Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/316

 that are outbreaks of that which is everlastingly the Woman. They assail, they challenge man to say what is so great as love. This polished, clear, sagacious, gifted, balanced woman dares man to say love is not greatest of all.

"How all the other passions fleet to air, As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac'd despair, And shudd'ring fear, and green-ey'd jealousy! O love,       Be moderate, allay thy ecstasy; In measure rein thy joy, scant this excess. I feel too much thy blessing; make it less, For fear I surfeit."

Thus the lips which an oath had sealed melt apart in the first kiss, and her heart, like a fluid ruby, rushes through.

Shakspeare's women never trickle into tepid acceptances: their Yes to love is not puckered in a mouth shaped by "prisms and propriety;" it is not a whisper through a closet key-hole, which the lover, overhearing, doubts may possibly be No. The Duke, in "Twelfth Night," steals rhetoric to utter Shakspeare's feeling about great-hearted and full-blooded women:—

"How will she love, when the rich, golden shaft Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else That live in her! when liver, brain, and heart, These sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fill'd (Her sweet perfections) with one self king!"

Yet Portia, whom Nature made capable of this rapture, had wit enough to invent comedies of life and character, judgment enough to devise the best ways, acumen that astonished Venetian subtlety, as it baffled