Which suggests the significance of the trite old adage, "Save us from our friends."

In a memorable production of "Julius Cæsar," at Booth's Theater, New York, in the early seventies, a most excellent actor, Mr. Charles Leclerq, played the Second Citizen, and gave it an importance and significance I had never before witnessed. Mr. Leclerq was tall and of spare figure; and his natural manner incisive rather than unctuous. His conceptions were the result of well-digested thought, and his performances rounded and complete. Surrounded by his homely fellows, and confident of their support, he was important but not intrusive, and impressed his audience with the characteristics I have endeavored to describe, so that, when one left the theater, in spite of the overwhelming predominance of the other characters, Mr. Leclerq's performance of the homely old Roman cobbler lingered in the memory.

THE CLOWN

/ IN

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

'N that most excellent work entitled "Studies in

IN

Shakespeare," by Richard Grant White, the author gives some sound advice to students and readers of the poet, which I most heartily indorse: "Don't skip small parts, such as servants, clowns, rustics, etc.; read them all."

This suggestion cannot be too emphatically impressed upon the minds of young readers, who, eager for the development of the plot or for the main points of the story, frequently neglect or omit the minor parts, deeming them non-essential to the interest of the play. This is to be deplored; for Shakespeare has placed many of his best thoughts and most pointed epigrams in the mouths of comparatively unimportant characters; so that to pass over or neglect these passages is to lose

many beauties of thought, much philosophic reflection, and a fund of characteristic humor.

From the rich mine of his transcendent genius, the poet has drawn such a wealth of wit and wisdom, that he has endowed the peasant as liberally as the prince, and the clown as the courtier; the flashes of brilliancy that sparkle in the repartee of the prince become bits of homely humor in the simple dialogue of the peasant, and the compliment of the courtier is bluntly expressed in the rugged honesty of the clown. The garb, becoming and appropriate, is fitted to the wearer; the doublet to the one, the smock to the other.

In all of his rustic and humorous characters, Shakespeare has been most conservative of their possibilities; probably from the fact that prior to his time, and also during his early career on the stage, the clown monopolized the attention of the audience to the exclusion of the serious interest of the play, and was usually a most exaggerated caricature without sense or significance.

Shakespeare felt this condition keenly and expressed himself emphatically on the subject; espe

cially in the prince's instructions to the player in Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 2.) He set himself about to reform the evil, by keeping the clown and the comedian within the limits of "the modesty of nature."

The brief sketch of the bucolic clown in "Antony and Cleopatra" is distinctly Shakespearean in character, and it is to be regretted that he does not appear at greater length in the play. While the tragedy is located in Egypt, the clown is essentially English, and is a capital type of the country clodhopper, many of whom still survive in remote English villages to-day, and such as the poet saw daily at Stratford when a boy.

This clown is a stockily-built, ruddy-faced man, with a shock head of hair, dressed in a homespun or coarse canvas smock, awkwardly stamping into the apartment, stolidly indifferent to conditions or environment, bent only on the execution of his commission, which is to bring "the pretty worm of Nilus, that kills and pains not," concealed in a basket of figs to some unknown lady. He is in

sensible to the significance of his errand, ignorant of its design, but honest in his warning as to the dangerous character of the worm; and what a powerful dramatic contrast is presented by the introduction of this dense, slow-witted fellow as an instrument to bring the means of death to the imperious "Sorceress of the Nile," now a hopeless despairing woman; "Tho' uncrowned, yet still a queen and daughter of a king."

At first he is denied admission by the soldier guards, but he creates such a disturbance, and the contents of his basket appear to be so harmless, that on the queen's intervention, the clown is permitted to enter her presence.

The fellow is ignorant of the exalted rank of his patron, and entirely lacking in reverence, for he pays the queen no deference, but gabbles on insensible of dismissal and oblivious to interruption till his tale is finished.

Cleopatra asks: "Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there?" To which he replies: "Truly I have him; but I would not be the party that