acts as the chorus of the play all through; and at the close he sums up the truth of the whole:

Consider what you first did swear unto-
To fast, to study, and to see no woman-
Flat treason 'gainst the kingly state of youth.
Say, can you fast? Your stomachs are too young,

And abstinence engenders maladies.

And, where that you have vowed to study, lords,
Why, universal plodding prisons up

The nimble spirits in the arteries.
But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye-
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound
When the suspicious head of theft is stopped;
Love's feeling is more soft and sensible

Than are the tender horns of cockled snails;
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste;
For valour-is not love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides ?
Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical

As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair.
And, when love speaks, the voice of all the gods

Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write

Until his ink were tempered with love's sighs;
Oh then his lines would ravish savage ears
And plant in tyrants mild humanity.
From woman's eyes this doctrine I derive;
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world,
Else none at all in aught proves excellent.

This omnipotence of love, to conquer the most recalcitrant, is illustrated again in Much Ado About Nothing, where Benedick, on the one hand, is as resolved to be a bachelor as Beatrice, on the other, is to die a maid; yet Nature, assisted by a little pleasant deception on the part of their friends, easily forces them beneath the golden yoke.

Love is, indeed, a serious enough matter, and some may be indignant that it should form a theme for laughter. Yet it has its ludicrous aspects; and at these there is no harm in laughing.

Its signs, or marks, for example. These are given in these comedies on many occasions. Thus, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, Valentine asks his man Speed, "How know you that I am in love?" to which that worthy answers: "Marry, by these special marks: first, you have learned to wreathe your arms like a

malcontent; to relish a love-song like a robinredbreast; to walk alone like one that had the pestilence; to sigh like a schoolboy that had lost his A B C; to weep like a young wench that had buried her grandam; to fast like one that takes diet; to watch like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently after dinner; when you looked sadly, it was for want of money; and now you are so metamorphosed with a mistress that, when I look upon you, I can scarcely think you my master." The witty Rosalind, in As You Like It, being asked what a lover should be like, replies: "A lean cheek; an eye blue and sunken; a beard neglected. Then your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and everything about you demonstrating a careless desolation."

Other observers, however, have noted marks exactly the opposite the lover blossoms out into a dandy, in the hope of pleasing the eyes of his lady: "I have known when he would have walked ten miles afoot to see a good armour; and now will he lie ten nights awake, carving the fashion of a new doublet".

Love is capable of a thousand extravagances; and these Shakspeare loved to paint. Who but he can lend a voice to love's hyperbole of admiration ? In

the Two Gentlemen of Verona, Valentine, who has been a despiser of love, meets with his fate; and he says:

Life is altered now;

I have done penance for contemning love.

O gentle Proteus, love's a mighty lord.

Now can I break my fast, dine, sup and sleep,
Upon the very naked name of love.

Proteus claims the right of preferring his own fiancée; to which Valentine replies:

And I will help thee to prefer her too.

She shall be dignified with this high honour-
To bear my lady's train, lest the base earth
Should from her vesture chance to steal a kiss
And, of so great a favour growing proud,
Disdain to root the summer-swelling flower,
And make rough winter everlastingly.

"Why, Valentine," replies Proteus, "what braggardism is this?" But Valentine replies:

Pardon me, Proteus; all I can is nothing

To her, whose worth makes other worthies nothing. She is alone.

She is mine own.

And I as rich in having such a jewel

As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,

The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.

In A Midsummer-Night's Dream there is a juice which the sportive Puck squeezes into sleeping eyes, with the result that, when they awake, they adore the first object upon which they chance to alight. Thus enchanted, even Titania, the dainty queen of the fairies, takes into her lap the ass-head of Bottom and thus apostrophizes that transformed weaver :

Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,

And stick muskroses in thy sleek, smooth head,
And kiss thy large, fair ears, my gentle joy.

Is not the insinuation, that love is such a spell, able to transform the world and to make things appear to loving eyes very different from what they are?

It is worthy of note that the scenes of these gay comedies are nearly all laid in places remote-such as Venice, Padua, Illyria, the Forest of Arden, and the like. The truth thus shadowed forth is, that love creates a world of its own, very unlike the everyday world of reality. By love human beings are lifted above the common earth, receiving the password into a region of fantasy, illuminated by a light that never was on sea or land. In this fairyland we see the bright creatures of Shakspeare's fancy roaming-the faithful but too venturesome Julia; the wellnigh distraught Helena; the sprightly Rosalind, "a gallant curtle-axe upon her thigh, a boarspear in her hand";