Volume Ii Part 30 (1/2)

prepares for the effect produced by his afterwards yielding to Hermione;--which is, nevertheless, perfectly natural from mere courtesy of s.e.x, and the exhaustion of the will by former efforts of denial, and well calculated to set in nascent action the jealousy of Leontes. This, when once excited, is unconsciously increased by Hermione:--

Yet, good deed, Leontes, I love thee not a jar o' the clock behind What lady she her lord;--

accompanied, as a good actress ought to represent it, by an expression and recoil of apprehension that she had gone too far.

At my request, he would not:--

The first working of the jealous fit;--

Too hot, too hot:--

The morbid tendency of Leontes to lay hold of the merest trifles, and his grossness immediately afterwards--

Padling palms and pinching fingers:--

followed by his strange loss of self-control in his dialogue with the little boy.

Act iii. sc. 2. Paulina's speech:

That thou betray'dst Polixenes,'twas nothing; That did but show thee, of a _fool_, inconstant, And d.a.m.nable ingrateful.--

Theobald reads 'soul.'

I think the original word is Shakspeare's.

1. My ear feels it to be Shakspearian;

2. The involved grammar is Shakspearian;--'show thee, being a fool naturally, to have improved thy folly by inconstancy;'

3. The alteration is most flat, and un-Shakspearian. As to the grossness of the abuse--she calls him 'gross and foolish' a few lines below.

Act iv. sc. 2. Speech of Autolycus:--

For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it.

Fine as this is, and delicately characteristic of one who had lived and been reared in the best society, and had been precipitated from it by dice and drabbing; yet still it strikes against my feelings as a note out of tune, and as not coalescing with that pastoral tint which gives such a charm to this act. It is too Macbeth-like in the 'snapper up of unconsidered trifles.'