would have brought before us a queen and a heroine of trag edy, stripped her of all pomp of place and circumstance, dispensed with all the usual sources of poetical interest, as youth, beauty, grace, fancy, commanding intellect, and without any appeal to our imagination, without any violation of historical truth, or any sacrifices of the other dramatic personages for the sake of effect, could depend on the moral principle alone to touch the very springs of feeling in our bosoms, and melt and elevate our hearts through the purest and holiest impulses of our nature!

The character, when analyzed, is, in the first place, distinguished by truth. I do not only mean its truth to nature, or its relative truth arising from its historic fidelity and dramatic consistency, but truth as a quality of the soul: this is the basis of the character. We often hear it remarked that those who are themselves perfectly true and artless are in this world the more easily and frequently deceived—a commonplace fallacy: for we shall ever find that truth is as undeceived as it is undeceiving, and that those who are true to themselves and others may now and then be mistaken, or in particular instances duped by the intervention of some other affection or quality of the mind; but they are generally free from illusion, and they are seldom imposed upon in the long run by the shows of things and superfices of characters. It is by this integrity of heart and clearness of understanding, this light of truth within her own soul, and not through any acuteness of intellect, that Katherine detects and exposes the real character of Wolsey, though unable either to unravel his designs or defeat them.

My lord, my lord,

I am a simple woman, much too weak
T'oppose your cunning.

She rather intuitively feels than knows his duplicity, and in the dignity of her simplicity she towers above his arrogance as much as she scorns his crooked policy. With this essen

tial truth are combined many other qualities, natural or ac quired, all made out with the same uncompromising breadth of execution and fidelity of pencil, united with the utmost delicacy of feeling. For instance, the apparent contradiction arising from the contrast between Katherine's natural dispo sition and the situation in which she is placed; her lofty Castilian pride and her extreme simplicity of language and deportment; the inflexible resolution with which she asserts her right, and her soft resignation to unkindness and wrong; her warmth of temper breaking through the meekness of a spirit subdued by a deep sense of religion; and a degree of austerity tinging her real benevolence-all these qualities, opposed yet harmonizing, has Shakespeare placed before us in a few admirable scenes.

Katherine is at first introduced as pleading before the king in behalf of the commonalty, who had been driven by the extortions of Wolsey into some illegal excesses. In this scene,

which is true to history, we have her upright reasoning mind, her steadiness of purpose, her piety and benevolence, placed in a strong light. The unshrinking dignity with which she opposes without descending to brave the cardinal, the stern rebuke addressed to the Duke of Buckingham's surveyor, are finely characteristic; and by thus exhibiting Katherine as invested with all her conjugal rights and influence, and royal state, the subsequent situations are rendered more impressive. She is placed in the first instance on such a height in our esteem and reverence, that in the midst of her abandonment and degradation, and the profound pity she afterwards inspires, the first effect remains unimpaired, and she never falls beneath it.

In the beginning of the second act we are prepared for the proceedings of the divorce, and our respect for Katherine heightened by the general sympathy for "the good queen,' as she is expressively entitled, and by the following beautiful eulogium on her character uttered by the Duke of Norfolk :

He (Wolsey) counsels a divorce: a loss of her
That like a jewel has hung twenty years
About his neck, yet never lost her lustre.
Of her that loves him with that excellence
That angels love good men with; even of her,
That when the greatest stroke of fortune falls,
Will bless the king!

The scene in which Anna Bullen is introduced as express ing her grief and sympathy for her royal mistress is exqui sitely graceful.

Here's the pang that pinches

His highness having liv'd so long with her, and she
So good a lady, that no tongue could ever
Pronounce dishonour of her,-by my life

She never knew harm-doing ;-0

now, after
So many courses of the sun enthron'd,

Still growing in a majesty and pomp, the which
To leave, a thousand fold more bitter than

'T is sweet at first t' acquire,-after this process,
To give her the avaunt! it is a pity

Would move a monster.

Old Lady.

Melt and lament for her.

Anne.

Hearts of most hard temper

O, God's will! much better

She ne'er had known pomp: though it be temporal,

Yet if that quarrel, Fortune, do divorce

It from the bearer, 't is a sufferance panging

As soul and body's severing.

How completely, in the few passages appropriated to Anna Bullen, is her character portrayed? with what a delicate and yet luxuriant grace is she sketched off, with her gayety and her beauty, her levity, her extreme mobility, her sweetness of

disposition, her tenderness of heart, and, in short, all her femalities! How nobly has Shakespeare done justice to the two women, and heightened our interest in both by placing the praises of Katherine in the mouth of Anna Bullen! and how characteristic of the latter, that she should first express unbounded pity for her mistress, insisting chiefly on her fall from her regal state and worldly pomp, thus betraying her own disposition:

For she that had all the fair parts of woman,

Had, too, a woman's heart, which ever yet
Affected eminence, wealth, sovereignty.

That she should call the loss of temporal pomp, once enjoyed," a sufferance equal to soul and body's severing;" that she should immediately protest that she would not herself be a queen—" No, good troth! not for all the riches under heaven !"—and not long afterwards ascend without reluctance that throne and bed from which her royal mistress had been so cruelly divorced!-how natural! The portrait is not less true and masterly than that of Katherine; but the character is overborne by the superior moral firmness and intrinsic excellence of the latter. That we may be more fully sensible of this contrast, the beautiful scene just alluded to immediately precedes Katherine's trial at Blackfriars, and the description of Anna Bullen's triumphant beauty at her coronation is placed immediately before the dying scene of Katherine; yet with equal good taste and good feeling Shakespeare has constantly avoided all personal collision between the two characters; nor does Anna Bullen ever appear as queen except in the pageant of the procession, which in reading the play is scarcely noticed.

To return to Katherine. The whole of the trial scene is given nearly verbatim from the old chronicles and records; but the dryness and harshness of the law proceedings is tempered at once and elevated by the genius and the wisdom of the poet. It appears, on referring to the historical authori

ties, that when the affair was first agitated in council, Katherine replied to the long expositions and theological sophistries of her opponents with resolute simplicity and composure: "I am a woman, and lack wit and learning to answer these opinions; but I am sure that neither the king's father nor my father would have condescended to our marriage if it had been judged unlawful. As to your saying that I should put the cause to eight persons of this realm, for quietness of the king's conscience, I pray Heaven to send his grace a quiet conscience; and this shall be your answer, that I say I am his lawful wife, and to him lawfully married, though not worthy of it; and in this point I will abide, till the court of Rome, which was privy to the beginning, have made a final ending of it."*

Katherine's appearance in the court at Blackfriars, attended by a noble troop of ladies and prelates of her counsel, and her refusal to answer the citation, are historical.† Her speech to the king

Sir, I desire you do me right and justice,
And to bestow your pity on me, etc.—

is taken word for word (as nearly as the change from prose to blank verse would allow) from the old record in Hall. It would have been easy for Shakespeare to have exalted his own skill by throwing a colouring of poetry and eloquence into this speech, without altering the sense or sentiment; but by adhering to the calm argumentative simplicity of manner and diction natural to the woman, he has preserved the truth * Hall's Chronicle, p. 781.

"The queen

The court at Blackfriars sat on the 28th of May, 1529. being called, accompanied by the four bishops and others of her counsel, and a great company of ladies and gentlewomen following her; and after her obeisance, sadly and with great gravity, she appealed from them to the court of Rome."-See Hall and Cavendish's Life of Wolsey.

The account which Hume gives of this scene is very elegant; but after the affecting naiveté of the old chroniclers, it is very cold and unsatisfactory.