, 1890-11-16

OlucT AeLululuc CuAIdCteI6, THESE are typ
ical, and exemplify the afiuence of his
invention. They appear in a way to ex-
haust the productivity of Nature, and
penetrate into the region of the super
sensible for illustration.
How ingenious, sweet, innocent, affec-
Tomato is Prospero's daughterl What
perfect w-omanliness, u~ntarnished by So
~phistication or conventionality-a very
wild flower, coupled with the uncon-
scious inheritance of culture and gentle
blood! She is so natural that she must
follow the law Of her being and lose her
virgin heart to any man with whom she
may be thrown. 1t was inevitable that
h should love Ferdinand; but might
h not nave been in danger v from
the deformed Caliban, whom, in the alb
sence of other male creatures, she might
have idealized into symmetry and kind
illness? Miranda will always b. the po-
etc representative of freshness, purity
and romantic love allied to flial duty in
budding womanhood.
Isabella is a most devoted sister, who,
to preserve her brother Claudio's life,
would sacrifice anything, everything,
save her own honor. When this is de-
manded of her by Angelo, and when
Claudio basely suggests that her YIELD
ing herself might, in such a cause,
become a shining virtue, she turns
OF him with righteous wrath, and
blights him with her scorn. Her sense
of chastity is a holy instinct that can
not for n moment be suppressed. She
is, in truth, a thing enskied and sainted.
When Claudio's natural manliness,
cowed by the vapor of apprehension,
has revived, her sisterly tenderness re-
turns, with an added horror and detes-
tation Of the lustful deputy. And then,
again, discovering that Claudio has been
spared by a ruse, she pleads for Angelo,
her would be runner, who had been deaf
to her plteous appeals for mercy. Such
changes, such ~opposites, are common to
women, especially to those of ardent.
emotional temperament. Isabella is a
thorough and most exalted oma and
womanly to the core: Nothing is truer
of her kind han that she should have
resolved in the first act to enter a nun
merry, and that she should in the fifth
give her hand to Vincentio, who had in
disguise witnessed her steadfastness
under trial and thereby beer c~aptivated.
The zeal that women feel for religion
often springs from the suppressed fire of
their mn~n-loving hearts. The priest or
1.-The lover kindles the flame, abstract or
personal, rs circumstance decides, but
in some form the lover, spiritual or
material. is ever there.
Titania is a fairy, though singularly
feminine, and her passion for Bottom is
a sly satire on the witchery that passion
lays on woman's eyes. She needs but
precious little change to be a delightful
daughter of Earth. Angels and god
desses fit well enough into theology and
mythology, but mortal. mutable, incom-
patible, gartered, furbelowed creatures
alone respond TO the sympathies and
yearnings of mankind.
Beatrice, with her keen wit, her ban
ter, her gayety, her unfagging spirits,
her veiied heart, might be a being of
today-a native of New York as well
as Of Centuries past, and of Messina. A
magnificent specimen of breezy, bound
ing, melted daughterhood, she is of the
world worldly, and yet capable of the
deepest devotion, or the greatest sacri-
fee, should circumstances call for it.
She is, and ever will be, eternally fresh.
and reveals to US what we nave glimpses
of in the buoyant, perfectly healthful,
tempting, tantalizing women that sweep
across our path like pungent winds, and
set our brains and hearts 20 the tune of
wbirling fancies. Sh IS continually
more thai n match for Renedick. as she
would be for almost any man she should
encounter. Splendid with all the ele-
ments of high comedy, she has no peer
In literature, and scarcely a complete
reflection, except in many real women,
necessary to make up her own.
Desdemona is the symbol and the soul
of wifely allegiance, whose doom is fore
Swallowed the moment that she joins her
fortunes and destiny with the half bar
barous Moor. A more natural, romantic
and deadly marriage couldnot nave been
concocted under the most baneful in
fluences of the planet Saturn. The
drama is more tragic than aught that
Aschylus, Sophocles and Euripides com
bined have written or imagined, but still
it is instinct with the life of the ages. 1t
is a prolonged heart break, and once
read cannot be forgotten. 1t is sufh-
cient to arouse passion in n statue or a
mathematician; it is a volcanic outburst,
to all of MS, of dreadful possibilities.
Poor Desdemona is too pure to under
stand jealousy, to repeat the blasting
words her frenzied husband hurls at her.
h is too pure to be prudent, to be the
wife of any one not a philosopher or a
saint. Her guilt is well nigh demon
strable; it is entirely obvious and logical
that Othello should kill her. Almost
any man might in mis- case have done
the same thing. Nevertheless she was,
AZ Emilia says, the sweetest innocent
that ever did lift up eye. Such an ex-
posture of the terrors of jealousy has
never been made, and Desdemona's char
acter is a brief niad of its woes.
Helena, Perdita, Rosalind, Viola are
different types of gentle, affectionate,
consummate ~womanhood, whose minds,
hopes and highest ambitions are DOM
mated by their soft and sympathetic
hearts. If not graDlly heroic, it is plain
that they might be SO if occasion should
command. They are too feminine not
to be equal to all duties laid on their
delicate though nervous shoulders. Cor
della is absolute sincerity and filial
conservation. Imogen is perhaps the
most delightful, the most alluring of all
Shakespeare's h~eroInes, with 30 cunning
a mixture of strength and weakness, of
archness and integrity, of attractive con-
trarities that the prosiest mar that
chances at her would hunger TO be Leo
natus, who had dared to doubt her inflex-
ible loyalty. She is the very Kohinoor
among the rare diamonds of wifehood-
Juliet is 80 spontaneous with girlish
intensity and PASSION that only youthful
lovers find themselves wholly in har-