This is very skilfully, as well as delicately conceived. In rejecting those poetical and accidental advantages which Giletta possesses in the original story, Shakspeare has substituted the beautiful character of the Countess; and he has contrived, that, as the character of Helena should rest for its internal charm on the depth of her own affections, so it should depend for its external interest on the affection she inspires.

MRS. JAMESON: Characteristics of Women.

Almost everybody falls in love with the Countess. And, truly, one so meek, and sweet, and venerable, who can help loving her? or who, if he can resist her, will dare to own it? We can almost find in our heart to adore the beauty of youth; yet this blessed old creature is enough to persuade us that age may be more beautiful still. Her generous sensibility to native worth amply atones for her son's mean pride of birth; all her honours of rank and place she would gladly resign, to have been the mother of the poor orphan left in her care. Campbell says, "She redeems nobility by reverting to nature." Verplanck thinks, as well he may, that the Poet's special purpose in this play was to set forth the precedence of innate over circumstantial distinctions. Yet observe with what a catholic spirit he teaches this great lesson, recognizing the noble man in the nobleman, and telling us that none know so well how to prize the nobilities of nature, as those who, like the King and the Countess in this play, have experienced the nothingness of all other claims.

HUDSON: The Works of Shakespeare.

VI.

Composition and Rank.

The composition is not as successful as in most of his [Shakspeare's] later comedies; several of the charac

ters, such as the Countess and the Duke of Florence, Lafeu, and Parolles, Violenta, and Mariana, do indeed take some external, but no internal part in the action. The reason of this unalterable and chief defect of the whole lies, it seems to me, in the subject-matter of the piece, which is not exactly happily chosen; for it must necessarily be offensive to a fine sense of feeling when, in courtship, woman is the wooer, and especially when this unwomanly proceeding-however well motived and excusable it may appear-is not merely narrated (as in Boccaccio's novel) but represented to us in a vivid, dramatic, and palpable form. To overcome this difficulty, and more particularly to make the surprising conclusion-the heroine's attainment of her wish-appear natural, the poet had, as it were, to take into his service a number of figures simply as motives and to bring the action to a close. But the very choice of this subject, and his adhering to it, in spite of its obvious difficulties, shows us the youthful poet, the youthful pleasure in that which is unusual, the youthful inclination to venture upon a task the difficulties of which have not been sufficiently considered.

ULRICI: Shakspeare's Dramatic Art.

She

All's Well that Ends Well is one of the most pleasing of our author's comedies. The interest is, however, more of a serious than of a comic nature. The character of Helena is one of great sweetness and delicacy. is placed in circumstances of the most critical kind, and has to court her husband both as a virgin and a wife; yet the most scrupulous nicety of female modesty is not once violated. There is not one thought or action that ought to bring a blush into her cheeks, or that for a moment lessens her in our esteem. Perhaps the romantic attachment of a beautiful and virtuous girl to one placed above her hopes by the circumstances of birth and fortune, was never so exquisitely expressed as

in the reflections which she utters when young Rousillon leaves his mother's house, under whose protection she has been brought up with him, to repair to the French king's court.

The interest excited by this beautiful picture of a fond and innocent heart is kept up afterwards by her resolution to follow him to France, the success of her experiment in restoring the King's health, her demanding Bertram in marriage as a recompense, his leaving her in disdain, her interview with him afterwards disguised as Diana, a young lady whom he importunes with his secret addresses, and their final reconciliation when the consequences of her stratagem and the proofs of her love are fully made known. The persevering gratitude of the French king to his benefactress, who cures him of a languishing distemper by a prescription hereditary in her family, the indulgent kindness of the Countess, whose pride of birth yields, almost without a struggle, to her affection for Helena, the honesty and uprightness of the good old lord Lafeu, make very interesting parts of the picture. The wilful stubbornness and youthful petulance of Bertram are also very admirably described. The comic part of the play turns on the folly, boasting, and cowardice of Parolles, a parasite and hanger-on of Bertram's, the detection of whose false pretensions to bravery and honour forms a very amusing episode. He is first found out by the old lord Lafeu, who says, “The soul of this man is his clothes"; and it is proved afterwards that his heart is in his tongue, and that both are false and hollow. The adventure of " the bringing off of his drum" has become proverbial as a satire on all ridiculous and blustering undertakings which the person never means to perform.

HAZLITT: Characters of Shakspear's Plays.

The comic scenes, and the general graceful ease and fluency of its diction, give an air of lightness and variety

to the play that are wanting in the novel. The mere story is not productive of more effect in one than in the other, and the drama makes no pretensions to rank in the first order of excellence. But a value is conferred upon Shakspeare's performance beyond its dramatic merit, by its being the repository of much sententious wisdom, and numerous passages of remarkable elegance. A single speech of the King may be referred to as an instance of both, and Helena's description of her hopeless passion may be selected as exquisitely beautiful.

SKOTTOWE: Life of Shakspeare.

Shakespeare departed widely from the story in its earlier form by the greater prominence given to the part of Helena and the singular sweetness and devotion which irradiate her whole course. Coleridge thought her Shakespeare's loveliest creation. The portraiture of her character is touched throughout with exquisite delicacy and skill. Helena suffers, however, from the atmosphere of the play, which is distinctly repellent; it is difficult to resist the feeling that, conceding all that the play demands in concentration of interest upon the single end to be achieved, Helena cheapens the love she finally wins by a sacrifice greater than love could ask or could afford to receive. And when the sacrifice is made and the end secured, the victory of love is purely external; there is no inward and deathless unity of passion between the lovers like that which united Posthumus and Imogen in life and Romeo and Juliet in death.

The play must be interpreted broadly in the light of Shakespeare's entire work; in this light it finds its place as the expression of a passing mood of deep and almost cynical distrust; it is full of that searching irony which from time to time finds utterance in the poet's work and was inevitable in a mind of such range of vision. It is well to remember, also, that in this play the poet,

for the sake of throwing a single quality into the highest relief, secured entire concentration of attention by disregarding or ignoring other qualities and relations of equal importance and authority. This was what Browning did in his much misunderstood poem "The Statue and the Bust." It is always a perilous experiment, because it involves so much intelligent coöperation on the part of the reader. It is a triumph of Shakespeare's art that Helena's purity not only survives the dangers to which she exposes it, but takes on a kind of saintly whiteness in the corruption in which she plays her perilous part.

MABIE: William Shakespeare: Poet, Dramatist, and Man.