versa. Therefore it is that I have never | vies with each in trying to outflank the cared very much to listen to "readings" other by jest and repartee; and as is of entire plays by any single person. I fitting, the victory is generally with the have sometimes given them myself; but lady, whose adroitness in "tacking about, only, like Beatrice, "upon great persua- and taking advantage of all winds," gives sion." her the advantage even against an adversary so formidable as Benedick.

That Beatrice is beautiful, Shakespeare is at pains to indicate. If what Wordsworth says was ever true of any one, assuredly it was true of her, that

vital feelings of delight

Had reared her form to stately height.

Pardon this digression. It was so much my way to live with the characters I represented, that when I sit down to write, my mind naturally wanders off into things which happened to me in connec tion with the representation of them. It was some time before I again performed Beatrice, and then I had for my Benedick Mr. James Wallack. He was at that time Accordingly we picture her as tall, and past the meridian of his life; but he threw with the lithe, elastic grace' of motion a spirit and grace into the part, which, which should come of a fine figure and added to his fine figure and gallant bear-high health. We are very early made to ing, made him, next to Mr. Charles Kem- see that she is the sunshine of her uncle ble, although far beneath him, the best Leonato's house. He delights in her Benedick whom I have ever seen. Oh, quaint, daring way of looking at things; for something of the fire, the undying youthfulness of spirit, now so rare, the fine courtesy of bearing, which made the acting with actors of this type delightful! By this time I had made a greater study of the play; moved more freely in my art, and was therefore able to throw myself into the character of Beatrice more completely than in the days of my novitiate. The oftener I played it the more the character grew upon me. The view I had taken of it seemed also to find favor with my audiences. I well remember the pleasure I felt, when some chance critic wrote of my Beatrice, that she was "a creature overflowing with joyousness, raillery it self being in her nothing more than an excess of animal spirits, tempered by pass ing through a soul of goodness." That she had a soul, brave and generous as well as good, it was always my aim to show. All this was easy work to me on the stage. To do it with my pen is a far harder task; but I must try.

It may be a mere fancy, but I cannot help thinking that Shakespeare found peculiar pleasure in the delineation of Beatrice, and more especially in devising the encounters between her and Benedick. You remember what old Fuller says of the wit combats between Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, in which he likens Jonson to a Spanish galleon, "built high, solid, but slow; and Shakespeare to an English man-of-war, "lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, tacking about, and taking advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." It is just this quickness of wit and invention which is the special characteristic of both Benedick and Beatrice. In their skirmishes, each

he is proud of her, too, for with all her sportive and somewhat domineering ways, she is every inch the noble lady, bearing herself in a manner worthy of her high blood and courtly breeding. He knows how good and sound she is in heart no less than in head, one of those strong natures which can be counted on to rise up in answer to a call upon their courage and fertility of resource in any time of diffi culty or trouble. Her shrewd, sharp sayings have only a pleasant piquancy for him. Indeed, however much weak, colorless natures might stand in awe of eyes so quick to detect a flaw, and a wit so prompt to cover it with ridicule, there must have been a charm for him and for all manly natures in the very peril of coming under the fire of her raillery. A young, beautiful, graceful woman, flashing out brilliant sayings, charged with no real malice, but with just enough of a sting in them to pique the self-esteem of those at whom they are aimed, must always, I fancy, have a peculiar fascination for men of spirit. And so we see at the very outset it was with Beatrice. Not only her uncle, but also Don Pedro, and the Count Claudio, have the highest admiration of her. That she was either a vixen or a shrew was the last idea that would have entered their minds. "By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady!" says Don Pedro ; and the words express what was obviously the general impression of all who knew her best.

How long Benedick and Beatrice have known each other before the play begins is not indicated. I think we may fairly infer that their acquaintance is of some standing. It certainly did not begin when

Don Pedro, Prince of Arragon, in pass-
ing through Messina, on the way prob-
ably to attack the Turks, with whom
Spain, Austria, and Venice were at war
about the period to which we may reason-
ably assign the action of the play, picked
Benedick up, and attached him to his
suite. They were obviously intimate be-
fore this. At all events, there had been
time for an antagonism to spring up be
tween them, which was natural where both
were witty, and both accustomed to lord it
somewhat, as witty people are apt to do,
over their respective circles. Benedick
could scarcely have failed to have drawn
the fire of Beatrice by his avowed and
contemptuous indifference to her sex, if by
nothing else. To be evermore proclaim-
ing, as we may be sure he did, just as
much before he went to the wars as he did
after his return, that he rated all women
cheaply, was an offence which Beatrice,
ready enough although she might be her-
self to make epigrams on the failings of
her sex, was certain to resent. Was it to
be borne that he should set himself up as
"a professed tyrant to her whole sex,'
and boast his freedom from the vassalage
to "love, the lord of all"? And this, too,
when he had the effrontery to tell herself,
"It is certain I am loved of all ladies,
only you excepted."

and, in short, has more of the qualities to win the heart of a woman of spirit, than any of the gallants who have come about her. She, on the other hand, has the attraction for him of being as clever as she is handsome, the person of all his circle who puts him most upon his mettle, and who pays him the compliment of replying upon his sharp sayings with repartees, the brilliancy of which he cannot but acknowledge, even while he smarts under them. He is, besides, far from insensible to her beauty, as we see by what he says of her to Claudio when contrasting her with Hero. "There is her cousin, an she were not possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty as the first of May doth the last of December." No wonder, therefore, that, as we see, they have often come into contact, creating no small amusement to their friends, and to none more than to Leonato. When Beatrice, in the opening scene of the play, says so many biting things about Benedick, Leonato, anxious that the messenger shall not carry away a false opinion of him, says: "You must not, sir, mistake my niece; there is a kind of merry war between Signor Benedick and her; they never meet but there's a skirmish of wit between them." Life, perhaps, has not been so amusing to Leonato since Signor Benedick went away. It is conceivable that Beatrice herself may have missed him, if for nothing else than for the jibes and sarcasm which had called her own exuber

It is true that Beatrice, when she is
pressed upon the point, has much the
same pronounced notions about the male
sex, and the bondage of marriage. But
she does not, like Benedick, go about pro-ance of wit into play.
claiming them to all comers; neither does
she denounce the whole male sex for the
faults or vices of the few. Besides, there
has clearly been about Benedick, in these
early days, an air of confident self-asser-
tion, a tendency to talk people down,
which have irritated Beatrice. The name,
"Signor Montanto," borrowed from the
language of the Italian fencing-school, by
which she asks after him in the first sen-
tence she utters, and her announcement
that she had promised "to eat all of his
killing," seem to point to the first of these
faults. And may we not take, as an in-
dication of the other, her first remark
to himself, "I wonder you will still be
talking, Signor Benedick; nobody marks
you:
and also the sarcasm in her de-
scription of him to her uncle, as "too like
my lady's eldest son, evermore tattling"?
What piques Beatrice is the undeniable
fact that Benedick is a handsome, gallant
young fellow, a general favorite, who
makes his points with trenchant effect in
the give and take of their wit-combats,

17

We shall not, I believe, do her justice unless we form some idea, such as I have indicated, of the relations that have subsisted between her and Benedick before the play opens. It would be impossible otherwise to understand why he should be uppermost in her thoughts, when she hears of the successful issue of Don Pedro's expedition, so that her first question to the messenger who brings the tidings is whether Benedick has come back with the rest. Finding that he has, unscathed "and as pleasant as ever he was," she proceeds to show him under no very flat. tering aspect. Her uncle, knowing how very different Benedick is from the man she describes, tries to stop her by saying, " Faith, niece, you tax Signor Benedick too much; but he'll be meet with you, I doubt not." This only stimulates her to such further travesty of his character, that the messenger observes, "I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books." In sheer enjoyment of her own humor, she rejoins, "No: an he were, I would burn

I wonder you will still be talking, Signor Benedick; nobody marks you.

Bene. What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?

Beat. Is it possible disdain should die, while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signor Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to disdain if you come in her presence.

In the dialogue which ensues, Benedick falls at once into his old habit of boasting that women love him, but that he does not love them. In what he says, he is unmannerly rather than witty; and finding very soon that he has the worst of the encounter, he is glad to break off the in. terview, telling Beatrice: "I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer. But keep your way, o' God's name; I have done." She is ready with her retort: "You always end with a jade's trick; I know you of old."

"In

At this point Don Pedro enters with his suite, and Benedick among them. It When Beatrice leaves the scene, and is not long before he draws upon himself, Benedick remains behind with Claudio, he and deservedly too, a shaft from the can give full vent to his disparagement of quiver of Beatrice's wit. When Don all womankind with no fear of rebuke. Pedro, turning to Hero, says, "I think In vain does Claudio try to extract from this is your daughter," and Leonato re- him some encouragement in his admirajoins, "Her mother hath many times told tion of Leonato's daughter Hero. me so," Benedick strikes in with the some- mine eye," says Claudio, "she is the sweetwhat impertinent freedom of a privileged est lady ever I looked on." But Benejester, "Were you in doubt, Signor, that dick can "see no such matter." Then it is you asked her?" Leonato retorts upon he drops out the acknowledgment, that him, "Signor Benedick, no; for then were Beatrice excels her cousin in beauty as you a child." "You have it full, Bene-"the first of May doth the last of Decemdick," exclaims Don Pedro; "we may ber," if only she were not "possessed guess by this what you are, being a man,' with a fury" a qualification made in - adding, Truly, the lady father's her- very soreness at the triumph her superior self; be happy, lady! for you are like an skill, in the carte and tierce of badinage, honorable father." Benedick, a little has so recently given her over him. Claustung by Leonato's repartee, now grows dio, who, on seeing Hero again, finds that rude. If Signor Leonato," he says, "be the admiration he had felt for her before her father, she would not have his head going to the war has deepened into an on her shoulders for all Messina, as like absorbing passion, writhes under the banhim as she is." The others turn away to ter of his unsympathetic friend,_and_is converse, but Beatrice, indignant at what very glad to have the support of Don Peshe considers his impertinent speech to dro, who now joins them. His coming is her uncle, addresses him tauntingly with the signal for Benedick to start off afresh into protestations of his indifference to In some recent reproductions of Shakespeare's the whole female sex, and of his fixed plays, the frequent repetition of the name of the Deity determination to live a bachelor. When has struck most painfully upon my ear. I suppose, when Shakespeare wrote, the lax use of this sacred Don Pedro, who knows human nature a name, like many other things repugnant to modern great deal too well to take such protestataste, was thought nothing of. In this play the name tions for serious earnest, says, "I shall of "God" occurs continually, and upon the most trivial occasions. It so happens that it rises to Beatrice's lips see thee, ere I die, look pale with love," more often than to any other's. In the books from Benedick rejoins, "With anger, with sick. which I studied, "Heaven "" was everywhere substi tuted for it; and I confess the word sounds pleasanterness, or with hunger, my lord, but not and softer to my ear, besides being in the circumstances with love." Don Pedro adheres to his less irreverent. I cannot help the feeling, though it may be thought fastidious. It is a word that should opinion, quoting the line, "In time the never rise lightly to the lips, or be used upon slight savage bull doth bear the yoke;" and There are, of course, occasions when, even this draws from Benedick the protest, on upon the stage, it is the right word to use. But these are rare, and only where the prevailing strain of thought which so much of the humor of what happens afterwards depends.

cause.

or emotion is high and solemn.