The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013144674 TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE LOUIS RHEAD SERIES arabian nights entertainment grimm 's fairy tales Gulliver's travels HANS Andersen's fairy tales robin hood robinson crusoe swiss family robinson tales from shakespeare TOM brown's school DAYS TREASURE ISLAND KIDNAPPED THE FAIRY BOOK KING ARTHUR AND HIS KNIGHTS HANS BRINKER HEIDI THE DEERSLAYER iESOP's FABLES VWfTE^^^^^^^^^^^^^SWMX^^^ ^TALE'S 'FROA\\^^,^.^_, if'fefllSHAKESPEARE BY CHARLES LAMB Tales raou Shakesfeake Copyright, 1918, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Printed by The Cornwall Press, Inc. Cornwall, N. Y. Artist's Preface xi Author's Preface xiii The Tempest i A iVliDoCMMEK. Night's Dream 19 Winters I ale v' 35 Much Ado About Nothing 50 As You LikeJt 67' Two GuN'iLEMEN OF Verona 88 Merchant of Venice 105 Cymbeline 123 Kino Lear ,,• 140 Macbeth 160 All s Well That_Ends_ Well 176 Taming of the Shrew - 192 Comedy of Errors 207 Measuf'^ fot ''If \sure 226 Twelfth Night; or. What YouJtViLL ., 246 TiMON of Athens 264 Romeo and Juliet 281 HajmleTj^Princejof Denmark. 304 Otrfuo • • 326 i'ERicLES, Prince of Tyre 345 Prospero, Miranda, and Caliban PaOng t. 2 Ariel: "Full Fathom Five Thy Father Lies" " 6 "On the Bat's Back I Do Fly" " 16 Puck " 39 Implored Him to Have Mercy on His Innocent Wife and Child " 36 "But Are You Sure that Benedick Loves Beatrice So Entirely?" " 54 "I Pray You, Bear with Me; I Can Go No Further" ..." 72 She Beheld Her Lover Serenading the Lady Silvia with Music " 96 "Tarry a Little, Jew," Said Portia. "This Bond Here Gives You No Drop of Blood" " 114 Imogen: "Good Masters, Do Not Harm Me" " 130 "Howl, Howl, Howl, Howl! O, You Are Men of Stones" " 156 "Macbeth, Beware of Macduff, the Thane of Fife!" . . " ' 1^ "I Dare Not Say, My Lord, I Take You" " 180 Petruchio Entertains His Wife at Dinner " 196 The Ship Split on a Mighty Rock " 208 "Plead You to Me, Fair Dame?" '* 214 "Hear Me, Isabel!" Said the Agonized Claudio .... ** 234 "Perchance He Is Not Drown'd; What Think You, Cap- tain.?" . " 246 ILLUSTRATIONS TiMON Bestowed upon Their Captain the Gold to Pat His Soldiers Pacing p. 274 "Romeo Shall Thank Thee, Daughter, FOR Us Both" . . . " ^88 "I Must Begone and Live, or Stay and Die" " 294 "Still Am I Called. Unhand Me,_.Gentlemen! By Heaven, I'll Make a Ghost of Him that Lets Me!" " 3°^ "Whose Skull Is This?" " 3i« Desdemona Loved to Hear Him Tell the Story of His Adventures " 3^6 "She Loved Thee, Cruel Moor" " 340 So They Cast the Queen Overboard " 350 "Are You Resolved to Obey Me?" ** 356 FOUR COLORED ILLUSTRATIONS Frontis Facing page She Beheld Her Lover Serenading the Lady Silvia with Music 96 "Plead You to Me, Fair Dame?" 214 "I Must Begone and Live, or Stay and Die" 294 ARTIST'S PREFACE INCE Lamb wrote these tales from the plays of Shakespeare, as he says — "especially for the young mind" — many efforts have been made by others, only to invariably produce a result inferior in every way, and so, quickly vanish from the reading world while these tales have grown in favor and esteem by thoughtful American parents. I know a dear lady who has for many years made it almost a duty at the holiday season to procure one or more copies of "Lamb's Tales" for presentation to some young reader among her numerous relatives and friends. After reading the tales the reason of its excellence is fully apparent. Charles Lamb was a diligent student of Shakespeare — appreciative of, and well fitted to write good English. We feel the truth of it when he says he took "particular pains to both amuse and instruct the youthful mind." He wisely re- frained from giving extracts of the well-known orations and speeches, such as spoken by Wolsey or Antony. He tells the tales with surprising directness and simplicity — as far as possible in Shakespeare's own words. Often he leaves out well-known characters who do not assist in developing the story, yet, there are several, like Touchstone, Jaques, etc., in "As You Like It," so revered generation after generation, that the illustrator has ventured to picture them although they were not described in the text. Lamb's greatest accomplishment in this volume is to give the average reader of any age a plain, simple description of the story IxiJ PREFACE and plot which, after reading the plays, even the adult often does not get or rightly understand. We are carried away by the splendor of words and thought. That is the reason why, it seems to me, these tales can be read with great advantage by those adults or parents who take for granted this volume is especially for younger readers. The plays are far more edifying after these tales have been read, because the magnificence of Shakespeare can be enjoyed to the fullest extent. It is remarkable that the scenes of nearly all Shakespeare's plays are laid outside his native land, mostly in Italy and Greece; at the grandest period of the world's history, disclosing with remarkable fidelity intimate details in the lives of famous men and women that would be unknown to the average reader out- side of classic literature. Louis Rhead. \ HE following Tales are meant to be sub- mitted to the young reader as an intro- ^' J duction to the study of Shakespeare, for which purpose his words are used when- ever it seemed possible to bring them in; and in whatever has been added to give them the regular form of a con- nected story, diligent care has been taken to select such words as might least interrupt the effect of the beautiful English tongue in which he wrote: therefore, words introduced into our language since his time have been as far as possible avoided. In those Tales which have been taken from the Tragedies, the young readers will perceive, when they come to see the source from which these stories are derived, that Shakespeare's own words, with little alteration, recur very frequently in the nar- rative as well as in the dialogue; but in those made from the G)medies the writers found themselves scarcely ever able t© turn his words into the narrative form: therefore it is feared that, in them, dialogue has been made use of too frequently for young people not accustomed to the dramatic form of writing. But this fault, if it be a fault, has been caused by an earnest wish to give as much of Shakespeare's own words as possible: and if the "He said" and "She said," the question and the reply, [ xiii ] PREFACE should sometimes seem tedious to their young ears, they must pardon it, because it was the only way in which could be given to them a few hints and little foretastes of the great pleasure which awaits them in their elder years, when they come to the rich treasures from which these small and valueless coins are extracted; pretending to no other merit than as faint and im- perfect stamps of Shakespeare's matchless image. Faint and imperfect images they must be called, because the beauty of his language is too frequently destroyed by the necessity of changing many of his excellent words into words far less expressive of his true sense, to make it read something like prose; and even in some few places, where his blank verse is given unaltered, as hoping from its simple plainness to cheat the young readers into the belief that they are reading prose, yet still his language being transplanted from its own natural soil and wild poetic garden, it must want much of its native beauty. It has been wished to make these Tales easy reading for very young children. To the utmost of their ability the writers have constantly kept this in mind; but the subjects of most of them made this a very difficult task. It was no easy matter to give the histories of men and women in terms familiar to the apprehension of a very young mind. For young ladies, too, it has been the intention chiefly to write; because boys being gen- erally permitted the use of their fathers' libraries at a much earlier age than girls are, they frequently have the best scenes of Shakespeare by heart, before their sisters are permitted to look into this manly book; and, therefore, instead of recommend- ing these Tales to the perusal of young gentlemen who can read them so much better in the originals, their kind assistance is rather requested in explaining to their sisters such parts as are hardest for them to understand: and when they have helped them to get over the difficulties, then perhaps they will read to them (carefully selecting what is proper for a young sister's ear) some passage which has pleased them in one of these stories, in the very words of the scene from which it is taken; and it is xiv PREFACE hoped they will find that the beautiful extracts, the select pas- sages, they may choose to give their sisters in this way will be much better relished and understood from their having some notion of the general story from one of these imperfect abridg- ments; — which if they be fortunately so done as to prove delight- ful to any of the young readers, it is hoped that no worse effect will result than to make them wish themselves a little older, that they may be allowed to read the Plays at full length (such a wish will be neither peevish nor irrational). When time and leave of judicious friends shall put them into their hands, they will discover in such of them as are here abridged (not to mention almost as many more, which are left untouched) many surprising events and turns of fortune, which for their infinite variety could not be contained in this little book, besides a world of sprightly and cheerful characters, both men and women, the humor of which it was feared would be lost if it were attempted to reduce the length of them. What these Tales shall have been to the young readers, that and much more it is the writers' wish that the true Plays of Shakespeare may prove to them in older years — enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honorable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, generosity, humanity: for of examples, teaching these virtues, his pages are full. TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE THE TEMPEST -(HERE was a certain island in the sea, 3^^| the only inhabitants of which were an old man, whose name was Prospero, and his daughter Miranda, a very beautiful young lady. She came to this island so young that she had no memory oi^ having seen any other human face than her father's. They lived in a cave or cell, made out of a rock; it was divided into several apartments, one of which Prospero called his study; there he kept his books, which chiefly treated of magic, a study at that time much affected by all learned men: and the knowledge of this art he found very useful to him; for being thrown by a strange chance upon this island, which had been enchanted by a witch called Sycorax, who died there a short time before his arrival, Prospero, by virtue of his art, released many good spirits that Sycorax had imprisoned in the bodies of large trees, because they had refused to execute her wicked commands. These gentle spirits were ever after obedient to the will of Pros- pero. Of these Ariel was the chief. The lively little sprite Ariel had nothing mischievous in his nature, except that he took rather too much pleasure in tor- menting an ugly monster called Caliban, for he owed him a grudge because he was the son of his old enemy Sycorax. This Caliban, Prospero found in the woods, a strange misshapen thing, far less human in form than an ape: he took him home 1 fi] TALES FROM to his cell, and taught him to speak; and Prospero would have been very kind to him, but the bad nature which Caliban inherited from his mother, Sycorax, would not let him learn anything good or useful: therefore he was employed Hke a slave, to fetch wood and do the most laborious offices; and Ariel had the charge of compelling him to these services. When Caliban was lazy and neglected his work, Ariel (who was invisible to all eyes but Prospero's) would come slyly and pinch him, and sometimes tumble him down in the mire; and then Ariel, in the likeness of an ape, would make mouths at him. Then swiftly changing his shape, in the likeness of a hedgehog, he would lie tumbling in Caliban's way, who feared the hedgehogfs sharp quills would prick his bare feet. With a variety of such-like vexatious tricks Ariel would often torment him, whenever Cali- ban neglected the work which Prospero commanded him to do. Having these powerful spirits obedient to his will, Prospero could by their means command the winds, and the waves of the sea. By his orders they raised a violent storm, in the midst of which, and struggling with the wild sea-waves that every moment threatened to swallow it up, he showed his daughter a fine large ship, which he told her was full of living beings like themselves. "O my dear father," said she, "if by your art you have raised this dreadful storm, have pity on their sad distress. Seel the vessel will be dashed to pieces. Poor souls! they will all perish. If I had power I would sink the sea beneath the earth, rather than the good ship should be destroyed, with all the precious souls within her." "Be not amazed, daughter Miranda," said Prospero; *'there is no harm done. I have so ordered it, that no person in the ship shall receive any hurt. What I have done has been in care of you, my dear child. You are ignorant who you are, or where you came from, and you know no more of me, but that I am your father and live in this poor cave. Can you remember a time before you came to this cell? I think you cannot, for you were not then three years of age." PROSPERO, MIRANDA, AND CALIBAN SHAKESPEARE "Certainly I can, sir," replied Miranda. "By what?" asked Prospero; "by any other house or person? Tell me what you can remember, my child." Miranda said: "It seems to me like the recollection of a dream. But had I not once four or five women who attended upon me?" Prospero answered : "You had, and more. How is it that this still lives in your mind ? Do you remember how you came here ?" "No, sir," said Miranda, "I remember nothing more." "Twelve years ago, Miranda," continued Prospero, "I was Duke of Milan, and you were a princess, and my only heir. I had a younger brother, whose name was Antonio, to whom I trusted everything; and as I was fond of retirement and deep study I commonly left the management of my state affairs to your uncle, my false brother (for so indeed he proved). I, neglecting all worldly ends, buried among my books, did dedicate my whole time to the bettering of my mind. My brother An- tonio, being thus in possession of my power, began to think himself the duke indeed. The opportunity I gave him of making himself popular among my subjects awakened in his bad nature a proud ambition to deprive me of my dukedom; this he soon effected with the aid of the King of Naples, a powerful prince, who was my enemy." "Wherefore," said Miranda, "did they not that hour destroy us?" "My child," answered her father, "they durst not, so dear was the love that my people bore me. Antonio carried us on board a ship, and when we were some leagues out at sea, he forced us into a small boat, without either tackle, sail, or mast; there he left us, as he thought, to perish. But a kind lord of my court, one Gonzalo, who loved me, had privately placed in the boat water, provisions, apparel, and some books which I prize above my dukedom." "O my father," said Miranda, "what a trouble must I have been to you then !" "No, my love," said Prospero, "you were a little cherub that [S] TALES FROM did preserve me. Your innocent smiles made me bear up against my misfortunes. Our food lasted till we landed on this desert island, since when my chief delight has been in teaching you, Miranda, and well have you profited by my instructions. "Heaven thank you, my dear father," said Miranda. "Now pray tell me, sir, your reason for raising this sea-storm? "Know then," said her father, "that by means of this storm, my enemies, the King of Naples and my cruel brother, are cast ashore upon this island." Having so said, Prospero gently touched his daughter with his magic wand, and she fell fast asleep; for the spirit Ariel just then presented himself before his master, to give an accourtt of the tempest, and how he had disposed of the ship's company, and though the spirits were always invisible to Miranda, Prospero did not choose she should hear him holding converse (as would seem to her) with the empty air. "Well, my brave spirit," said Prospero to Ariel, "how have you performed your task V Ariel gave a lively description of the storm, and of the terrors of the mariners, and how the king's son, Ferdinand, was the first who leaped into the sea; and his father thought he saw his dear son swallowed up by the waves and lost. "But he is safe," said Ariel, "in a corner of the isle, sitting with his arms folded, sadly lamenting the loss of the king, his father, whom he concludes drowned. Not a hair of his head is injured, and his princely garments, though drenched in the sea-waves,- look fresher than before." "That's my delicate Ariel," said Prospero. "Bring him hither: my daughter must see this young prince. Where is the king, and my brother?" "I left them," answered Ariel, "searching for Ferdinand, whom they have little hopes of finding, thinking they saw him perish. Of the ship's crew not one is missing; though each one thinks himself the only one saved; and the ship, though invisible to them, is safe in the harbor." 16] ARIEL: "FULL FATHOM FIVE THY FATHER LIES' SHAKESPEARE "Ariel," said Prospero, "thy charge is faithfully performed; but there is more work yet." "Is there more work?" said Ariel. "Let me remind you, master, you have promised me my hberty. I pray, remember, I have done you worthy service, told you no lies, made no mis- takes, served you without grudge or grumbUng." "How now!" said Prospero. "You do not recollect what a torment I freed you from. Have you forgot the wicked witch Sycorax, who with age and envy was almost bent double ? Where was she born? Speak; tell me." "Sir, in Algiers," said Ariel. "Oh, was she so?" said Prospero. "I must recount what you have been, which I find you do not remember. This bad witch, Sycorax, for her witchcrafts, too terrible to enter human hearing, was banished from Algiers, and here left by the sailors; and because you were a spirit too dehcate to execute her wicked commands, she shut you up in a tree, where I found you howling. This torment, remember, I did free you from." "Pardon me, dear master," said Ariel, ashamed to seem ungrateful; "I will obey your commands." "Do so," said Prospero, "and I will set you free." He then gave orders what further he would have him do; and away went Ariel, first to where he had left Ferdinand, and found him still sitting on the grass in the same melancholy posture. "Oh, my young gentleman," said Ariel, when he saw him, "I will soon move you. You must be brought, I find, for the Lady Miranda to have a sight of your pretty person. Come, sir, follow me." He then began singing: "Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade. But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark! now I hear them — Ding-dong, bell." [9l TALES FROM This strange news of his lost father soon roused the prince from the stupid fit into which he had fallen. He followed m amazement the sound of Ariel's voice, till it led him to Prospero and Miranda, who were sitting under the shade of a large tree. Now Miranda had never seen a man before, except her own father. "Miranda," said Prospero, "tell me what you are looking at yonder." "Oh, father," said Miranda, in a strange surprise, "surely that is a spirit. Lord! how it looks about! BeUeve me, sir, it is a beautiful creature. Is it not a spirit.?" "No, girl," answered her father; "it eats, and sleeps, and has senses such as we have. This young man you see was in the ship. He is somewhat altered by grief, or you might call him a handsome person. He has lost his companions, and is wandering about to find them." Miranda, who thought all men had grave faces and gray beards like her father, was delighted with the appearance of this beautiful young prince; and Ferdinand, seeing such a lovely lady in this desert place, and from the strange sounds he had heard, expecting nothing but wonders, thought he was upon an enchanted island, and that Miranda was the goddess of the place, and as such he began to address her. She timidly answered, she was no goddess, but a simple maid, and was going to give him an account of herself, when Prospero interrupted her. He was well pleased to find they admired each other, for he plainly perceived they had (as we say) fallen in love at first sight: but to try Ferdinand's constancy, he resolved to throw some difficulties in their way: therefore, advancing for- ward, he addressed the prince with a stern air, telling him, he came to the island as a spy, to take it from him who was the lord of it. "Follow me," said he. "I will tie your neck and feet together. You shall drink sea-water; shell-fish, withered roots, and husks of acorns shall be your food." "No," said Ferdinand, "I will resist such entertainment till [lO] SHAKESPEARE I see a more powerful enemy," and drew his sword; but Prospero, waving his magic wand, fixed him to the spot where he stood, so that he had no power to move. Miranda hung upon her father, saying: "Why are you so un- gentle ? Have pity, sir; I will be his hutuAifA ^ ^^^^-^t'^-'^^^^i^^t.f ^\ surety. This is the second man I ever saw, and to me he seems a true one." "Silence!" said the father. "One word more will make me chide you, girl! What! an advocate for an impostor! You think there are no more such fine men, having seen only him and Caliban. I tell you, foolish girl, most men as far excel this as he does Caliban." This he said to prove his daughter's constancy; and she replied : "My affections are most humble. I have no wish to see a goodlier man." "Come on, young man," said Prospero to the prince; "you have no power to disobey me." "I have not indeed," answered Ferdinand; and not knowing that it was by magic he was deprived of all power of resistance, [II] TALES FROM he was astonished to find himself so strangely compelled to follow Prospero; looking back on Miranda as long as he could see her, he said, as he went after Prospero into the cave, My spirits are all bound up, as if I were in a dream; but this man s threats, and the weakness which I feel, would seem light to me if from my prison I might once a day behold this fair maid. Prospero kept Ferdinand not long confined within the cell: he soon brought out his prisoner, and set him a severe task to per- form, taking care to let his daughter know the hard labor he had imposed on him, and then pretending to go into his study, he secretly watched them both. Prospero had commanded Ferdinand to pile up some heavy logs of wood. Kings' sons not being much used to laborious work, Miranda soon after found her lover almost dying with fatigue. "Alas!" said she, "do not work so hard; my father is at his studies, he is safe for these three hours; pray rest yourself/' "Oh, my dear lady," said Ferdinand, "I dare not. I must finish my task; before I take my rest." "If you will sit down," said Miranda, "I will carry your logs the while." But this Ferdinand would by no means agree to. Instead of a help Miranda became a hindrance, for they began a long conversation, so that the business of log-carrying went on very slowly. Prospero, who had enjoined Ferdinand this task merely as a trial of his love, was not at his books, as his daughter supposed, but was standing by them invisible, to overhear what they said. Ferdinand inquired her name, which she told, saying it was against her father's express command she did so. Prospero only smiled at this first instance of his daughter's disobedience, for having by his magic art caused his daughter to fall in love so suddenly, he was not angry that she showed her love by forgetting to obey his commands. And he listened well pleased to a long speech of Ferdinand's, in which he professed to love her above all the ladies he ever saw. In answer to his praises of her beauty, which he said exceeded' [12] SHAKESPEARE all the women in the world, she replied: "I do not remember the face of any woman, nor have I seen any more men than you, my good friend, and my dear father. How features are abroad, I know not; but, believe me, sir, I would not wish any companion in the world but you, nor can my imagination form any shape but yours that I could like. But, sir, I fear I talk to you too freely, and my father's precepts I forget." At this Prospero smiled, and nodded his head, as much as to say, "This goes on exactly as I could wish ; my girl will be Queen of Naples." And then Ferdinand, in another fine long speech (for young princes speak in courtly phrases), told the innocent Miranda he was heir to the crown of Naples, and that she should be his queen. "Ah! sir," said she, "I am a fool to weep at what I am glad of. I will answer you in plain and holy innocence. I am your wife if you will marry me." Prospero prevented Ferdinand's thanks by appearing visible before them. "Fear nothing, my child," said he; "I have overheard, and approve of all you have said. And, Ferdinand, if I have too severely used you, I will make you rich amends by giving you my daughter. All your vexations were but trials of your love, and you have nobly stood the test. Then as my gift, which your true love has worthily purchased, take my daughter, and do not smile that I boast she is above all praise." He then, telling them that he had business which required his presence, desired they would sit down and talk together till he returned; and this com- mand Miranda seemed not at all disposed to disobey. When Prospero left them he called his spirit Ariel, who quickly appeared before him, eager to relate what he had done with Prospero's brother and the King of Naples. Ariel said he had left them almost out of their senses with fear, at the strange things he had caused them to see and hear. When fatigued with wandering about, and famished for want of food, he had suddenly set before them a delicious banquet, and then, just as I 13 I TALES FROM they were going to eat, he appeared visible before them in the shape of a harpy, a voracious monster with wings, and the feast vanished away. Then, to their utter amazement, this seeming harpy spoke to them, reminding them of their cruelty in driving Prospero from his dukedom, and leaving him and his infant daughter to perish in the sea, saying, that for this cause these terrors were suflFered to afflict them. The King of Naples, and Antonio the false brother, repented the injustice they had done to Prospero; and Ariel told his master he was certain their penitence was sincere, and that he, though a spirit, could not but pity them. "Then bring them hither, Ariel," said Prospero: "if you, who are but a spirit, feel for their distress, shall not I, who am a human being like themselves, have compassion on them? Bring them quickly, my dainty Ariel." Ariel soon returned with the king, Antonio, and old Gonzalo in their train, who had followed him, wondering at the wild music he played in the air to draw them on to his master's presence. This Gonzalo was the same who had so kindly provided Prospero formerly with books and provisions, when his wicked brother left him, as he thought, to perish in an open boat in the sea. Grief and terror had so stupefied their senses that they did not know Prospero. He first discovered himself to the good old Gonzalo, calling him the preserver of his life; and then his brother and the king knew that he was the injured Prospero. Antonio, with tears and sad words of sorrow and true re- pentance, implored his brother's forgiveness, and the king ex- pressed his sincere remorse for having assisted Antonio to depose his brother: and Prospero forgave them; and, upon their engag- ing to restore his dukedom, he said to the King of Naples, "I have a gift in store for you, too"; and, opening a door, showed him his son Ferdinand playing at chess with Miranda. Nothing could exceed the joy of the father and the son at this unexpected meeting, for they each thought the other drowned in the storm. [I4l SHAKESPEARE "Oh wonder!" said Miranda, "what noble creatures these are! It must surely be a brave world that has such people in it." The King of Naples was almost as much astonished at the beauty and excellent graces of the young Miranda as his son had been. "Who is this maid?" said he; "she seems the goddess that has parted us, and brought us thus together." "No, sir," answered Ferdinand, smiling to find his father had fallen into the same mistake that he had done when he first saw Miranda, "she is a mortal, but by immortal Providence she is mine; I chose her when I could not ask you, my father, for your consent, not thinking you were alive. She is the daughter to this Prospero, who is the famous Duke of Milan, of whose renown I have heard so much, but never saw him till now: of him I have received a new life: he has made himself to me a second father, giving me this dear lady." "Then I must be her father," said the king; "but, oh, how oddly will it sound, that I must ask my child forgiveness." "No more of that," said Prospero: "let us not remember our troubles past, since they so happily have ended." And then Prospero embraced his brother, and again assured him of his forgiveness; and said that a wise overruling Providence had permitted that he should be driven from his poor dukedom of Milan, that his daughter might inherit the crown of Naples, for that by their meeting in this desert island it had happened that the king's son had loved Miranda. These kind words which Prospero spoke, meaning to comfort his brother, so filled Antonio with shame and remorse that he wept and was unable to speak; and the kind old Gonzalo wept to see this joyful reconciliation, and prayed for blessings on the young couple. Prospero now told them that their ship was safe in the harbor, and the sailors all on board her, and that he and his daughter would accompany them home the next morning. "In the mean time," says he, "partake of such refreshments as my poor cave affords; and for your evening's entertainment I will relate [15] TALES FROM the history of my life from my first landing in this desert island." He then called for Caliban to prepare some food, and set the cave in order; and the company were astonished at the uncouth form and savage appearance of this ugly monster, who (Prosper© said) was the only attendant he had to wait upon him. Before Prospero left the island he dismissed Ariel from his service, to the great joy of that lively little spirit, who, though he had been a faithful servant to his master, was always longing to enjoy his free liberty, to wander uncontrolled in the air, like a wild bird, under green trees, among pleasant fruits, and sweet- smelling flowers. " My quaint Ariel," said Prospero to the little sprite when he made him free, "I shall miss you; yet you shall have your freedom." "Thank you, my dear master," said Ariel; "but give me leave to attend your ship home with prosperous gales, before you bid farewell to the assistance of your faithful spirit; and then, master, when I am free, how merrily I shall live!" Here Ariel sang this pretty song: "Where the bee sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip's bell I lie: There I crouch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough." Prospero then buried deep in the earth his magical books and wand, for he was resolved never more to make use of the magic art. And having thus overcome his enemies, and being recon- ciled to his brother and the King of Naples, nothing now remained to complete his happiness but to revisit his native land, to take possession of his dukedom, and to witness the happy nuptiab of his daughter and Prince Ferdinand, which the king said should be instantly celebrated with great splendor on their return to Naples. At which place, under the safe convoy of the spirit Ariel, they, after a pleasant voyage, soon arrived. [i61 o Q U < m H < w H o SHAKESPEARE A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM I HERE was a law in the city of Athens which gave to its citizens the power of compelling their daughters to marry whomsoever they pleased; for upon a daughter's refusing to marry the man her father had chosen to be her hus- band, the father was empowered by this law to cause her to be put to death; but as fathers do not often desire the death of their own daughters, even though they do happen to prove a little refractory, this law was seldom or never put in execution, though perhaps the young ladies of that city were not unfrequently threatened by their parents with the terrors of it. There was one instance, however, of an old man, whose name was Egeus, who actually did come before Theseus (at that time the reigning Duke of Athens), to complain that his daughter Hemua, whom he had commanded to marry Demetrius, a young man of a noble Athenian family, refused to obey him, because she loved another young Athenian, named Lysander. Egeus demanded justice of Theseus, and desired that this cruel law might be put in force against his daughter. Hermia pleaded in excuse for her disobedience that Demetrius had formerly professed love for her dear friend Helena, and that Helena loved Demetrius to distraction; but this honorable reason, which Hermia gave for not obeying her father's command, moved not the stem Egeus. Theseus, though a great and merciful prince, had no power to alter the laws of his country; therefore he could only give Hermia [19] TALES FROM four days to consider of it : and at the end of that time, if she still refused to marry Demetrius, she was to be put to death. When Hermia was dismissed from the presence of the duke, she went to her lover Lysander and told him the peril she was in, and that she must either give him up and marry Demetrius or lose her life in four days. Lysander was in great affliction at hearing these evil tidings; but, recollecting that he had an aunt who lived at some distance from Athens, and that at the place where she lived the cruel law could not be put in force against Hermia (this law not extending beyond the boundaries of the city), he proposed to Hermia that she should steal out of her father's house that night, and go with him to his aunt's house, where he would marry her. "I will meet you," said Lysander, "in the wood a few miles without the city; in that delightful wood where we have so often walked with Helena in the pleasant month of May." To this proposal Hermia joyfully agreed; and she told no one of her intended flight but her friend Helena. Helena (as maidens will do foolish things for love) very ungenerously resolved to go and tell this to Demetrius, though she could hope no benefit from betraying her friend's secret but the poor pleasure of follow- ing her faithless lover to the wood; for she well knew that Demetrius would go thither in pursuit of Hermia. The wood in which Lysander and Hermia proposed to meet was the favorite haunt of those little beings known by the name of "fairies." Oberon the king, and Titania the queen of the fairies, with all their tiny train of followers, in this wood held their midnight revels. Between this little king and queen of sprites there happened, at this time, a sad disagreement; they never met by moonlight in the shady walks of this pleasant wood but they were quarreling,, till all their fairy elves would creep into acorn-cups and hide themselves for fear. The cause of this unhappy disagreement was Titania's refusing [20] PUCK SHAKESPEARE to give Oberon a little changeling boy, whose mother had been Titania's friend; and upon her death the fairy queen stole the child from its nurse and brought him up in the woods. The night on which the lovers were to meet in this wood, as Titania was walking with some of her maids of honor, she met Oberon attended by his train of fairy courtiers. "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania," said the fairy king. The queen replied : "What, jealous Oberon, is it you ? Fairies, skip hence; I have forsworn his company." "Tarry, rash fairy," said Oberon. "Am I not thy lord ? Why does Titania cross her Oberon? Give me your little changeling boy to be my page." "Set your heart at rest," answered the queen; "your whole fairy kingdom buys not the boy of me." She then left her lord in great anger. "Well, go your way," said Oberon; "before the morning dawns I will torment you for this injury." Oberon then sent for Puck, his chief favorite and privy coun- selor. Puck (or, as he was sometimes called, Robin Goodfellow) was a shrewd and knavish sprite, that used to play comical pranks in the neighboring villages; sometimes getting into the dairies and skimming the milk, sometimes plunging his light and airy form into the butter-chum, and while he was dancing his fantastic shape in the chum, in vain the dairymaid would labor to change her cream into butter. Nor had the village swains any better success; whenever Puck chose to play his freaks in the brewing copper, the ale was sure to be spoiled. When a few good neighbors were met to drink some comfortable ale together. Puck would jump into the bowl of ale in the likeness of a roasted crab, and when some old goody was going to drink he would bob against her lips, and spill the ale over her withered chin; and presently after, when the same old dame was gravely seating herself to tell her neighbors a sad and melancholy story. Puck would slip her three-legged stool from under her, and down toppled the poor old TALE S FR O M woman, and then the old gossips would hold their sides and laugh at her, and swear they never wasted a merrier hour. "Come hither, Puck," said Oberon to this little merry wanderer of the night; "fetch me the flower which maids call 'Love in Idleness'; the juice of that little purple flower laid on the eye- lids of those who sleep will make them, when they awake, dote on the first thing they see. Some of the juice of that flower I will drop on the eyeUds of my Titania when she is asleep; and the first thing she looks upon when she opens her eyes she will fall in love with, even though it be a lion or a bear, a meddling monkey or a busy ape; and before I will take this charm from off her sight, which I can do with another charm I know of, I will make her give me that boy to be my page." Puck, who loved mischief to his heart, was highly diverted with this intended frolic of his master, and ran to seek the flower; and while Oberon was waiting the return of Puck he observed Demetrius and Helena enter the wood: he overheard Demetrius reproaching Helena for following him, and after many unkind words on his part, and gentle expostulations from Helena, re- minding him of his former love and professions of true faith to her, he left her (as he said) to the mercy of the wild beasts, and she ran after him as swiftly as she could. The fairy king, who was always friendly to true lovers, felt great compassion for Helena; and perhaps, as Lysander said they used to walk by moonlight in this pleasant wood, Oberon might have seen Helena in those happy times when she was beloved by Demetrius. However that might be, when Puck returned with the little purple flower, Oberon said to his favorite: "Take a part of this flower; there has been a sweet Athenian lady here, who is in love with a disdainful youth; if you find him sleeping, drop some of the love-juice in his eyes, but contrive to do it when she is near him, that the first thing he sees when he awakes may be this despised lady. You will know the man by the Athenian garments which he wears." Puck promised to manage this matter very dexterously and [24] SHAKESPEARE then Oberon went, unperceived by Titania, to her bower, where she was preparing to go to rest. Her fairy bower was a bank, where grew wild thyme, cowslips, and sweet violets, under a canopy of woodbine, musk-roses, and eglantine. There Titania always slept some part of the night; her coverlet the enameled skin of a snake, which, though a small mantle, was wide enough to wrap a fairy in. He found Titania giving orders to her fairies, how they were to employ themselves while she slept. "Some of you," said her Majesty, "must kill cankers in the musk-rose buds, and some wage war with the bats for their leathern wings, to make my small elves coats; and some of you keep watch that the clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, come not near me: but first sing me to sleep." Then they began to sing this song: "You spotted snakes, with double tongue. Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; Newts and blind-wonns do no wrong; Come not near our fairy queen: [25] TALES FROM "Phaomel, with melody. Sing in our sweet lullaby; Lulla, luUa, lullaby; luUa, lulla, lullaby; Never harm, nor spell, nor charm. Come our lovely lady nigh; So, good night, with lullaby." When the fairies had sung their queen asleep with this pretty lullaby, they left her to perform the important services she had enjoined them. Oberon then softly drew near his Titania and dropped some of the love-juice on her eyelids, saying: "What thou seest when thou dost wake. Do it for thy true-love take." But to return to Hermia, who made her escape out of her father's house that night, to avoid the death she was doomed to for refusing to marry Demetrius. When she entered the wood, she found her dear Lysander waiting for her, to conduct her to his aunt's house; but before they had passed half through the wood Hermia was so much fatigued that Lysander, who was very careful of this dear lady, who had proved her affection for him even by hazarding her life for his sake, persuaded her to rest till morning on a bank of soft moss, and, lying down him- self on the ground at some little distance, they soon fell fast asleep. Here they were found by Puck, who, seeing a handsome young man asleep, and perceiving that his clothes were made in the Athenian fashion, and that a pretty lady was sleeping near him, concluded that this must be the Athenian maid and her disdainful lover whom Oberon had sent him to seek; and he naturally enough conjectured that, as they were alone together, she must be the first thing he would see when he awoke; so, without more ado, he proceeded to pour some of the juice of the little purple flower into his eyes. But it so fell out that Helena came that way, and, instead of Hermia, was the first object Lysander beheld when he opened his eyes; and strange to relate, so powerful was the love-charm, all his love for Hermia vanished away and Lysander fell in love with Helena. [26] SHAKESPEARE Had he first seen Hermia when he awoke, the blunder Puck committed would have been of no consequence, for he could not love that faithful lady too well; but for poor Lysander to be forced by a fairy love-charm to forget his own true Hermia, and to run after another lady, and leave Hermia asleep quite alone in a wood at midnight, was a sad chance indeed. Thus this misfortune happened. Helena, as has been before related, endeavored to keep pace with Demetrius when he ran away so rudely from her; but she could not continue this unequal race long, men being always better runners in a long race than ladies. Helena soon lost sight of Demetrius; and as she was wandering about, dejected and forlorn, she arrived at the place where Lysander was sleeping. "Ah!" said she, "this is Lysander lying on the ground. Is he dead or asleep?" Then, gently touching him, she said, "Good sir, if you are alive, awake." Upon this Lysander opened his eyes, and, the love-charm begin- ning to work, immediately addressed her in terms of extravagant love and admiration, telling her she as much excelled Hermia in beauty as a dove does a raven, and that he would run through fire for her sweet sake; and many more such lover-like speeches. Helena, knowing Lysander was her friend Hermia's lover, and that he was solemnly engaged to marry her, was in the utmost rage when she heard herself addressed in this manner; for she thought (as well she might) that Lysander was making a jest of her. "Oh!" said she, "why was I born to be mocked and scorned by every one? Is it not enough, is it not enough, young man, that I can never get a sweet look or a kind word from Demetrius; but you, sir, must pretend in this disdainful manner to court me? I thought, Lysander, you were a lord of more true gentleness." Saying these words in great anger, she ran away; and Lysander followed her, quite forgetful of his own Hermia, who was still asleep. When Hermia awoke she was in a sad fright at finding herself alone. She wandered about the wood, not knowing what was [27] TALES FROM become of Lysander, or which way to go to seek for him. In the mean tihie Demetrius, not being able to find Hermia and his rival Lysander, and fatigued with his fruitless search, was ob- served by Oberon fast asleep. Oberon had learned by some questions he had asked of Puck that he had applied the love- charm to the wrong person's eyes; and now, having found the person first intended, he touched the eyehds of the sleeping Demetrius with the love-juice, and he instantly awoke; and the first thing he saw being Helena, he, as Lysander had done before, began to address love-speeches to her; and just at that moment Lysander, followed by Hermia (for through Puck's unlucky mistake it was now become Hermia's turn to run after her lover), made his appearance; and then Lysander and Demetrius, both speaking together, made love to Helena, they being each one under the influence of the same potent charm. The astonished Helena thought that Demetrius, Lysander, and her once dear friend Hermia were all in a plot together to make a jest of her. Hermia was as much surprised as Helena; she knew not why Lysander and Demetrius, who both before loved her, were now become the lovers of Helena, and to Hermia the matter seemed to be no jest. The ladies, who before had always been the dearest of friends, now fell to high words together. "Unkind Hermia," said Helena, "it is you have set Lysander on to vex me with mock praises; and your other lover, De- metrius, who used almost to spurn me with his foot, have you not bid him call me goddess, nymph, rare, precious, and celestial? He would not speak thus to me, whom he hates, if you did not set him on to make a jest of me. Unkind Hermia, to join with men in scorning your poor friend. Have you forgot our school- day friendship? How often, Hermia, have we two, sitting on one cushion, both singing one song, with our needles working the same flower, both on the same sampler wrought; growing up [281 SHAKESPEARE together in fashion of a double cherry, scarcely seeming parted! Hermia, it is not friendly in you, it is not maidenly to join with men in scorning your poor friend." "I am amazed at your passionate words," said Hermia: "I ' scorn you not; it seems you scorn me." "Aye, do," returned Helena, "persevere, counterfeit serious looks, and make mouths at me when I turn my back; then wink at each other, and hold the sweet jest up. If you had any pity, grace, or manners, you would not use me thus." While Helena and Hermia were speaking these angry words to each other, Demetrius and Lysander left them, to fight to- gether in the wood for the love of Helena. When they found the gentlemen had left them, they departed, and once more wandered weary in the wood in search of their lovers. As soon as they were gone the fairy king, who with little Puck had been listening to their quarrels, said to him, "This is your negligence. Puck; or did you do this wilfully?" "Believe me, king of shadows," answered Puck, "it was a mistake. Did not you tell me I should know the man by his Athenian garments ? However, I am not sorry this has happened, for I think their jangling makes excellent sport." "You heard," said Oberon, "that Demetrius and Lysander are gone to seek a convenient place to fight in. I command you to overhang the night with a thick fog, and lead these quarrel- some lovers so astray in the dark that they shall not be able to find each other. Counterfeit each of their voices to the other, and with bitter taunts provoke them to follow you, while they think it is their rival's tongue they hear. See you do this, till they are so weary they can go no farther; and when you find they are asleep, drop the juice of this other flower into Lysander's eyes, and when he awakes he will forget his new love for Helena, and return to his old passion for Hermia; and then the two fair ladies may each one be happy with the man she loves and they will think all that has passed a vexatious dream. About this [29] TALES FROM quickly, Puck, and I will go and see what sweet love my Titania has found." Titania was still sleeping, and Oberon, seeing a clown near her who had lost his way in the wood and was likewise asleep, "This fellow," said he, "shall be my Titania's true love"; and clapping an ass's head over the clown's, it seemed to lit him as well as if it had grown upon his own shoulders. Though Oberon fixed the ass's head on very gently, it awakened him, and, rising up, unconscious of what Oberon had done to him, he went toward the bower where the fairy queen slept. "Ah! what angel is that I see?" said Titania, opening her eyes, and the juice of the little purple flower beginning to take effect. "Are you as wise as you are beautiful?" "Why, mistress," said the foolish clown, "if I have wit enough to find the way out of this wood, I have enough to serve my turn." "Out of the wood do not desire to go," said the enamoured queen. "I am a spirit of no common rate. I love you. Go with me, and I will give you fairies to attend upon you." She then called four of her fairies. Their names were Peas- blossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard-seed. "Attend," said the queen, "upon this sweet gentleman. Hop in his walks and gambol in his sight; feed him with grapes and apricots, and steal for him the honey-bags from the bees. Come, sit with me," said she to the clown, "and let me play with your amiable hairy cheeks, my beautiful ass! and kiss your fair large ears, my gentle joy!" "Where is Peas-blossom?" said the ass-headed clown, not much regarding the fairy queen's courtship, but very proud of his new attendants. "Here, sir," said little Peas-blossom. "Scratch my head," said the clown. "Where is Cobweb?" "Here, sir," said Cobweb. "Good Mr. Cobweb," said the foolish clown, "kill me the red bumblebee on the top of that thistle yonder; and, good Mr. Cobweb, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too [30] SHAKESPEARE much in the action, Mr. Cobweb, and take care the honey-bag break not; I should be sorry to have you overflown with a honey- bag. Where is Mustard-seed?" "Here, sir," said Mustard-seed. "What is your will?" "Nothing," said the clown, "good Mr. Mustard-seed, but to help Mr. Peas-blossom to scratch; I must go to a barber's, Mr. Mustard-seed, for methinks I am marvelous hairy about the face." "My sweet love," said the queen, "what will you have to eat? I have a venturous fairy shall seek the squirrel's hoard, and fetch you some new nuts." "I had rather have a handful of dried peas," said the clown, who with his ass's head had got an ass's appetite. "But, I pray, let none of your people disturb me, for I have a mind to sleep." "Sleep, then," said the queen, "and I will wind you in my arms. Oh, how I love you! how I dote upon you!" When the fairy king saw the clown sleeping in the arms of his queen, he advanced within her sight, and reproached her with having lavished her favors upon an ass. This she could not deny, as the clown was then sleeping within her arms, with his ass's head crowned by her with flowers. When Oberon had teased her for some time, he again demanded the changeling boy; which she, ashamed of being discovered by her lord with her new favorite, did not dare to refuse him. Oberon, having thus obtained the little boy he had so long wished for to be his page, took pity on the disgraceful situation into which, by his merry contrivance, he had brought his Titania, and threw some of the juice of the other flower into her eyes; and the fairy queen immediately recovered her senses, and wondered at her late dotage, saying how she now loathed the sight of the strange monster. Oberon likewise took the ass's head from off the clown, and left him to finish his nap with his own fool's head upon his shoulders. Oberon and his Titania being now perfectly reconciled, he [31] TALES FROM related to her the history of the lovers and their midnight quar- rels, and she agreed to go with him and see the end of their adventures. The fairy king and queen found the lovers and their fair ladies, at no great distance from one another, sleeping on a grass-plot; I ^ t '^■^\„f if ^ for Puck, to make amends for his former mistake, had contrived with the utmost diligence to bring them all to the same spot, unknown to one another; and he had carefully removed the charm from off the eyes of Lysander with the antidote the fairy king gave to him. Hermia first awoke, and, finding her lost Lysander asleep so [32] SHAKESPEARE near her, was looking at him and wondering at his strange in- constancy. Lysander presently opening his eyes, and seeing his dear Hermia, recovered his reason which the fairy charm had before clouded, and with his reason his love for Hermia; and they began to talk over the adventures of the night, doubting if these things had really happened, or if they had both been dreaming the same bewildering dream. Helena and Demetrius were by this time awake; and a sweet sleep having quieted Helena's disturbed and angry spirits, she listened with delight to the professions of love which Demetrius still made to her, and which, to her surprise as well as pleasure, she began to perceive were sincere. These fair night-wandering ladies, now no longer rivals, became once more true friends; all the unkind words which had passed were forgiven, and they calmly consulted together what was best to be done in their present situation. It was soon agreed that, as Demetrius had given up his pretensions to Hermia, he should endeavor to prevail upon her father to revoke the cruel sentence of death which had been passed against her. Demetrius was preparing to return to Athens for this friendly purpose, when they were surprised with the sight of Egeus, Hermia's father, who came to the wood in pursuit of his runaway daughter. When Egeus understood that Demetrius would not now marry his daughter, he no longer opposed her marriage with Lysander, but gave his consent that they should be wedded on the fourth day from that time, being the same day on which Hermia had been condemned to lose her life; and on that same day Helena joyfully agreed to marry her beloved and now faithful Demetrius. The fairy king and queen, who were invisible spectators of this reconciliation, and now saw the happy ending of the lovers' history, brought about through the good offices of Oberon, received so much pleasure that these kind spirits resolved to celebrate the approaching nuptials with sports and revels through- out their fairy kingdom. 3 [33] TALE S FR O M And now, if any are offended with this story of fairies and their pranks, as judging it incredible and strange, they have only to think that they have been asleep and dreaming, and that all these adventures were visions which they saw in their sleep. And I hope none of my readers will be so unreasonable as to be offended with a pretty, harmless Midsummer Night's Dream. SHAKESPEARE WINTER'S TALE ^EONTES, King of Sicily, and his queen, the beautiful and virtuous Hermione, once lived in the greatest harmony to- gether. So happy was Leontes in the j love of this excellent lady that he had no wish ungratified, except that he some- '■"jj[! times desired to see again and to present to his queen his old companion and schoolfellow, Polixenes, King of Bohemia. Leontes and Polixenes were brought up together from their infancy, but being, by the death of their fathers, called to reign over their respective kingdoms, they had not met for many years, though they frequently interchanged gifts, letters, and loving embassies. At length, after repeated invitations, Polixenes came from Bohemia to the Sicilian court, to make his friend Leontes a visit. At first this visit gave nothing but pleasure to Leontes. He recommended the friend of his youth to the queen's particular attention, and seemed in the presence of his dear friend and old companion to have his felicity quite completed. They talked over old times; their school-days and their youthful pranks were remembered, and recounted to Hermione, who always took a cheerful part in these conversations. When, after a long stay, Polixenes was preparing to depart, Hermione, at the desire of her husband, joined her entreaties to his that Polixenes would prolong his visit. And now began this good queen's sorrow; for Polixenes, refus- ing to stay at the request of Leontes, was won over by Hermione's gentle and persuasive words to put off his departure for some [35] TALES FROM weeks longer. Upon this, although Leontes had so long known the integrity and honorable principles of his friend Polixenes, as well as the excellent disposition of his virtuous queen, he was seized with an ungovernable jealousy. Every attention Hermione showed to Polixenes, though by her husband's particular desire and merely to please him, increased the unfortunate king's jealousy; and from being a loving and a true friend, and the best and fondest of husbands, Leontes became suddenly a savage and inhuman monster. Sending for Camillo, one of the lords of his court, and telUng him of the suspicion he entertained, he com- manded him to poison Polixenes. Camillo was a good man, and he, well knowing that the jealousy of Leontes had not the slightest foundation in truth, instead of poisoning Polixenes, acquainted him with the king his master's orders, and agreed to escape with him out of the Sicilian dominions; and Polixenes, with the assistance of Camillo, arrived safe in his own kingdom of Bohemia, where Camillo lived from that time in the king's court and became the chief friend and favorite of Polixenes. The flight of Polixenes enraged the jealous Leontes still more; he went to the queen's apartment, where the good lady was sitting with her little son Mamillius, who was just beginning to tell one of his best stories to amuse his mother, when the king entered and, taking the child away, sent Hermione to prison. Mamillius, though but a very young child, loved his mother tenderly; and when he saw her so dishonored, and found she was taken from him to be put into a prison, he took it deeply to heart and drooped and pined away by slow degrees, losing his appetite and his sleep, till it was thought his grief would kill him. The king, when he had sent his queen to prison, commanded Cleomenes and Dion, two Sicilian lords, to go to Delphos, there to inquire of the oracle at the temple of Apollo tf his queen had been unfaithful to him. When Hermione had been a short time in prison she was brought to bed of a daughter; and the poor lady received much comfort [36I IMPLORED HIM TO HAVE MERCY ON HIS INNOCENT WIFE AND CHILD SHAKESPEARE from the sight of her pretty baby, and she said to it, "My poor little prisoner, I am as innocent as you are." Hermione had a kind friend in the noble-spirited Paulina, who was the wife of Antigonus, a Sicilian lord; and when the lady Paulina heard her royal mistress was brought to bed she went to the prison where Hermione was confined; and she said to Emilia, a lady who attended upon Hermione, "I pray you, Emilia, tell the good queen, if her Majesty dare trust me with her little babe, I will carry it to the king, its father: we do not know how he may soften at the sight of his innocent child." "Most worthy madam," replied Emilia, "I will acquaint the queen with your noble oiFer. She was wishing to-day that she had any friend who would venture to present the child to the king." "And tell her," said Paulina, "that I will speak boldly to Leontes in her defense." "May you be forever blessed," said Emilia, "for your kindness to our gracious queen!" Emilia then went to Hermione, who joyfully gave up her baby to the care of Paulina, for she had feared that no one would dare venture to present the child to its father. Paulina took the new-born infant and, forcing herself into the king's presence, notwithstanding her husband, fearing the king's anger, endeavored to prevent her, she laid the babe at its father's feet; and Paulina made a noble speech to the king in defense of Hermione, and she reproached him severely for his inhumanity and implored him to have mercy on his innocent wife and child. But Paulina's spirited remonstrances only aggravated Leontes's displeasure, and he ordered her husband Antigonus to take her from his presence. When Paulina went away she left the little baby at its father's feet, thinking when he was alone with it he would look upon it and have pity on its helpless innocence. The good Paulina was mistaken, for no sooner was she gone than the merciless father ordered Antigonus, Paulina's husband, [39] TALE S F R O M to take the child and carry it out to sea and leave it upon some desert shore to perish. Antigonus, unlike the good Camillo, too well obeyed the orders of Leontes; for he immediately carried the child on ship- board, and put out to sea, intending to leave it on the first desert coast he could find. So firmly was the king persuaded of the guilt of Hermione that he would not wait for the return of Cleomenes and Dion; whom he had sent to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphos, but before the queen was recovered from her lying-in, and from the grief for the loss of her precious baby, he had her brought to a public trial before all the lords and nobles of his court. And when all the great lords, the judges, and all the nobility of the land were assembled together to try Hermione, and that unhappy queen was standing as a prisoner before her subjects to receive their judgment, Cleomenes and Dion entered the assembly and presented to the king the answer of the oracle, sealed up; and Leontes commanded the seal to be broken, and the words of the oracle to be read aloud, and these were the words: "Hermione is innocent, Polixenes blameless, Camillo a true subject, Leontes a jealous tyrant, and the king shall live without an heir if that which is lost be not found." The king would give no credit to the words of the oracle. He said it was a falsehood invented by the queen's friends, and he desired the judge to proceed in the trial of the queen; but while Leontes was speaking a man entered and told him that the Prince Mamillius, hearing his mother was to be tried for her life, struck with grief and shame, had suddenly died. Hermione, upon hearing of the death of this dear, affectionate child, who had lost his life in sorrowing for her misfortune, fainted; and Leontes, pierced to the heart by the news, began to feel pity for his unhappy queen, and he ordered Paulina, and the ladies who were her attendants, to take her away and use means for her recovery. Paulina soon returned and told the king that Her- mione was dead. [40] SHAKESPEARE When Leontes heard that the queen was dead he repented of his cruelty to her; and now that he thought his ill-usage had broken Hermione's heart, he believed her innocent; and now he thought the words of the oracle were true, as he knew "if that which was lost was not found," which h'e con- cluded was his young daughter, he should be with- out an heir, the young Princ e Mamillius being dead; and he would give his kingdom now to recover his lost daughter. And Leontes gave him- self up to remorse and passed many years in mournful thoughts and re- pentant grief. The ship in which Antigonus carried the infant princess out to sea was driven by a storm upon the coast of Bohemia, the very kingdom of the good King Polixenes. Here Antigonus landed and here he left the little baby. >' Antigonus never returned to Sicily to tell Leontes where he had left his daughter, for, as he was going back to the ship, a bear came out of the woods and tore him to pieces; [41] TALES FROM a just punishment on him for obeying the wicked order of Leontes. The child was dressed in rich clothes and jewels; for Hermione had made it very fine when she sent it to Leontes, and Antigonus had pinned a paper to its mantle, and the name of "Perdita" written thereon, and words obscurely intimating its high birth and untoward fate. This poor, deserted baby was found by a shepherd. He was a humane man, and so he carried the little Perdita home to his wife, who nursed it tenderly. But poverty tempted the shepherd to conceal the rich prize he had found; therefore he left that part of the country, that no one might know where he got his riches, and with part of Perdita's jewels he bought herds of sheep and became a wealthy shepherd. He brought up Perdita as his own child, and she knew not she was any other than a shepherd's daughter. The little Perdita grew up a lovely maiden; and though she had no better education than that of a shepherd's daughter, yet so did the natural graces she inherited from her royal mother shine forth in her untutored mind that no one, from her behavior, would have known she had not been brought up in her father's court. Polixenes, the King of Bohemia, had an only son, whose name was Florizel. As this young prince was hunting near the shep- herd's dwelling he saw the old man's supposed daughter; and the beauty, modesty, and queenlike deportment of Perdita caused him instantly to fall in love with her. He soon, under the name of Doricles, and in the disguise of a private gentleman, became a constant visitor at the old shepherd's house. Florizel's frequent absences from court alarmed Polixenes; and setting people to watch his son, he discovered his love for the shepherd's fair daughter. Polixenes then called for Camillo, the faithful Camillo, who had preserved his life from the fury of Leontes, and desired that he would accompany him to the house of the shepherd, the sup- posed father of Perdita. [42] SHAKESPEARE Polixenes and Camillo, both in disguise, arrived at the old shepherd's dweUing while they were celebrating the feast of sheep-shearing; and though they were strangers, yet at the sheep-shearing, every guest being made welcome, they were invited to walk in and join in the general festivity. Nothing but mirth and jollity was going forward. Tables were spread and great preparations were making for the rustic feast. Some lads and lasses were dancing on the green before the house, while others of the young men were buying ribands, gloves, and such toys of a peddler at the door. While this busy scene was going forward Florizel and Perdita sat quietly in a retired corner, seemingly more pleased with the con- versation of each other than desirous of engaging in the sports and silly amusements of those around them. The king was so disguised that it was impossible his son could know him. He theretore advanced near enough to hear the conversation. The simple yet elegant manner in which Perdita conversed with his son did not a little surprise Polixenes, He said to Camillo: "This is the prettiest low-born lass I ever saw; nothing she does or says but looks like something greater than herself, too noble for this place." 143] TALES FROM Camillo replied, "Indeed she is the very queen of curds and cream." "Pray, my good friend," said the king to the old shepherd, "what fair swain is that talking with your daughter?" "They call him Doricles," replied the shepherd. "He says he loves my daughter; and, to speak truth, there is not a kiss to choose which loves the other best. If young Doricles can get her, she shall bring him that he little dreams of," meaning the remainder of Perdita's jewels; which, after he had bought herds of sheep with part of them, he had carefully hoarded up for her marriage portion. Polixenes then addressed his son. "How now, young man!" said he. "Your heart seems full of something that takes off your mind from feasting. When I was young I used to load my love with presents; but you have let the peddler go and have bought your lass no toy." The young prince, who little thought he was talking to the king his father, replied, "Old sir, she prizes not such trifles; the gifts which Perdita expects from me are locked up in my heart." Then turning to Perdita, he said to her, "Oh, hear me, Perdita, before this ancient gentleman, who it seems was once himself a lover; he shall hear what I profess." Florizel then called upon the old stranger to be a witness to a solemn promise of marriage which he made to Perdita, saying to Polixenes, "I pray you, mark our contract." "Mark your divorce, young sir," said the king, discovering himself. Polixenes then reproached his son for daring to con- tract himself to this low-born maiden, calling Perdita "shepherd's brat, sheep-hook," and other disrespectful names, and threatening if ever she suffered his son to see her again, he would put her, and the old shepherd her father, to a cruel death. The king then left them in great wrath, and ordered Camillo to follow him with Prince Florizel. When the king had departed, Perdita, whose royal nature was roused by Polixenes's reproaches, said, "Though we are [44] SHAKESPEARE all undone, I was not much afraid; and once or twice I was about to speak and tell him plainly that the selfsame sun which shines upon his palace hides not his face from our cottage, but looks on both alike." Then sorrowfully she said, "But now I am awakened from this dream, I will queen it no further. Leave me, sir. I will go milk my ewes and weep." The kind-hearted Camillo was charmed with the spirit and propriety of Perdita's behavior; and, perceiving that the young prince was too deeply in love to give up his mistress at the command of his royal father, he thought of a way to befriend the lovers and at the same time to execute a favorite scheme he had in his mind. Camillo had long known that Leontes, the King of Sicily, was become a true penitent; and though Camillo was now the favored friend of King Polixenes, he could not help wishing once more to see his late royal master and his native home. He therefore proposed to Florizel and Perdita that they should accompany him to the Sicilian court, where he would engage Leontes should protect them till, through his mediation, they could obtain pardon from Polixenes and his consent to their marriage. To this proposal they joyfully agreed; and Camillo, who con- ducted everything relative to their flight, allowed the old shepherd to go along with them. The shepherd took with him the remainder of Perdita's jewels, her baby clothes, and the paper which he had found pinned to her mantle. After a prosperous voyage, Florizel and Perdita, Camillo and the old shepherd, arrived in safety at the court of Leontes. Leontes, who still mourned his dead Hermione and his lost child, received Camillo with great kindness and gave a cordial welcome to Prince Florizel. But Perdita, whom Florizel introduced as his princess, seemed to engross all Leontes's attention. Per^ ceiving a resemblance between her and his dead queen Hermione, [45] TALES FROM his grief broke out afresh, and he said such a lovely creature might his own daughter have been if he had not so cruelly de- stroyed her. "And then, too," said he to Florizel, "I lost the society and friendship of yoiir brave father, whom I now desire more than my life once again to look upon." When the old shepherd heard how much notice the king had taken of Perdita, and that he had lost a daughter who was ex- posed in infancy, he fell to comparing the time when he found the little Perdita with the manner of its exposure, the jewels and other tokens of its high birth; from all which it was im- possible for him not to conclude that Perdita and the king's lost daughter were the same. Florizel and Perdita, Camillo and the faithful Paulina, were present when the old shepherd related to the king the manner in which he had found the child, and also the circumstance of Antigonus's death, he having seen the bear seize upon him. He showed the rich mantle in which Paulina remembered Hermione had wrapped the child; and he produced a jewel which she remembered Hermione had tied about Perdita's neck; and he gave up the paper which Paulina knew to be the writing of her husband. It could not be doubted that Perdita was Leontes's own daughter. But, oh, the noble struggles of Paulina, between sorrow for her husband's death and joy that the oracle was fulfilled, in the king's heir, his long-lost daughter being found! When Leontes heard that Perdita was his daughter, the great sorrow that he felt that Hermione was not living to behold her child made him that he could say nothing for a long time but "Oh, thy mother, thy mother!" Paulina interrupted this joyful yet distressful scene with saying to Leontes that she had a statue newly finished by that rare Italian master, Julio Romano, which was such a perfect resem- blance of the queen that would his Majesty be pleased to go to her house and look upon it, he would be almost ready to think it was Hermione herself. Thither then they all went; the king [46] SHAKESPEARE anxious to see the semblance of his Hermione, and Perdita longing to behold what the mother she never saw did look like. When PauHna drew back the curtain which concealed this famous statue, so perfectly did it resemble Hermione that all the king's sorrow was renewed at the sight; for a long time he had no power to speak or move. "I like your silence, my liege," said Paulina; "it the more shows your wonder. Is not this statue very like your queen?" At length the king said: "Oh, thus she stood, even with such majesty, when I first wooed her. But yet, Paulina, Hermione was not so aged as this statue looks." Paulina replied: "So much the more the carver's excellence, who has made the statue as Hermione would have looked had she been living now. But let me draw the curtain, sire, lest presently you think it moves." The king then said: "Do not draw the curtain. Would I were dead! See, Camillo, would you not think it breathed? Her eye seems to have motion in it." "I must draw the curtain, my liege," said Paulina. "You are so transported, you will persuade yourself the statue lives." "Oh, sweet Paulina," said Leontes, "make me think so twenty years together! Still methinks there is an air comes from her. What fine chisel could ever yet cut breath? Let no man mock me, for I will kiss her." "Good my lord, forbear!" said Paulina. "The ruddiness upon l47] TALES FROM her lip is wet; you will stain your own with oily painting. Shall I draw the curtain ?" "No, not these twenty years," said Leontes. Perdita, who all this time had been kneeling and beholding in silent admiration the statue of her matchless mother, said now, "And so long could I stay here, looking upon my dear mother." "Either forbear this transport," said Paulina to Leontes, "and let me draw the curtain or prepare yourself for more amazement. I can make the statue move indeed; aye, and descend from off the pedestal and take you by the hand. But then you will think, which I protest I am not, that I am assisted by some wicked powers." "What you can make her do," said the astonished king, "I am content to look upon. What you can make her speak I am content to hear; for it is as easy to make her speak as move." Paulina then ordered some slow and solemn music, which she had prepared for the purpose, to strike up; and, to the amazement of all the beholders, the statue came down from off the pedestal and threw its arms around Leontes's neck. The statue then began to speak, praying for blessings on her husband and on her child, the newly found Perdita. No wonder that th« statue hung upon Leontes's neck and blessed her husband and her child. No wonder; for the statue was indeed Hermione herself, the real, the living queen. Paulina had falsely reported to the king the death of Hermione, thinking that the only means to preserve her royal mistress's life; and with the good Paulina Hermione had lived ever since, never choosing Leontes should know she was living till she heard Perdita was found; for though she had long forgiven the injuries which Leontes had done to herself, she could not pardon his cruelty to his infant daughter. His dead queen thus restored to life, his lost daughter found, the long-sorrowing Leontes could scarcely support the excess of his own happiness. Nothing but congratulations and affectionate speeches were [48] SHAKESPEARE heard on all sides. Now the delighted parents thanked Prince Florizel for loving their lowly seeming daughter; and now they blessed the good old shepherd for preserving their child. Greatly did Camillo and Paulina rejoice that they had lived to see so good an end of all their faithful services. And as if nothing should be wanting to complete this strange and unlooked-for joy, King Polixenes himself now entered the palace. When Polixenes first missed his son and Camillo, knowing that Camillo had long wished to return to Sicily, he conjectured he should find the fugitives here; and, following them with all speed, he happened to just arrive at this the happiest moment of Leontes's life. Polixenes took a part in the general joy; he forgave his friend Leontes the unjust jealousy he had conceived against him, and they once more loved each other with all the warmth of their first boyish friendship. And there was no fear that Polixenes would now oppose his son's marriage with Perdita. She was no "sheep-hook" now, but the heiress of the crown of Sicily. Thus have we seen the patient virtues of the long-suffering Hermione rewarded. That excellent lady lived many years with her Leontes and her Perdita, the happiest of mothers and of queens. 4 TALES FROM MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING [HERE lived in the palace at Messina two ladies, whose names were Hero and Beatrice. Hero was the daughter, and Beatrice the niece, of Leonato, the gov- ernor of Messina. Beatrice was of a lively temper and loved to divert her cousin Hero, who was of a more serious disposition, with her sprightly sallies. Whatever was going forward was sure to make matter of mirth for the light- hearted Beatrice. At the time the history of these ladies commences some young men of high rank in the army, as they were passing through Messina on their return from a war that was just ended, in which they had distinguished themselves by their great bravery, came to visit Leonato. Among these were Don Pedro, the Prince of Arragon, and his friend Claudio, who was a lord of Florence; and with them came the wild and witty Benedick, and he was a lord of Padua. These strangers had been at Messina before, and the hospitable governor introduced them to his daughter and his niece as their old friends and acquaintance. Benedick, the moment he entered the room, began a lively conversation with Leonato and the prince. Beatrice, who liked not to be left out of any discourse, interrupted Benedick with saying: "I wonder that you will still be talking, Signor Benedick. Nobody marks you." Benedick was just such another rattlebrain as Beatrice, yet [sol SHAKESPEARE he was not pleased at this free salutation; he thought it did not become a well-bred lady to be so flippant with her tongue; and he remembered, when he was last at Messina, that Beatrice used to select him to make her merry jests upon. And as there is no one who so Uttle likes to be made a jest of as those who are apt to take the same liberty them- selves, so it was with Benedick and Beatrice; these two sharp wits never met in former times but a perfect war of raillery was kept up between them, and they always parted mutually displeased with each other. Therefore, when Beatrice stopped him in the middle of his discourse with telling him nobody marked what he was say- ing, Benedick, affecting not to have observed before that she was present, said: "What, my dear Lady Disdain, are you yet living?" And now war broke out afresh between them, and a long jangling argu- ment ensued, during which Beatrice, although she knew he had so well approved his valor in the late war, said that she would eat all he had killed there; and observing the prince take de- light in Benedick's conversation, she called him "the prince's jester." This sarcasm sank deeper into the mind of Benedick than all Beatrice had said before. The hint she gave him that he was a cow^d, by saying she would eat all he had killed, he did not regard, knowing himself to be a brave man; but there is nothing that great wits so much dread as the imputation of ISi] TALES FROM buffoonery, because the charge comes sometimes a little too near the truth; therefore Benedick perfectly hated Beatrice when she called him "the prince's jester." The modest lady Hero was silent before the noble guests; and while Claudio was attentively observing the improvement which time had made in her beauty, and was contemplating the exquisite graces of her fine figure (for she was an admirable young lady), the prince was highly amused with listening to the humorous dialogue between Benedick and Beatrice; and he said in a whisper to Leonato: "This is a pleasant-spirited young lady. She were an excel- lent wife for Benedick." I Leonato repUed to this suggestion, "O my lord, my lord, if they were but a week married, they would talk themselves mad!" But though Leonato thought they would make a discordant pair, the prince did not give up the idea of matching these two keen wits together. When the prince returned with Claudio from the palace he found that the marriage he had devised between Benedick and Beatrice was not the only one projected in that good com- pany, for Claudio spoke in such terms of Hero as made the prince guess at what was passing in his heart; and he liked it well, and he said to Claudio: "Do you affect Hero?" To this question Claudio replied, "O my lord, when I was last at Messina I looked upon her with a soldier's eye, that liked, but had no leisure for loving; but now, in this happy time of peace, thoughts of war have left their places vacant in my mind, and in their room come thronging soft and delicate thoughts, all prompting me how fair young Hero is, reminding me that I liked her before I went to the wars." Claudio's confession of his love for Hero so wrought upon the 'prince that he lost no time in soliciting the consent of Leonato to accept of Claudio for a son-in-law. Leonato agreed to this proposal, and the prince found no great difficulty in persuading SHAKESPEARE the gentle Hero herself to listen to the suit of the noble Claudio, who was a lord of rare endowments and highly accomplished, and Claudio, assisted by his kind prince, soon prevailed upon Leonato to fix an early day for the celebration of his marriage with Hero. Claudio was to wait but a few days before he was to be married to his fair lady; yet he complained of the interval being tedious, as indeed most young men are impatient when they are waiting for the accomplishment of any event they have set their hearts upon. The prince, therefore, to make the time seem short to him, proposed as a kind of merry pastime that they should invent some artful scheme to make Benedick and Beatrice fall in love with each other. Claudio entered with great satisfaction into this whim of the prince, and Leonato promised them his assistance, and even Hero said she would do any modest office to help her cousin to a good husband. The device the prince invented was that the gentlemen should make Benedick believe that Beatrice was in love with him, and that Hero should make Beatrice believe that Benedick was in love with her. The prince, Leonato, and Claudio began their operations first; and watching upon an opportunity when Benedick was quietly seated reading in an arbor, the prince and his assistants took their station among the trees behind the arbor, so near that Benedick could not choose but hear all they said; and after some careless talk the prince said: "Come hither, Leonato, What was it you told me the other day — ^that your niece Beatrice was in love with Signor Benedick? I did never think that lady would have loved any man." "No, nor I neither, my lord," answered Leonato. "It is most wonderful that she should so dote on Benedick, whom she in all outward behavior seemed ever to dislike." Claudio confirmed all this with saying that Hero had told himl Beatrice was so in love with Benedick that she would certainly; die of grief if he could not be brought to love her; which Leonato and Claudio seemed to agree was impossible, he having always [53] TALES FROM been such a railer against all fair ladies, and in particular against Beatrice. The prince affected to harken to all this with great compassion for Beatrice, and he said, "It were good that Benedick were told of this." "To what end?" said Claudio. "He would but make sport of it, and torment the poor lady worse." "And if he should," said the prince, "it were a good deed to hang him; for Beatrice is an excellent sweet lady, and exceeding wise in everything but in loving Benedick." Then the prince motioned to his companions that they should walk on and leave Benedick to meditate upon what he had overheard. Benedick had been listening with great eagerness to this con- versation; and he said to himself, when he heard Beatrice loved him: "Is it possible? Sits the wind in that corner.?" And when they were gone, he began to reason in this manner with himself: "This can be no trick! They were very serious, and they have the truth from Hero, and seem to pity the lady. Love me! Why, it must be requited! I did never think to marry. But when I said I should die a bachelor, I did not think I should live to be married. They say the lady is virtuous and fair. She is so. And wise in everything but loving me. Why, that is no great argument of her folly! But here comes Beatrice. By this day, she is a fair lady. I do spy some marks of love in her." Beatrice now approached him and said, with her usual tart- ness, "Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner." Benedick, who never felt himself disposed to speak so politely to her before, replied, "Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains." And when Beatrice, after two or three more rude speeches, left him. Benedick thought he observed a concealed meaning of kindness under the uncivil words she uttered, and he said aloud: "If I do not take pity on her, I am a villain. If I do not love her, I am a Jew. I will go get her picture." The gentleman being thus caught in the net they had spread [54] "BUT ARE YOU SURE THAT BENEDICK LOVES BEATRICE SO ENTIRELY?" SHAKESPEARE for him, it was now Hero's turn to play her part with Beatrice; and for this purpose she sent for Ursula and Margaret, two gentlewomen who attended upon her, and she said to Margaret: "Good Margaret, run to the parlor; there you will find my cousin Beatrice talking with the prince and Claudio. Whisper in her ear that I and Ursula are walking in the orchard and that our discourse is all of her. Bid her steal into that pleasant arbor, where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun, like ungrateful minions, forbid the sun to enter." This arbor into which Hero desired Margaret to entice Beatrice was the very same pleasant arbor where Benedick had so lately been an attentive listener. "I will make her come, I warrant, presently," said Margaret. Hero, then taking Ursula with her into the orchard, said to her: "Now, Ursula, when Beatrice comes, we will walk up and down this alley, and our talk must be only of Bene- dick, and when I name him, let it be your part to praise him more than ever man did merit. My talk to you must be how Benedick is in love with Beatrice. Now begin; for look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs close by the ground, to hear our conference." They then began. Hero saying, as if in answer to something which Ursula had said: "No, truly, Ursula. She is too dis- dainful; her spirits are as coy as wild birds of the rock." "But are you sure," said Ursula, "that Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?" Hero replied, "So says the prince and my lord Claudio, and they entreated me to acquaint her with it; but I persuaded them, if they loved Benedick, never to let Beatrice know of it." "Certainly," replied Ursula, "it were not good she knew his love, lest she made sport of it." "Why, to say truth," said Hero, "I never yet saw a man, how wise soever, or noble, young, or rarely featured, but she would dispraise him." "Sure sure, such carping is not commendable," said Ursula. [57] TALE S FR O M "No," replied Hero, "but who dare tell her so? If I should speak, she would mock me into air." "Oh, you wrong your cousin!" said Ursula. "She cannot be so much without true judgment as to refuse so rare a gentle- man as Signor Benedick." "He hath an excellent good name," said Hero. "Indeed, he is the first man in Italy, always excepting my dear Claudio." And now. Hero giving her attendant a hint that it was time to change the discourse, Ursula said, "And when are you to be married, madam?" Hero then told her that she was to be married to Claudio the next day, and desired she would go in with her and look at some new attire, as she wished to consult with her on what she would wear on the morrow. Beatrice, who had been listening with breathless eagerness to this dialogue, when they went away exclaimed: "What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true? Farewell, contempt and scorn, and maiden pride, adieu! Benedick, love on! I will requite you, taming my wild heart to your loving hand." It must have been a pleasant sight to see these old enemies converted into new and loving friends, and to behold their first meeting after being cheated into mutual liking by the merry artifice of the good-humored prince. But a sad reverse in the fortunes of Hero must now be thought of. The morrow, which was to have been her wedding-day, brought sorrow on the heart of Hero and her good father, Leonato. The prince had a half-brother, who came from the wars along with him to Messina. This brother (his name was Don John) was a melancholy, discontented man, whose spirits seemed to labor in the contriving of villainies. He hated the prince his brother, and he hated Claudio because he was the prince's friend, and determined to prevent Claudio's marriage with Hero, only for the malicious pleasure of making Claudio and the prince unhappy, for he knew the prince had set his heart upon this marriage almost as much as Claudio himself; and to effect this [S8] SHAKESPEARE wicked purpose he employed one Borachio, a man as bad as himself, whom he encouraged with the offer of a great reward. This Borachio paid his court to Margaret, Hero's attendant; and Don John, knowing this, prevailed upon him to make Margaret promise to talk with him from her lady's chamber window that night, after Hero was asleep, and also to dress herself in Hero's clothes, the better to deceive Claudio into the belief that it was Hero; for that was the end he meant to compass by this wicked plot. Don John then went to the prince and Claudio and told them that Hero was an impru- dent lady, and that she talked with men from her chamber window at midnight. Now this was the evening before the wed- ding, and he offered to take them that night where they should themselves hear Hero discoursing with a man from her window; and they consented to go along with him, and Claudio said: "If I see anything to-night why I should not marry her, to-morrow in the congregation, where I intended to wed her, there will I shame her." The prince also said, "And as I assisted you to obtain her, I will join with you to disgrace her." When Don John brought them near Hero's chamber that night, they saw Borachio standing under the window, and they saw Margaret looking out of Hero's window and heard her talking with Borachio; and Margaret being dressed in the same clothes they had seen Hero wear, the prince and Claudio believed it was the lady Hero herself. [59] TALES FROM Nothing could equal the anger of Claudio when he had made (as he thought) this discovery. All his love for the innocent Hero was at once converted into hatred, and he resolved to expose her in the church, as he had said he would, the next day; and the prince agreed to this, thinking no punishment could be too severe for the naughty lady who talked with a man from her window the very night before she was going to be married to the noble Claudio. The next day, when they were all met to celebrate the marriage, and Claudio and Hero were standing before the priest, and the priest, or friar, as he was called, was proceeding to pronounce the marriage ceremony, Claudio, in the most passionate language, proclaimed the guilt of the blameless Hero, who, amazed at the strange words he uttered, said, meekly: "Is my lord well, that he does speak so wide.?" Leonato, in the utmost horror, said to the prince, "My lord, why speak not you?" "What should I speak.?" said the prince. "I stand dishonored that have gone about to link my dear friend to an unworthy woman. Leonato, upon my honor, myself, my brother, and this grieved Claudio did see and hear her last night at midnight talk with a man at her chamber window." Benedick, in astonishment at what he heard, said, "This looks not like a nuptial." "True, O God!" replied the heart-struck Hero; and then this hapless lady sank down in a fainting fit, to all appearance dead. The prince and Claudio left the church without staying to see if Hero would recover, or at all regarding the distress into which they had thrown Leonato. So hard-hearted had their anger made them. Benedick remained and assisted Beatrice to recover Hero from her swoon, saying, "How does the lady?" "Dead, I think," replied Beatrice, in great agony, for she loved her cousin; and, knowing her virtuous principles, she believed nothing of what she had heard spoken against her. [60] SHAKESPEARE Not so the poor old father. He believed the story of his child's shame, and it was piteous to hear him lamenting over her, as she lay like one dead before him, wishing she might never more open her eyes. But the ancient friar was a wise man and full of observation on human nature, and he had attentively marked the lady's countenance when she heard herself accused ij, and noted a thousand blushing shames to start into her face, and then he saw an angel- like whiteness bear away those blushes, and in her eye he saw a fire that did belie the error that the prince did speak against her maiden truth, and he said to the sorrowing father: "Call me a fool; trust not my reading nor my observation; trust not my age, my reverence, nor my call- ing, if this sweet lady he not guiltless here under some biting error." When Hero had re- covered from the swoon into which she had fallen, the friar said to her, "Lady, what man is he you are accused of?" Hero replied, "They know that do accuse me; I know of none." Then turning to Leonato, she said, "0 my father, if you can [6i] TALES FROM prove that any man has ever conversed with me at hours unmeet, or that I yesternight changed words with any creature, refuse me, hate me, torture me to death." "There is," said the friar, "some strange misunderstanding in the prince and Claudio." And then he counseled Leonato that he should report that Hero was dead; and he said that the deathlike swoon in which they had left Hero would make this easy of belief; and he also advised him that he should put on mourning, and erect a monument for her, and do all rites that appertain to a burial. "What shall become of this?" said Leonato. "What will this do?" The friar replied : "This report of her death shall change slander into pity; that is some good. But that is not all the good I hope for. When Claudio shall hear she died upon hearing his words, the idea of her life shall sweetly creep into his imagination. Then shall he mourn, if ever love had interest in his heart, and wish that he had not so accused her; yea, though he thought his accusation true." Benedick now said, "Leonato, let the friar advise you; and though you know how well I love the prince and Claudio, yet on my honor I will not reveal this secret to them." Leonato, thus persuaded, yielded; and he said, sorrowfully, "I am so grieved that the smallest twine may lead me." The kind friar then led Leonato and Hero away to comfort and console them, and Beatrice and Benedick remained alone; and this was the meeting from which their friends, who contrived the merry plot against them, expected so much diversion; those friends who were now overwhelmed with affliction and from whose minds all thoughts of merriment seemed forever banished. Benedick was the first who spoke, and he said, "Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?" "Yea, and I will weep awhile longer," said Beatrice. "Surely," said Benedick, "I do believe your fair cousin is ■> '-. «■ '^j 3,' [62] SHAKESPEARE "Ah," said Beatrice, "how much might that man deserve of me who would right her!" Benedick then said: "Is there any way to show such friend- ship ? I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?" "It were as possible," said Beatrice, "for me to say I loved nothing in the world so well as you; but believe me not, and yet I lie not. I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing. I am sorry for my cousin." "By my sword," said Benedick, "you love me, and I protest I love you. Come, bid me do anything for you." "Kill Claudio," said Beatrice. "Ha! not for the world," said Benedick; for he loved his friend Claudio and he believed he had been imposed upon, "Is not Claudio a villain that has slandered, scorned, and dishonored my cousin?" said Beatrice. "Oh, that I were a man!" "Hear me, Beatrice!" said Benedick. But Beatrice would hear nothing in Claudio's defense, and she continued to urge on Benedick to revenge her cousin's wrongs; and she said: "Talk with a man out of the window? a proper saying! Sweet Hero! she is wronged; she is slandered; she is undone. Oh, that I were a man for Claudio's sake! or that I had any friend who would be a man for my sake! But valor is melted into courtesies and compliments. I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving." "Tarry, good Beatrice," said Benedick. "By this hand I love you." "Use it for my love some other way than swearing by it," said Beatrice. "Think you on your soul that Claudio has wronged Hero?" asked Benedick. "Yea," answered Beatrice; "as sure as I have a thought or a soul." "Enough," said Benedick. "I am engaged; I will challenge I63] TALE S FR OM him. I will kiss your hand, and so leave you. By this hand Claudio shall render me a dear account! As you hear from me, so think of me. Go, comfort your cousin." While Beatrice was thus powerfully pleading with Benedick, and working his gallant temper, by the spirit of her angry words, to engage in the cause of Hero and fight even with his dear friend Claudio, Leonato was challenging the prince and Claudio to answer with their swords the injury they had done his child, who, he affirmed, had died for grief. But they respected his age and his sorrow, and they said: "Nay, do not quarrel with us, good old man." And now came Benedick, and he also challenged Claudio to answer with his sword the injury he had done to Hero; and Claudio and the prince said to each other: "Beatrice has set him on to do this." Claudio, nevertheless, must have accepted this challenge of Benedick had not the justice of Heaven at the moment brought to pass a better proof of the innocence of Hero than the uncertain fortune of a duel. While the prince and Claudio were yet talking of the challenge of Benedick a magistrate brought Borachio as a prisoner before the prince. Borachio had been overheard talking with one of his companions of the mischief he had been employed by Don John to do. Borachio made a full confession to the prince in Claudio's hearing that it was Margaret dressed in her lady's clothes that he had talked with from the window, whom they had mistaken for the lady Hero herself; and no doubt continued on the minds of Claudio and the prince of the innocence of Hero. If a sus- picion had remained it must have been removed by the flight of Don John, who, finding his villainies were detected, fled from Messina to avoid the just anger of his brother. The heart of Claudio was sorely grieved when he found he had falsely accused Hero, who, he thought, died upon hearing his cruel words; and the memory of his beloved Hero's image [64] SHAKESPEARE came over him in the rare semblance that he loved it first; and the prince, asking him if what he heard did not run like iron through his soul, he answered that he felt as if he had taken poison while Borachio was speaking. And the repentant Claudio implored forgiveness of the old man Leonato for the injury he had done his child; and promised that, whatever penance Leonato would lay upon him for his fault in beUeving the false accusation against his betrothed wife, for her dear sake he would endure it. The penance Leonato enjoined him was to marry the next morning a cousin of Hero's, who, he said, was now his heir, and in person very hke Hero. Claudio, regarding the solemn promise he made to Leonato, said he would marry this unknown lady, even though she were an Ethiop. But his heart was very sor- rowful, and he passed that night in tears and in remorseful grief at the tomb which Leonato had erected f/or Hero. When the morning came the prince accompanied Claudio to the church, where the good friar and Leonato and his niece were already assembled, to celebrate a second nuptial; and Leonato presented to Claudio his promised bride. And she wore a mask, that Claudio might not discover her face. And Claudio said to the lady in the mask: "Give me your hand, before this holy friar. I am your hus- band, if you will marry me." "And when I lived I was your other wife," said this unknown lady; and, taking off her mask, she proved to be no niece (as was pretended), but Leonato's very daughter, the lady Hero herself. Wejnay^be sure that this proved a most agreeable sur- prise to Claudio, who thouglit Tier dead,rs6 that he could scarcely for Joy believe his eyes; and the prince, who was equally amazed at what he saw, exclaimed: "Is not this Hero, Hero that was dead?" Leonato replied, "She died, my lord, but while her slander lived." The friar promised them an explanation of this seeming miracle, 5 [6s] TALES FROM after the ceremony was ended, and was proceeding to marry them when he was interrupted by Benedick, who desired to be married at the same time to Beatrice. Beatrice making some demur to this match, and Benedick challenging her with her love for him, which he had learned from Hero, a pleasant explanation took place; and they found they had both been tricked into a belief of love, which had never existed, and had become lovers in truth by the power of a false jest. But the affection which a merry invention had cheated them into was grown too powerful to be shaken by a serious explanation; and since Benedick proposed to marry, he was resolved to think nothing to the purpose that the world could say against it; and he merrily kept up the jest and swore to Beatrice that he took her but for pity, and because he heard she was dying of love for him; and Beatrice protested that she yielded but upon great persuasion, and partly to save his life, for she heard he was in a consumption. So these two mad wits were reconciled and made a match of it, after Claudio and Hero were married; and to complete the history, Don John, the con- triver of the villainy, was taken in his flight and brought back to Messina; and a brave punishment it was to this gloomy, dis- contented man to see the joy and feastings which, by the disap- pointment of his plots, took place in the palace in Messina. SHAKESPEARE AS YOU LIKE IT lURING the time that France was divided into provinces (or dukedoms, as they were called) there reigned in one of these provinces a usurper who had deposed and banished his elder brother, the law- ful duke. The duke who was thus driven from his dominions retired with a few faithful followers to the forest of Arden; and here the good duke lived with his loving friends, who had put themselves into a voluntary exile for his sake, while their land and revenues enriched the false usurper; and custom soon made the life of careless ease they led here more sweet to them than the pomp and uneasy splendor of a courtier's life. Here they lived like the old Robin Hood of England, and to this forest many noble youths daily resorted from the court, and did fleet the time care- lessly, as they did who lived in the golden age. In the summer they lay along under the fine shade of the large forest trees, marking the playful sports of the wild deer; and so fond were they of these poor dappled fools, who seemed to be the native inhabitants of the forest, that it grieved them to be forced to kill them to supply themselves with venison for their food. When the cold winds of winter made the duke feel the change of his adverse fortune, he would endure it patiently, and say: "These chilling winds which blow upon my body are true counselors; they do not flatter, but represent truly to me my condition; and though they bite sharply, their tooth is nothing like so keen as that of unkindness and ingratitude. I find that howsoever men speak against adversity, yet some sweet uses are [67] TALES FROM to be extracted from it; like the jewel, precious for medicine, which is taken from the head of the venomous and despised toad." In this manner did the patient duke draw a useful moral from everything that he saw; and by the help of this moralizing turn, in that life of his, remote from public haunts, he could find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. The banished duke had an only daughter, named Rosalind, whom the usurper, Duke Frederick, when he banished her father, still retained in his court as a companion for his own daughter, Celia. A strict friendship subsisted between these ladies, which the disagreement between their fathers did not in the least in- terrupt, Celia striving by every kindness in her power to make amends to Rosalind for the injustice of her own father in deposing the father of Rosalind; and whenever the thoughts of her father's banishment, and her own dependence on the false usurper, made Rosalind melancholy, Celia's whole care was to comfort and console her. One day, when Celia was talking in her usual kind manner to Rosalind, saying, "I pray you, Rosalind, my sweet cousin, be merry," a messenger entered from the duke, to tell them that if they wished to see a wrestling-match, which was just going to begin, they must come instantly to the court before the palace; and Celia, thinking it would amuse Rosalind^ agreed to go and see it. In those times wrestling, which is only practised now by country clowns, was a favorite sport even in the courts of princes, and before fair ladies and princesses. To this wrestling-match, therefore, Celia and Rosalind went. They found that it was likely to prove a very tragical sight; for a large and powerful man, who had been long practised in the art of wrestling and had slain many men in contests of this kind, was just going to wrestle with a very young man, who, from his extreme youth and in- experience in the art, the beholders all thought would certainly be killed. 168] SHAKESPEARE When the duke saw Celia and Rosalind he said: "How now, daughter and niece, are you crept hither to see the wrestling? You will take little delight in it, there is such odds in the men. In pity to this young man, I would wish to persuade him from wrestling. Speak to him, ladies, and see if you can move him." The ladies were well pleased to perform this humane office, and first Celia entreated the young stranger that he would desist from the attempt; and then Rosalind spoke so kindly to him, and with such feeling consideration for the danger he was about to undergo, that, instead of being persuaded by her gentle words to forego his purpose, all his thoughts were bent to distinguish himself by his courage in this lovely lady's eyes. He refused the request of Celia and Rosalind in such graceful and modest words that they felt still more concern for him; he concluded his refusal with saying: "I am sorry to deny such fair and excellent ladies anything. But let your fair eyes and gentle wishes go with me to my trial, wherein if I be conquered there is one shamed that was never gracious; if I am killed, there is one dead that is wiUing to die. I shall do my friends no wrong, for I have none to lament me; the world no injury, for in it I have nothing; for I only fill up a place in the world which may be better supplied when I have made it empty." And now the wrestling-match began. Celia wished the young stranger might not be hurt; but Rosalind felt most for him. The friendless state which he said he was in, and that he wished to die, made Rosalind think that he was, like herself, unfortunate; and she pitied him so much, and so deep an interest she took in his danger while he was wrestling, that she might almost be said at that moment to have fallen in love with him. The kindness shown this unknown youth by these fair and noble ladies gave him courage and strength, so that he performed wonders; and in the end completely conquered his antagonist, who was so much hurt that for a while he was unable to speak or move. [69] TALE S FR OM The Duke Frederick was much pleased with the courage and skill shown by this young stranger; and desired to know his name and parentage, meaning to take him under his protection. The stranger said his name was Orlando, and that he was the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys. Sir Rowland de Boys, the father of Orlando, had been dead some years; but when he was living he had been a true subject and dear friend of the banished duke; therefore, when Frederick heard Orlando was the son of his banished brother's friend, all his liking for this brave young man was changed into displeasure and he left the place in very ill humor. Hating to hear the very name of any of his brother's friends, and yet still admiring the valor of the youth, he said, as he went out, that he wished Orlando had been the son of any other man. Rosalind was delighted to hear that her new favorite was the son of her father's old friend; and she said to Celia, "My father loved Sir Rowland de Boys, and if I had known this young man was his son I would have added tears to my entreaties before he should have ventured." The ladies then went up to him and, seeing him abashed by the sudden displeasure shown by the duke, they spoke kind and encouraging words to him; and Rosalind, when they were going away, turned back to speak some more civil things to the brave young son of her father's old friend, and taking a chain from off her neck, she said: "Gentleman, wear this for me. I am out of suits with fortune, or I would give you a more valuable present." When the ladies were alone, Rosalind's talk being still of Orlando, Celia began to perceive her cousin had fallen in love with the handsome young wrestler, and she said to Rosalind: "Is it possible you should fall in love so suddenly?" Rosalind replied, "The duke, my father, loved his father dearly." "But," said Celia, "does it therefore follow that you should love his son dearly.? For then I ought to hate him, for my father hated his father; yet I do not hate Orlando." [70] SHAKESPEARE Frederick, being enraged at the sight of Sir Rowland de Boys's son, which reminded him of the hiany friends the banished duke had among the nobility, and having been for some time displeased with his niece because the people praised her for her virtues and pitied her for her good father's sake, his malice sud- denly broke out against her; and while Celia and RosaUnd were talking of Orlando, Frederick entered the room and with looks full of anger ordered RosaUnd instantly to leave the palace and follow her father into banishment, telling Celia, who in vain pleaded for her, that he had only suffered Rosalind to stay upon her account. "I did not then," said Celia, "entreat you to let her stay, for I was too young at that time to value her; but now that I know her worth, and that we so long have slept to- gether, rose at the same in- stant, learned, played, and eat together, I cannot live out of her company." Frederick replied: "She is too subtle for you; her smoothness, her very silence, and her patience speak to the people, and they pity her. You are a fool to plead for her, for you will seem more bright and virtuous when she is gone; therefore -open not your lips in her favor, for the doom which I have passed upon her is irrevocable." When Celia found she could not prevail upon her father to let [71J TALES FROM Rosalind remain with her, she generously resolved to accompany her; and, leaving her father's palace that night, she went along with her friend to seek Rosalind's father, the banished duke, in the forest of Arden. Before they set out Celia considered that it would be unsafe for two young ladies to travel in the rich clothes they then wore; she therefore proposed that they should disguise their rank by dressing themselves like country maids. Rosalind said it would be a still greater protection if one of them was to be dressed like a man. And so it was quickly agreed on between them that, as Rosalind was the tallest, she should wear the dress of a young countryman, and Celia should be habited like a country lass, and that they should say they were brother and sister; and Rosalind said she would be called Ganymede, and Celia chose the name of Aliena. In this disguise, and taking their money and jewels to defray their expenses, these fair princesses set out on their long travel; for the forest of Arden was a long way off, beyond the boundaries of the duke's dominions. The lady Rosalind (or Ganymede, as she must now be called) with her manly garb seemed to have put on a manly courage. The faithful friendship Celia had shown in accompanying Rosa- lind so many weary miles made the new brother, in recompense for this true love, exert a cheerful spirit, as if he were indeed Ganymede, the rustic and stout-hearted brother of the gentle village maiden, Aliena. When at last they came to the forest of Arden they no longer found the convenient inns and good accommodations they had met with on the road, and, being in want of food and rest, Gany- mede, who had so merrily cheered his sister with pleasant speeches and happy remarks all the way, now owned to Aliena that he was so weary he could find in his heart to disgrace his man's apparel and cry like a woman; and Aliena declared she could go no farther; and then again Ganymede tried to recollect that it was a man's duty to comfort and console a woman, [72] '' I PRAY YOU, BEAR WITH ME; I CAN GO NO FURTHER " SHAKESPEARE as the weaker vessel; and to seem courageous to his new sister, he said: "Come, have a good heart, my sister Aliena; we are now at the end of our travel, in the forest of Arden." But feigned manliness and forced courage would no longer sup- port them; for, though they were in the forest of Arden, they knew not where to find the duke. And here the travel of these weary ladies might have come to a sad conclusion, for they might have lost themselves and perished for want of food, but, providentially, as they were sitting on the grass, almost dying with fatigue and hopeless of any relief, a countryman chanced to pass that way, and Ganymede once more tried to speak with a manly boldness, saying: "Shepherd, if love or gold can in this desert place procure us entertainment, I pray you bring us where we may rest ourselves; for this young maid, my sister, is much fatigued with traveling, and faints for want of food." The man replied that he was only a servant to a shepherd, and that his master's house was just going to be sold, and therefore they would find but poor entertainment; but that if they would go with him they should be welcome to what there was. They followed the man, the near prospect of relief giving them fresh strength, and bought the house and sheep of the shepherd, and took the man who conducted them to the shepherd's house to wait on them; and being by this means so fortunately provided with a neat cottage, and well supplied with provisions, they agreed to stay here till they could learn in what part of the forest the duke dwelt. When they were rested after the fatigue of their journey, they began to like their new way of life, and almost fancied themselves the shepherd and shepherdess they feigned to be. Yet some- times Ganymede remembered he had once been the same Lady Rosalind who had so dearly loved the brave Orlando because he was the son of old Sir Rowland, her father's friend; and though Ganymede thought that Orlando was many miles distant, [75] TALES FROM even so many weary miles as they nad traveled, yet it soon ap- peared that Orlando was also in the forest of Arden. And in this manner this strange event came to pass. Orlando was the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys, who, when he died, left him (Orlando being then very young) to the care of his eldest brother, Oliver, charging Oliver on his blessing to give his brother a good education and provide for him as became the dignity of their ancient house. Oliver proved an unworthy brother, and, disregarding the commands of his dying father, he never put his brother to school, but kept him at home untaught and entirely neglected. But in his nature and in the noble qualities of his mind Orlando so much resembled his excellent father that, without any advantages of education, he seemed like a youth who had been bred with the utmost care; and Oliver so envied the line person and dignified manners of his untutored brother that at last he wished to destroy him, and to effect this he set on people to persuade him to wrestle with the famous wrestler who, as has been before related, had killed so many men. Now it was this cruel brother's neglect of him which made Orlando say he wished to die, being so friendless. When, contrary to the wicked hopes he had formed, his brother proved victorious, his envy and malice knew no bounds, and he swore he would burn the chamber where Orlando slept. He was overheard making his vow by one that had been an old and faith- ful servant to their father, and that loved Orlando because he resembled Sir Rowland. This old man went out to meet him when he returned from the duke's palace, and when he saw Or- lando the peril his dear young master was in made him break out into these passionate exclamations : "O my gentle master, my sweet master! O you memory of old Sir Rowland! Why are you virtuous ? Why are you gentle, strong, and valiant? And why would you be so fond to over- come the famous wrestler? Your praise is come too swiftly home before you." Orlando, wondering what all this meant, asked him what was [76I SHAKESPEARE the matter. And then the old man told him how his wicked brother, envying the love all people bore him, and now hearing the fame he had gained by his victory in the duke's palace, in- tended to destroy him by setting fire to his chamber that night, and in conclusion advised him to escape the danger he was in by instant flight; and knowing Orlando had no money, Adam (for that was the good old man's name) had brought out with him his own little hoard, and he said: "I have five hundred crowns, the thrifty hire I saved under your father and laid by to be provision for me when my old limbs should become unfit for service. Take that, and He that doth the ravens feed be comfort to my age! Here is the gold. All this I give to you. Let me be your servant; though I look old I will do the service of a younger man in all your business and necessities." "O good old man!" said Orlando, "how well appears in you the constant service of the old world! You are not for the fashion of these times. We will go along together, and before your youthful wages are spent I shall light upon some means for both our maintenance." Together, then, this faithful servant and his loved master set out; and Orlando and Adam traveled on, uncertain what course to pursue, till they came to the forest of Arden, and there they found themselves in the same distress for want of food that s:^ fr reared as loving and obedient a wife to him, and would hang upon him as if her affection grew to him. And now within two months, or, as it seemed to young Hamlet, less than two months, she had married again, married his uncle, her dear husband's brother, in itself a highly improper and unlawful marriage, from the nearness of relationship, but made much more so by the indecent haste with which it was concluded and the unkingly character of the man whom she had chosen to be the partner of her throne and bed. This it was which more than the loss of ten kingdoms dashed the spirits and brought a cloud over the mind of this honorable young prince. In vain was all that his mother Gertrude or the king could do to contrive to divert him; he still appeared in court in a suit of deep black, as mourning for the king his father's death, which mode of dress he had never laid aside, not even in compliment to his mother upon the day she was married, nor could he be brought to join in any of the festivities or rejoicings of that (as appeared to him) disgraceful day. What mostly troubled him was an uncertainty about the man- ner of his father's death. It was given out by Claudius that a serpent had stung him; but young Hamlet had shrewd suspi- cions that Claudius himself was the serpent; in plain English, that he had murdered him for his crown, and that the serpent who stung his father did now sit on the throne. How far he was right in this conjecture and what he ought to think of his mother, how far she was privy to this murder and whether by her consent or knowledge, or without, it came to pass, were the doubts which continually harassed and distracted him. 20 { 30s ] TALES FROM A rumor had reached the ear of young Hamlet that an appari- tion, exactly resembling the dead king his father, had been seen by the soldiers upon watch, on the platform before the palace at midnight, for two or three nights successively. The figure came constantly clad in the same suit of armor, from head to foot, which the dead king was known to have worn. And they who saw it (Hamlet's bosom friend Horatio was one) agreed in their testi- mony as to the time and manner of its appearance — that it came just as the clock struck twelve; that it looked pale, with a face more of sorrow than of anger; that its beard was grisly, and the color a sable silvered, as they had seen it in his lifetime; that it made no answer when they spoke to it; yet once they thought it lifted up its head and addressed itself to motion, as if it were about to speak; but in that moment the morning cock crew and it shrank in haste away, and vanished out of their sight. The young prince, strangely amazed at their relation, which was too consistent and agreeing with itself to disbelieve, con- cluded that it was his father's ghost which they had seen, and de- termined to take his watch with the soldiers that night, that he might have a chance of seeing it; for he reasoned with himself that such an appearance did not come for nothing, but that the ghost had something to impart, and though it had been silent hitherto, yet it would speak to him. And he waited with impa- tience for the coming of night. When night came he took his stand with Horatio, and Marcel- lus, one of the guard, upon the platform, where this apparition was accustomed to walk; and it being a cold night, and the air unusually raw and nipping, Hamlet and Horatio and their com- panion fell into some talk about the coldness of the night, which was suddenly broken off by Horatio announcing that the gfiost was coming. At the sight of his father's spirit Hamlet was struck with a sudden surprise and fear. He at first called upon the angels and heavenly ministers to defend them, for he knew not whether it were a good spirit or bad, whether it came for good or evil; but [306] "STILL AM I CALLED. UNHAND ME, GENTLEMEN! BY HEAVEN, I'LL MAKE A GHOST OF HIM THAT LETS ME!" SHAKESPEARE he gradually assumed more courage; and his father (as it seemed to him) looked upon him so piteously, and as it were desiring to have conversation with him, and did in all respects appear so hke himself as he was when he lived, that Hamlet could not help addressing him. He called him by his name, "Hamlet, King, Father!" and conjured him that he would tell the reason why he had left his grave, where they had seen him quietly bestowed, to come again and visit the earth and the moonlight; and be- sought him that he would let them know if there was anything which they could do to give peace to his spirit. And the ghost beckoned to Hamlet, that he should go with him to some more removed place where they might be alone; and Horatio and Mar- cellus would have dissuaded the young prince from following it, for they feared lest it should be some evil spirit who would tempt him to the neighboring sea or to the top of some dreadful cliff, and there put on some horrible shape which might deprive the prince of his reason. But their counsels and entreaties could not alter Hamlet's determination, who cared too little about life to fear the losing of it; and as to his soul, he said, what could the spirit do to that, being a thing immortal as itself? And he felt as hardy as a lion, and, bursting from them, who did all they could to hold him, he followed whithersoever the spirit led him. And when they were alone together, the spirit broke silence and told him that he was the ghost of Hamlet, his father, who had been cruelly murdered, and he told the manner of it; that it was done by his own brother Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, as Hamlet h^d already but too much suspected, for the hope of succeeding to his bed and crown. That as he was sleeping in his garden, his custom always in the afternoon, his treasonous brother stole upon him in his sleep and poured the juice of poisonous henbane into his ears, which has such an antipathy to the life of man that, swift as quicksilver, it courses through all the veins of the body, baking up the blood and spreading a crust-Hke leprosy all over the skin. Thus sleeping, by a brother's hand he was cut off at once from his crown, his queen, and his life; and he adjured [309] TALES FROM Hamlet, if he did ever his dear father love, that he would revenge iiis foul murder. And the ghost lamented to his son that his mother should so fall off from virtue as to prove false to the wedded love of her first husband and to marry his murderer; but he cautioned Hamlet, howsoever he proceeded in his revenge against his wicked uncle, by no means to act any violence against the person of his mother, but to leave her to Heaven, and to the stings and thorns of conscience. And Hamlet promised to ob- serve the ghost's direction in all things, and the ghost vanished. And when Hamlet was left alone he took up a solemn resolution that all he had in his memory, all that he had ever learned by books or observation, should be instantly forgotten by him, and nothing live in his brain but the memory of what the ghost had told him and enjoined him to do. And Hamlet related the particulars of the conversation which had passed to none but his dear friend Horatio; and he enjoined both to him and Marcellus the strictest secrecy as to what they had seen that night. The terror which the sight of the ghost had left upon the senses of Hamlet, he being weak and dispirited before, almost unhinged his mind and drove him beside his reason. And he, fearing that it would continue to have this effect, which might subject him to observation and set his uncle upon his guard, if he suspected that he was meditating anything against him, or that Hamlet really knew more of his father's death than he professed, took up a strange resolution, from that time to counterfeit as if he were really and truly mad; thinking that he would be less an object of suspicion when his uncle should believe him incapable of any serious project, and that his real perturbation of mind would be best covered and pass concealed under a disguise of pretended lunacy. From this time Hamlet affected a certain wildness and strange- ness in his apparel, his speech, and behavior, and did so excel- lently counterfeit the madman that the king and queen were both deceived, and not thinking his grief for his father's death a suffi- [310] SHAKESPEARE cient cause to produce such a distemper, for they knew not of the appearance of the ghost, they concluded that his malady V7as love and they thought they had found out the object. Before Hamlet fell into the melancholy way which has been related he had dearly loved a fair maid called OpheUa, the daugh- ter of Polonius, the king's chief counselor in affairs of state. He had sent her letters and rings, and made many tenders of his affection to her, and importuned her with love in honorable fashion; and she had given belief to his vows and importunities. But the melancholy which he fell into latterly had made him neglect her, and from the time he conceived the project of counter- feiting madness he affected to treat her with unkindness and a sort of rudeness; but she, good lady, rather than reproach him [311] TALES FROM with being false to her, persuaded herself that it was nothing but the disease in his mind, and no settled unkindness, which had made him less observant of her than formerly; and she compared the faculties of his once noble mind and excellent understanding, impaired as they were with the deep melancholy that oppressed him, to sweet bells which in themselves are capable of most ex- quisite music, but when jangled out of tune, or rudely handled, produce only a harsh and unpleasing sound. Though the rough business which Hamlet had in hand, the revenging of his father's death upon his murderer, did not suit with the playful state of courtship, or admit of the society of so idle a passion as love now seemed to him, yet it could not hinder but that soft thoughts of his Ophelia would come between, and in one of these moments, when he thought that his treatment of this gentle lady had been unreasonably harsh, he wrote her a letter full of wild starts of passion, and in extravagant terms, such as agreed with his supposed madness, but mixed with some gentle touches of affection, which could not but show to this honored lady that a deep love for her yet lay at the bottom of his heart. He bade her to doubt the stars were fire, and to doubt that the sun did move, to doubt truth to be a liar, but never to doubt that he loved; with more of such extravagant phrases. This letter Ophelia dutifully showed to her father, and the old man thought himself bound to communicate it to the king and queen, who from that time supposed that the true cause of Hamlet's madness was love. And the queen wished that the good beauties of Ophelia might be the happy cause of his wildness, for so she hoped that her virtues might happily restore him to his accustomed way again, to both their honors. But Hamlet's malady lay deeper than she supposed, or than could be so cured. His father's ghost, which he had seen, still haunted his imagination, and the sacred^injunction to revenge his murder gave him no rest till it was accomplished. Every hour of delay seemed to him a sin and a violation of his father's com- mands. Yet how to compass the death of the king, surrounded [312] SHAKESPEARE as he constantly was with his guards, was no easy matter. Or if it had been, the presence of the queen, Hamlet's mother, who was generally with the king, was a restraint upon his purpose, which , he could not break through. Besides, the very circumstance that the usurper was his mother's husband filled him with some remorse and still blunted the edge of his purpose. The mere act of putting a fellow-creature to death was in itself odious and ter- rible to a disposition naturally so gentle as Hamlet's was. His very melancholy, and the dejection of spirits he had so long been in, produced an irresoluteness and wavering of purpose which kept him from proceeding to extremities. Moreover, he could not help having some scruples upon his mind, whether the spirit which he had seen was indeed his father, or whether it might not be the devil, who he had heard has power to take any form he pleases, and who might have assumed his father's shape only to take advantage of his weakness and his melancholy, to drive him to the doing of so desperate an act as murder. And he determined that he would have more certain grounds to go upon than a vision, or apparition, which might be a delusion. While he was in this irresolute mind there came to the court certain players, in whom Hamlet formerly used to take delight, and particularly to hear one of them speak a tragical speech, describing the death of old Priam, King of Troy, with the grief of Hecuba his queen. Hamlet welcomed his old friends, the players, and remembering how that speech had formerly given him pleasure, requested the player to repeat it; which he did in so lively a manner, setting forth the cruel murder of the feeble old king, with the destruction of his people and city by fire, and the mad grief of the old queen, running barefoot up and down the palace, with a poor clout upon that head where a crown had been, and with nothing but a blanket upon her loins, snatched up in haste, where she had worn a royal robe; that not only it drew tears from all that stood by, who thought they saw the real scene, so lively was it represented, but even the player himself delivered it with a broken voice and real tears. This put Ham- [313] T AL E S FROM let upon thinking, if that player could so work himself up to pas- sion by a mere fictitious speech, to weep for one that he had never seen, for Hecuba, that had been dead so many hundred years, how dull was he, who having a real motive and cue for passion, a real king and a dear father murdered, was yet so little moved that his revenge all this while had seemed to have slept in dull and muddy forgetfulness ! and while he meditated on actors and acting, and the powerful effects which a good play, represented to the life, has upon the spectator, he remembered the instance of some murderer, who, seeing a murder on the stage, was by the mere force of the scene and resemblance of circumstances so affected that on the spot he confessed the crime which he had committed. And he determined that these players should play something like the murder of his father before his uncle, and he would watch narrowly what effect it might have upon him, and from his looks he would be able to gather with more certainty if he were the murderer or not. To this effect he ordered a play to be prepared, to the representation of which he invited the king and queen. The story of the play was of a murder done in Vienna upon a duke. The duke's name was Gonzago, his wife's Baptista. The play showed how one Lucianus, a near relation to the duke, poisoned him in his garden for his estate, and how the murderer in a short time after got the love of Gonzago's wife. At the representation of this play, the king, who did not know the trap which was laid for him, was present, with his queen and the whole court; Hamlet sitting attentively near him to observe his looks. The play began with a conversation between Gonzago and his wife, in which the lady made many protestations of love, and of never marrying a second husband if she should outlive Gonzago, wishing she might be accursed if she ever took a second husband, and adding that no woman did so but those wicked women who kill their first husbands. Hamlet observed the king his uncle change color at this expression, and that it was as bad as wormwood both to him and to the queen. But when Lucianus, [314] SHAKESPEARE according to the story, came to poison Gonzago sleeping in the garden, the strong resemblance which it bore to his own wicked act upon the late king, his brother, whom he had poisoned in his garden, so struck upon the conscience of this usurper that he was unable to sit out the rest of the play, but on a sudden calling for lights to his chamber, and affecting or partly feeling a sudden sickness, he abruptly left the theater. The king being departed, the play was given over. Now Hamlet had seen enough to be satisfied that the words of the ghost were true and no illusion; and in a fit of gaiety, like that which comes over a man who suddenly has some great doubt or scruple resolved, he swore to Horatio that he would take the ghost's word for a thousand pounds. But before he could make up his resolution as to what measures of revenge he should take, now he was cer- tainly informed that his uncle was his father's murderer, he was sent for by the queen his mother, to a private conference in her closet. It was by desire of the king that the queen sent for Hamlet, that she might signify to her son how much his late behavior had displeased them both, and the king, wishing to know all that passed at that conference, and thinking that the too partial report of a mother might let slip some part of Hamlet's words, which it might much import the king to know, Polonius, the old counselor of state, was ordered to plant himself behind the hang- ings in the queen's closet, where he might, unseen, hear all that passed. This artifice was particularly adapted to the disposition of Polonius, who was a man grown old in crooked maxims and policies of state, and delighted to get at the knowledge of matters in an indirect and cunning way. Hamlet being come to his mother, she began to tax him in the roundest way with his actions and behavior, and she told him that he had given great offense to his father, meaning the king, his uncle, whom, because he had married her, she called Hamlet's father. Hamlet, sorely indignant that she should give so dear and honored a name as father seemed to him to a wretch who was [315] TALES FROM indeed no better than the murderer of his true father, with some sharpness replied: "Mother, you have much offended my father." The queen said that was but an idle answer. "As good as the question deserved," said Hamlet. The queen asked him if he had forgotten who it was he was speaking to. "Alas!" replied Hamlet, "I wish I could forget. You are the queen) your husband's brother's wife; and you are my mother. I wish you were not what you are." "Nay, then," said the queen, "if you show me so little respect, I will set those to you that can speak," and was going to send the king or Polonius to him. But Hamlet would not let her go, now he had her alone, till he had tried if his words could not bring her to some sense of her wicked life; and, taking her by the wrist, he held her fast, and made her sit down. She, affrighted at his earnest manner, and fearful lest in his lunacy he should do her a mischief, cried out; and a voice was heard from behind the hangings, "Help, help, the queen!" which Hamlet hearing, and verily thinking that it was the king himself there concealed, he drew his sword and stabbed at the place where the voice came from, as he would have stabbed a rat that ran there, till, the voice ceasing, he concluded the person to be dead. But when he dragged forth the body it was not the king, but Polonius, the old, officious counselor, that had planted himself as a spy behind the hangings. "Oh, me!" exclaimed the queen, "what a rash and bloody deed have you done!" "A bloody deed, mother," replied Hamlet, "but not so bad as yours, who killed a king, and married his brother." Hamlet had gone too far to leave off here. He was now in the humor to speak plainly to his mother, and he pursued it. And though the faults of parents are to be tenderly treated by their children, yet in the case of great crimes the son may have leave to speak even to his own mother with some harshness, so as that [316] SHAKESPEARE harshness is meant for her good and to turn her from her wicked ways, and not done for the purpose of upbraiding. And now this virtuous prince did in moving terms represent to the queen the heinousness of her offense in being so forgetful of the dead king, his father, as in so short a space of time to marry with his brother and reputed murderer. Such an act as, after the vows which she had sworn to her first husband, was enough to make all vows of women suspected and all virtue to be accounted hypocrisy, wed- ding contracts to be less than gamesters' oaths, and religion to be a mockery and a mere form of words. He said she had done such a deed that the heavens blushed at it, and the earth was sick of her because of it. And he showed her two pictures, the one of the late king, her first husband, and the other of the present king, her second husband, and he bade her mark the diiFerence; [317] TALES FROM what a grace was on the brow of his father, how like a god he looked ! the curls of Apollo, the forehead of Jupiter, the eye of Mars, and a posture like to Mercury newly alighted on some heaven-kissing hill! this man, he said, had been her husband. And then he showed her whom she had got in his stead; how like a blight or a mildew he looked, for so he had blasted his whole- some brother. And the queen was sore ashamed that he should so turn her eyes inward upon her soul, which she now saw so black and deformed. And he asked her how she could continue to live with this man, and be a wife to him, who had murdered her first husband and got the crown by as false means as a thief— and just as he spoke the ghost of his father, such as he was in his lifetime and such as he had lately seen it, entered the room, and Hamlet, in great terror, asked what it would have; and the ghost said that it came to remind him of the revenge he had promised, which Hamlet seemed to have forgot; and the ghost bade him speak to his mother, for the grief and terror she was in would else kill her. It then vanished, and was seen by none but Hamlet, neither could he by pointing to where it stood, or by any description, make his mother perceive it, who was ter- ribly frightened all this while to hear him conversing, as it seemed to her, with nothing; and she imputed it to the disorder of his mind. But Hamlet begged her not to flatter her wicked soul in such a manner as to think that it was his madness, and not her own offenses, which had brought his father's spirit again on the earth. And he bade her feel his pulse, how temperately it beat, not like a madman's. And he begged of her, with tears, to con- fess herself to Heaven for what was past, and for the future to avoid the company of the king and be no more as a wife to him; and when she should show herself a mother to him, by respecting his father's memory, he would ask a blessing of her as a son. And she promising to observe his directions, the conference ended. And now Hamlet was at leisure to consider who it was that in his unfortunate rashness he had killed; and when he came to see that it was Polonius, the father of the Lady Ophelia whom he so [318] "WHOSE SKULL IS THIS?' SHAKESPEARE dearly loved, he drew apart the dead body, and, his spirits being now a little quieter, he wept for what he had done. The unfortunate death of Polonius gave the king a pretense for sending Hamlet out of the kingdom. He would willingly have put him to death, fearing him as dangerous; but he dreaded the peo- ple, who loved Hamlet, and the queen, who, with all her faults, doted upon the prince, her son. So this subtle king, under pre- tense of providing for Hamlet's safety, that he might not be called to account for Polonius's death, caused him to be conveyed on board a ship bound for England, under the care of two courtiers, by whom he despatched letters to the English court, which in that time was in subjection and paid tribute to Denmark, requir- ing, for special reasons there pretended, that Hamlet should be put to death as soon as he landed on English ground. Hamlet, suspecting some treachery, in the nighttime secretly got at the letters, and, skilfully erasing his own name, he in the stead of it put in the names of those two courtiers, who had the charge of him, to be put to death; then sealing up the letters, he put them into their place again. Soon after the ship was attacked bypirates, and a sea-fight commenced, in the course of which Hamlet, de- sirous to show his valor, with sword in hand singly boarded the enemy's vessel; while his own ship, in a cowardly manner, bore away; and leaving him to his fate, the two courtiers made the best of their way to England, charged with those letters the sense of which Hamlet had altered to their own deserved destruction. The pirates who had the prince in their power showed them- selves gentle enemies, and, knowing whom they had got prisoner, in the hope that the prince might do them a good turn at court in recompense for any favor they might show him, they set Hamlet on shore at the nearest port in Denmark. From that place Hamlet wrote to the king, acquainting him with the strange chance which had brought him back to his own country and saying that on the next day he should present himself before his Majesty. When he got home a sad spectacle offered itself the first thing to his eyes. 21 [321] TALES FROM [322] This was the funeral of the young and beautiful Ophelia, his once dear mis- tress. The wits of this young lady had begun to turn ever since her poor father's death. That he should die a violent death, and by the hands of the prince whom she loved, so affected this tender young maid that in a httle time she grew perfectly dis- tracted, and would go about giving flowers away to the ladies of the court, and say- ing that they were for her father's burial, singing songs about love and about death, and sometimes such as had no meaning at all, as if she had no memory of what happened to her. There was a willow which grew slanting over a brook, and reflected its leaves on the stream. To this brook she came one day when she was unwatched, with gar- lands she had been makings mixed up of daisies and nettles, flowers and weeds together, and clambering up to hang her garland upon the boughs of the willow, SHAKESPEARE a bough broke and precipitated this fair young maid, garland, and all that she had gathered, into the water, where her clothes bore her up for a while, during which she chanted scraps of old tunes, like one insensible to her own distress, or as if she were a creature natural to that element; but long it was not before her garments, heavy with the wet, pulled her in from her melodious singing to a muddy and miserable death. It was the funeral of this fair maid which her brother Laertes was celebrating, the king and queen and whole court being present, when Hamlet arrived. He knew not what all this show imported, but stood on one side, not inclining to interrupt the ceremony. He saw the flowers strewed upon her grave, as the custom was in maiden burials, which the queen herself threw in; and as she threw them she said: "Sweets to the sweet! I thought to have decked thy bride- bed, sweet maid, not to have strewed thy grave. Thou shoixldst have been my Hamlet's wife." And he heard her brother wish that violets might spring from her grave; and he saw him leap into the grave all frantic with grief, and bid the attendants pile mountains of earth upon him, that he might be buried with her. And Hamlet's love for this fair maid came back to him, and he could not bear that a brother should show so much transport of grief, for he thought that he loved Opheha better than forty thousand brothers. Then dis- covering himself, he leaped into the grave where Laertes was, all as frantic or more frantic than he, and Laertes, knowing him to be Hamlet, who had been the cause of his father's and his sis- ter's death, grappled him by the throat as an enemy, till the attendants parted them; and Hamlet, after the funeral, excused his hasty act in throwing himself into the grave as if to brave Laertes; but he said he could not bear that any one should seem to outgo him in grief for the death of the fair Ophelia. And for the time these two noble youths seemed reconciled. But out of the grief and anger of Laertes for the death of his father and Opheha the king, Hamlet's wicked uncle, contrived [323] TALES FROM destruction for Hamlet. He set on Laertes, under cover of peace and reconciliation, to challenge Hamlet to a friendly trial of skill at fencing, which Hamlet accepting, a day was appointed to try the match. At this match all the court was present, and Laertes, by direction of the king, prepared a poisoned weapon. Upon this match great wagers were laid by the courtiers, as both Hamlet and Laertes were known to excel at this sword play; and Hamlet, taking up the foils, chose one, not at all suspecting the treachery of Laertes, or being careful to examine Laertes's weapon, who, instead of a foil or blunted sword, which the laws of fencing require, made use of one with a point, and poisoned. At first Laertes did but play with Hamlet, and suffered him to gain some advantages, which the dissembling king magnified and extolled beyond measure, drinking to Hamlet's success and wager- ing rich bets upon the issue. But after a few pauses Laertes, growing warm, made a deadly thrust at Hamlet with his poisoned weapon, and gave him a mortal blow. Hamlet, incensed, but not knowing the whole of the treachery, in the scuffle exchanged his own innocent weapon for Laertes's deadly one, and with a thrust of Laertes's own sword repaid Laertes home, who was thus justly caught in his own treachery. In this instant the queen shrieked out that she was poisoned. She had inadvertently drunk out of a bowl which the king had prepared for Hamlet, in case that, being warm in fencing, he should call for drink; into this the treacherous king had infused a deadly poison, to make sure of Hamlet, if Laertes had failed. He had forgotten to warn the queen of the bowl, which she drank of, and immediately died, exclaiming with her last breath that she was poisoned. Hamlet, suspecting some treachery, ordered the doors to be shut while he sought it out. Laertes told him to seek no farther, for he was the traitor; and feeling his life go away with the wound which Hamlet had given him, he made confession of the treachery he had used and how he had fallen a victim to it: and he told Hamlet of the envenomed point, and said that Hamlet had not half an hour to live, for no medicine could cure him; and begging [324] SHAKESPEARE forgiveness of Hamlet, he died, with his last words accusing the king of being the contriver of the mischief. When Hamlet saw his end draw near, there being yet some venom left upon the sword, he suddenly turned upon his false uncle and thrust the point of it to his heart, fulfilling the promise which he had made to his father's spirit, whose injunction was now accomplished and his foul murder revenged upon the murderer. Then Hamlet, feeling his breath fail and life departing, turned to his dear friend Horatio, who had been spectator of this fatal tragedy; and with his dying breath requested him that he would live to tell his story to the world (for Horatio had made a motion as if he would slay himself to accompany the prince in death), and Horatio promised that he would make a true report as one that was privy to all the circumstances. And, thus satisfied, the noble heart of Hamlet cracked; and Horatio and the bystanders with many tears commended the spirit of this sweet prince to the guardianship of angels. For Hamlet was a loving and a gentle prince and greatly beloved for his many noble and prince- like qualities; and if he had lived, would no doubt have proved a most royal and complete king to Denm.ark. TA LES FROM OTHELLO IRABANTIO, the rich senator of Venice, had a fair daughter, the gentle Des- demona. She was sought to by divers suitors, both on account of her many virtuous qualities and for her rich ex- pectations. But among the suitors of her own clime and complexion she saw none whom she could aJfFect, for this noble lady, who regarded the mind more than the features of men, with a singularity rather to be ad- mired than imitated had chosen for the object of her affections a Moor, a black, whom her father loved and often invited to his house. Neither is Desdemona to be altogether condemned for the unsuitableness of the person whom she selected for her lover. Bating that Othello was black, the noble Moor wanted nothing which might recommend him to the affections of the greatest lady. He was a soldier, and a brave one; and by his conduct in bloody wars against the Turks had risen to the rank of general in the Venetian service, and was esteemed and trusted by the state. He had been a traveler, and Desdemona (as is the manner of ladies) loved to hear him tell the story of his adventures, which he would run through from his earliest recollection; the battles, sieges, and encounters which he had passed through; the perils he had been exposed to by land and by water; his hair-breadth escapes, when he had entered a breach or marched up to the mouth of a cannon; and how he had been taken prisoner by the insolent enemy, and sold to slavery; how he demeaned himself in that [326] tn W > Q O CO M H a: p< <: w E Q > s § W Q C/3 M Q SHAKESPEARE state, and how he escaped : all these accounts, added to the narra- tion of the strange things he had seen in foreign countries, the vast wilderness and romantic caverns, the quarries, the rocks and mountains whose heads are in the clouds; of the savage nations, the cannibals who are man-eaters, and a race of people in Africa whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. These travelers' stories would so enchain the attention of Desdemona that if she were called off at any time by household affairs she would despatch with all haste that business, and return, and with a greedy ear devour Othello's discourse. And once he took ad- vantage of a pliant hour and drew from her a prayer that he would tell her the whole story of his life at large, of which she had heard so much, but only by parts. To which he consented, and beguiled her of many a tear when he spoke of some distressful stroke which his youth had suffered. His story being done, she gave him for his pains a world of sighs. She swore a pretty oath that it was all passing strange, and pitiful, wondrous pitiful. She wished (she said) she had not heard it, yet she wished that Heaven had made her such a man; and then she thanked him, and told him, if he had a friend who loved her, he had only to teach him how to tell his story and that would woo her. Upon this hint, delivered not with more frankness than modesty, accompanied with certain bewitching prettiness and blushes, which Othello could not but understand, he spoke more openly of his love, and in this golden opportunity gained the consent of the generous Lady Desdemona privately to marry him. Neither Othello's color nor his fortune was such that it could be hoped Brabantio would accept him for a son-in-law. He had left his daughter free; but he did expect that, as the manner of noble Venetian ladies was, she would choose erelong a husband of senatorial rank or expectations; but in this he was deceived. Desdemona loved the Moor, though he was black, and devoted her heart and fortunes to his valiant parts and qualities. So was her heart subdued to an implicit devotion to the man she had [329] TALES FROM selected for a husband that his very color, which to all but this discerning lady would have proved an insurmountable objection, was by her esteemed above all the white skins and clear complex- ions of the young Venetian nobility, her suitors. Their marriage, which, though privately carried, could not long be kept a secret, came to the ears of the old man, Brabantio, who appeared in a solemn council of the senate as an accuser of the Moor Othello, who by spells and witchcraft (he maintained) had seduced the affections of the fair Desdemona to marry him, without the consent of her father, and against the obligations of hospitality. At this juncture of time it happened that the state of Venice had immediate need of the services of Othello, news having arrived that the Turks with mighty preparation had fitted out a fleet, which was bending its course to the island of Cyprus, with intent to regain that strong post from the Venetians, who then held it; in this emergency the state turned its eyes upon Othello, who alone was deemed adequate to conduct the defense of Cyprus against the Turks. So that Othello, now summoned before the senate, stood in their presence at once as a candidate for a great state employment and as a culprit charged with offenses which by the laws of Venice were made capital. The age and senatorial character of old Brabantio commanded a most patient hearing from that grave assembly; but the incensed father conducted his accusation with so much intemperance, producing likelihoods and allegations for proofs, that, when Othello was called upon for his defense, he had only to relate a plain tale of the course of his love; which he did with such an artless eloquence, recounting the whole story of his wooing as we have related it above, and deUvered his speech with so noble a plainness (the evidence of truth) that the duke, who sat as chief judge, could not help confessing that a tale so told would have won his daughter, too, and the spells and conjurations which Othello had used in his courtship plainly appeared to have been no more than the honest arts of men in love, and the only witchcraft [330] SHAKESPEARE which he had used the faculty of telling a soft tale to win a lady's ear. This statement of Othello was confirmed by the testimony of the Lady Desdemona herself, who appeared in court and, pro- fessing a duty to her father for Ufe and education, challenged leave of him to profess a yet higher duty to her lord and husband, even so much as her mother had shown in preferring him (Bra- bantio) above her father. The old senator, unable to maintain his plea, called the Moor to him with many expressions of sorrow, and, as an act of neces- sity, bestowed upon him his daughter, whom, if he had been free to withhold her (he told him), he would with all his heart have kept from him; adding that he was glad at soul that he had no other child, for this behavior of Desdemona would have taught him to be a tyrant and hang clogs on them for her desertion. This difficulty being got over, Othello, to whom custom had rendered the hardships of a military life as natural as food and rest are to other men, readily undertook the management of the wars in Cyprus; and Desdemona, preferring the honor of her lord (though with danger) before the indulgence of those idle delights in which new-married people usually waste their time, cheerfully consented to his going. No sooner were Othello and his lady landed in Cyprus than news arrived that a desperate tempest had dispersed the Turkish fleet, and thus the island was secure from any immediate apprehension of an attack. But the war which Othello was to suffer was now beginning; and the enemies which malice stirred up against his innocent lady proved in their nature more deadly than strangers or infidels. Among all the general's friends no one possessed the confidence of Othello more entirely than Cassio. Michael Cassio was a young soldier, a Florentine, gay, amorous, and of pleasing address, favorite qualities with women; he was handsome and eloquent, and exactly such a person as might alarm the jealousy of a man advanced in years (as Othello in some measure was) who had [331] TALES FROM married a young and beautiful wife; but Othello was as free from jealousy as he was noble, and as incapable of suspecting as of doing a base action. He had employed this Cassio in his love affair with Desdemona, and Cassio had been a sort of go-between in his suit; for Othello, fearing that himself had not those soft parts of conversation which please ladies, and finding these qualities in his friend, would often depute Cassio to go (as he phrased it) a-courting for him, such innocent sim- plicity being rather an honor than a blemish to the character of the valiant Moor. So that no wonder if, next to Othello himself (but at far distance, as beseems a virtuous wife), the gentle Desdemona loved and trusted Cassio. Nor had the marriage of this couple made any differ- ence in their behavior to Michael Cassio. He fre- quented their house, and his free and rattling talk was no unpleas- ing variety to Othello, who was himself of a more serious temper; for such tempers are observed often to delight in their contraries, as a relief from the oppressive excess of their own; and Desde- mona and Cassio would talk and laugh together, as in the days when he went a-courting for his friend. Othello had lately promoted Cassio to be the lieutenant, a place of trust, and nearest to the general's person. This promotion gave great offense to lago, an older officer who thought he had a better claim than Cassio, and would often ridicule Cassio as a fellow fit only for the company of ladies and one that knew no more of the art of war or how to set an army in array for battle than a [332] SHAKESPEARE girl. lago hated Cassio, and he hated Othello, as well for favoring Cassio as for an unjust suspicion, which he had lightly taken up against Othello, that the Moor was too fond of lago's wife Emilia. From these imaginary provocations the plotting mind of lago conceived a horrid scheme of revenge, which should involve Cassio, the Moor, and Desdemona in one common ruin. lago was artful, and had studied human nature deeply, and he knew that of all the torments which afflict the mind of man (and far beyond bodily torture) the pains of jealousy were the most intolerable and had the sorest sting. If he could succeed in making Othello jealous of Cassio he thought it would be an exquisite plot of revenge and might end in the death of Cassio or Othello, or both; he cared not. The arrival of the general and his lady in Cyprus, meeting with the news of the dispersion of the enemy's fleet, made a sort of holiday in the island. Everybody gave himself up to feasting and making merry. Wine flowed in abundance, and cups went round to the health of the black Othello and his lady the fair Desdemona. Cassio had the direction of the guard that night, with a charge from Othello to keep the soldiers from excess in drinking, that no brawl might arise to fright the inhabitants or disgust them with the new-landed forces. That night lago began his deep-laid plans of mischief. Under color of loyalty and love to the general, he enticed Cassio to make rather too free with the bottle (a great fault in an officer upon guard). Cassio for a time resisted, but he could not long hold out against the honest freedom which lago knew how to put on, but kept swallowing glass after glass (as lago still plied him with drink and encouraging songs), and Cas- sio's tongue ran over in praise of the Lady Desdemona, whom he again and again toasted, affirming that she was a most exquisite lady. Until at last the enemy which he put into his mouth stole away his brains; and upon some provocation given him by a fellow whom lago had set on, swords were drawn, and Montano, a worthy officer, who interfered to appease the dispute, was 1 333] TALES FROM wounded in the scuffle. The riot now began to be general, and lago, who had set on foot the mischief, was foremost in spreading the alarm, causing the castle bell to be rung (as if some dangerous mutiny instead of a slight drunken quarrel had arisen). The alarm-bell ringing awakened Othello, who, dressing in a hurry and coming to the scene of action, questioned Cassio of the cause. Cassio was now come to himself, the effect of the wine having a little gone off, but was too much ashamed to reply; and lago, pre- tending a great reluctance to accuse Cassio, but, as it were, forced into it by Othello, who in- sisted to know the truth, gave an account of the whole matter (leav- ing out his own share in it, which Cassio was too far gone to re- member) in such a manner as, while he seemed to make Cassio's offense less, did indeed make it appear greater than it was. The result was that Othello, who was a strict observer of discipline, was compelled to take away Cassio's place of lieutenant from him. Thus did lago's first artifice suc- ceed completely; he had now un- dermined his hated rival and thrust him out of his place; but a further use was hereafter to be made of the adventure of this disastrous night. Cassio, whom this misfortune had entirely sobered, now lamented to his seeming friend lago that he should have been such a fool as to transform himself into a beast. He was undone, for how could he ask the general for his place again ? He would tell [334] SHAKESPEARE him he was a drunkard. He despised himself. lago, affecting to make light of it, said that he, or any man living, might be drunk upon occasion; it remained now to make the best of a bad har- gain. The general's wife was now the general, and could do any- thing with Othello; that he were best to apply to the Lady Des- demona to mediate for him with her lord; that she was of a frank, obliging disposition and would readily undertake a good office of this sort and set Cassio right again in the general's favor; and then this crack in their love would be made stronger than ever. A good advice of lago, if it had not been given for wicked pur- poses, which will after appear. Cassio did as lago advised him, and made application to the Lady Desdemona, who was easy to be won over in any honest suit; and she promised Cassio that she should be his solicitor with her lord, and rather die than give up his cause. This she imme- diately set about in so earnest and pretty a manner that Othello, who was mortally offended with Cassio, could not put her off. When he pleaded delay, and that it was too soon to pardon such an offender, she would not be beat back, but insisted that it should be the next night, or the morning after, or the next morn- ing to that at farthest. Then she showed how penitent and humbled poor Cassio was, and that his offense did not deserve so sharp a check. And when Othello still hung back: "What! my lord," said she, "that I should have so much to do to plead for Cassio, Michael Cassio, that came a-courting for you, and oftentimes, when I have spoken in dispraise of you has taken your part! I count this but a little thing to ask of you. When I mean to try your love indeed I shall ask a weighty matter." Othello could deny nothing to such a pleader, and only request- ing that Desdemona would leave the time to him, promised to receive Michael Cassio again in favor. It happened that Othello and lago had entered into the room where Desdemona was, just as Cassio, who had been imploring her intercession, was departing at the opposite door; and lago, [335] TALES FROM who was full of art, said in a low voice, as if to himself, "I like not that." Othello took no great notice of what he said; indeed, the conference which immediately took place with his lady put it out of his head; but he remembered it afterward. For when Desdemona was gone, lago, as if for mere satisfaction of his thought, questioned Othello whether Michael Cassio, when Othello was courting his lady, knew of his love. To this the gen- eral answering in the affirmative, and adding, that he had gone between them very often during the courtship, lago knitted his brow, as if he had got fresh light on some terrible matter, and cried, "Indeed!" This brought into Othello's mind the words which lago had let fall upon entering the room and seeing Cassio with Desdemona; and he began to think there was some meaning in all this, for he deemed lago to be a just man, and full of love and honesty, and what in a false knave would be tricks in him seemed to be the natural workings of an honest mind, big with something too great for utterance. And Othello prayed lago to speak what he knew and to give his worst thoughts words. "And what," said lago, "if some thoughts very vile should have intruded into my breast, as where is the palace into which foul things do not enter?" Then lago went on to say, what a pity it were if any trouble should arise to Othello out of his im- perfect observations; that it would not be for Othello's peace to know his thoughts; that people's good names were not to be taken away for slight suspicions; and when Othello's curiosity was raised almost to distraction with these hints and scattered words, lago, as if in earnest care for Othello's peace of mind, be- sought him to beware of jealousy. With such art did this villain raise suspicions in the unguarded Othello, by the very caution which he pretended to give him against suspicion. "I know," said Othello, "that my wife is fair, loves company and feasting, is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well; but where virtue is, these qualities are virtuous. I must have proof before I think her dishonest." Then lago, as if glad that Othello was slow to believe ill of his 1 336] SHAKESPEARE lady, frankly declared that he had no proof, but begged Othello toobserve her behavior well, when Cassio was by; not to be jeal- ous nor too secure neither, for that he (lago) knew the dispositions of the Italian ladies, his countrywomen, better than Othello could do; and that in Venice the wives let Heaven see many pranks they dared not show their husbands. Then he artfully insinuated that Desdemona deceived her father in marrying with Othello, and carried it so closely that the poor old man thought that witch- craft had been used. Othello was much moved with this argu- ment, which brought the matter home to him, for if she had deceived her father why might she not deceive her husband.? lago begged pardon for having moved him; but Othello, assuming an indifference, while he was really shaken with inward grief at lago's words, begged him to go on, which lago did with many apologies, as if unwilling to produce anything against Cassio, whom he called his friend. He then came strongly to the! (point and reminded Othello how Desdemona had refused many suitable matches of her own clime and complexion, and had married him, a Moor, which showed unnatural in her and proved her to have a headstrong will; and when her better judgment returned, how probable it was she should fall upon comparing Othello with the fine forms and clear white complexions of the young Italians her countrymen. He concluded with advising Othello to put off his reconcilement with Cassio a little longer, and in the mean while to note with what earnestness Desdemona should intercede in his behalf; for that much would be seen in that. So mischievously did this artful villain lay his plots to turn the gentle qualities of this innocent lady into her destruction, and make a net for her out of her own goodness to entrap her, first setting Cassio on to entreat her mediation, and then out of that very mediation contriving stratagems for her ruin. The conference ended with lago's begging Othello to account his wife innocent until he had more decisive proof; and Othello promised to be patient; but from that moment the deceived Othello never tasted 'content of mind. Poppy, nor the juice of 22 ^337] TALES FROM mandragora, nor all the sleeping potions in the world, could ever again restore to him that sweet rest which he had enjoyed but , yesterday. His occupation sickened upon him. He no longer .took delight in arms. His heart, that used to be roused at the sight of troops and ban- It Alf ners and battle array, and would stir and leap at the sound of a drum or a trumpet or a neighing war - horse, seemed to have lost all that pride and ambition which are a soldier's virtue; and his military ardor and all his old joys forsook him. Sometimes he thought his wife honest, and at times he thought her not so; sometimes he thought lago just, and at times he thought him not so; then he would wish that he had never known of it; he was not the worse for her lov- ing Cassio, so long as he knew it not. Tom to pieces with these distract- ing thoughts, he once laid hold on lago's throat and demanded proof of Desdemona's guilt, or threatened instant death for his having belied her. lago, feigning indignation that his honesty should be taken for a vice, asked Othello if he had not sometimes seen a handker- chief spotted with strawberries in his wife's hand. Othello an- swered that he had given her such a one, and that it was his first gift. [338] SHAKESPEARE "That same handkerchief," said lago, "did I see Michael Cassio this day wipe his face with." "If it be as you say," said Othello, "I will not rest till a wide revenge swallow them up; and first, for a token of your fideUty, I expect that Cassio shall be put to death within three days; and for that fair devil [meaning his lady] I will withdraw and devise some swift means of death for her." Trifles hght as air are to the jealous proofs as strong as holy writ. A handkerchief of his wife's seen in Cassio's hand was motive enough to the deluded Othello to pass sentence of death upon them both, without once inquiring how Cassio came by it. Desdemona had never given such a present to Cassio, nor would this constant lady have wronged her lord with doing so naughty a thing as giving his presents to another man; both Cassio and Desdemona were innocent of any offense against Othello; but the wicked lago, whose spirits never slept in contrivance of vil- lainy, had made his wife (a good, but a weak woman) steal this handkerchief from Desdemona, under pretense of getting the work copied, but in reality to drop it in Cassio's way, where he might find it, and give a handle to lago's suggestion that it was Desdemona's present. Othello, soon after meeting his wife, pretended that he had a headache (as he might indeed with truth), and desired her to lend him her handkerchief to hold to his temples. She did so. "Not this," said Othello, "but that handkerchief I gave you." Desdemona had it not about her (for indeed it was stolen, as we have related). "How?" said Othello, "this is a fault indeed. That handker- chief an Egyptian woman gave to my mother; the woman was a witch and could read people's thoughts. She told my mother while she kept it it would make her amiable and my father would love her; but if she lost it or gave it away, my father's fancy would turn and he would loathe her as much as he had loved her. She, dying, gave it to me, and bade me, if I ever married, [339] TALES FROM to give it to my wife. I did so. Take heed of it. Make it a darling as precious as your eye." "Is it possible?" said the frighted lady. ; "Tis true," continued Othello; "it is a magical handkerchief; a sibyl that had lived in the world two hundred years, in a fit of prophetic fury worked it; the silkworms that furnished the silk were hallowed, and it was dyed in a mummy of maidens' hearts conserved." Desdemona, hearing the wondrous virtues of the handkerchief, was ready to die with fear, for she plainly perceived she had lost it, and with it, she feared, the affections of her husband. Then Othello started and looked as if he were going to do some rash thing, and still he demanded the handkerchief, which when she could not produce, she tried to divert her husband from too serious thoughts, and cheerfully told him she saw all his talk about the handkerchief was only to put her off from her suit about Michael Cassio, whom she went on to praise (as lago had foretold), till Othello in perfect distraction burst out of the room, and then Desdemona, though unwillingly, began to suspect that her lord was jealous. What cause she could have ministered to him she knew not, and then she accused herself for accusing the noble Othello, and thought, to be sure, that some untoward news from Venice or some state troubles had puddled his spirits and made his temper not so sweet as formerly. And she said, "Men are not gods, and we must not look for that observance from them when they are married which they show us on the bridal day." And she be- shrewed herself for so unkindly judging of his unkindness. Again Othello and Desdemona met, and he accused her more plainly of being unfaithful and of loving another man, but he did not name whom. And Othello wept, and Desdemona said, "Alas! the heavy day! why do you weep?" And Othello told her he could have borne all sorts of evils with fortitude — poverty, and disease, and disgrace — but her infidelity had broken his heart. And he called her a weed that looked so fair and smelled so sweet [340] V "SHE LOVED THEE, CRUEL MOOR' SHAKESPEARE that the sense ached at it; and wished she had never been born. And when he had left her this innocent lady was so stupefied with wonder at her lord's untrue suspicion of her that a weight- like sleep came over her, and she only desired her attendant to make her bed and to lay her wedding-sheets upon it, saying that when people teach their babes they do it by gentle means and easy tasks, and Othello might have chid her so; for in good faith she was but a child when she was chidden. And this was all the com- plaint which this gentle lady made. Desdemona being retired to bed, expecting her lord would fol- low her, soon fell into a slumber, the effect of her troubled spirits, when Othello entered the chamber, full of the black purpose which he had meditated, of putting his lady to death. But when he saw her asleep he thought he would not shed her blood, nor scar that white skin of hers, more white than alabaster. But he was resolved she should die, else (as he said) she would live to betray more men as she had done him. Then he kissed her for the last time (as he said), and that kiss was so sweet that he must needs kiss her again; and he wept, but he said they were cruel tears. Desdemona was awakened with his kisses, and she looked upon Othello, and she saw him gnaw his under lip and roll his eyes, and she knew he was always fatal when he looked so; and he bade her prepare for death and to say her prayers, for he would not kill her soul. And this innocent wife, as she lay at his mercy, begged for compassion and to know her fault, and then he named Cassio, and the handkerchief which (he said) she had given him; and as the guiltless lady was proceeding to clear herself he sud- denly would hear no more, but, covering her up in the bedclothes, stifled her till she died. In this instant of time was brought into the house Cassio, wounded and bleeding, whom lago had set one of his creatures on to assassinate; but the fellow not succeeding in his attempt to kill Cassio (whom he wounded, but not mortally), and being him- self killed by lago to prevent discovery, in his pockets were found certain letters, which made the guilt of lago, and the innocence [343] TALES FROM of Cassio, clear beyond all doubt; and Cassio now came to beg pardon of Othello, and to ask wherein he had offended him, that he had employed lago to murder him. This discovery was as a thunderstroke to Othello, who now plainly saw that he was no better than a murderer, and that his wife (poor innocent lady) had been ever faithful to him; the extreme anguish of which discovery making life insupportable, he fell upon his sword, and throwing himself upon the body of his dear injured lady, expired. These rash acts raised much passion of horror and amazement in the bystanders, for Othello had borne a fair reputation, and till he was wrought upon by the arts of a villain, which his own noble nature never gave him leave to suspect, he was a loving and a doting husband. He had loved not wisely, but too well; and his manly eyes (when he learned his mistake), though not used to weep on every small occasion, dropped tears as fast as the Arabian trees their gum. And when he was dead all his former merits and his valiant acts were remembered. Nothing now remained for his successor but to put the utmost censure of the law in force against lago, who was executed with strict tortures; and to send word to the state of Venice of the lamentable death of their renowned general. SHAKESPEARE PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE r^ERICLES, Prince of Tyre, became a voluntary exile from his dominions, to avert the dreadful calamities which Antiochus, the wicked emperor of Greece, threatened to bring upon his subjects and city of Tyre, in revenge for a dis- covery which the prince had made of a shocking deed which the emperor had done in secret; as commonly it proves dangerous to pry into the hidden crimes of great ones. Leaving the government of his people in the hands of his able and honest minister, Helicanus, Pericles set sail from Tyre, thinking to absent himself till the wrath of Antiochus, who was mighty, should be appeased. The first place which the prince directed his course to was Tarsus, and hearing that the city of Tarsus was at that time suffering under a severe famine, he took with him store of pro- visions for its relief. On his arrival he found the city reduced to the utmost distress; and, he coming like a messenger from heaven with his unhoped-for succor, Cleon, the governor of Tarsus, welcomed him with boundless thanks. Pericles had not been here many days before letters came from his faithful minister, warning him that it was not safe for him to stay at Tarsus, for Antiochus knew of his abode, and by secret emissaries despatched for that purpose sought his life. Upon receipt of these letters Pericles put out to sea again, amid the blessings and prayers of a whole people who had been fed by his bounty. He had not sailed far when his ship was overtaken by a dreadful storm, and every man on board perished except Pericles, who was [345] TALES FROM cast by the sea waves naked on an unknown shore, where he had not wandered long before he met with some poor fishermen, who invited him to their homes, giving him clothes and provisions. The fishermen told Pericles the name of their country was Pen- tapolis, and that their king was Simonides, commonly called the good Simonides, because of his peaceable reign and good govern- ment. From them he also learned that King Simonides had a fair young daughter, and that the following day was her birthday, when a grand tournament was to be held at court, many princes and knights being come from all parts to try their skill in arms for the love of Thaisa, this fair princess. While the prince was listening to this account, and secretly lamenting the loss of his good armor, which disabled him from making one among these valiant knights, another fisherman brought in a complete suit of armor that he had taken out of the sea with his fishing-net, which proved to be the very armor he had lost. When Pericles beheld his own armor he said: "Thanks, Fortune; after all my crosses you give me somewhat to repair myself. This armor was be- queathed to me by my dead father, for whose dear sake I have so loved it that whithersoever I went I still have kept it by me, and the rough sea that parted it from me, having now be- come calm, hath given it back again, for which I thank it, for, since I have my father's gift again, I think my shipwreck no nMsfortune." The next day Pericles, clad in his brave father's armor, repaired to the royal court of Simonides, where he performed wonders at the tournament, vanquishing with ease all the brave knights and valiant princes who contended with him in arms for the honor of Thaisa's love. When brave warriors contended at court tourna- ments for the love of kings' daughters, if one proved sole victor over all the rest, it was usual for the great lady for whose sake these deeds of valor were undertaken to bestow all her respect upon the conqueror, and Thaisa did not depart from this custom, for she presently dismissed all the princes and knights whom Peri- cles had vanquished, and distinguished him by her especial favor [346 J SHAKESPEARE and regard, crowning him with the wreath of victory, as king of that day's happiness; and Pericles became a most passionate lover of this beauteous princess from the first moment he beheld her. The good Simonides so well approved of the valor and noble qualities of Pericles, who was indeed a most accomplished gentle- man and well learned in all excellent arts, that though he knew not the rank of this royal stranger (for Pericles for fear of Anti- ochus gave out that he was a private gentleman of Tyre), yet did not Simonides disdain to accept of the valiant unknown for a son-in-law, when he perceived his daughter's aflPections were firmly fixed upon him. Pericles had not been many months married to Thaisa before he received intelligence that his enemy Antiochus was dead, and that his subjects of Tyre, impatient of his long absence, threatened to revolt and talked of placing Helicanus upon his vacant throne. This news came from Helicanus himself, who, being a loyal sub- ject to his royal master, would not accept of the high dignity offered him, but sent to let Pericles know their intentions, that he might return home and resume his lawful right. It was matter of great surprise and joy to Simonides to find that his son-in-law (the obscure knight) was the renowned Prince of Tyre; yet again he regretted that he was not the private gentleman he supposed him to be, seeing that he must now part both with his admired son-in-law and his beloved daughter, whom he feared to trust to the perils of the sea, because Thaisa was with child; and Pericles himself wished her to remain with her father till after her confine- ment; but the poor lady so earnestly desired to go with her hus- band that at last they consented, hoping she would reach Tyre before she was brought to bed. The sea was no friendly element to unhappy Pericles, for long before they reached Tyre another dreadful tempest arose, which so terrified Thaisa that she was taken ill, and in a short space of time her nurse, Lychorida, came to Pericles with a little child in her arms, to tell the prince the sad tidings that his wife died the [347] TALES FROM moment her little babe was born. She held the babe toward its father, saying: "Here is a thing too young for such a place. This is the child of your dead queen." No tongue can tell the dreadful sufferings of Pericles when he heard his wife was dead. As soon as he could speak he said : "O you gods, why do you make us love your goodly gifts and then snatch those gifts away ?'• "Patience, good sir," said Lychorida, "here is all that is left alive of our dead queen, a little daughter, and for your child's sake be more manly. Patience, good sir, even for the sake of this precious charge." Pericles took the new- born infant in his arms, and he said to the little babe: "Now may your life be mild, for a more blusterous birth had never babe! May your condition be mild and gentle, for you have had the rudest welcome that ever prince's child did meet with! May that which follows be happy, for you have had as chiding a nativity as fire, air, water, earth, and heaven could make to herald you from the womb! Even at the first, your loss," meaning in the death of her mother, "is more than all the joys, which you shall find [348] SHAKESPEARE upon this earth to which you are come a new visitor, shall be able to recompense." The storm still continuing to rage furiously, and the sailors having a superstition that while a dead body remained in the ship the storm would never cease, they came to Pericles to demand that his queen should be thrown overboard; and they said: "What courage, sir? God save you!" "Courage enough," said the sorrowing prince, "I do not fear the storm; it has done to me its worst; yet for the love of this poor infant, this fresh new seafarer, I wish the storm was over." "Sir," said the sailors, "your queen must overboard. The sea works high, the wind is loud, and the storm will not abate till the ship be cleared of the dead." Though Pericles knew how weak and unfounded this super- stition was, yet he patiently submitted, saying: "As you think meet. Then she must overboard, most wretched queen!" And now this unhappy prince went to take a last view of his dear wife, and as he looked on his Thaisa he said: "A terrible childbed hast thou had, my dear; no light, no fire; the unfriendly elements forget thee utterly, nor have I time to bring thee hal- lowed to thy grave, but must cast thee scarcely coffined into the sea, where for a monument upon thy bones the humming waters must overwhelm thy corpse, lying with simple shells. O Ly- chorida, bid Nestor bring me spices, ink, and paper, my casket and my jewels, and bid Nicandor bring me the satin coffin. Lay the babe upon the pillow, and go about this suddenly, Lychorida, while I say a priestly farewell to my Thaisa." They brought Pericles a large chest, in which (wrapped in a satin shroud) he placed his queen, and sweet-smelling spices he strewed over her, and beside her he placed rich jewels, and a written paper telling who she was and praying if haply any one should find the chest which contained the body of his wife they Would give her burial; and then with his own hands he cast the chest into the sea. When the storm was over, Pericles ordered the sailors to make for Tarsus. "For " said Pericles, "the babe r349] TALES FROM cannot hold out till we come to Tyre. At Tarsus I will leave it at careful nursing." After that tempestuous night when Thaisa was thrown into the sea, and while it was yet early morning, as Cerimon, a worthy gentleman of Ephesus and a most skilful physician, was standing by the seaside, his servants brought to him a chest, which they said the sea waves had thrown on the land. "I never saw," said one of them, "so huge a billow as cast it on our shore." Cerimon ordered the chest to be conveyed to his own house, and when it was opened he beheld with wonder the body of a young and lovely lady; and the sweet-smelling spices and rich casket of jewels made him conclude it was some great person who was thus strangely entombed. Searching farther, he discovered a paper, from which he learned that the corpse which lay as dead before him had been a queen, and wife to Pericles, Prince of Tyre; and much admiring at the strangeness of that accident, and more pitying the husband who had lost this sweet lady, he said: "If you are living, Pericles, you have a heart that even cracks with woe." Then, observing attentively Thaisa's face, he saw how fresh and unlike death her looks were, and he said, "They were too hasty that threw you into the sea"; for he did not be- lieve her to be dead. He ordered a fire to be made, and proper cordials to be brought, and soft music to be played, which might help to calm her amazed spirits if she should revive; and he said to those who crowded round her, wondering at what they saw, "I pray you, gentlemen, give her air; this queen will live; she has not been entranced above five hours; ■ and see, she begins to blow into life again; she is alive; behold, her eyelids move; this fair creature will live to make us weep to hear her fate." Thaisa had never died, but after the birth of her little baby had fallen into a deep swoon which made all that saw her con- clude her to be dead; and now by the care of this kind gentleman she once more revived to light and life; and, opening her eyes, she said: [350] so THEY CAST THE QUEEN OVERBOARD SHAKESPEARE "Where am I? Where is my lord? What world is this?" By gentle degrees Cerimon let her understand what had be- fallen her; and when he thought she was enough recovered to bear the sight he showed her the paper written by her husband, and the jewels; and she looked on the paper and said: "It is my lord's writing. That I was shipped at sea I well remember, but whether there delivered of my babe, by the holy gods I cannot rightly say; but since my wedded lord I never shall see again, I will put on a vestal livery and never more have "Madam," said Cerimon, "if you purpose as you speak, the temple of Diana is not far distant from hence; there you may abide as a vestal. Moreover, if you please, a niece of mine shall there attend you." This proposal was accepted with thanks by Thaisa; and when she was perfectly recovered, Cerimon placed her in the temple of Diana, where she became a vestal or priestess of that goddess, and passed her days in sorrowing for her husband's supposed loss, and in the most devout exercises of those times. Pericles carried his young daughter (whom he named Marina, because she was bom at sea) to Tarsus, intending to leave her with Cleon, the governor of that city, and his wife Dionysia, thinking, for the good he had done to them at the time of their famine, they would be kind to his little motherless daughter. When Cleon saw Prince Pericles and heard of the great loss which had befallen him he said, "Oh, your sweet queen, that it had pleased Heaven you could have brought her hither to have blessed my eyes with the sight of her!" Pericles repHed : "We must obey the powers above us. Should I rage and roar as the sea does in which my Thaisa lies, yet the end must be as it is. My gentle babe, Marina here, I must charge your charity with her. I leave her the infant of your care, beseech- ing you to give her princely training." And then turning to Cleon's wife, Dionysia, he said, "Good madam, make me blessed in your care in bringing up my child." 23 [353] TALES FROM And she answered, "I have a child myself who shall not be more dear to my respect than yours, my lord." And Cleon made the like promise, saying: "Your noble ser- vices. Prince Pericles, in feeding my whole people with your com (for which in their prayers they daily remember you) must in your child be thought on. If I should neglect your child, my whole people that were by you reheved would force me to my duty; but if to that I need a spur, the gods revenge it on me and mine to the end of generation." Pericles, being thus assured that his child would be carefully attended to, left her to the protection of Cleon and his wife Dionysia, and with her he left the nurse, Lychorida. When he went away the little Marina knew not her loss, but Lychorida wept sadly at parting with her royal master. "Oh, no tears, Lychorida," said Pericles; "no tears; look to your little mistress, on whose grace you may depend here- after." Pericles arrived in safety at Tyre, and was once more settled in the quiet possession of his throne, while his woeful queen, whom he thought dead, remained at Ephesus. Her little babe Marina, whom this hapless mother had never seen, was brought up by Cleon in a manner suitable to her high birth. He gave her the most careful education, so that by the time Marina attained the age of fourteen years the most deeply learned men were not more studied in the learning of those times than was Marina. She sang like one immortal, and danced as goddess-like, and with her needle she was so skilful that she seemed to compose nature's own shapes in birds, fruits, or flowers, the natural roses being scarcely more like to each other than they were to Marina's silken flowers. But when she had gained from education all these graces which made her the general wonder, Dionysia, the wife of Cleon, became her mortal enemy from jealousy, by reason that her own daughter, from the slowness of her mind, was not able to attain to that perfection wherein Marina excelled; and Ending that all praise was bestowed on Marina, while her daughter, who [354] SHAKESPEARE was of the same age and had been educated with the same care as Manna, though not with the same success, was in comparison disregarded, she formed a project to remove Marina out of the way, vainly imagining that her untoward daughter would be more respected when Marina was no more seen. To encompass this she employed a man to murder Marina, and she well timed her wicked design, when Lychorida, the faithful nurse, had just died. Dionysia was discoursing with the man she had commanded to commit this murder when the young Marina was weeping over the dead Lychorida. Leonine, the man she employed to do this bad deed, though he was a very wicked man, could hardly be persuaded to undertake it, so had Marina won all hearts to love her. He said: "She is a goodly creature!" "The fitter then the gods should have her," replied her merci- less enemy. "Here she comes weeping for the death of her nurse Lychorida. Are you resolved to obey me?" Leonine, fearing to disobey her, replied, "I am resolved." And so, in that one short sentence, was the matchless Marina doomed to an untimely death. She now approached, Avith a basket of flowers in her hand, which she said she would daily strew over the grave of good 1 ychorida. The purple violet and the marigold should as a carpet hang upon her grave, while sum- mer days did last. "Alas for me!" she said, "poor unhappy maid, born in a tem- pest, when my mother died. This world to me is like a lasting storm, hurrying me from my friends." "How now, Marina," said the dissembling Dionysia, "do you weep alone.? How does it chance my daughter is not with you.? Do not sorrow for Lychorida; you have a nurse in me. Your beauty is quite changed with this unprofitable woe. Come, give me your flowers — the sea air will spoil them — and walk with Leonine; the air is fine, and will enliven you. Come, Leonine, take her by the arm and walk with her." "No, madam," said Marina, "I pray you let me not de- [355] TALES FROM prive you of your servant"; for Leonine was one of Dionysia's attendants. "Come, come," said this artful woman, who wished for a pre- tense to leave her alone with Leonine, "1 love the prince, your father, and I love you. We every day expect your father here;; and when he comes and finds you so changed by grief from the paragon of beauty we reported you, he will think we have taken no care of you. Go, I pray you, walk, and be cheerful once again. Be careful of that excellent complexion which stole the hearts of old and young." Marina, being thus importuned, said, "Well, I will go, but yet I have no desire to it." As Dionysia walked away she said to Leonine, " Remember what I have said!" shocking words, for their meaning was that he should remember to kill Marina. Marina looked toward the sea, her birthplace, and said, "Is the wind westerly that blows?" "Southwest," replied Leonine. "When I was bom the wind was north," said she; and then the storm and tempest and all her father's sorrows, and her mother's death, came full into her mind, and she said, "My father, as Lychorida told me, did never fear, but cried. Courage, good seamen, to the sailors, galling his princely hands with the ropes, and, clasping to the masts, he endured a sea that almos split the deck." "When was this?" said Leonine. "When I was bom," replied Marina. "Never were wind and waves more violent." And then she described the storm, the action of the sailors, the boatswain's whistle, and the loud call of the master, "which," said she, "trebled the confusion of the shipv' Lychorida had so often recounted to Marina the story of her hapless birth that these things seemed ever present to her imagina- tion. But here Leonine interrupted her with desiring her to say her prayers. "What mean you ?" said Marina, who began to fear, she knew not why. [356] '•ARE YOU RESOLVED TO OBEY ME?" SHAKESPEARE "If you require a little space for prayer, I grant it," said Leonine; "but be not tedious; the gods are quick of ear and I am sworn to do my work in haste." "Will you kill me?" said Marina. "Alas! why?" "To satisfy my lady," replied Leonine. "Why would she have me killed?" said Marina. "Now, as I can remember, I never hurt her in all my life. I never spake bad word nor did any ill turn to any living creature. Believe me now, I never killed a mouse nor hurt a fly. I trod upon a worm once against my will, but I wept for it. How have I offended ?" The murderer rephed, "My commission is not to reason on the deed, but to do it." And he was just going to kill her when certain pirates happened to land at that very moment, who, see- ing Marina, bore her off as a prize to their ship. The pirate who had made Marina his prize carried her to Mity- lene and sold her for a slave, where, though in that humble condi- tion, Marina soon became known throughout the whole city of Mitylene for her beauty and her virtues, and the person to whom she was sold became rich by the money she earned for him. She taught music, dancing, and fine needleworks, and the money she got by her scholars she gave to her master and mistress ; and the fame of her learning and her great industry came to the knowledge of Lysimachus, a young nobleman who was governor of Mitylene, and Lysimachus went himself to the house where Marina dwelt, to see this paragon of excellence whom all the city praised so highly. Her conversation delighted Lysimachus beyond measure, for, though he had heard much of this admired maiden, he did not expect to find her so sensible a lady, so virtuous, and so good, as he perceived Marina to be; and he left her, saying he hoped she would persevere in her industrious and virtuous course, and that if ever she heard from him again it should be for her good. Ly- simachus thought Marina such a miracle for sense, fine breeding, and excellent qualities, as well as for beauty and all outward graces, that he wished to marry her, and, notwithstanding her humble situation, he hoped to find that her birth was noble; but [359] TALES FROM ever when they asked her parentage she would sit still and weep. Meantime, at Tarsus, Leonine, fearing the anger of Dionysia, told her he had killed Marina; and that wicked woman gave out that she was dead, and made a pretended funeral for her, and erected a stately monument; and shortly after Pericles, accom- panied by his loyal minister Helicanus, made a voyage from Tyre to Tarsus, on purpose to see his daughter, intending to take her home with him. And he never having beheld her since he left her an infant in the care of Cleon and his wife, how did this good prince rejoice at the thought of seeing this dear child of his buried queen! But when they told him Marina was dead, and showed the monument they had erected for her, great was the misery this most wretched father endured, and, not being able to bear the sight of that country where his last hope and only memory of his dear Thaisa was entombed, he took ship and hastily departed from Tarsus. From the day he entered the ship a dull and heavy melancholy seized him. He never spoke, and seemed totally in- sensible to everything around him. Sailing from Tarsus to Tyre, the ship in its course passed by Mitylene, where Marina dwelt; the governor of which place, Lysimachus, observing this royal vessel from the shore, and de- sirous of knowing who was on board, went in a barge to the side of the ship, to satisfy his curiosity. Helicanus received him very courteously and told him that the ship came from Tyre, and that they were conducting thither Pericles, their prince. "A man, sir," said Helicanus, "who has not spoken to any one these three months, nor taken any sustenance, but just to prolong his grief; it would be tedious to repeat the whole ground of his distemper, but the main springs from the loss of a beloved daughter and a wife." Lysimachus begged to see this afflicted prince, and w^en he beheld Pericles he saw he had been once a goodly person, and he said to him: "Sir king, all hail! The gods preserve you! Hail, royal sir!" [360] SHAKESPEARE But in vain Lysimachus spoke to him. Pericles made no answer, nor did he appear to perceive any stranger approached. And then Lysimachus bethought him of the peerless maid Marina, that haply with her sweet tongue she might win some answer from the silent prince; and with the consent of HeUcanus he sent for Marina, and when she entered the ship in which her own father sat motionless with grief, they welcomed her on board as if they had known she was their princess; and they cried : "She is a gallant lady." Lysimachus was well pleased to hear their commendations, and he said: "She is such a one that, were I well assured she came of noble birth, I would wish no better choice and think me rarely blessed in a wife." And then he addressed her in courtly terms, as if the lowly seeming maid had been the high-bom lady he wished to find her, calling her Fair and beautiful Marina, telling her a great prince on board that ship had fallen into a sad and mournful silence; and, as if Marina had the power of conferring health and felicity, he begged she would undertake to cure the royal stranger of his melancholy. "Sir," said Marina, "I will use my utmost skill in his recovery, provided none but I and my maid be suffered to come near him." She, who at Mitylene had so carefully concealed her birth, ashamed to tell that one of royal ancestry was now a slave, first began to speak to Pericles of the wayward changes in her own fate, telling him from what a high estate herself had fallen. As if she had known it was her royal father she stood before, all the words she spoke were of her own sorrows; but her reason for so doing was that she knew nothing more wins the attention of the unfortunate than the recital of some sad calamity to match their own. The sound of her sweet voice aroused the drooping prince; he lifted up his eyes, which had been so long fixed and motionless; and Marina, who was the perfect image of her mother, presented to his amazed sight the features of his dead queen. The long silent prince was once more heard to speak, [361] TALES FROM "My dearest wife," said the awakened Pericles, "was like this maid, and such a one might my daughter have been. My queen's square brows, her stature to an inch, as wand-like straight, as silver-voiced, her eyes as jewel-like. Where do you live, young maid ? Report your parentage. I think you said you had been tossed from wrong to injury, and that you thought your griefs would equal mine, if both were opened." "Some such thing I said," replied Marina, "and said no more than what my thoughts did warrant me as likely." "Tell me your story," answered Pericles. "If I find you have known the thousandth part of my endurance you have home your sorrows like a man and I have suffered like a girl; yet you do look like Patience gazing on kings' graves and smiling extremity out of act. How lost you your name, my most kind virgin? Recount your story, I beseech you. Come, sit by me." How was Pericles surprised when she said her name was Marina, for he knew it was no usual name, but had been invented by himself for his own child to signify sea-born. "Oh, I am mocked," said he, "and you are sent hither by some incensed god to make the world laugh at me." "Patience, good sir," said Marina, "or I must cease here." "Nay," said Pericles, "I will be patient. You little know how you do startle me, to call yourself Marina." "The name," she replied, "was given me by one that had some power, my father and a king." "How, a king's daughter!" said Pericles, "and called Marina! But are you flesh and blood? Are you no fairy? Speak on. Where were you born, and wherefore called Marina?" She replied: "I was called Marina because I was bom at sea. My mother was the daughter of a king; she died the minute I was bom, as my good nurse Lychorida has often told me, weeping. The king, my father, left me at Tarsus till the cruel wife of Cleon sought to murder me. A crew of pirates came and rescued me and brought me here to Mitylene. But, good sir, why do you weep? It may be you think me an impostor. But indeed, [362] SHAKESPEARE sir, I am the daughter to King Perides, if good Kmg Feridesbe living." Then Pericles, terrified as he seemed at his own sudden joy, and doubtful if this could be real, loudly called for his attendants, who rejoiced at the sound of their beloved king's voice; and he said to Helicanus: "O HeUcanus, strike me, give me a gash, put me to present pain, lest this great sea of joys rushing upon me overbear the shores of my mortality. Oh, come hither, thou that wast bom at sea, buried at Tarsus, and found at sea again. O Helicanus, down on your knees, thank the holy gods! This is Marina. Now blessings on thee, my child! Give me fresh garments, mine own Helicanus ! She is not dead at Tarsus as she should have been by the savage Dionysia. She shall tell you all, when you shall kneel f363] TALES FROM to her and call her your very princess. Who is this?" (observing Lysimachus for the first time). "Sir," said Helicanus, "it is the governor of Mitylene, who, hearing of your melancholy, came to see you." "I embrace you, sir," said Pericles. "Give me my robes! I am well with beholding. O Heaven bless my girl! But hark, what music is that?" — for now, either sent by some kind god or by his own delighted fancy deceived, he seemed to hear soft music. "My lord, I hear none," replied Helicanus. "None?" said Pericles. "Why, it is the music of the spheres." As there was no music to be heard, Lysimachus concluded that the sudden joy had unsettled the prince's understanding, and he said, "It is not good to cross him; let him have his way." And then they told him they heard the music; and he now complain- ing of a drowsy slumber coming over him, Lysimachus persuaded him to rest on a couch, and, placing a pillow under his head, he, quite overpowered with excess of joy, sank into a sound sleep, and Marina watched in silence by the couch of her sleeping parent. While he slept, Pericles dreamed a dream which made him resolve to go to Ephesus. His dream was that Diana, the goddess of the Ephesians, appeared to him and commanded him to go to her temple at Ephesus, and there before her altar to declare the story of his life and misfortunes; and by her silver bow she swore that if he performed her injunction he should meet with some rare felicity. When he awoke, being miraculously refreshed, he told his dream, and that his resolution was to obey the bidding of the goddess. Then Lysimachus invited Pericles to come on shore and refresh himself with such entertainment as he should find at Mitylene, which courteous offer Pericles accepting, agreed to tarry with him for the space of a day or two. During which time we may well suppose what feastings, wh at rej oicings, wh at costly shows and enter- tainments the governor made in Mitylene to greet the royal father of his dear Marina, whom in her obscure fortunes he had so re- spected. Nor did Pericles frown upon Lysimachus's suit, when [364] SHAKESPEARE he understood how he had honored his child in the days of her low estate, and that Marina showed herself not averse to his pro- posals; only he made it a condition, before he gave his consent, that they should visit with him the shrine of the Ephesian Diana; to whose temple they shortly after all three undertook a voyage; and, the goddess herself filling their sails with prosperous winds, after a few weeks they arrived in safety at Ephesus. There was standing near the altar of the goddess, when Pericles with his train entered the temple, the good Cerimon (now grown very aged), who had restored Thaisa, the wife of Pericles, to life; and Thaisa, now a priestess of the temple, was standing before the altar; and though the many years he had passed in sorrow for her loss had much altered Pericles, Thaisa thought she knew her husband's features, and when he approached the altar and began to speak, she remembered his voice, and listened to his words with wonder and a joyful amazement. And these were the words that Pericles spoke before the altar: "Hail, Diana! to perform thy just commands I here confess myself the Prince of Tyre, who, frighted from my country, at Pentapolis wedded the fair Thaisa. She died at sea in childbed, but brought forth a maid-child called Marina. She at Tarsus was nursed with Dionysia, who at fourteen years thought to kill her, but her better stars brought her to Mitylene, by whose shores as I sailed her good fortunes brought this maid on board, where by her most clear remembrance she made herself known to be my daughter." Thaisa, unable to bear the transports which his words had raised in her, cried out, "You are, you are, O royal Pericles" — and fainted. "What means this woman?" said Pericles. "She dies! Gen- tlemen, help." "Sir," said Cerimon, "if you have told Diana's altar true, this is your wife." "Reverend gentleman, no," said Pericles. "I threw her over- board with these very arms." [365^ TALES FROM Cerimon then recounted how, early one tempestuous morning, this lady was thrown upon the Ephesian shore; how, opening the coffin, he found therein rich jewels and a paper; how, happily, he recovered her and placed her here in Diana's temple. And now Thaisa, being restored from her swoon, said: "0 my lord, are you not Pericles ? Like him you speak, hke him you are. Did you not name a tempest, a birth, and death?" He, astonished, said, "The voice of dead Thaisa!" "That Thaisa am I," she replied, "supposed dead and drowned." "O true Diana!" exclaimed Pericles, in a passion of devout astonishment. "And now," said Thaisa, "I know you better. Such a ring as I see on your finger did the king my father give you when we with tears parted from him at Pentapolis." "Enough, you gods!" cried Pericles. "Your present kindness makes my past miseries sport. Oh, come, Thaisa, be buried a second time within these arms." And Marina said, "My heart leaps to be gone into my mother's bosom." Then did Pericles show his daughter to her mother, saying, "Look who kneels here, flesh of thy flesh, thy burthen at sea, and called Marina because she was yielded there." "Blessed and my own!" said Thaisa. And while she hung in rapturous joy over her child Pericles knelt before the altar, saying: "Pure Diana, bless thee for thy vision. For this I will offer oblations nightly to thee." And then and there did Pericles, with the consent of Thaisa, solemnly affiance their daughter, the virtuous Marina, to the well- deserving Lysimachus in marriage. Thus have we seen in Pericles, his queen, and daughter, a famous example of virtue assailed by calamity (through the suf- ferance of Heaven, to teach patience and constancy to men), under the same guidance becoming finally successful and triumph- ing over chance and change. In HeUcanus we have beheld a nota-> [366] SHAKESPEARE ble pattern of truth, of faith, and loyalty, who, when he might have succeeded to a throne, chose rather to recall the rightful owner to his possession than to become great by another's wrong. In the worthy Cerimon, who restored Thaisa to life, we are in- structed how goodness, directed by knowledge, in bestowing bene- fits upon mankind approaches to the nature of the gods. It only remains to be told that Dionysia, the wicked wife of Cleon, met with an end proportionable to her deserts. The inhabitants of Tarsus, when her cruel attempt upon Marina was known, rising in a body to revenge the daughter of their benefactor, and setting fire to the palace of Cleon, burned both him and her and their whole household, the gods seeming well pleased that so foul a murder, though but intentional and never carried into act, should be punished in a way befitting its enormity. THE END A NOTE ABOUT RAINBOW BINDINGS The cover on this book represents an en- tirely new process in book-binding by which the illustration is reproduced with the full beauty of the original directly on the cloth. It is then specially treated to make it dust proof and water proof and can be cleaned with a damp cloth in a few moments. Rainbow Bindings are solely the product of Blue Ribbon Books, Inc., and are a unique development in modern book making.