But there is something beyond all this in the "young gallant"; something not easily put into words; which made it possible for a Rosalind to say to him,—

"Sir, you have wrestled well, and overthrown

More than your enemies."

Of "Heavenly Rosalind" herself we must quote what Lady Martin (Helena Faucit) says, who played the part with such consummate grace and dignity and understanding :—

"At the core of all that Rosalind says and does lies a passionate love as pure and all-absorbing as ever swayed a woman's heart. Surely it was the finest and boldest of all devices, one on which only a Shakespeare could have ventured, to put his heroine into such a position that she could, without revealing her own secret, probe the heart of her lover to the very bottom, and thus assure herself that the love which possessed her being was as completely the master of his. Neither could any but Shakespeare have so carried out this daring design. . . .

... No one can study this play without seeing that through the guise of the brilliant-witted boy Shakespeare meant the charm. of the high-hearted woman, strong, tender and delicate, to make itself felt. Hence it is that Orlando finds the spell which "Heavenly Rosalind' had thrown around him drawn hourly closer and closer, he knows not how, while at the same time he has himself been winning his way more and more into his mistress's heart. Thus, when at last Rosalind doffs her doublet and hose, and appears arranged for her bridal, there seems nothing strange or unmeet in the somewhat sudden consummation of what has been in truth a lengthened wooing. The actress will, in my opinion, fail signally in her task who shall not suggest all this, who shall not leave upon her audience the impression that, when Rosalind resumes her state at her father's court, she shall bring into it as much grace and dignity as by her bright spirits she had brought of sunshine and cheerfulness into the shades of the Forest of Arden.”I

Celia. Celia is the type of the womanly woman, calm, honest, affectionate; clinging to the stronger and larger nature 1 Lady Martin "On Some of Shakespeare's Female Characters."

of her cousin Rosalind, but reserving for herself the gentle strength of obstinacy, the peculiar property and attribute of some mild women's natures, which carries them quietly through difficulties and trials they could be scarcely expected to survive. That she never loses her head, nor her sense of what is befitting her station, throughout all their strange disguised adventures, may be seen from the passage where she mildly rates Rosalind at the conclusion of her incomparable wit-combat with Orlando (IV. i. 200). And she duly performs what is expected of her by falling in love with Oliver in the orthodox fashion when occasion offers.

Phebe. The character of the shepherdess Phebe, on the other hand, is a type of the spoilt country beauty, the untutored nature and untrained mind. Phebe's vanity is huge; her views of life are exaggerated and romantic; and her somewhat idiopathic knowledge of it is just enough to be a dangerous thing. Hers is the nature of quick impulses, small ambitions, inferior standards; and Life's golden fruit is hung always either just above or just below her line of sight.

Adam. The character or the old servant Adam possesses a peculiar interest because tradition assigns the rôle to Shakespeare himself; for about Stratford there long lingered a legend to that effect, said to have been handed down from the poet's brother, who in his own old age told of his having once seen the poet come upon the stage on another man's back." The picture of the good old Adam, devoting himself at four-score years with his "thrifty hire" to his young master's needs, is one of the truest tenderness and pathos :

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“Though I am old, yet I am strong and lusty,

For in my youth I never did apply

Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood."

Oliver. Perhaps of all the characters in the play that of Oliver, the elder brother, is least easy of analysis. Like Duke Frederick, he is tyrannous and jealous in the beginning; a bully, whose dislike of his younger brother Orlando seems founded on no other reason than a recognition of Orlando's

all-round superiority; and, like the Duke Frederick, he repents and changes his conduct somewhat abruptly at the end of the play. Gratitude to Orlando for saving his life is in this case the motive; and the timely direction of Oliver's feeling into another channel-where there is no place for jealousy-by his meeting with Celia and their sudden mutual attachment, gives a further stimulus to all that is potentially good in his disposition.

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The Other Characters.-Audrey, the goat-herd, is happier than Phebe on a lower level; for she has no ambitions and no standards at all; and on her way through life she will always find a Touchstone to fetch up her goats" for her. The Senior Duke's is a fine, thoughtful, optimistic character. There is a mellow wisdom about him, and a simple nobility which will never forsake him, whether he philosophises in the Forest of Arden or returns to the strenuous life of his court and dukedom. Of Duke Frederick we do not see much; but he appears equally unstable; in the beginning as a jealous man, a usurper and a tyrant, and in the end in his sudden retirement from the world and from the dukedom he has failed to govern. country vicar, Sir Oliver Mar-text, with all the fussy selfimportance of his "calling," and Charles, the champion wrestler, in his giant strength, are interesting types of contemporary Elizabethan life and character. The shepherds, and especially Silvius, with his dogged devotion to foolish Phebe, come out well, affording us a pleasant suggestion of the genial relations existing in Shakespeare's day between the educated classes and the English peasantry. Hymen. The introduc

The

tion of Hymen, at the end of the play, is in keeping with the supposed magical agency at work in the final transformation It was not possible to bring about so sudden a dénouement artistically, except by some such device.

scene.

Euphuism and Casket-Literature. It is well to remember, in reviewing the qualities of Shakespeare's "highhearted" heroine, that when As You Like It appeared John Lyly and his school of euphuism had introduced a new literature which was already recognised as the literature of "the Gentle

women of England." Lyly had declared that his book "had rather lie unread in a lady's casket than open in a scholar's study,” and he had prefixed to his Euphues an epistle specially addressed to "the Ladies and Gentlewomen of England." It is as if Shakespeare, in dramatising this popular romance, one of the gems of the women's literature of euphuism, had intended, in silent comment, to show men and women how far a real Rosalind could surpass the Rosalynde of mere euphuistic romance. It is a kind of silent challenge to his contemporaries, Lyly and Lodge and their followers, and to euphuism itself, that "casket-literature," with its affectations and limitations. It is as if the King of Playwrights said to them, "I have dramatised your euphuism; but here is Nature's work, a woman with a heart and a mind." And we feel sure that, if Shakespeare's Rosalind had carried a casket into the Forest of Arden (Lodge mentions a casket), Euphues would not have been in it. Her brilliant tirade on the deaths "by attorney" of poor Troilus and Leander, and on the mistaken "finding" of "the foolish chroniclers" upon the same, may be taken as proof positive of this.

The Spirit of the Play.-People have provided the play with meanings. It has been said to be "essentially a love-poem,' a poem to commemorate the generous impulses of "happy love." "Is not love indeed," says Lady Martin, "the pivot on which the action of the play turns-love, too, at first sight? of this view the lines are quoted

port

:

"Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might,-
'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?'

In sup

Again, the play has been said to be a splendid lesson in the sweet uses of adversity, the cheerful endurance of "shrewd days and nights." "What most we prize," says Dr. Furnivall, “is misfortune borne with cheery mind, the sun of man's spirit shining through and dispersing the clouds that strive to shade it. And surely this is the spirit of the play." Others put a yet more concrete moral upon it: it is, not to be cheery under misfortune, but "how to read the lessons in the vicissitudes of physical nature."

"2

Lady Martin: "On Some of Shakespeare's Female Characters." 2 See Introduction to The Leopold Shakespeare.

Ulrici finds that "the poetical truth" of this mixed drama of fancy and intrigue lies in its being based on "the comic view of life." Through this medium, "the truth of human life,” he says, "is not represented directly, but by means of contrast; that is, by accident, caprice and waywardness paralysing one another, and by the true agent of human life—the eternal order of things-being brought vividly into view. This becomes clearly evident when we consider how the unrighteous caprice (whatever may have been its motive) which suddenly drove the good old Duke into exile as suddenly reverts against itself, destroying its own work, and restoring what it had wrongfully appropriated; how, in like manner, by a similar change of sentiment, the right relation between the two brothers De Bois is also brought about; how the love between Orlando and Rosalinde, between Celia and Oliver— which arose suddenly by the concurrence of circumstances— attains its object by an equally sudden change of circumstances and relations; and, lastly, how the coyness of the shepherdess Phebe is overcome much in the same way, and she is in the end united to her faithful, good-natured simpleton of a lover." Nowhere, according to Ulrici, in this comedy, do we find "conscious plans, definite resolves, decided aims and objects." The characters, he says, "full of life, gay, and bold in action and quick in decision . . . either appear "inconstant, variable, going from one extreme to the other," or possess "such a vast amount of imagination, sensitiveness and love for what is romantic and adventurous that their conduct to a prosaic mind can only appear thoughtless, capricious and arbitrary." The Forest of Arden is, he thinks, the "fitting scene" for such a conception of life; the people who inhabit it are fantastic creatures, following their own whims and moods; and Touchstone and Jaques are bracketed together by him as "the two fools" of the Play.

Professor Dowden reminds us, in dealing with "this idyllic play," that, to understand the spirit of it, we must bear in mind that it was "written immediately after Shakespeare's great series of histories, ending with Henry V. (1599)," and before he began the great series of tragedies. Shakespeare turned with a sense of relief, and a long easeful sigh, from the oppressive subjects of history, so grave, so real, so massive, and found rest and freedom and pleasure in escape from courts and camps to the Forest of Arden.