Page:Little Clay Cart (Ryder 1905).djvu/26

xx of ignorant conceit, brutal lust, and cunning, this greater than Cloten, who, after strangling an innocent woman, can say: "Oh, come! Let's go and play in the pond." Most attractive characters are the five conspirators, men whose home is "east of Suez and the ten commandments." They live from hand to mouth, ready at any moment to steal a gem-casket or to take part in a revolution, and preserving through it all their character as gentlemen and their irresistible conceit. And side by side with them moves the hero Chārudatta, the Buddhist beau-ideal of manhood,

A tree of life to them whose sorrows grow,

Beneath its fruit of virtue bending low.

To him, life itself is not dear, but only honor. He values wealth only as it supplies him with the means of serving others. We may, with some justice, compare him with Antonio in The Merchant of Venice. There is some inconsistency, from our point of view, in making such a character the hero of a love-drama; and indeed, it is Vasantasenā who does most of the love-making.

Vasantasenā is a character with neither the girlish charm of Shakuntalā nor the mature womanly dignity of Sītā. She is more admirable than lovable. Witty and wise she is, and in her love as true as steel; this too, in a social position which makes such constancy difficult. Yet she cannot be called a great character; she does not seem so true to life as her clever maid, Madanikā. In making the heroine of his play a courtezan, Shūdraka follows a suggestion of the technical works on the drama; he does not thereby cast any imputation of ill on Vasantasenā's character. The courtezan class in India corresponded roughly to the hetæræ of