in the island of Nisida, she restrained all expression of grief that she might not shake his fortitude; but afterwards, in passing through a chamber in which there hung a picture of Hector and Andromache, she stopped, gazed upon it for a time with a settled sorrow, and at length burst into a passion of tears.* If Portia had been a Christian, and lived in later times, she might have been another Lady Russel; but she made a poor stoic. No factitious or external control was sufficient to restrain such an exuberance of sensibility and fancy: and those who praise the philosophy of Portia and the heroism of her death, certainly mistook the character altogether. It is evident, from the manner of her death, that it was not deliberate self-destruction, "after the high Roman fashion," but took place in, a paroxysm of madness, caused by overwrought and suppressed feeling, grief, terror, and suspense. Shakspeare has thus represented it :— BRUTUS. O Cassius! I am sick of many griefs! CASSIUS. Of your philosophy you make no use, * When at Naples, I have often stood upon the rock at the extreme point of Posilippo, and looked down upon the little Island of Nisida, and thought of this scene till I forgot the Lazaretto which now deforms it: deforms it, however, to the fancy only, for the building itself, as it rises from amid the vines, the cypresses, and fig-trees which embosom it, looks beautiful at a distance. BRUTUS. No man bears sorrow better; Portia's dead. CASSIUS. Ha!-Portia ? BRUTUS. She is dead. CASSIUS. How 'scap'd I killing when I cross'd you so? BRUTUS. Impatient of my absence, And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony So much for woman's philosophy! MARGARET OF ANJOU. MALONE has written an essay, to prove from external and internal evidence, that the three parts of King Henry VI. were not originally written by Shakspeare, but altered by him from two old plays,* with considerable improvements and additions of his own. Burke, Porson, Dr. Warbur "The contention of the two Houses of York and Lancaster,' in two parts, supposed by Malone to have been written abou 1590. ton, and Dr. Farmer, pronounced this piece of criticism convincing and unanswerable; but Dr. Johnson and Steevens would not be convinced, and, moreover, have contrived to answer the unanswerable. "Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" The only arbiter in such a case is one's own individual taste and judgment. To me it appears that the three parts of Henry VI. have less of poetry and passion, and more of unnecessary verbosity and inflated language, than the rest of Shakspeare's works; that the continual exhibition of treachery, bloodshed, and violence, is revolting, and the want of unity of action, and of a pervading interest, oppressive and fatiguing; but also that there are splendid passages in the Second and Third Parts, such as Shakspeare alone could have written and this is not denied by the most skeptical. * *I abstain from making any remarks on the character of Joan of Arc, as delineated in the First part of Henry VI.; first, because I do not in my conscience attribute it to Shakspeare, and secondly, because in representing her according to the vulgar English traditions, as half sorceress, half enthusiast, and in the end, corrupted by pleasure and ambition, the truth of history, and the truth of nature, justice, and common sense, are equally violated. Schiller has treated the character nobly: but in making Joan the slave of passion, and the victim of love, instead of the victim of patriotism, has committed, I think, a serious error in judgment and feeling; and I cannot sympathize with Madame de Staël's defence of him on this particular point. There was no occasion for this deviation from the truth of things, and from the dignity and spotless purity of the character. This young enthusiast, with her religious reveries, her simplicity, her heroism, her melancholy, her sensibility, her fortitude, her perfectly Among the arguments against the authenticity of these plays, the character of Margaret of Anjou has not been adduced, and yet to those who have studied Shakspeare in his own spirit, it will appear the most conclusive of all. When we compare her with his other female characters, we are struck at once by the want of family likeness; Shakspeare was not always equal, but he had not two manners, as they say of painters. I discern his hand in particular parts, but I cannot recognize his spirit in the conception of the whole: he may have laid on some of the colors, but the original design has a certain hardness and heaviness, very unlike his usual style. Margaret of Anjou, as exhibited in these tragedies, is a dramatic portrait of considerable truth, and vigor, and consistency-but she is not one of Shakspeare's women. He who knew so well in what true greatness of spirit consisted— who could excite our respect and sympathy even for a Lady Macbeth, would never have given us a heroine without a touch of heroism; he would not have portrayed a high-hearted woman, struggling unsubdued against the strangest vicissitudes of for tune, meeting reverses and disasters, such as would feminine bearing in all her exploits, (for though she so often led the van of battle unshrinking, while death was all around her, she never struck a blow, nor stained her consecrated sword with blood,-another point in which Schiller has wronged her,) this heroine and martyr, over whose last moments we shed burning tears of pity and indignation, remains yet to be treated as a dramatic character, and I know but one person capable of doing his. have broken the most masculine spirit, with unshaken constancy, yet left her without a single personal quality which would excite our interest in her bravely-endured misfortunes; and this too in the very face of history. He would not have given us, in lieu of the magnanimous queen, the subtle and accomplished French woman, a mere " Amazonian trull," with every coarser feature of depravity and ferocity; he would have redeemed her from unmingled detestation; he would have breathed into her some of his own sweet spirit—he would have given the woman a soul. The old chronicler Hall informs us, that Queen Margaret "excelled all other as well in beauty and favor, as in wit and policy, and was in stomach and courage more like to a man than to a woman." He adds, that after the espousals of Henry and Margaret, "the king's friends fell from him; the lords of the realm fell in division among themselves; the Commons rebelled against their natural prince; fields were foughten; many thousands slain; and, finally, the king was deposed, and his son slain, and his queen sent home again with as much misery and sorrow as she was received with pomp and triumph." This passage seems to have furnished the groundwork of the character as it is developed in these plays with no great depth or skill. Margaret is portrayed with all the exterior graces of her sex; as bold and artful, with spirit to dare, resolution to act, and fortitude to endure; but treacherous, |