"You two are book-men: Can you tell by your wit, The ladies have received verses and jewels from their lovers; but they trust not to the What was a month old at Cain's birth, that's verses-they think them "bootless rhymes," —the effusions of "prodigal wits :" 66 not five weeks old as yet?" The answer of Holofernes is the very quintessence of pedantry. He gives Goodman Dull the hardest name for the moon in the mythology. Goodman Dull is with difficulty quieted. Holofernes then exhibits his poetry; and he "will something affect the letter, for it argues facility." He produces, as all pedants attempt to produce, not what is good when executed, but what is difficult of execution. Satisfied with his own performances -"the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it”—he is profuse in his contempt for other men's productions. He undertakes to prove Biron's canzonet to be very unlearned, neither savouring of poetry, wit, nor invention." The portrait is two hundred years old, and yet how many of the present day might sit for it! Holofernes, however, is not meant by Shakspere for a blockhead. He is made of better stuff than the ordinary run of those who "educate youth at the charge-house." Shakspere has taken care that we should see flashes of good sense amidst his folly. To say nothing of the curate's commendations of his reasons at dinner," we have his own description of Armado, to show how clearly he could discover the ludicrous side of others. The pedant can see the ridiculous in pedantry of another stamp. But the poet also takes care that the ridiculous side of "the two learned men "shall still be prominent. Moth and Costard are again brought upon the scene to laugh at those who "have been at a great feast of languages, and have stolen the scraps." Costard himself is growing affected. He has picked up the fashion of being clever, and he has himself stolen honorificabilitudinitatibus out of "the alms-basket of words." But business proceeds :-Holofernes will present before the Princess the nine worthies, and he will play three himself. The soul of the schoolmaster is in this magnificent device; and he looks down with most selfsatisfied pity on honest Dull, who has spoken no word, and understood none. 66 66 'Folly in fools bears not so strong a note When Boyet discloses to the Princess the scheme of the mask of Muscovites, she is more confirmed in her determination to laugh at the laughers : "They do it but in mocking merriment ; And mock for mock is only my intent." The affectation of "speeches penn'd " is overthrown in a moment by the shrewdness of the women, who encounter the fustian harangue with prosaic action. Moth comes in crammed with others' affectations : "All hail, the richest beauties on the earth! A holy parcel of the fairest dames"-The ladies turn their backs on him— 66 Biron in vain gives him the cue-" their eyes, villain, their eyes :"-" the pigeon-egg of discretion" has ceased to be discreet-he is out, and the speech is ended. The maskers will try for themselves. They each take a masked lady apart, and each finds a wrong mistress, who has no sympathy with him. The keen breath of "mocking wenches " has puffed out all their fine conceits: "Well, better wits have worn plain statutecaps." The sharp medicine has had its effect. The King and his lords return without their disguises; and, being doomed to hear the echo of the laugh at their folly, they come down from their stilts to the level ground of com "To choke a gibing spirit, Whose influence is begot of that loose grace been laughed at now take to laughing at | he has a natural fault to correct, worse than others. Costard, who is the most natural of any affectation; and beautifully does Rosathe Worthies, comes off with the fewest hurts. line hold up to him the glass which shows He has performed Pompey marvellously well, him how. and he is not a little vain of his performance —“I hope I was perfect." When the learned curate breaks down as Alexander, the apology of Costard for his overthrow is inimitable : "There, an 't shall please you ; a foolish mild man; an honest man, look you, and soon dashed! He is a marvellous good neighbour, in sooth; and a very good bowler; but, for Alisander, alas! you see how 't is ; a little o'erparted." Holofernes comes off worse than the curate—" Alas, poor Machabæus, how hath he been baited!" We feel, in spite of our inclination to laugh at the pedant, that his remonstrance is just "This is not generous, not gentle, not humble." We know that to be generous, to be gentle, to be humble, are the especial virtues of the great; and Shakspere makes us see that the schoolmaster is right. Lastly, comes Armado. His discomfiture is still more signal. The malicious trick that Biron suggests to Costard shows that Rosaline's original praise of him was not altogether deserved—that his merriment was not always "Within the limit of becoming mirth." The affectations of Biron are cast aside, but The affectations are blown into thin air. The King and his courtiers have to turn from speculation to action—from fruitless vows to deeds of charity and piety. Armado is about to apply to what is useful: "I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her sweet love three years." The voices of the pedants are heard no more in scraps of Latin. They are no longer "singled from the barbarous." But, on the contrary, "the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled, in praise of the owl and the cuckoo,” is full of the most familiar images, expressed in the most homely language. Shakspere, unquestionably, to our minds, brought in this most characteristic song-(a song that he might have written and sung in the chimney-corner of his father's own kitchen, long before he dreamt of having a play acted before Queen Elizabeth)-to mark, by an emphatic close, the triumph of simplicity over false refinement. CHAPTER IV. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. IN Dr. Farmer's 'Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare,' we find this passage:— "The story of All's Well that Ends Well' or, as I suppose it to have been sometimes called, 'Love's Labour Wonne"" (and here Farmer inserts a reference to Meres' 'Wits' Treasury,' where 'Love's Labour Wonne' is mentioned amongst plays by Shakspere,) "is originally indeed the property of Boccace, but it came immediately to Shakspeare from Painter's Giletta of Narbon."" Mr. Hun no kind of argument or evidence; and I cannot find that any persons who have repeated it after him have shown any probable grounds for the opinion." Malone, in the first edition of his 'Chronological Order of Shakspeare's Plays,' assigns the date of this comedy to 1598, upon the authority of the passage in Meres. He says, "No other of our author's plays could have borne that title ('Love's Labour Won') with so much propriety as that before us; yet it must be acknowledged that the present title is inserted in the body of the play : 'All's well that ends well: still the fine 's the crown.' This line, however, might certainly have suggested the alteration of what has been thought the first title, and affords no decisive proof that this piece was originally called 'All's Well that Ends Well." When Coleridge describes this play as “originally intended as the counterpart of 'Love's Labour's Lost," "—when Mrs. Jameson, with reference to the nature of the plot and the suitableness of the title found in Meres, states, complainingly, "Why the title was altered, or by whom, I cannot discover,"and when Tieck says, "The poet probably first called this play 'Love's Labour Won,'" —we may add the opinions of these eminent writers on Shakspere to the original opinion of Malone, in opposition to the opinion of Mr. Hunter, that "the leading features of the story in 'All's Well' cannot be said to be aptly represented by the title in Meres' list." Coleridge described this play as the counterpart of 'Love's Labour's Lost.' Shakspere's titles, in the judgment of our philosophical critic, always exhibit "great significancy." The Labour of Love which is Lost is not a very earnest labour. The King and his courtiers are fantastical lovers. They would win their mistresses by "bootless rhymes" and "speeches penn'd," and their most sincere declarations are thus only received as "mocking merriment." The concluding speeches of the ladies to their lovers show clearly that Shakspere meant to mark the cause why their labour was lost-it was labour hastily taken up, pursued in a light temper, assuming the character of " pleasant jest and courtesy." The Princess and her ladies would not accept it as "labour" without a year's probation. It was offered, they thought, "in heat of blood;"-theirs was a love which only bore "gaudy blossoms." What would naturally be the counterpart of such a story? One of passionate, enduring, all-pervading love—of a love that shrinks from no difficulty, resents no unkindness, fears no disgrace, but perseveres, under the most adverse circumstances, to vindicate its own claims by its own energy, and to achieve success by the strength of its own will. This is the Labour of Love which is Won. Is not this the story of 'All's Well that Ends Well?' When Helena, in the first scene, so beautifully describes the hopelessness of her love "It were all one That I should love a bright particular star, And think to wed it, he is so above me" could she propose to come within "his sphere" without some extraordinary effort? "Hic labor, hoc opus est." She does resolve to make the effort; it is within the bounds of possibility that her labour may be successful, and therefore her "intents are fix'd:" "The mightiest space in fortune nature brings To join like likes, and kiss like native things. Impossible be strange attempts to those That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose What hath been cannot be." Inferior natures, that estimate their labours by a common standard-"that weigh their pains in sense"-that are not supported in their labours by a spirit which rejects all fear and embraces all hope,—confound the difficult with the impossible: they know that courage has triumphed over difficulty, but they still think "what hath been cannot be" again. Helena is not of their mind : "My project may deceive me, But my intents are fix'd, and will not leave me." avowed without hesitation. Her will was too strong to admit of that timidity which might have clung to a feebler mind : This is the purpose avowed from the com- The reward, however, which she seeks is mencement of the dramatic action; which marks every stage of its progress; which is essentially 'Love's Labour,' whether it be won or be lost. How beautifully does Shakspere relieve us from the feeling that it is unsexual for the labour to be undertaken by Helena, through the compassion which she inspires in the good old Countess : 66 Then shalt thou give me, with thy kingly hand, What husband in thy power I will command." Up to this point all has been "labour"the conception of a high and dangerous pur "It is the show and seal of nature's truth, Where love's strong passion is impress'd in pose—the carrying it through without shrink youth." How delicately, too, does he make Helena hold to her determination, even whilst she confesses to the Countess the secret of her ambitious love : ing. When the cure is effected, and she has to avow her choice, comes a still greater labour. The struggle within herself is most intense : "Now, Dian, from thy altar do I fly;" "My friends were poor but honest; so's my and— Be not offended; for it hurts not him "There's something hints, More than my father's skill, which was the greatest Of his profession, that his good receipt not for the cure of the King only, but for "I will no more enforce mine office on you;" but she immediately after presses her "fix'd intents:" "What I can do can do no hurt to try." She succeeds : "Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak." "The blushes in my cheeks thus whisper me,'We blush, that thou shouldst choose,' these expressions sufficiently give the key to what passes within her. Her feelings amount almost to agony when Bertram refuses her, and for a moment she abandons her fix'd intent : "That you are well restor'd, my lord, I 'm glad; Let the rest go." "But shall she weakly relinquish the golden opportunity, and dash the cup from her lips at the moment it is presented? Shall she cast away the treasure for which she has ventured both life and honour, when it is just within her grasp ? Shall she, after compromising her feminine delicacy by the public disclosure of her preference, be thrust back into shame, 'to blush out the remainder of her life,' and die a poor, lost, scorned thing? This would be very pretty and interesting and characteristic in Viola or Ophelia, but not at all consistent with that high determined spirit, that moral energy, with which Helena is portrayed."* Helena suffers Bertram to be forced upon her—and this is the greatest "labour" of all. After the marriage and the desertion "Love's labour" is still most untiringly tasked. Love next assumes the sweet and Mrs. Jameson's Characteristics,' vol. i. p. 212. smiling aspect of duty. "What's his will else?"-" what more commands he ?" "In everything I wait upon his will”— "The time will bring on summer, When briars shall have leaves as well as thorns, And be as sweet as sharp." are all the replies she makes to the harsh She repines at no exertion—she shrinks from commands of her lord, conveyed by a frivolous messenger. In her parting interview with Bertram, in which his coldness and dislike are scarcely attempted to be concealed, She has a the same spirit alone exists. harder trial still. Her lord avows his final abandonment of her, except upon apparently impossible conditions. She has only one complaint, "This is a dreadful sentence;" but her intense love has destroyed in her all the feeling of self through which she was enabled to accomplish the triumph of her own will: "Poor lord! is 't I When she says "I will be gone," she probably had no purpose of seeking Bertram, and of endeavouring to reverse his "dreadful sentence" by her own management. But "love's labours" were not yet ended. Her mind was not framed to shrink from difficulty; and we soon meet her at Florence. The plot after this is such a one as Shakspere could only have found in the legendary history of an unrefined age, preserved from oblivion by one who was imbued with the kindred genius of unveiling the brightness of the poetical, even when it was concealed from ordinary vision by the clouds of a prosaic, atmosphere. Mrs. Jameson has truly observed, "All the circumstances and details with which Helena is surrounded are shocking to our feelings, and wounding to our delicacy; and yet the beauty of the character is made to triumph over all." The beauty of the character is in its intensity. By that is Helena enabled to pass through all the slough of her last "labours" without contamination; her purpose sanctifies her acts. From the first scene to the last her life is one continued struggle. But the hopeful quality of her soul never forsakes her : no fatigue : "But this exceeding posting, day and night, Must wear your spirits low," has no reference to herself. When she finds the King has left Marseilles she has no regrets : "All's well that ends well, yet; Though time seem so adverse, and means unfit." Her final triumph at last arrives; but it is a happiness that cannot be spoken of. Her feelings find vent in— "O my dear mother, do I see you living!" She can now, indeed, call the Countess mother. In the early scenes she dared only to name her as "mine honourable mistress." By her energy and perseverance she has conquered. Is this, or is it not, Love's Labour Won? The Malone, as we have already expressed our belief, has applied the true test to the application of Meres' title of 'Love's Labour Won:' "No other of our author's plays could have borne that title with so much propriety as that before us." The application, be it understood, is limited to the comedies. title cannot be applied to 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' 'The Comedy of Errors,' 'Love's Labour's Lost,' 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' 'The Merchant of Venice,' for those are also mentioned in Meres' list as existing in 1598. Can it have reference to 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' than which no title can be more definite ;-to 'The Taming of the Shrew,' equally defined; to 'Twelfth Night' or 'Measure for Measure,' or 'Much Ado about Nothing,' or 'As You Like It,' or 'The Winter's Tale?'-We think not; we are sure that none of our readers who are familiar with the plots of these plays can believe that either of them was so named. We, of course, here put the question of chronology out of view. Mr. Hunter, to support his opinion that "The Tempest' was |