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a storm upon the coast of Bohemia.*

Florizel goes at once to the court of the king of Sicily, declares himself the son and ambassador of Polixenes, and presents Perdita as his wife.

Dorastus, remembering the existing enmity between the king of Bohemia and his father, conceals his name and rank: he is thrown into prison by the king of Bohemia, who attempts the corruption of Fawnia's virtue. Leontes receives Florizel with every demonstration of kindness and affection. Shakspeare forbears from the representation of so revolting a spectacle as a father seeking the seduction of his child, but he was not able wholly to divest his mind of the influence of his original :

Florizel.

"At your request,

My father will grant precious things as trifles.

Leontes. Would he do so, I'd beg your precious mistress, - Which he counts but a trifle.

Paulina.

Your eye

Sir, my liege,

hath too much youth in't: not a month Fore your queen died, she was more worth such gazes Than what you look on now."

* If critics on Shakspeare had read the novel, they would have been spared the trouble of writing their air-drawn speculations on Shakspeare's taste in causing a shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia.

In the novel, the king of Sicily sends ambassadors to demand the release of his son, and the death of Fawnia. In the play, the father of Florizel himself follows the fugitives, and prevents the marriage.

To bring the plot, at this crisis, to a conclusion, the presence of the shepherd who had found the infant princess, and who could alone furnish proofs of her identity, was absolutely necessary, and it is contrived both in the play and the novel, though by means somewhat different, to transport him from his native country in the vessel with the lovers. Subsequent explanation is easy; the prediction of the oracle is fulfilled; in the person of Perdita "that which is lost, is found;" and the king no longer lives" without an heir." The lovers are united, and the kings reconciled.

The novel narrates that reflection upon the injustice and cruelty of his former conduct fixed a deep melancholy in the mind of the Bohemian monarch, and that in a paroxysm of madness he put a period to his life.

If not a more natural, Shakspeare has certainly substituted a more agreeable conclusion to his drama. Indeed, few scenes of greater interest, and none managed with a more consummate knowledge of stage effect, are to be met with

than that which closes the Winter's Tale. With the exception of this striking scene, Shakspeare has done little towards the improvement of the story that he worked from; but he was more successful in his delineation of its principal characters. Nothing that is seen of Egisthus in the novel, can at all compare with the masterly display of the jealousy of Leontes in the second scene of the first act. For dignity and eloquence, Bellaria cannot, for a moment, be put in competition with Hermione. When the dramatist deviated from the novel by sending the infant, born of the queen, to a remote and desert place, he . was obliged to create a character for the execution of the important commission: hence Antigonus; whose part is short indeed, for a bear devours him in the third act. The plot for the restoration of Hermione, also, required an agent, not to be met with in the novel; and such an one was supplied in Paulina, the wife of Antigonus. Paulina is not one of Shakspeare's happiest female portraits: however good her heart and her intentions, her manners are not well adapted for a court; her candour is ill-bred bluntness, and her vehemence vulgar passion. The intrinsic worth of Florizel is not very superior to that of Dorastus, but the air of refined sentiment which Shakspeare has thrown over

his actions, elevates him greatly above his predecessor.

The lovely Fawnia is interesting; but what portrait can be compared with Shakspeare's Perdita? She embodies the poetic conceptions of Arcadian innocence and simplicity; and with that truth to nature so peculiar to the characterisations of our dramatist, he has endued the princess, though fostered in a cottage, with innate delicacy of sentiment and elegance of taste.

The old shepherd of the novel has a wife who is naturally visited by some qualms of jealousy when her husband brings an infant home for her to take care of. Shakspeare omits this lady, but, not to leave the rustic without a companion, supplies her place by assigning him a son, who is no bad specimen of a country clown. The amusing awkwardness of the father and son at court is an incident of Shakspeare's own conception.

As is the case in many other of Shakspeare's plays, a character is engrafted on the Winter's Tale of which no traces are to be found in the materials he used, and whose business in the progress of the business of the scene is utterly unimportant. Autolycus is a wit, a songster, a liar, and a thief. He is a shrewd observer of life and manners; his bosom is impenetrable to the necessities of

others, and his vigilance ever awake to administer to his own. His fund of humour is inexhaustible, and his impudence matchless. He is moreover interesting, as connected with the manners of Shakspeare's age-as the representative of a class of persons numerous in the middle ages, but who dwindled away as towns increased, and the wants of life did not depend on wakes and fairs for their satisfaction.

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