possible to place Juliet among the great female characters of Shakespeare's creation." Other critics of high esteem, especially Mrs. Jameson, take a different view; but this may result, in part, from the representation being so charged, not to say overcharged, with poetic warmth and brilliancy, as to hinder a cool and steady judgment of the character. For the passion in which Juliet lives is most potently infectious; one can scarce venture near enough to see what and whence it is, without falling under its influence; while in her case it is so fraught with purity and tenderness, and self-forgetting ardor and constancy, and has so much, withal, that challenges a respectful pity, that the moral sense does not easily find where to fix its notes of reproof. And if in her intoxication of soul and sense she loses whatsoever of reason her youth and inexperience can have gathered, the effect is breathed forth with an energy and elevation of spirit, and in a transporting affluence of thought and imagery, which none but the sternest readers can well resist, and which, after all, there may not be much virtue in resisting.

We have to confess, however, that Juliet appears something better as a heroine than as a woman, the reverse of which commonly holds in the Poet's delineations. But she is a real heroine, in the best sense of the term; her womanhood being developed through her heroism, not eclipsed or obscured by it. Wherein she differs from the general run of tragic heroines, who act as if they knew not how to be heroic, without unsexing themselves, and becoming something mannish or viraginous: the trouble with them being, that they set out with a special purpose to be heroines, and study to approve themselves such; whereas Juliet is surprised into heroism, and acts the heroine without knowing it, simply because it is in her to do so, and, when the occasion comes, she cannot do otherwise.

It is not till the marriage with Paris is forced upon her, that the proper heroism of her nature displays itself. All her feelings as a woman, a lover, and a wife, are then thor

oughly engaged; and because her heart is all truth, therefore she cannot but choose rather to die "an unstain'd wife to her sweet love," than to live on any other terms. To avert what is to her literally an infinite evil, she appeals imploringly to her father, her mother, and the Nurse, in succession; nor is it till she is cast entirely on her own strength that she finds herself sufficient for herself. There is something truly fearful in the resolution and energy of her discourse with the Friar; yet we feel that she is still the same soft, tender, gentle being whose breath was lately so rich and sweet with words of love. When told the desperate nature of the remedy, she rises to a yet higher pitch, her very terror of the deed inspiring her with fresh energy of purpose. And when she comes to the performance, she cannot indeed arrest the workings of her imagination, neither can those workings shake her resolution; on the contrary, in their reciprocal action each adds vigor and intensity to the other, the terrific images which throng upon her excited fancy developing within her a strength and courage to face them. In all which there is certainly much of the heroine, but then the heroism is the free, spontaneous, unreflecting outcome of her native womanhood.

It is well worth noting, with what truth to nature the different qualities of the female character are in this representation distributed. Juliet has both the weakness and the strength of woman, and she has them in the right, that is, the natural places. For, if she appears as frail as the frailest of her sex in the process of becoming a lover, her frailty ends with that process: /weak in yielding to the first touch of passion, all her strength of character comes out in courage and constancy afterwards. Thus it is in the cause of the wife that the greatness proper to her

woman transpires. Moore, in his Life of Byron, speaks of this as a peculiarity of the Italian women; but surely it is nowise peculiar to them, save that they may have it in a larger measure than others. For, if we mistake not, the general rule of women everywhere is, that the

¿QUIEN SADE!

Introduction

I disagree!

easiest to fall in love are the hardest to get out of it, and > at the same time the most religiously tenacious of their honor in it.

It is very considerable that Juliet, though subject to the same necessity of loving as Romeo, is nevertheless quite exempt from the delusions of fancy, and therefore never gets bewildered with a love of her own making. The elements of passion in her do not, it is against her nature that they should, act in such a way as to send her in quest of an object: indeed they are a secret even to herself, she suspects not their existence, till the proper object appears, because it is the inspiration of that object that kindles them into effect.-Her modesty, too, is much like Romeo's honor; that is, it is a living attribute of her character, and not merely a form impressed upon her manners from without. She therefore does not try to conceal or disguise from herself the impulses of her nature, because she justly regards them as sanctified by the religion of her heart On this point, especially with reference to her famous soliloquy at the beginning of the second scene in Act III, we leave her in the hands of Mrs. Jameson; who, with a rare gift to see what is right, joins an equal felicity in expressing what she sees. "Let it be remembered," says she, "that in this speech Juliet is not supposed to be addressing an audience, nor even a confidante; and I confess I have been shocked at the utter want of taste and refinement in those who, with coarse derision, or in a spirit of prudery yet more gross and perverse, have dared to comment on this beautiful 'Hymn to the Night,' breathed out by Juliet in the silence and solitude of her chamber. She is thinking aloud; it is the young heart 'triumphing to itself in words.' In the midst of all the vehemence with which she calls upon the night to bring Romeo to her arms, there is something so almost infantine in her perfect simplicity, so playful and fantastic in the imagery and language, that the charm of sentiment and innocence is thrown over the whole; and her impatience, to use her own ex

pression, is truly that of ‘a childɔefore a festival, that hath new robes and may not wear thm.'”

The Nurse is in some respets another edition of Mrs. Quickly, though in a differet binding. The character has a tone of reality that most startles us on a first acquaintance. She gives the impression of a literal transcript from actual life; whih is doubtless owing in part to the predominance of meiory in her mind, causing her to think and speak of thing just as they occurred; as in her account of Juliet's age, where she cannot go on without bringing in all the accients and impertinences which stand associated with the suject. And she has a way of repeating the same thing in the same words, so that it strikes us as a fact cleaving ther thoughts, and exercising a sort of fascination over thm: it seems scarce possible ould be so enslaved to actual a real person that but any events.

This general passivene to what is going on about her naturally makes her whe character "smell of the shop." And she has a certain/ulgarized air of rank and refinement, as if, priding erself on the confidence of her superiors, she has caught and assimilated their manners to In this mixture of refinement and her own vulgar natre. vulgarity, both elnents are made the worse for being together; for, likeall those who ape their betters, she exaggerates what er she copies; or, borrowing the proprieties of the above her, she turns them into their opposite, becae she has no sense of propriety. Without a particle of uth, or honor, or delicacy; one to whom life has no sacriness, virtue no beauty, love no holiness; a woman, în ort, without womanhood; she abounds, however, in se-iceable qualities; has just that low servile prudence whh at once fits her to be an instrument, and makes Yet she acts not so much her pred to be used as such. from apositive disregard of right as from a lethargy of conscice; or as if her soul had run itself into a sort of moralty-rot through a leak at the mouth.

Accordingly,

base

she is a pattern of virtue.

st acts she never dreams but that And because she is thus uncon

scious and, as it were, innocent of her own vices, therefore Juliet thinks her free from th

beneath her petulant, vulgarem, and suspects not but that

loquacity she has a vein of y.. For she has, in her way, atsoever would give pleasure

womanly honor and sensibilit a real affection for Juliet; wh to herself, that she will do an young mistress; and, until loty thing to compass for her question, there has never been re and marriage become the any thing to disclose the essential oppugnancy of their r atures. When, however, in her noble agony, Juliet appeals to the Nurse for counsel, and is met with the advice to marry Paris, she sees at once what her soul is made of; that t her former praises of Romeo were but the offspring of a with talk; that in her long life she has gained only that sensual pruriency easing itself sort of experience which works the debasement of its possessor and that she knows less than nothing of love and marriage, because she has worn th eir prerogatives without any feeling of their sacredness.

Mercutio is one of the instances which strikingly show the excess of Shakespeare's powers abo ve his performances. Though giving us more than any other to have given but a small part of himself; for we see not man, he still seems but he could have gone on indefinitely rev "exquisite ebullience and overflow" of lifeling in the same and wit which he has started in Mercutio. As seeking rah As seeking rather to instruct

alk, he lets off

her, and then

us with character than to entertain us with t just enough of the latter to disclose the for stops, leaving the impression of an inexhaustib e abundance withheld to give scope for something better. From the nature of the subject, he had to leave unsatisfied the desire which in Mercutio is excited. Delightful as Me cutio is, the Poet valued and makes us value his room mo his company. It has been said that he was obliged to kill Mercutio, lest Mercutio should kill him. And cert,

re than

is not easy to see how he could have kept Mercu inly it Tybalt in the play without spoiling it, nor how io and

could