Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/339

 *posing that she is departed, he finds that she is for the first time present. Although he has been full of faults, and does not hesitate to screen himself by the most ungentlemanly prevarications, there is a strain of his nature that sounded when he thought that death had snapped her string. The vibration woke the tone of Helena, and married him to her without a priest save death. "Sweet Helen's knell" became the joy-peals of her marriage morn. Then he receives his true patent of nobility; for her soul converts him to a man.

In this play, Shakspeare has followed the incidents of an old story; but, in doing so, Helena grew upon his hands to be so fine that we dislike to see her submit to a certain one of the circumstances of that borrowed plot. And we wonder that Shakspeare should not have shielded her by a better invention.

We are not satisfied to know that such incidents were very common in the novels of that day, whence Shakspeare derived many of his plots; for the greatest moments of his genius have taught us reverently to demand of him more than that he should be content to take the old threads and weave the old strand over. We expect to follow them as clews that lead through subtle labyrinths of Nature where the heart has stored its secrets. Whenever we venture with him on that raft of some light tale of Boccaccio, we are not surprised if we drop into deep water whose cresting waves admonish Shakspeare to brace and fortify the slim float he started on. We do not relish the idea that Shakspeare is mainly interested to work out a plot into a good act