capable of movement and of speech. But with fine instinct Shakspere does not lengthen out this episode. After Hermione's long seclusion few words befit her lips, and a silent surrender to her husband's embrace, followed by a prayer of blessing on her daughter's head, are sufficient tokens to those who know her nature of the measureless joy that floods her being at this reunion with those she loves.BOAS, Shakspere and his Predecessors. TRAGIC AND COMIC ELEMENTS The play may meet with the objection of being tragical in the first three acts, and comic in the last two. Externally this certainly appears to be the case. But the objection holds good only upon a superficial examination of the piece and when individual features alone are considered. Viewed externally the comic elements-in the narrower sense of the word—are certainly crowded into the last two acts. But every careful reader will feel even in the first three acts that the whole is based upon the comic view of life. This is why the colors used to describe the jealousy of Leontes, the unhappiness of his wife, and the king's repentance and sorrow, are nowhere laid on with glaring thickness, but tempered and given in light touches. Even individual points in the declaration of the oracle, as, in fact, its very introduction into the play, points to a happy issue. Accordingly, the comic scenes at the shepherds' festival in Bohemia, and subsequently those in Sicilia, are most naturally connected with the conclusion of the third act. The contradiction is indeed not wholly removed; this could not be were it only on account of the circumstance that the last two acts are played sixteen years after the first, in quite new surroundings, under different relations and by different individuals. The division of the piece into two separate parts remains an undeniable defect in the composition. Still, what remains of the contradiction is nevertheless perfectly in keeping with the story-like character of the play and serves to bring this more prominently for ward. As in a tale, so here pain and anxiety are directly mingled with fantastic pleasure and grotesque merriment; as in a tale, the distance of time and place disappear in the mysterious haze which envelops the whole; as in a tale, the apparently widely-diverging threads are ultimately wound one into another and form an harmonious design, in which every figure receives its proper place.-ULRICI, Shakspeare's Dramatic Art. HERMIONE, queen to Leontes PERDITA, daughter to Leontes and Hermione PAULINA, wife to Antigonus EMILIA, a lady attending on Hermione Other Lords and Gentlemen, Ladies, Officers, and Servants, Time, as Chorus SCENE: Partly in Sicilia, and partly in Bohemia SYNOPSIS By J. ELLIS BURDICK ACT I Polixenes, king of Bohemia, wishes to terminate his visit to his old school friend Leontes, king of Sicily, but he is prevailed upon to stay longer when Hermione, Sicily's queen, adds her entreaties to her lord's. This incident arouses Leontes to an insane jealousy concerning the honor of his wife and his friend. Camillo, one of his courtiers, promises to prepare a poisoned drink and give it to Polixenes, but instead of fulfilling his agreement, he tells the Bohemian king of his danger and flees with him to Bohemia. ACT II Leontes, when he knows of Polixenes' flight, believes his suspicions to be well founded. He imprisons Hermione in a dungeon, where after a short time she gives birth to a daughter. The child is carried to its father by Paulina, a lady of the court. The king disavows the babe and orders Antigonus, Paulina's husband, to carry it to some remote and desert place, quite out of his dominions, there to leave it "without more mercy, to its own protection and favor of the climate." ACT III Hermione is brought to trial. She is proved innocent by the words of the Delphic oracle:-"Hermione is chaste; Polixenes blameless; Camillo a true subject; Leontes a jealous tyrant; his innocent babe truly begotten; and the king shall live without an heir, if that which is lost be not |