WOMAN IN SHAKESPEARE.

PROPOSE to speak in this lecture on Woman as she appears to us in the writings of Shakespeare.

This

1. I begin with the element of idealism. is essential to the grace, the beauty,—I had almost said to the goodness of womanly character. Woman's nature and woman's life, void of idealism, want the special, the inner loveliness which sweetens all other qualities with the soul of a feminine inspiration. I do not account mere weakness womanly, or mere strength manly; but unideal weakness becomes silliness, and unideal strength, coarseness. A lofty soul is not unfeminine; on the contrary, it may be most womanly, rich in fancy and sensibility. She that has a rich womanly soul, however moderately gifted with talent or beauty, has a lustre around her of purity and grace more engaging than any brilliancy of talent or splendor of beauty. It is

never coarse garments or plain features that offend hearts the gentlest and the noblest have beaten against homespun, and features not of Grecian mould have been shrines to genius worthy of the gods. That which really does offend and shock is the harsh voice, the ungentle look, speech mindless and unmusical: these things in woman give us more than common pain, because they disappoint, because they disenchant, because they contradict the faith which we cherish, and rightly cherish, in the diviner humanity that we attribute to woman's nature. And there is no stage or relationship of life in which idealism is not a primal element of goodliness in the woman. It is so in the matron as in the maiden; in the devotion of the mother as in the dreams of the girl; in the wife as in the virgin; as holy in the memories of age as it is glowing in the affections, the passions, and the hopes of youth.

Now, this, which is in every woman's life whose life is truly womanly, Shakespeare brings out and shapes into brightest forms of poetry. Idealism is an evident characteristic of all the women in Shakespeare that poetically interest our feelings and imagination. But in some it is so luminous as to form a nimbus in which they always appear to our memory and fancy. Miranda is the first of this order. She has dwelt alone, from her

infancy, with her father, on a desert island compassed by ocean and the heavens; and thus she has lived, fearless and delighted, in the midst of mystery and beauty. Quiet in the soul-sleep of innocence, trustful in her father's care and power, she has dread of nothing. The spirits of air are her ministers, the brutes of earth are meek to her, and even Caliban bends to her service. But clouds gather in the sky; winds rush upon the sea; with the storm comes her prince, and with the prince comes love. The visionary world is broken into by the actual; realities intrude on fancies; and out of dreams she merges into passion. Now this a fable in outward fact is a truth in the inward life. The actual, natural, genuine maiden does dwell much alone. Her life is an island full of enchantments, girded by immensity. In her intercourse with nature, she sees, and hears, and feels the wonderful and the lovely; filial affections are in her heart; the graces and charities of maidenhood are in her manners. When this calm of unconsciousness must end—when the trouble darkens out of which impassioned hopes are born when the prince of her affections comes to her in the storm, she arises in the royalty of womanhood to meet him. If no prince should come, or if he who does come should not be a prince, or princely,

she will yet be queenly in her own womanly right, and by her own womanly nature.

Another of this ideal order of Shakespeare's women is Perdita; but I must pass on to Imogen, - for the compression which the conditions of this lecture enforce will compel me to hurry on, when often I would wish to stop and linger. I would delight to ramble in the summer woods and pastures with sweet Perdita, among her clowns and shepherds; but the minute-hand speeds too rapidly through the circle of the hour to give time for such pleasant idling. Imogen demands attention that is more serious. In her we have the ideal of a wife carried into deepest poetry. Purity and strength of character, sweetness and grandeur of nature, attain in her a perfect union. She sees her husband through the illusion of her own hallowed imagination; she arrays him with the glory of her own wealth; and she loves him for a worth which is entirely in herself. Although we spurn him from our regard, for the foul and degrading trial to which he subjects her truth, we are almost content with a plot that would otherwise disgust us, for the splendor and dignity of virtue which it is instrumental in revealing. She seems to bring together, for the enrichment of her wifehood, the gentle graces of the girl and the deep wisdom of the

woman. Calm in her own integrity, gross accusation does not wound her sense of honor, for she feels that in honor she is invulnerable; but it grieves her to think that the man to whom she gave the treasure of her love should be unworthy of it. She is not so much indignant that he judges falsely of her, as that he should be capable of such judgment: the sorrow is not the mere injury of fact; the most bitter grief is, that her husband could credit as a fact what she supposed he could not conceive even as a possibility. Secure in her own conscious purity, she could regard her husband only "more in sorrow than in anger," and pity him for the misery of his mistake. It is indeed the godly privilege of woman to trust — to trust not only in Heaven, which neither deceives nor betrays, but in man, who does both; to believe when faith seems fatuity; to hope for him against hope; to forgive him when hope is over; and cling to him with affection when nothing but his need of her saves him from her contempt.

2. The interest in Shakespearian women such as these is mainly moral and imaginative. A something preternatural separates us from Miranda; Perdita is lost to us in uncertain space; Imogen is obscured to us in uncertain time; but this dimness and remoteness of their persons render