Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/245

 dispense with it,—in fact, children cry for it. Perhaps he supped many a time upon the hemlock of her tongue, and became so acclimated to the draught that the last cup in prison tasted sweetly.

Shakspeare shows the exaggeration of the protesting temper in woman by means of the little spat between Queen Eleanor and Constance, in ii. 7.

A woman's language becomes exacerbated because she is so inadequate to protest by actions. The weakness rolls itself into a bristling defence of words. Men do not drip so profusely into words because they are reservoirs of force and competency. They know that by fair means or foul they can effect purposes from which women are debarred by seclusion, strangeness of habit, and innate reserve. Among women there is a certain resentment at this civic and social disability which does not stint expression.

When, however, a noble woman with a level countenance repudiates an unjust charge, she transfers herself from the bar to the bench, and unseats her summoners. Their purpose quails before this innocence that is so weak, yet grows so overpowering, as in the beauty of Madame Roland and the prison-blanched majesty of Marie Antoinette. The rebuke pulls down the accuser's eyes from their threat, and they seem to go wandering into corners furtively for refuge. Joan of Arc burns in court before the deluded men who claim her as an imp of witchcraft have time to pile their fagots: the passionless chastity gives out blinding sparks when thus enforced; the cheeks of by-standers are reached by