I doubt not that 'money' was the first word of the line, and has dropped out:—
{Footnote 1: In 1664, at Bury St. Edmonds on the trial of Rose Cullender and Amy Duny. Ed.}
THE STAPLE OF NEWS.
Act IV. sc. 3. Pecunia's speech:—
That lay not in his power: he had the use
Of your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute's.
Read (1815),
Your bodies, &c.
Now, however, I doubt the legitimacy of my transposition of the 'of' from the beginning of this latter line to the end of the one preceding;—for though it facilitates the metre and reading of the latter line, and is frequent in Massinger, this disjunction of the preposition from its case seems to have been disallowed by Jonson. Perhaps the better reading is—
the two syllables being slurred into one, or rather snatched, or sucked, up into the emphasized 'your.' In all points of view, therefore, Ben's judgment is just; for in this way, the line cannot be read, as metre, without that strong and quick emphasis on 'your' which the sense requires;—and had not the sense required an emphasis on 'your,' the tmesis of the sign of its cases 'of,' 'to,' &c. would destroy almost all boundary between the dramatic verse and prose in comedy:—a lesson not to be rash in conjectural amendments. 1818.
Ib. sc. 4.
'Frommy,' 'fromme', pious, dutiful, &c.
Act v. sc. 4. Penny-boy sen. and Porter:—
I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben had Lear in his mind in this mock mad scene.
THE NEW INN.
Act I. sc. 1. Host's speech:—
'Makes', frequent in old books, and even now used in some counties for mates, or pairs.
Ib. sc. 3. Host's speech:—
O' the vaulting horse, to play the vaulting house.—
Instead of reading with Whalley 'ply' for 'play,' I would suggest 'horse' for 'house.' The meaning would then be obvious and pertinent. The punlet, or pun-maggot, or pun intentional, 'horse and house,' is below Jonson. The 'jeu-de-mots' just below—
Upon Aquinas at St. Thomas à Waterings—
had a learned smack in it to season its insipidity.
Ib. sc. 6. Lovel's speech:—
That open-handed sit upon the clouds,
And press the liberality of heaven
Down to the laps of thankful men!
Like many other similar passages in Jonson, this is {Greek (transliterated): eidos chalepon idein}—a sight which it is difficult to make one's self see,—a picture my fancy cannot copy detached from the words.
Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, &c. of this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to damn a new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,—most abominable stuff indeed!
Act in. sc. 2. Lovel's speech:—
Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love.—
Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far; but the part most difficult and delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it can be.
NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
Seward's Preface. 1750.
The King And No King, too, is extremely spirited in all its characters; Arbaces holds up a mirror to all men of virtuous principles but violent passions. Hence he is, as it were, at once magnanimity and pride, patience and fury, gentleness and rigor, chastity and incest, and is one of the finest mixtures of virtues and vices that any poet has drawn, &c.
These are among the endless instances of the abject state to which psychology had sunk from the reign of Charles I. to the middle of the present reign of George III.; and even now it is but just awaking.
Ib. Seward's comparison of Julia's speech in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iv. last scene—
with Aspatia's speech in the Maid's Tragedy—
and preference of the latter.
It is strange to take an incidental passage of one writer, intended only for a subordinate part, and compare it with the same thought in another writer, who had chosen it for a prominent and principal figure.
Ib. Seward's preference of Alphonso's poisoning in A Wife for a Month, act i. sc. 1, to the passage in King John, act v. sc. 7,—
Mr. Seward! Mr. Seward! you may be, and I trust you are, an angel; but you were an ass.
Ib.
from Shakspeare.
Of what taste?
Ib. Seward's classification of the Plays:—
Surely Monsieur Thomas, The Chances, Beggar's Bush, and the Pilgrim, should have been placed in the very first class! But the whole attempt ends in a woeful failure.
HARRIS'S COMMENDATORY POEM ON FLETCHER.
A power to take up on common faith:—
This is an instance of that modifying of quantity by emphasis, without which our elder poets cannot be scanned. 'Power,' here, instead of being one long syllable—pow'r—must be sounded, not indeed as a spondee, nor yet as a trochee; but as—{Symbol: u-shape beneath line};—the first syllable is 1 1/4.
poets (for in those times a drama was a poem), until some man undertakes
the work, who has studied the philosophy of metre. This has been found
the main torch of sound restoration in the Greek dramatists by Bentley,
Porson, and their followers;—how much more, then, in writers in our own
language! It is true that quantity, an almost iron law with the Greek,
is in English rather a subject for a peculiarly fine ear, than any law
or even rule; but, then, instead of it, we have, first, accent;
secondly, emphasis; and lastly, retardation, and acceleration of the
times of syllables according to the meaning of the words, the passion
that accompanies them, and even the character of the person that uses
them. With due attention to these,—above all, to that, which requires
the most attention and the finest taste, the character, Massinger, for
example, might be reduced to a rich and yet regular metre. But then the
'regulæ' must be first known;—though I will venture to say, that he who
does not find a line (not corrupted) of Massinger's flow to the time
total of a trimeter catalectic iambic verse, has not read it aright. But
by virtue of the last principle—the retardation or acceleration of
time—we have the proceleusmatic foot * * * *, and the 'dispondaeus' —
— — —, not to mention the 'choriambus', the ionics, paeons, and
epitrites. Since Dryden, the metre of our poets leads to the sense: in
our elder and more genuine bards, the sense, including the passion,
leads to the metre. Read even Donne's satires as he meant them to be
read, and as the sense and passion demand, and you will find in the
lines a manly harmony.
LIFE OF FLETCHER IN STOCKDALE'S EDITION. 1811.
In general their plots are more regular than Shakspeare's.—
This is true, if true at all, only before a court of criticism, which judges one scheme by the laws of another and a diverse one. Shakspeare's plots have their own laws or regulæ, and according to these they are regular.
MAID'S TRAGEDY.
Act I. The metrical arrangement is most slovenly throughout.
and all that follows to 'who is return'd'—is plainly blank verse, and falls easily into it.
Ib. Speech of Melantius:—
The music must be shrill, and all confus'd,
That stirs my blood; and then I dance with arms.
What strange self-trumpeters and tongue-bullies all the brave soldiers of Beaumont and Fletcher are! Yet I am inclined to think it was the fashion of the age from the Soldier's speech in the Counter Scuffle; and deeper than the fashion B. and F. did not fathom.
Ib. Speech of Lysippus:—
Walks discontented, with her wat'ry eyes
Bent on the earth, &c.
Opulent as Shakspeare was, and of his opulence prodigal, he yet would not have put this exquisite piece of poetry in the mouth of a no-character, or as addressed to a Melantius. I wish that B. and F. had written poems instead of tragedies.
Ib.
Read
Ib. Speech of Calianax:—
office!
The syllable off reminds the testy statesman of his robe, and he carries on the image.
Ib. Speech of Melantius:—
That sea of blood, that I have lost in fight, &c.
All B. and F.'s generals are pugilists, or cudgel-fighters, that boast of their bottom and of the claret they have shed.
Ib. The Masque;—Cinthia's speech:—
And raise to time a noble memory
Of what these lovers are.
I suspect that 'nobler,' pronounced as 'nobiler'—{Symbol (metrical): U-=shape below the line}—, was the poet's word, and that the accent is to be placed on the penultimate of 'memory.' As to the passage—
removed from the text of Cinthia's speech by these foolish editors as unworthy of B. and F.—the first eight lines are not worse, and the last couplet incomparably better, than the stanza retained.
Act ii. Amintor's speech:—
All thoughts revengeful! In that sacred name,
'The king,' there lies a terror.
It is worth noticing that of the three greatest tragedians, Massinger was a democrat, Beaumont and Fletcher the most servile jure divino royalist, and Shakspeare a philosopher;—if aught personal, an aristocrat.
A KING AND NO KING.
Act IV. Speech of Tigranes:—
And miseries, that must follow such mad passions,
Endless and wild as women! &c.
Seward's note and suggestion of 'in.'
It would be amusing to learn from some existing friend of Mr. Seward what he meant, or rather dreamed, in this note. It is certainly a difficult passage, of which there are two solutions;—one, that the writer was somewhat more injudicious than usual;—the other, that he was very, very much more profound and Shakspearian than usual. Seward's emendation, at all events, is right and obvious. Were it a passage of Shakspeare, I should not hesitate to interpret it as characteristic of Tigranes' state of mind,—disliking the very virtues, and therefore half-consciously representing them as mere products of the violence, of the sex in general in all their whims, and yet forced to admire, and to feel and to express gratitude for, the exertion in his own instance. The inconsistency of the passage would be the consistency of the author. But this is above Beaumont and Fletcher.
THE SCORNFUL LADY.
Act II. Sir Roger's speech:—
her in heroical epistles? Did I expound the Owl, and undertake, with
labor and expense, the recollection of those thousand pieces, consum'd
in cellars and tobacco-shops, of that our honor'd Englishman, Nic.
Broughton? &c.
Strange, that neither Mr. Theobald, nor Mr. Seward, should have seen that this mock heroic speech is in full-mouthed blank verse! Had they seen this, they would have seen that 'quarters' is a substitution of the players for 'quires' or 'squares,' (that is) of paper:—
And woo'd her in heroical epistles.
They ought, likewise, to have seen that the abbreviated 'Ni. Br.' of the text was properly 'Mi. Dr.'—and that Michael Drayton, not Nicholas Broughton, is here ridiculed for his poem The Owl and his Heroical Epistles.
Ib. Speech of Younger Loveless:—
These Editors ought to have learnt, that scarce an instance occurs in B. and F. of a long speech not in metre. This is plain staring blank verse.
THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY.
I cannot but think that in a country conquered by a nobler race than the natives, and in which the latter became villeins and bondsmen, this custom, 'lex merchetae', may have been introduced for wise purposes,—as of improving the breed, lessening the antipathy of different races, and producing a new bond of relationship between the lord and the tenant, who, as the eldest born, would, at least, have a chance of being, and a probability of being thought, the lord's child. In the West Indies it cannot have these effects, because the mulatto is marked by nature different from the father, and because there is no bond, no law, no custom, but of mere debauchery. 1815.
Act i. sc. 1. Rutilio's speech:—
Evidently to be transposed and read thus:—
foolish engine here:—I say no more—But if your Honor's guts are not
enchanted—
Licentious as the comic metre of B. and F. is,—a far more lawless, and yet far less happy, imitation of the rhythm of animated talk in real life than Massinger's—still it is made worse than it really is by ignorance of the halves, thirds, and two-thirds of a line which B. and F. adopted from the Italian and Spanish dramatists. Thus in Rutilio's speech:—
Any man would desire to have her, and by any means, &c.
Correct the whole passage—
Any man would Desire to have her, and by any means,
At any rate too, yet this common hangman
That hath whipt off a /THOUsand maids' HEADS/ already—
That he should glean the harvest, sticks in my stomach!
{Between the two /, upper-case syllables have the stress, written as a horizontal line above them in the original text, and lower-case syllables are unstressed, written as a u-shape (the u-symbol previously described) above them. text Ed.}
In all comic metres the gulping of short syllables, and the abbreviation of syllables ordinarily long by the rapid pronunciation of eagerness and vehemence, are not so much a license, as a law,—a faithful copy of nature, and let them be read characteristically, the times will be found nearly equal. Thus the three words marked above make a 'choriambus'—u u —, or perhaps a 'paeon primus'—u u u; a dactyl, by virtue of comic rapidity, being only equal to an iambus when distinctly pronounced. I have no doubt that all B. and F.'s works might be safely corrected by attention to this rule, and that the editor is entitled to transpositions of all kinds, and to not a few omissions. For the rule of the metre once lost—what was to restrain the actors from interpolation?
THE ELDER BROTHER
Act I. sc. 2. Charles's speech:—
Who better can deliver it than Virgil
In his Georgicks? and to cure your herds,
His Bucolicks is a master-piece.
Fletcher was too good a scholar to fall into so gross a blunder, as Messrs. Sympson and Colman suppose. I read the passage thus:—
Who better can deliver it than Virgil,
In his /GeORGicks/, or to cure your herds;
(His Bucolicks are a master-piece.)
But when, &c.
Jealous of Virgil's honor, he is afraid lest, by referring to the Georgics alone, he might be understood as undervaluing the preceding work. 'Not that I do not admire the Bucolics, too, in their way:—But when, &c.'
Act iii. sc. 3. Charles's speech:—
The story of the heavens looks very like her.
Seward reads 'glory;' and Theobald quotes from Philaster—
I can make sense of this passage as little as Mr. Seward;—the passage from Philaster is nothing to the purpose. Instead of 'a story,' I have sometimes thought of proposing 'Astræa.'
Ib. Angellina's speech:—
And the shadow of the earth eclips'd your judgment.
Inappropriate to Angellina, but one of the finest lines in our language.
Act iv. sc. 3. Charles's speech:—
As thin neglected sand, whiteness of name.
You must be mine, &c.
Seward's note, and reading—
You must be mine!
Nonsense! 'Whiteness of name,' is in apposition to 'the serious part of life,' and means a deservedly pure reputation. The following line—'You must be mine!' means—'Though I do not enjoy you to-day, I shall hereafter, and without reproach.'
THE SPANISH CURATE.
Act IV. sc. 7. Amaranta's speech:—
Perhaps the true word is 'conning,' that is, learning, or reading, and therefore inattentive.
WIT WITHOUT MONEY.
Act I. Valentine's speech:—
The present text, and that proposed by Seward, are equally vile. I have endeavoured to make the lines sense, though the whole is, I suspect, incurable except by bold conjectural reformation. I would read thus:—
Without the pleasure of her life, that's wanton;
Tho' she be young, forgetting it; tho' fair,
Making her glass the eyes of honest men,
Not her own admiration.
'That's wanton,' or, 'that is to say, wantonness.'
Act ii. Valentine's speech:—
As there is a syllable wanting in the measure here. (Seward.)
A syllable wanting! Had this Seward neither ears nor fingers? The line is a more than usually regular iambic hendecasyllable.
Ib.
With one faith, one content, one bed;
Aged, she makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue;
A widow is, &c.
Is 'apaid'—contented—too obsolete for B. and F.? If not, we might read it thus:—
She makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue;—
Or it may be—
that is, satisfied with one set of children, in opposition to—
Colman's note on Seward's attempt to put this play into metre.
The editors, and their contemporaries in general, were ignorant of any but the regular iambic verse. A study of the Aristophanic and Plautine metres would have enabled them to reduce B. and F. throughout into metre, except where prose is really intended.
THE HUMOROUS LIEUTENANT.
Act I. sc. 1. Second Ambassador's speech:—
And, curling up your foaming crests, defied, &c.
This worse than superfluous 'like' is very like an interpolation of some matter of fact critic—all 'pus, prose atque venenum'. The 'your' in the next line, instead of 'their,' is likewise yours, Mr. Critic!
Act ii: sc. 1. Timon's speech:—
We much suspect the poets wrote, 'of a new day.' So, immediately after,
(SEWARD'S NOTE.)
For this very reason I more than suspect the contrary.
Ib. sc. 3. Speech of Leucippe:—
What we call a riding-habit,—some mannish dress.
THE MAD LOVER.
Act IV. Masque of beasts:—
An usher that still grew before his lady,
Wither'd at root: this, for he could not wooe,
A grumbling lawyer: &c.
Here must have been omitted a line rhyming to 'tree;' and the words of the next line have been transposed:—
Which leafless, and obscur'd with moss you see,
An usher this, that 'fore his lady grew,
Wither'd at root: this, for he could not wooe, &c.
THE LOYAL SUBJECT.
It is well worthy of notice, and yet has not been, I believe, noticed hitherto, what a marked difference there exists in the dramatic writers of the Elizabetho-Jacobæan age—(Mercy on me! what a phrase for 'the writers during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.!')—in respect of their political opinions. Shakspeare, in this as in all other things, himself and alone, gives the permanent politics of human nature, and the only predilection, which appears, shews itself in his contempt of mobs and the populacy. Massinger is a decided Whig;—Beaumont and Fletcher high-flying, passive-obedience, Tories. The Spanish dramatists furnished them with this, as with many other ingredients. By the by, an accurate and familiar acquaintance with all the productions of the Spanish stage previously to 1620, is an indispensable qualification for an editor of B. and F.;—and with this qualification a most interesting and instructive edition might be given. This edition of Colman's Stockdale, (1811,) is below criticism.
In metre, B. and F. are inferior to Shakspeare, on the one hand, as expressing the poetic part of the drama, and to Massinger, on the other, in the art of reconciling metre with the natural rhythm of conversation,—in which, indeed, Massinger is unrivalled. Read him aright, and measure by time, not syllables, and no lines can be more legitimate,—none in which the substitution of equipollent feet, and the modifications by emphasis, are managed with such exquisite judgment. B. and F. are fond of the twelve syllable (not Alexandrine) line, as—
This has, often, a good effect, and is one of the varieties most common in Shakspeare.
RULE A WIFE AND HAVE A WIFE.
Act III. Old Woman's speech:—
Mr. Seward discards the words 'for lying', because 'most of the things spoke of Estifania are true, with only a little exaggeration, and because they destroy all appearance of measure.' (Colman's note.)
Mr. Seward had his brains out. The humor lies in Estifania's having ordered the Old Woman to tell these tales of her; for though an intriguer, she is not represented as other than chaste; and as to the metre, it is perfectly correct.
Ib.
'Leon'. It shall be better, I will give none, madam, &c.
The meaning is: 'It shall be a better way, first;—as it is, I will not give it, or any that you in your present mood would wish.'
THE LAWS OF CANDY.
Act I. Speech of Melitus:—
Can by no character be well express'd,
But in her only name, the proud Erota.
Colman's note.
The poet intended no allusion to the word 'Erota' itself; but says that her very name, 'the proud Erota,' became a character and adage; as we say, a Quixote or a Brutus: so to say an 'Erota,' expressed female pride and insolence of beauty.
Ib. Speech of Antinous:—
From 'successary', but purchas'd with my blood.—
The poet doubtless wrote 'successry,' which, though not adopted in our language, would be, on many occasions, as here, a much more significant phrase than ancestry.
THE LITTLE FRENCH LAWYER.
Act I. sc. 1. Dinant's speech:—
No more on't, &c.
Seward reads:—
How long Have you been conning this speech? 'Tis a new one, &c.
If conjectural emendation, like this, be allowed, we might venture to read:—
or,
Ib.
one?
'Cler'. Words are but words.
'Din'. Nor wouldst thou take a blow?
Seward's note.
O miserable! Dinant sees through Cleremont's gravity, and the actor is to explain it. 'Words are but words,' is the last struggle of affected morality.
VALENTINIAN.
Act I. sc. 3. It is a real trial of charity to read this scene with tolerable temper towards Fletcher. So very slavish—so reptile—are the feelings and sentiments represented as duties. And yet remember he was a bishop's son, and the duty to God was the supposed basis.
Personals, including body, house, home, and religion;—property, subordination, and inter-community;—these are the fundamentals of society. I mean here, religion negatively taken,—so that the person be not compelled to do or utter, in relation of the soul to God, what would be, in that person, a lie;—such as to force a man to go to church, or to swear that he believes what he does not believe. Religion, positively taken, may be a great and useful privilege, but cannot be a right,—were it for this only that it cannot be pre-defined. The ground of this distinction between negative and positive religion, as a social right, is plain. No one of my fellow-citizens is encroached on by my not declaring to him what I believe respecting the super-sensual; but should every man be entitled to preach against the preacher, who could hear any preacher? Now it is different in respect of loyalty. There we have positive rights, but not negative rights;—for every pretended negative would be in effect a positive;—as if a soldier had a right to keep to himself, whether he would, or would not, fight. Now, no one of these fundamentals can be rightfully attacked, except when the guardian of it has abused it to subvert one or more of the rest. The reason is, that the guardian, as a fluent, is less than the permanent which he is to guard. He is the temporary and mutable mean, and derives his whole value from the end. In short, as robbery is not high treason, so neither is every unjust act of a king the converse. All must be attacked and endangered. Why? Because the king, as 'a' to A., is a mean to A. or subordination, in a far higher sense than a proprietor, as 'b'. to B. is a mean to B. or property.
Act ii. sc. 2. Claudia's speech:—
The whole of this speech seems corrupt; and if accurately printed,—that is, if the same in all the prior editions, irremediable but by bold conjecture. ''Till' my tackle,' should be, I think, 'while,' &c.
Act iii. sc. 1. B. and F. always write as if virtue or goodness were a sort of talisman, or strange something, that might be lost without the least fault on the part of the owner. In short, their chaste ladies value their chastity as a material thing—not as an act or state of being; and this mere thing being imaginary, no wonder that all their women are represented with the minds of strumpets, except a few irrational humorists, far less capable of exciting our sympathy than a Hindoo, who has had a bason of cow-broth thrown over him;—for this, though a debasing superstition, is still real, and we might pity the poor wretch, though we cannot help despising him. But B. and F.'s Lucinas are clumsy fictions. It is too plain that the authors had no one idea of chastity as a virtue, but only such a conception as a blind man might have of the power of seeing, by handling an ox's eye. In The Queen of Corinth, indeed, they talk differently; but it is all talk, and nothing is real in it but the dread of losing a reputation. Hence the frightful contrast between their women (even those who are meant for virtuous) and Shakspeare's. So, for instance, The Maid in the Mill:—a woman must not merely have grown old in brothels, but have chuckled over every abomination committed in them with a rampant sympathy of imagination, to have had her fancy so drunk with the 'minutiæ' of lechery as this icy chaste virgin evinces hers to have been.
It would be worth while to note how many of these plays are founded on rapes,—how many on incestuous passions, and how many on mere lunacies. Then their virtuous women are either crazy superstitions of a merely bodily negation of having been acted on, or strumpets in their imaginations and wishes, or, as in this Maid in the Mill, both at the same time. In the men, the love is merely lust in one direction,—exclusive preference of one object. The tyrant's speeches are mostly taken from the mouths of indignant denouncers of the tyrant's character, with the substitution of 'I' for 'he,' and the omission of the prefatory 'he acts as if he thought' so and so. The only feelings they can possibly excite are disgust at the Aeciuses, if regarded as sane loyalists, or compassion, if considered as Bedlamites. So much for their tragedies. But even their comedies are, most of them, disturbed by the fantasticalness, or gross caricature, of the persons or incidents. There are few characters that you can really like,—(even though you should have had erased from your mind all the filth, which bespatters the most likeable of them, as Piniero in The Island Princess for instance,)—scarcely one whom you can love. How different this from Shakspeare, who makes one have a sort of sneaking affection even for his Barnardines;—whose very Iagos and Richards are awful, and, by the counteracting power of profound intellects, rendered fearful rather than hateful;—and even the exceptions, as Goneril and Regan, are proofs of superlative judgment and the finest moral tact, in being left utter monsters, 'nulla virtute redemptæ,' and in being kept out of sight as much as possible,—they being, indeed, only means for the excitement and deepening of noblest emotions towards the Lear, Cordelia, &c. and employed with the severest economy! But even Shakspeare's grossness—that which is really so, independently of the increase in modern times of vicious associations with things indifferent,—(for there is a state of manners conceivable so pure, that the language of Hamlet at Ophelia's feet might be a harmless rallying, or playful teazing, of a shame that would exist in Paradise)—at the worst, how diverse in kind is it from Beaumont and Fletcher's! In Shakspeare it is the mere generalities of sex, mere words for the most part, seldom or never distinct images, all head-work, and fancy-drolleries; there is no sensation supposed in the speaker. I need not proceed to contrast this with B. and F.
ROLLO.
This is, perhaps, the most energetic of Fletcher's tragedies. He evidently aimed at a new Richard III. in Rollo;—but as in all his other imitations of Shakspeare, he was not philosopher enough to bottom his original. Thus, in Rollo, he has produced a mere personification of outrageous wickedness, with no fundamental characteristic impulses to make either the tyrant's words or actions philosophically intelligible. Hence, the most pathetic situations border on the horrible, and what he meant for the terrible, is either hateful, {Greek (transliterated): to misaeton}, or ludicrous. The scene of Baldwin's sentence in the third act is probably the grandest working of passion in all B. and F.'s dramas;—but the very magnificence of filial affection given to Edith, in this noble scene, renders the after scene—(in imitation of one of the least Shakspearian of all Shakspeare's works, if it be his, the scene between Richard and Lady Anne,)—in which Edith is yielding to a few words and tears, not only unnatural, but disgusting. In Shakspeare, Lady Anne is described as a weak, vain, very woman throughout.
Act i. sc. I.