Laer. "Enter PRIESTS, &c. in Procession; the tate: Couch we a while, and mark. [Retiring with HORATIO. A very noble youth: Mark. As we have warranty: Her death was And, but that great command o'ersways the order, She should in ground unsanctified have lodg'd Till the last trumpet; for charitable A minist'ring angel shall my sister be, Ham. prayers, Shards, flints, and pebbles, should be thrown on her: Yet here she is allowed her virgin crants, Laer. Must there no more be done? dead, To sing a requiem, and such to rest her [Scattering Flowers. I hop'd thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife; I thought, thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, And not have strew'd thy grave. Laer. O, treble woe Fall ten times treble on that cursed head, Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense Depriv'd thee of!-Hold off the earth a while, Till I have caught her once more in mine arms; [Leaps into the grave. Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead; Till of this flat a mountain you have made The corse, they follow, did with despe- Conjures the wand'ring stars, and makes rate hand Fordo its own life. 'Twas of some es them stand Like wonder-wounded hearers? this is I, Hamlet the Dane." And so vanishes for ever from our eyes, she whom Samuel Johnson tenderly calls "Ophelia, the young, the beautiful, the harmless, and the pious." To o'er-top old Pelion, or the skyish head Ham. (Advancing.) What is he, whose Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow Away! Away! with us, far, far from the courts of Sin and Suffering, to that Enchanted Isle, where MIRANDA is walking on flowers or shells, and ARIEL Winnows the pure air around her head with wings lovely as the rainbow. The Bermuda Isles, in which Shakspeare has placed the scene of the Tempest, were described by Sir George Somers, who was wrecked there, as "a land of devils," 66 a most prodigious and enchanted place," subject to continual tempests and supernatural visitings; and such was the idea entertained of the "stillvexed Bermoothes" in Shakspeare's age. But later travellers, says Mrs Jameson, describe them "as perfect regions of enchantment in a far different sense; as so many fairy Edens, clustered like a knot of gems upon the bosom of the Atlantic, decked out in all the lavish luxuriance of nature, with shades of myrtle and cedar, fringed round with groves of coral; in short, each island a living paradise, rich with perpetual blossoms, in which Ariel might have slumbered, and ever-verdant bowers, in which Ferdinand and Miranda might have strayed. So that Shakspeare, in blending the wild relations of the shipwrecked mariners with his own inspired fancies, has produced nothing, however lovely in nature, and sublime in magical power, which does not harmonize with the beautiful and wondrous reality." There has been shipwreck-the hurly-burly's done-and in the calm before their Cell, lo! Prospero, the Mighty Magician, and his daughter, THE WONDErful. "O! I have suffered With those that I saw suffer! a brave vessel, Who had no doubt some noble creatures in her, Dashed all to pieces! Oh, the cry did knock Against my very heart! Poor souls! they perished! Had I been any God of Power, I would Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er It should the good ship so have swallow'd, and 66 The freighting souls within her!" Already we love Miranda. Contrasted with the impression of her refined and dignified beauty, and its effect on all beholders, is Miranda's own soft simplicity, her virgin innocence, her total ignorance of the conventional forms and language of society. It is most natural, that in a being thus constituted, the first tears should spring from compassion, suffering with those that she saw suffer." With what intent interest do we listen, all the while gazing on her miraculous beauty, to her father's narrative, then first told to her, of their strange eventful history!" The Isle is felt to be indeed enchanted, ere we have a glimpse of Ariel, who, to answer his master's pleasure, is ready "to fly, To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride On the curl'd clouds." Each touching sentence of the tale brings out some delightful trait of nature in Miranda; and in the solitary place, as up grew that living 66 flower beneath his eye," we feel how happy Prospero must have been in watching the unfolding of her woman's heart. Ignorant of how she came there, and often wondering, no doubt, at her own wondrous life, yet had she never once asked her father to explain the mystery. "Prospero. My dear one! thee, my daughter! who Art ignorant of what thou art, nought knowing Of whence I am; nor that I am more better Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell, Did never meddle with my thoughts." But as more-as all is told her-how her thoughts-her feelings rise ac cordant to all those of her beloved father! How beautifully she speaks of her dreamlike remembrances of some other evanished life, when elsewhere she was a child! How pity and grief and indignation alternate in her simple heart, as her father unfolds the story of his wrongs, his perils, his escape, and his banish ment! 66 Prospero. There they hoist us, To cry to the sea that roar'd to us; to sigh To the winds, whose pity, sighing back again, Did us but loving wrong! O, a cherubim Thou wast, that did preserve me! Thou didst smile, Infused with a fortitude from heaven! Miranda. How came we ashore? Prospero. By Providence divine. Some food we had, and some fresh water, that A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo, Which since have steaded much; so of me, Would I might From my own library, with volumes that Than other princes can, that have more time For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful. Miranda. Heaven thank thee for't." Yes! she has had a noble education. And she is grateful to Heaven for her father's love. She is now-as we gather from the narrative-in her fifteenth year-one year older than Juliet," alike, but oh! how different" from that other "snowy dove!" Never had she seen a man but her father. But she had read of her faroff kind, and when the ship went to pieces, she said, " who had no doubt some noble creatures in her." Much had she pored, no doubt, over her father's books, and the Lady of the Enchanted Isle had bright ideas of her own, sweet imaginings of all that breathed and moved in the great cities of the remote world beyond her own waves. Phantoms all! yet dear as she looked on the silent letters to her human heart. But let one of her own sex draw her character. Had Shakspeare, she says, never created a Miranda, we should never have been made to feel how completely the purely natural and the purely ideal can blend into each other. "The character of Miranda resolves itself into the very elements of womanhood. She is beautiful, modest, and tender, and she is these only; they comprise her whole being, external and internal. She is so perfectly unsophisticated, so delicately refined, that she is all but ethereal. Let us imagine any other woman placed beside Miranda-even one of Shakspeare's own loveliest and sweetest creations-there is not one of them that could sustain the comparison for a moment, not one that would not appear somewhat coarse or artificial when brought into immediate contact with this pure child of nature, this Eve of an enchanted Paradise.' upon the winds, rode the curl'd clouds, and, in the colours of the rainbow, lived' -Miranda herself appears a palpable reality, a woman, breathing thoughtful breath,' a woman, walking the earth in her mortal loveliness, with a heart as frail-strung, as passion-touched, as ever fluttered in a female bosom. "I have said that Miranda possesses merely the elementary attributes of womanhood, but each of these stand in her with a distinct and peculiar grace. She resembles nothing upon earth; but do we therefore compare her, in our own minds, with any of those fabled beings with which the fancy of ancient poets peopled the forest depths, the fountain, or the ocean?-Oread or dryad fleet, seamaid, or naiad of the stream? We cannot think of them together. Miranda is a "What, then, has Shakspeare done? 'O wondrous skill and sweet wit of the man!'-he has removed Miranda far from all comparison with her own sex; he has placed her between the demi-demon of earth and the delicate spirit of air. The next step is into the ideal and supernatural, and the only being who approaches Miranda, with whom she can be contrasted, is Ariel. Beside the subtle essence of this ethereal sprite, this creature of elemental light and air, that ran consistent, natural, human being. Our impression of her nymph-like beauty, her peerless grace and purity of soul, has a distinct and individual character. Not only she is exquisitely lovely, being what she is, but we are made to feel that she could not possibly be otherwise than as she is portrayed. She has never beheld one of her own sex; she has never caught from society one imitated or artificial grace. The impulses which have come to her, in her enchanted solitude, are of heaven and nature, not of the world and its vanities. She has sprung up into beauty beneath the eye of her father, the princely magician; her companions have been the rocks and woods, the manyshaped, many-tinted clouds, and the silent stars; her playmates the ocean billows, that stooped their foamy crests, and ran rippling to kiss her feet. Ariel and his attendant sprites hovered over her head, ministered duteous to her every wish, and presented before her pageants of beauty and grandeur. The very air, made vocal by her father's art, floated in music around her. If we can pre-suppose such a situation with all its circumstances, do we not behold in the character of Miranda not only the credible, but the natural, the necessary results of such a situation? She retains her woman's heart, for that is unalterable and inalienable, as a part of her being; but her deportment, her looks, her language, her thoughtsall these, from the supernatural and poetical circumstances around her, assume a cast of the pure ideal; and to us, who are in the secret of her human and pitying nature, nothing can be more charming and consistent than the effect which she produces upon others, who never having beheld any thing resembling her, approach her as a wonder,' as something celestial." Mira. Pro. If now 'twere fit to do't:-At the first No wonder, sir; And his brave son, being twain. Pro. The duke of Milan, And his more braver daughter, could control thee, It goes on, usurp Aside. As my soul prompts it:-Spirit, fine The name thou ow'st not; and hast put spirit! I'll free thee Within two days for this. thyself Fer. May know, if you remain upon this island; How I may bear me here: My prime re- If you be maid, or no? My language! heavens! Pro. Were I but where 'tis spoken. Fer. A single thing, as I am now, that To hear them speak of Naples; He does And, that he does, I weep: myself am The king my father wreck'd. I must uneasy make, lest too light win- That thou attend me: thou dost here Upon this island, as a spy, to win it Fer. If the ill spirit have so fair an house, I'll manacle thy neck and feet together: Wherein the acorn cradled; Follow. Fer. Mira. I will resist such entertainment, till Who mak'st a show, but dar'st not strike, • Is so possess'd with guilt: come from thy ward; For I can here disarm thee with this stick, And make thy weapon drop. Mira. I'll be his surety. too, have their share in her bosom, for her father's anger seems kindled against him who she thought might be " a spirit." No tumult is in her veins-though her heart be beating -and when Ferdinand says, "My prime request, Which I do last pronounce, is, O you Wonder! If you be maid or no?" Her simplicity calmly answers, She says, indeed, "this is the first man that e'er I sighed for!" But how gentle must have been that sigh! Its sweetness but made her pray-" pity move my father to be inclined my way!" and at the close of the scene, when she bids Ferdimy nand be comforted, for that " father's of a better nature, sir, than he appears by speech," her looks, no doubt, like her language, are those but of pitiful and sorrowful affection-all that yet she knows of Love. "Enter FERDINAND, bearing a Log. Fer. There be some sports are painful ; and their labour Delight in them sets off: some kinds of baseness Are nobly undergone; and most poor matters Point to rich ends. This my mean task Juliet is thrilled to the heart's core by the first kiss of Romeo. Her Life is in a moment Passion. She must "If he be possess him or she dies. married, my grave shall be my wedding-bed!" Sleep flies her till she rest in Romeo's bosom. Yet is she pure. His blood, too, is turned to liquid fire. And from transient bliss they are hurried on by fatalities attending their passion to death. It burns to the last-the full flame is extinguished all at once in the tomb. Miranda as suddenly loves; but with her 'tis all imagination-save the sweet impulse of innocent nature, passion there is none. Surprise, wonder, admiration,delight-in them she finds a new being, and it all gathers upon Ferdinand. Pity and fear, And makes my labours pleasures: O, she Ten times more gentle than her father's remove Some thousands of these logs, and pile. them up, Upon a sore injunction: My sweet mis tress Weeps when she sees me work: and says, such baseness Had ne'er like executor. Enter MIRANDA; and PROSPERO at a Mira. Alas, now! pray you, Work not so hard: I would, the lightning had Burnt up those logs, that you are enjoin'd to pile! Pray, set it down, and rest you: when this burns, |