Page:Woman in the Nineteenth Century 1845.djvu/201

Rh Iphigenia is more like one of the women Shakspeare loved than the others; she is a tender virgin, ennobled and strengthened by sentiment more than intellect, what they call a woman par excellence.

Macaria is more like one of Massinger's women. She advances boldly, though with the decorum of her sex and nation:

Her speech when she offers herself as the victim, is reasonable, as one might speak to-day. She counts the cost all through. Iphigenia is too timid and delicate to dwell upon the loss of earthly bliss, and the due experience of life, even as much as Jeptha's daughter did, but Macaria is explicit, as well befits the daughter of Hercules.

Still nobler when Iolaus proposes rather that she shall draw lots with her sisters.