Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/217

 *ous saps: stramonium and clover were indiscriminately cropped; but Heaven gave to its wild creatures tough stomachs to begin with. They effect a compromise with such complacency that literature is charmed to celebrate it; and the dew of humor condenses beneath a long-suffering sky. A powerful and happy digestion does not prefer the noxious weeds; but it has learned how to account for them, and to measure their effects.

Women are not good readers of any kind of plays. The movement and lapse of events in a novel are more congenial to their secluded life. And I venture to impute to the average woman a thinly running vein of humor as the reason why she finds such difficulty in admiring Shakspeare. Many of the finest women can never conquer their repugnance. There seems to be in it something of impatience at the dramatic intervals and the movement by incessant colloquy, something of an equanimity of passion, something of fright at the broad and powerful statement, which flinches at nothing; blabs dreadfully of Juliet's clandestine feeling; keeps Helena in contented ear-shot of Parolles, and lets her devise an indelicate solution of the plot; shows the sweet Marianna of the moated grange ready to help on another play with the same alacrity, and leaves Nature everywhere, in the most passionate or vulgar phases, to her absolute sincerity, and concedes to her the freedom of the dictionary. Women do not like to be charmed along through scenes of tender and lofty feeling to stumble over the sentences of porters, carriers, camp-followers, fellows on a frolic; phrases that hiccough a decided waft of sack; clauses