Leontes.

That

any

"I ne'er heard yet,

of these bolder vices wanted

Less impudence to gainsay what they did,
Than to perform it first."

The queen proceeds, in the novel, to a more particular denial of her crime:

"What hath passed between him and me the gods only know, and I hope will presently reveale. That I loved Egisthus, I cannot denie; that I honoured him, I shame not to confess. But as touching lascivious lust, I say Egisthus is honest, and hope myself to be found without spot. For Franion, I can neither accuse him nor excuse him. I was not privie to his departure. And that this is truth which I have here rehearsed, I refer myself to the divine oracle." Shakespeare a little dilates on these ideas :

"For Polixenes,

With whom I am accus'd, I do confess,

I lov'd him, as in honour he requir'd;
With such a kind of love, as might become

A lady like me; with a love, even such,

So, and no other, as yourself commanded:

Which not to have done, I think, had been in me

Both disobedience and ingratitude,

To you, and toward your friend; whose love had spoke,

Even since it could speak, from an infant, freely

That it was yours. Now, for conspiracy,

I know not how it tastes; though it be dish'd
For me to try how: all I know of it,

Is, that Camillo was an honest man;

And why he left your court, the gods themselves,
Wotting no more than I, are ignorant.

Your honours all,

I do refer me to the oracle;

Apollo be my judge."

The commissioners appear; the sacred scroll which they had borne from Delphos is produced and read aloud:

Suspicion is no proofe; jealousie is an unequal judge; Bellaria is chaste; Egisthus blameless; Franion a true subject; Pandosto treacherous his babe innocent; and the king shall dye without an heire, if that which is lost be not found." - Dorastus and Fawnia.

"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 found."- SHAKSPEARE.

When the judgment of the oracle is declared in the play, a servant hastily enters, and proclaims the death of the king's son. The transition from joy at her acquittal, to grief for the sudden loss of her child, is too violent for the enfeebled queen to bear: she sinks in a swoon upon the earth, and is carried lifeless from the judgment-hall. The novel adds, that the dreadful

spectacle deprived the king of reason: at the end of three days he recovered; but was with difficulty prevented from putting a period to his life. Shakspeare omits these paroxysms of grief, and simply prescribes to Leontes the customary decent forms of lamentation and atonement.. Both the widowers resort daily to the cemetery of the queen:

"Once in every day he went to Bellaria's tomb, and with tears of penitence, and sorrow, lamented her unhappy fate and his own misfortunes." Dorastus and Fawnia.

"Once a day I'll visit

The chapel were they lie; and tears, shed there,
Shall be my recreation."

SHAKSPEARE.

pursue the infant prinThe boat in which the

At this period of the story both the play and the novel turn aside to cess in her adventures. novel placed her was fortunately driven on the coast of Sicily, the dominions of Egisthus, and it as fortunately happened that a shepherd who had missed one of his sheep, just at the same time came to "the sea-cliffes, to see if perchance the sheepe was browzing on the seaivy." Shakspeare sends Antigonus, under the impression of a vision, to a "desert country, near the sea," in Bohemia, the dominions of

Polixenes, where, having safely deposited the infant, he is torn to pieces by a bear as he endeavours to return to the ship. Shakspeare's shepherd is attracted to the "sea-side" in search of his sheep which he hoped to find " browzing on ivy." In both cases the infant is found by the shepherd, and reared up as his own.

The interval between the infancy of the child, and her growth into the prime of youth and beauty, is easily passed over in narration; but it was a serious difficulty in the play. The dramas of his predecessors and contemporaries furnished Shakspeare with abundance of precedents for the expedient he adopted, — that of personifying Time, and in that character soliciting the spectators to imagine the lapse of sixteen years.

In the simple occupation of a shepherdess, the exiled princess had advanced from infancy to womanhood, and she now appears as the lovely Perdita,

"A creature,

Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal
Of all professors else; make proselytes

Of who she but bid follow."

It was the fortune of Florizel, the son of Polixenes, to meet her as he returned from

hawking; and so deeply did he become ena. moured of Perdita's beauty, that, for the sake of her society, he cast aside his princely robes, and assumed the habit of a shepherd:

"The heavenly gods have sometime earthly thought; Neptune became a ram, Jupiter a bull,

Apollo a shepherd: they gods, and yet in love."

Florizel.

Dorastus and Fawnia.

"The gods themselves,

Humbling their deities to love, have taken
The shapes of beasts upon them: Jupiter
Became a bull, and bellow'd; the green Neptune
A ram, and bleated; and the fire-rob'd god,
Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain,

As I seem now.

SHAKSPEARE.

The discovery of Florizel in his degrading metamorphosis by Polixenes is superadded by the dramatist to the story of the novel; whence, however, the trifling particular of Perdita being "mistress of the feast" is borrowed.

Detected in his disguise, Florizel fled from his father's dominions with the lovely object of his choice; and they safely land in Sicily. Dorastus is not discovered by his father, but still he flies, and, with his beautiful shepherdess, carries her reputed father: they are driven by