Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/332

 so that Helena must not only succeed, but manifest pure and noble qualities on the strange road she takes toward success, if she would gain our sympathy. The play begins quite early to canvass for our favor by showing that she is a noble woman who proceeds thus, and it is in the interest of a love that intends to be pure and legal. It is death to be without Bertram; and love will dare all things, risk life itself, to save the life of love. Why not in a woman as well as in a man? Nay, more likely in her case, for that special reason of womanhood, that positive instinct to be dependent, and to find life at once swallowed up and blessed by something or some person outside of Self. A modern woman, who desires to be independent, is eager to find something upon which she may depend. The Self of the average woman does not really subsist and reach perfect consciousness until the lover makes the claim of another Self upon it. For that which at first appears to be a threat of absorption, annihilation of the individual, turns out to be the bliss of being rendered back. It is only by the loss of mere individuality that an immortal person is established.

What kind of a woman is this one who sallies forth to turn a man into a husband? Shakspeare endows her with natural traits so positive that they claim no repose, are contented with no proficiency, and continually project improvement. "Her dispositions she inherits, which make fair gifts fairer; for where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations go with pity, they are virtues and traitors too; in her they are