intense moral indignation she has felt and still feels, by reason of her cousin's wrongs. When the command is sprung upon Benedick, his reply, notwithstanding all that he has just said, leaps spontaneously from his lips, showing the genuine and deep friendship he entertains for Claudio, and doing honor to his heart, "Ha! not for the wide world." But he is fully assured of what his duty is as the lover of Beatrice and as a man of honor, and resolves to do it. "Think you," he says, "in your soul the Count Claudio hath wronged Hero? Beat. Yea, as sure as I have a thought or a soul. Bene. Enough, I am engaged; I will challenge him. I will kiss your hand; and so I leave you. By this hand, Claudio shall render me a dear account. As you hear of me, so think of me. Go comfort your cousin: I must say she is dead; and so, farewell."

Things begin to have a decidedly tragic look; but the reader, or the spectator, knows what the actors do not know; and the situation has for him a comic background. He knows of the villany of Don John, and that it has been discovered by the watchmen who overhear the story told by Borachio to Conrade (A. III. Sc. iii.). Leonato has the opportunity of knowing about the villany before he goes to church, Dogberry and Verges having called on him at his house to acquaint him with it; but in his haste to be off to the marriage ceremony, he, having only learned from them that the watch "have comprehended two aspicious persons," dismisses the rude but faithful officials to make the examination themselves of the culprits.

In A. V. Sc. i. 111 et seq., we see how Benedick comports himself, in challenging Claudio. In spite of their high-proof melancholy, as they call it, Claudio and Don Pedro are disposed to indulge in drollery, and their accustomed banter, with Benedick, who soon shows to them both his indisposition and his superiority thereto. He is now only the man of honor - honor backed and braced by love of Beatrice and regard for her deeply-wronged cousin.

Benedick having challenged Claudio and gone out, Dogberry,

Verges, and the Watch, enter with Conrade and Borachio, and Don Pedro and Claudio learn how their over-ready credulity has been abused, through the machinations of the Bastard, Don John. But they don't learn that Hero is alive; nor do they know this till in the last scene of the Play.

When Benedick and Beatrice again meet, Benedick assures her that he has challenged Claudio, adding "and either I must shortly hear from him, or I will subscribe him a coward." This ends the honor matter. Each can now say,

"I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more."

Immediately upon this, their pleasantries are renewed, with a mutual understanding of them, Benedick asking her for which of his bad parts she first fell in love with him; and she asking him for which of her good parts he first suffered love for her, etc. Ursula enters and informs them of the discovery of the villany of Don John, and they go out. Lloyd remarks, Beatrice is misrepresented when actors allow to Benedick at this point, a premature success, that is, a kiss. This is reserved for the last scene, when after manful perseverance, he is victorious at last, over the banter of others and his own, and seals his success by kissing her to stop her mouth; and in first proof of self-control, she leaves to her husband the office of retort and speaks no more.

HAMLET.

ON

NE of the many vexed questions to which the Tragedy of Hamlet has given rise a question which has, indeed, been imposed upon the play, as a good many other questions have been is that of Hamlet's sanity or insanity.

There is no other of Shakespeare's dramas in which the hero occupies so large a space, is so great a part. Hamlet is the protagonist in the tragedy; he is, in fact, the all, the entire play. It is this which gives the meaning to the common saying, expressive of nothing remaining, "The play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out." In the introduction to "The Talisman," Scott says: "The Betrothed' did not greatly please one or two friends, who thought that it did not well correspond to the general title of 'The Crusaders.' They urged, therefore, that without direct allusion to the manners of the Eastern tribes, and to the romantic conflicts of the period, the title of a 'Tale of the Crusaders,' would resemble the play bill which is said to have announced the tragedy of Hamlet, the character of the Prince of Denmark being left out."

If Hamlet is deranged, he should be handed over for treatment to the superintendent of an Insane Hospital — he is not a subject for the art critic. If he is deranged, and the poet has presented through him correct phenomena of mental disease, the play may be regarded as a valuable contribution to pathology, but is not entitled to a niche in the great temple of Art.

Hamlet's sanity, then, must be postulated, for it is only on such postulate that the art critic can proceed. But here it may be asked, cannot the insane or the diseased in any form be employed as part of the material with which the artist works? Most cer

tainly it can but the idea of his work cannot centre in it cannot be based upon it. That idea must be one of health, of reason, of harmony with the constitution of things. Insanity may be employed in a work of art just as any other form of evil, of moral obliquity, of moral darkness, is employed - but insanity, or any other form of evil, of moral obliquity, of moral darkness, must be subsidiary to sanity, to the good and the true, to moral rectitude, to moral light.

Those dramatic compositions which have exerted the greatest influence over the sympathies of men are all characterized by a large and even predominant element of moral obliquity, of moral evil, of moral darkness. Look at all the great Greek tragedies that have come down to us, at the masterpieces of the modern drama, especially those of Shakespeare. Their power might be pronounced to be almost in direct proportion to the degree in which the element of moral darkness predominates. Witness his Richard the Third, his King Lear, his Macbeth, his Othello. All these plays exert, and ever will exert, a powerful influence over the sympathies of mankind.

Now what is the attraction for the artist when he selects subjects so characterized by enormity of crime, by enormity, we might say, of the unreasonable? Is it that he loves darkness rather than light, that evil deeds constitute so large an element of his creations? And is it because men in general love darkness rather than light, that they sympathize so deeply with such themes when treated by a great master? Certainly not. The artist does not employ, and men are not interested in, moral darkness for its own sake; this, the most depraved would not be willing to admit; but the attractive element and the real basis of their sympathy is the light which struggles with, and is intensified by, the darkness.

A mere reproduction of nature and of human life is not the end of art, but the emphasizing and intensifying of these in a way to impress deeply and pleasurably (ie., harmoniously). And by emphasis, I mean something other than stress or strain of expression. I don't mean that at all. Where there's the greatest em

phasis, in the true sense of the word, there's the least stress and strain of expression. It is only by emphasizing the natural, and the manifold phases of human life and character, that the poet secures a response in less susceptible souls. The great poet's soul is an Æolian harp which vibrates responsive to the faintest spiritual breathings of things; but ordinary souls are like the stiff cordage of ships which makes music only when played upon by the strongest blasts.

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Now one of the most effectual means of emphasis and intensity, employed by the word or color artist is, with the one, moral darkness, with the other, physical darkness, and these, in every true art product, are subsidiary to moral and physical light. As Blackie remarks, in his lectures on Beauty, "A picture becomes a picture in the highest artistical sense, only when the forms and lights composing it are separated from the great world of form and light, of which it is a part, by a certain and very appreciable darkness." And this applies equally as well to word-painting as to color-painting. Without moral or physical darkness, there can be, in an art product, no intensity of moral or physical light.

It is the light, then, which struggles with the darkness, which is revealed and intensified by the darkness, which is the ultimate aim of all art worthy of the name; and, although darkness may constitute, as it frequently does, the largest element, yet, in every true art product, it must ever be regarded as subsidiary to the exhibition of the light.

Now, if all this is true, it might appear that Hamlet's insanity, assuming him to be insane, could be brought within the category of dark and intensifying elements. If so, we should have to look outside of him for what is intensified; it would have to centre in some one of the other characters: it could not centre in him -in the unreasonable, the unreasoning. It might be resident in a great criminal, as is the case in the tragedy of Macbeth. But Macbeth is a responsible being; and when we sympathize with him, in an art sense, we sympathize with that force which we recognize as the stuff out of which true greatness and nobility of charac