force; and the superb manner in which she set the maternal authority at naught and stood by her lover might seem to denote a nature that no tyranny could subdue. Subdued, however, she is, and forced to believe ill of her absent lover, and so the fatal marriage contract is signed and the crash follows. When Ellen Terry came on for that scene the glee had all vanished; the face was as white as the garments that enswathed her; and you saw a creature whom the hand of death had visibly touched. The stage has not at any time heard from any lips but her own such tones of pathos as those in which she said the simple words : May God forgive you, then, and pity me It is not a long scene, and happily not, for the strain upon the emotion of the actress was intense. The momentary wild merriment, the agony of the breaking heart, the sudden delirium and collapse, were not for an instant exaggerated. All was natureor rather the simplicity, fidelity, and grace of art that make the effect of nature. Beautiful scenery, painted by Craven, framed the piece with appropriate magnificence. The several seaside pictures were Q admirably representative of the grandeur, the gaunt loneliness, and the glorious colour for which Scotland is so much loved. The public gain in that production was a revival of interest in one of the most famous novels in the language; the possession of a scenical pageant that filled the eye with beauty and strongly moved the imagination; a play that is successful in the domain of romantic poetry; a touching exemplification of the great art of acting; and once again the presentment of that vast subject, - the relation of heart to heart, under the dominion of love, in human society, — that more absorbs the attention, affects the character, and controls the destiny of the human race than anything else that is beneath the sun. XVI. THE MERRY WIVES AND FALSTAFF. SHAK HAKESPEARE wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor in 1601, and during the Christmas holidays of that year it was presented upon the stage, before Queen Elizabeth and her court, at Windsor Castle. In 1602 it was published in London in quarto form, and in 1619 a reprint of that quarto was published there. The version that appears in the two quartos is considered by Shakespeare scholars to be spurious. The authentic text, no doubt, is that of the comedy as it stands in the first folio (1623). Shakespeare had written Henry IV. - both parts of it and also Henry V., when this comedy was acted, and therefore he had completed his portrait of Falstaff, whose life is displayed in the former piece and whose death is described in the latter. Henry IV. was first printed in 1598 (we know not when it was first acted), and it passed through five quarto editions prior to the publication of it in the folio of 1623. In the epilogue to the second part of that play a promise is made that the story shall be continued, "with Sir John in it," but it is gravely doubted whether that epilogue was written by Shakespeare. The continuation of the story occurs in Henry V., in which Falstaff does not figure, although he is mentioned in it. Various efforts have been made to show a continuity between the several plays in which Falstaff is implicated, but the attempt always fails. The histories contain the real Falstaff. The Falstaff of the comedy is another and less important man. If there really were a sequence of story and of time in the portraiture of this character the plays would stand in the following order: 1, Henry IV., Part First; 2, The Merry Wives of Windsor; 3, Henry IV., Part Second; 4, Henry V. As no such sequence exists, or apparently was intended, the comedy should be viewed by itself. Its texture is radically different from that of the histories. One of the best Shakespeare editors, Charles Knight, ventures the conjecture that The Merry Wives of Windsor was written first. Shakespeare invented the chief part of the plot, taking, however, a few things from Tarl ton's Newes out of Purgatorie, which in turn was founded on a story called The Lovers of Pisa. It is possible also that he may have derived suggestions from a German play by Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick - a contemporary, who died in 1611- to which The Merry Wives of Windsor bears some resemblance, and of which he may have received an account from English actors who had visited Germany, as the actors of his time occasionally did. Tradition declares that he wrote this comedy at the command of Queen Elizabeth, who had expressed a wish to see Falstaff in love. This was first stated by John Dennis, in the preface to an alteration of The Merry Wives of Windsor which was made by him, under the name of The Comical Gallant, or the Amours of Sir John Falstaff, and was successfully acted at Drury Lane theatre. That piece, which is paltry and superfluous, appeared in 1702. No authority was given by Dennis for his statement about Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare's play. The tradition rests exclusively on his word. Rowe, Pope, Theobald, and other Shakespeare editors, have transmitted it to the present day, but it rests on nothing but supposition |