Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/286

 these men's garments you will continue to wear, preferring to be women. Not one of them, I venture to declare, which your eternal instinct will feel to cramp or to disguise the form. "Dost thou think," says Rosalind, "though I am caparison'd like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition?"

Perdita, I think, if she were not discovered to be a king's daughter, might take to floriculture, and earn a living by it. She would no longer keep her dainty pique against the gilly-flower, but learn to marry

"A gentler scion to the wildest stock,"

and thus mend Nature. She would prefer to be "Flora peering in April's front," along meadows which Proserpine might have roved through, far from the university and the din of scholarships. And pray restrain Ophelia from the commission of suicide by joining a nunnery; but do not save her life to put her to a trade that turns upon any other knack than simple beauty. A woman who can enthrall a Hamlet will esteem it no derogation to pluck from his memory a rooted sorrow. It is a profession quite as sanative as Helena's, whose father had taught her the use of curious drugs, and bequeathed to her "prescriptions of rare and prov'd effects." But let Ophelia be simply beautiful, be surprising like the first May-flowers, be winning like unobtrusive violets; let her exhale, like slopes that are brown with needles of the pine. Preserve the maid who held Hamlet's princely heart in the hollow of a moist and rosy hand: let her survive among us to hold others, to unwrinkle brows of