The Letters in Shakespeare's Plays

SOME years ago, when I was asked to lecture on Shakespeare’s heroines in the light of the knowledge which I had gained of their character through impersonating them on the stage, I wondered if it were possible to find anything to say that had not been said before. ‘If nothing is, that has not been before, how are our brains beguiled!’ However, I found out, when I applied myself to the task, that even Shakespeare, about whom hundreds of books have been written, has a little of the unknown. For years it was my trade to find out, not what he had been to others, but what he was to me, and to make that visible in my acting. It was easier to describe what I saw through my own medium, than through one for which I have had no training; but I am glad that I tried, because it meant more study of the plays, and so, more delightful experiences.

In the course of this study for my lectures on the women in Shakespeare, I was struck by the fact that the letters in his plays have never had their due. Little volumes of the songs have been published; jewels of wit and wisdom have been taken out of their setting and reset in birthday books, calendars, and the rest; but, so far as I know, there is no separate collection of the letters. I found, when I read them aloud, that they were wonderful letters, and worth talking about on their merits. ‘I should like to talk about them as well as the heroines,’ I said. ‘But there are so few,’ the friend, to whom I suggested them as a subject for a causerie, objected. ’I can’t remember any myself beyond t hose in The Merchant of Venice, and As You Like It.' ‘That’s splendid!’ I thought. ‘If you, who are not at all ignorant, can’t do better than that, there must be hundreds to whom it will be a surprise to learn that there are thirty letters, and all good ones!’

There is all the more reason for giving them our attention because they are the only letters written by Shakespeare that have survived. I doubt whether, as a man, he was a good correspondent. He crowded his great life’s work, which has made England more honored throughout the world than the achievements of her great soldiers, sailors, and statesmen, into a score of years. He did not begin his career as a youthful prodigy, and he died when he was fifty-two. What with adapting plays, creating them, retouching them at rehearsal, writing sonnets, acting, managing companies of actors, and having a good time with his friends, he could not have had much leisure for pouring out his soul in letters. The man who does that is, as a rule, an idle man, and Shakespeare, I feel sure, was always busy.

People often say we have no authority for talking about Shakespeare as a man at all. What do we know for certain about his life? But I quite agree with Georg Brandes (my favorite Shakespearean scholar) that, given the possession of forty-five important works by any man, it is entirely our own fault if we know nothing about him. But perhaps these works are not by Shakespeare, but by a syndicate, or by some fellow who took his name! Why should we pursue these tiresome theories? I wish we had just one authentic letter of Shakespeare’s to put a stop to it. Otherwise, I should be glad that he left none behind for posterity to thumb. I don’t like reading the private letters of a great man. Print is so merciless. Many things pass in hand-writing, which print, ‘shows up.’ Print is so impertinent — flinging open the door of a little room, where, perhaps, two lovers are communing, and saying to the public, ‘Have a look at them — these great people in love! You see they are just as silly as little people.’ The Browning letters — ought they ever to have been published? The Sonnets from the Portuguese gave us the picture of a great love. The letters were like an anatomical dissection of it.

Now these letters in Shakespeare’s plays were meant for the public ear — invented to please it; so we can examine them with a clear conscience. Yet they are true to life. We can learn from them how the man of action writes a letter, and how the poet writes a letter. We can learn that, when people are in love, they all use the same language. Whether they are stupid or clever, they employ the same phrases. ‘I love you,’ writes the man of genius—and ‘I love you,’ writes the fool. Hamlet begins his letter to Ophelia in the conventional rhymes which were fashionable with Elizabethan gallants: —

‘To the celestial and my soul’s idol, the most beautified Ophelia’ — ‘In her excellent white bosom, these,’ and so on.

So far he writes in his character of ‘the glass of fashion.’ But he does not like the artificial style and soon abandons it for simple, earnest prose: —

O DEAR OPHELIA, I am ill at these numbers. I have not art to reckon my groans; but that I love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu.

Thine evermore, most dear lady, Whilst this machine is to him,

HAMLET.

Is this a sincere love-letter? Was Hamlet ever in love with Ophelia? I think he was, and found it hard to put her out of his life. At the very moment when the revelation of his mother’s infidelity had made him cynical about woman’s virtue, this girl acts in a way that fills him with suspicion. She hands his letters to her father, allows herself to be made a tool. His conclusion is: ‘You are like my mother; you could act as she did.’ But he loved her all the same.

Proteus, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, is one of those professional lovers who are never in love and never out of it. I can imagine him reeling off love-letters with consummate ease, not caring much to whom they were addressed so long as they contained enough beautiful epithets to satisfy him! Of his letter to Julia we hear only fragments: ‘Kind Julia’; ‘love-wounded Proteus’; ‘poor forlorn Proteus’; ‘passionate Proteus ’ — more of Proteus than of Julia, you see! — for Julia, like many another woman, has, for the sake of her self-respect, torn up the letter that she is burning to read! She pieces the torn bits together, but these incoherent exclamations are all that her pride has left legible. Proteus’s letter to Silvia we hear complete. It is in the fashionable rhyme, affected, insincere, but quite pretty.

How this letter-writer enjoyed playing with words! And how different this skill at pat-ball from the profound feeling in the letter from Antonio to Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice! Hear how a man, deeply moved, writes to the friend he loves.

SWEET BASSANIO, — My ships have all miscarried, my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very low, my bond to the Jew is forfeit, and since in paying it, it is impossible I should live, all debts are cleared between you and I, if I might but see you at my death. Notwithstanding, use your pleasure. If your love do not persuade you to come, let not my letter.

To my mind, in this letter human love at its greatest finds expression. This love has all the tenderness of a woman’s love: ‘Sweet Bassanio!’ the trustfulness of a child’s ‘I have only to tell him and he will help me’; the generosity and manliness of a true friend’s ‘Don’t feel that you owe me anything. It’s all right, but I would like to see you and grasp your hand’; the unselfishness with which wives and mothers love: ‘You must n’t think of coming all the same, if it puts you out.’ Of all the letters in the plays, this one of Antonio’s is my favorite.

Our manner of expression is determined by the age in which we live, but in this letter it is the thing expressed that seems to have changed. It is impossible to study Shakespeare’s plays closely without noticing that to him friendship was perhaps the most sacred of all human relations. Valentine offers to sacrifice Silvia to Proteus. Bassanio says that his wife matters less to him than the life of his friend. To an Elizabethan audience this exaltation of friendship did not seem strange. Two of Shakespeare’s comrades, Beaumont and Fletcher, lived together ‘on the Bankside, not far from the playhouse,’ and had the same ‘clothes and cloak between them’; and there were many such all-sufficing friendships. That attractive old sinner, John Falstaff, was cut to the heart when His friend Prince Hal publicly denounced him. His affection for young Harry is a lovable trait in his character; and who does not feel sorry for him, worthless old waster as he is, when the Prince answers his, ‘God save thee my sweet boy,’ with ‘I know thee not, old man; fall to thy prayers’? But when Falstaff wrote the following letter, Harry was still unreformed and friendly: —

Sir John Falstaff, knight, to the son of the King nearest his father, HARRY PRINCE OP WALES, greeting: —

I will imitate the honourable Romans in brevity. I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I leave thee. Be not too familiar with Poins; for he misuses thy favours so much, that he swears thou art to marry his sister Nell. Repent at idle times as thou mayest; and so, farewell.

Thine by yea and no, which is as much as to say, as thou usest him, JACK FALSTAFF with my familiars, JOHN with my brothers and sisters, and SIR JOHN with all Europe.

When we meet Sir John again in The Merry Wives of Windsor, — in which play Shakespeare had to bring him out of his grave, ‘by request,’ because he was so popular in the theatre that audiences wanted to see him in another play, — his wit is not quite so bright, but his epistolary style is much the same. You may remember that he writes two loveletters, word for word the same, to two women living in the same town, who, as he must have known, met often and exchanged confidences. This alone shows that the Falstaff of the Merry Wives is not quite the man he was in Henry IV — does not carry his sack as well, perhaps!

Ask me no reason why I love you; for though Love use Reason for his physician, he admits him not for his counsellor. You are not young, no more am I; go to then, there’s sympathy. You are merry, so am I; ha, ha! then there’s more sympathy. You love sack, and so do I; would you desire better sympathy? Let it suffice thee, Mistress Page, — at the least, if the love of a soldier can suffice, — that I love thee. I will not say, pity me; ’t is not a soldier-like phrase; but I say, love me. By me,

JOHN FALSTAFF.

This letter may not be very funny in print; but when it is read aloud on the stage, it provokes much laughter. Sometimes one thinks that a joke is the thing most affected by the time-spirit. Remove it from its place in time, and it ceases to exist as a joke. Our sense of what is tragic remains the same through the centuries; but our sense of humor — that changes. It is hard to believe that some Elizabethan comedies were ever amusing. In nothing does Shakespeare show himself ‘above the law’ more clearly than in his fun. It is not always ‘nice,’ but it is mirthprovoking, that is, if it is not treated academically. If a modern audience does not laugh at Shakespeare’s jokes, blame the actors! The letter that Maria, in Twelfth Night, palms off on Malvolio as Olivia’s has all the material for making us laugh; but I have seen Malvolios who so handled the material as to justify the opinion that Shakespeare’s comedy is no longer comic. Here again it is the situation that makes the letter good fun on the stage. It begins in verse of rather poor quality: —

Maria was not much of a poet, but when she takes to prose, she shines.

If this fall into thy hand, revolve. In my stars I am above thee, but be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em. Thy Fates open their hands, let thy blood and spirit embrace them; and, to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy humble slough and appear fresh. Be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants; let thy tongue tang arguments of state; put thyself into the trick of singularity: she thus advises thee that sighs for thee. Remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered. I say, remember. Go to, thou art made, if thou desirest to be so; if not, let me see thee a steward still, the fellow of servants, and not worthy to touch Fortune’s fingers. Farewell. She that would alter services with thee,

THE FORTUNATE UNHAPPY.

Then follows the postscript; and Maria had reserved her great coup for the postscript (the only one, by the way, that is written in full in the plays): —

If thou entertainest my love, let it appear in thy smiling. Thy smiles become thee well; therefore in my presence still smile, dear my sweet, I prithee!

Shakespeare was no Puritan. He probably enjoyed bear-baiting, and yet, unlike many of his contemporaries, felt sorry for the bear. So after writing this scene, in which Malvolio is baited, and deluded, and made to look a fool, he is able to write another in which our sympathies are roused with the victim of Maria’s ‘sport royal.’ Malvolio’s letter to Olivia makes us see that the sport had its cruel side.

By the Lord, madam, you wrong me, and the world shall know it. Though you have put me into darkness and given your drunken cousin rule over me, yet have I the benefit of my senses as well as your ladyship. I have your own letter that induced me to the semblance I put on; with the which I doubt not but to do myself much right, or you much shame. Think of me as you please. I leave my duty a little unthought of and speak out of my injury.

THE MADLY-USED MALVOLIO.

Although written in circumstances calculated to make the best servant ‘a little forget his duty,’ this letter is full of the dignity of service, and a just rebuke to those who hold their ‘inferiors’ up to ridicule.

From a letter from a steward in a gold chain, preserving his dignity in an undignified position, I turn to one from a groom. A plain fellow this. I see him sitting down, laboriously scratching out a few illegible sentences. But they are straight to the point, and they have their dramatic value in adding a touch to the portrait of Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII.

MY LORD, — The horses your lordship sent for, with all the care I had, I saw well chosen, ridden, and furnished. They were young and handsome, and of the best breed in the north. When they were ready to set out for London, a man of my Lord Cardinal’s, by commission and main power, took ’em from me, with this reason: His master would be served before a subject, if not before the King; which stopped our mouths, sir.

There is a tedious, pedantic letter in Love’s Labour’s Lost, which may have amused Shakespeare’s contemporaries because it satirizes the affectations of their day. Armado’s style in this letter is only a slight exaggeration of that in which people wrote to Queen Elizabeth. They used six long words when one short one would have conveyed their meaning, and racked their brains for pretentious and extravagant compliments. I used to read this letter in one of my lectures, and oh, what a job it was to get any fun out of it! Here is a sample of its humor: —

The magnanimous and most illustrate king Cophetua set eye upon the pernicious and indubitate beggar, Zenelophon; and he it was that might rightly say, Veni, vidi, vici; which to annothanize in the vulgar, — O base and obscure vulgar! — videlicet, He came, saw, and overcame: he came, one; saw, two; overcame, three. Who came? The king. Why did he come? To see. Why did he see? To overcome. To whom came he? To the beggar. What saw he? The beggar. Who overcame he? The beggar. The conclusion is victory; on whose side? The king’s. The captive is enriched; on whose side? The beggar’s. The catastrophe is a nuptial; on whose side? The king’s; no, on both in one, or one in both.

And so forth.

But, of course, when the audience has seen the popinjay Armado and knows that this high-flowm stuff is written to an illiterate peasant-girl, the letter makes a different impression, especially if Boyet, who has to read it, is a good actor! But if he is a wise one, he will probably beg for the effusion to be ‘cut.’

‘I say she never did invent this letter,’ exclaims Rosalind, after hearing the rhymed jingle that Phebe sends her under the impression that she is a handsome young man. This lets us into a little secret about these rhymed letters. They could be bought in many English villages, from the professional letterwriter of the parish. And this was the sort of letter that he turned out: —

In All’s Well that Ends Well, we find that women of property commanded the services of their stewards when they wanted a letter written. Bertram’s mother in this play instructs her steward, Rinaldo, to write to her son for her: —

Rinaldo evidently obeyed this instruction faithfully, for we hear later on that the letter ‘stings Bertram’s nature,’ and that on the reading of it ‘he changed almost into another man.’ Bertram ends his letter to his mother with ‘My duty to you.’ He is not on good terms with her, but he does not forget to be externally filial and polite. An odious young man, yet Helena, whom he treats so outrageously, is annoyingly fond of him.

My next letter-writer, Leonatus in Cymbeline, plays his wife a dirty trick. But in all ages a man whose jealousy is roused is forgiven much. Leonatus is devoted to Imogen, yet he can make her chastity the subject of a wager with a man who scoffs at the idea of any woman being chaste.

He writes and asks her to welcome this man of whom he has every reason to think ill. He goes so far as to describe Iachimo to her as ‘one of the noblest note, to whose kindnesses I am most infinitely tied. Reflect upon him accordingly, as you value your trust —’ ’So far I read aloud,’ says Imogen; and adds that the rest of the letter warms ‘the very middle of my heart’ — a letter written by a husband who cannot believe in her without proof, and has sent a comparative stranger to make an assault on her virtue!

It is not surprising that, when Iachimo returns with his catalogue of all the furniture in Imogen’s room, and a careful description of the mole on her left breast, ‘cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops i’ the bottom of a cowslip,’ Leonatus should ‘see red’; but there is really no excuse for his sitting down and writing a base falsehood to lure his wife to her death. How differently Imogen behaves when Iachimo traduces Leonatus to her! She is not only indignant; she is reasonable and sensible. When he urges her to be revenged, she says that, if it were true, — but she will not let her heart be abused in haste by her ears, — revenge would not help her. And what wisdom there is in her reply to Iachimo: —

She sees through this man, but naturally does not see through this letter from Leonatus.

Justice, and your father’s wrath, should he take me in his dominion, could not be so cruel to me, as you, O the dearest of creatures, would even renew me with your eyes. Take notice that I am in Cambria, at Milford-Haven; what your own love will out of this advise you, follow. So he wishes you all happiness, that remains loyal to his vow, and your increasing in love

LEONATUS POSTHUMUS.

I never could read it on the stage without believing in its sincerity. A woman would have to be very suspicious to take it as ‘a trap.’ Imogen’s love was so great that she forgave the man who wrote it to make her death sure. Did Shakespeare himself hold the opinion that a woman’s love and a man’s love have no common denominator? Leonatus shows his love by planning to kill his wife, when he is convinced that she is unfaithful. When he finds that he has been deceived, he calls himself ‘a credulous fool,’and other harsh names. But Imogen refrains from petty reproaches. The worst she says is: —

To love when all goes well — that is easy. To love when the loved one behaves like Leonatus — that requires a self-abnegation which is apparently considered impossible except to women!

Macbeth’s letter to his wife is interesting, not only because it is one of those rare tributes that a man sometimes pays to the share his wife has had in the making of his career, but because of the light it throws on the visionary element in Macbeth’s character. The goal of his ambition is a material thing, — an earthly crown, — but he believes in the supernatural nature of his ‘call.’

They met me in the day of success; and I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the King, who all-hailed me ‘Thane of Cawdor’; by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, with ‘Hail, King that shalt be!’ This have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou mightest not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell.

‘My dearest partner of greatness!’ Is not that a wonderful revelation of the relationship between this husband and his wife? Is not the whole letter a wonderful revelation of the man’s character? a man who was driven by dreams into a common and cruel crime.

We could not have a better example than this of Shakespeare’s use of the letter in his plays. Dramatists now condemn them, with soliloquies, as a clumsy expedient for letting the audience ‘know things.’ But Shakespeare employs both letters and soliloquies with a skill that strikes one more when one sees his plays in action than when one reads them. Bellario’s letter to the Duke in The Merchant of Venice, besides being a model of what a letter should be, is a masterly preparation for Portia’s entrance in the Court scene, and an instruction as to how the actress ought to handle that scene. She is not to behave with feminine inconsequence, and provoke laughter by her ignorance of legal procedure, but to conduct herself like a trained advocate. The letter makes Portia’s eloquence and intelligence convincing to the audience.

Your Grace shall understand that at the receipt of your letter I am very sick; but in the instant that your messenger came, in loving visitation was with me a young doctor of Rome. His name is Balthazar. I acquainted him with the cause in controversy between the Jew and Antonio the merchant. We turned o’er many books together. He is furnished with my opinion; which, bettered with his own learning, the greatness whereof I cannot enough commend, comes with him, at my importunity, to fill up your Grace’s request in my stead. I beseech you, let his lack of years be no impediment to let him lack a reverend estimation; for I never knew so young a body with so old a head. I leave him to your gracious acceptance, whose trial shall better publish his commendation.

What a lot of things there are to think over in this letter! And what pictures it conjures up! No Italian painter could make us see more clearly the learned Bellario receiving his young visitor and instructing her how to conduct her case. With the instinct of genius, the dramatist absorbed the spirit of the Renaissance in this play, as in Julius Cœsar he absorbed the spirit of ancient Rome. If Shakespeare knew ‘small Latin and less Greek,’ he was able to make this letter of warning to Cœsar typically Latin in its conciseness: —

Cœsar, beware of Brutus; take heed of Cassius; come not near Casca; have an eye to Cinna; trust not Trebonius; mark well Metellus Cimber; Decius Brutus loves thee not; thou hast wronged Caius Ligarius. There is but one mind in all these men, and it is bent against Cæsar. If thou beest not immortal, look about you; security gives way to conspiracy. The mighty gods defend thee! Thy lover,

ARTEMODORUS.

The whole plot of the play, and the guiding motive of each character, can be found in these short sentences.

If we compare this letter with the long-winded effusion from Armado to the King in Love’s Labour’s Lost (which I am not going to quote here, because it is so terribly long), we get a good idea of the infinite variety of style that the dramatist had at his command, and of his insight into the characteristics of different races at different times. He knew that the Romans were masters of brevity. And he knew that the affected Elizabethan courtier was a master of verbosity. Both he can imitate to the life.

In Henry IV Hotspur reads a letter, and this time it is the man who reads it, not the man who writes it, on whom our attention is concentrated. You see a quick-witted, courageous fellow, impatient of cautious people who see both sides of a question and are afraid of going too far. You see the ‘extremist,’ with all his good points and his bad ones.

He could be contented; why is he not, then? In respect of the love he bears our house: he shows in this, he loves his own barn better than he loves our house. . . . ‘The purpose you undertake is dangerous’; — why that’s certain. ’T is dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety. ‘The purpose you undertake is dangerous; . . . the friends you have named uncertain; and your whole plot too light for the counterpoise of so great an opposition.’ Say you so, say you so? I say unto you again, you are a shallow, cowardly hind, and you lie. What a lackbrain is this! By the Lord, our plot is a good plot as ever was laid; our friends true and constant: a good plot, good friends, and full of expectation; an excellent plot, very good friends. What a frosty-spirited rogue is this! Why, my Lord of York commends the plot and the general course of the action. ’Zounds, an I were now by this rascal, I could brain him with his lady’s fan.

There is real ‘vinegar and pepper’ in this outburst of Hotspur’s. Compare it with the ‘vinegar and pepper’ of Sir Andrew Aguecheek’s fiery challenge to Viola in Twelfth Night. Sir Andrew is, as you know, a very devil of a fellow. He is quite sure that this letter is bold enough to strike terror into the heart of the most confident enemy: —

Youth, whatsoever thou art, thou art but a scurvy fellow. Wonder not, nor admire not in thy mind, why I do call thee so, for I will show thee no reason for’t. Thou com’st to the lady Olivia, and in my sight she uses thee kindly. But thou liest in thy throat; that is not the matter I challenge thee for. I will waylay thee going home; where if it be thy chance to kill me, thou killest me like a rogue and a villain. Fare thee well, and God have mercy upon one of our souls! He may have mercy upon mine; but my hope is better, and so look to thyself.

Thy friend, as thou usest him, and thy sworn enemy, ANDREW AGUECHEEK.

Besides Hamlet’s letter to Ophelia, there are two other letters from him in the play which are often omitted in acting versions. The first is to Horatio, and it has its bright side in the complete confidence he places in his friend: —

Horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked this, give these fellows some means to the King; they have letters for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour. In the grapple I boarded them. On the instant they got clear of our ship, so I alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy, but they knew what they did: I am to do a good turn for them. Let the King have the letters I have sent, and repair thou to me with as much speed as thou wouldst fly death. I have words to speak in your ear will make thee dumb, yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter. These good fellows will bring thee where I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course for England; of them I have much to tell thee. Farewell.

He that thou knowest thine,

HAMLET.

The wording of the second letter, to the King, is simple and direct enough, yet it has a sinister and malevolent sound — its very civility is calculated to terrify the guilty conscience of the King: —

High and mighty, You shall know I am set naked on your kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes, when I shall, first asking your pardon thereunto, recount the occasions of my sudden and more strange return.

HAMLET.

‘And in a postscript here,’ says the King, who reads the letter, ‘he says, “alone.” ’

In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare adopts the method of making someone give the substance of a letter, instead of reading the actual words of the writer. Twice Octavius Cæsar enters ‘reading a letter,’ and twice we have to trust to his honor that he is reporting it fairly. The first, which brings news of Antony, is obviously colored by Octavius’s jealousy of his great ‘competitor.’

You feel at once that Octavius reads this as a stroke of diplomacy. He wants to justify himself in the eyes of the world for hating Antony, and he does not trouble to be accurate. Half a truth is always more damning than a lie.

Antony was, as he is represented hero, a pleasure-seeker; he had that reckless determination to enjoy the moment, which is not an uncommon attribute of great rulers and great artists. But he was, as well, a fine soldier, one who was at his best in defeat and misfortune. He loved luxury, but he could at times renounce all comfort for the sake of keeping up the courage of his men. But with Roman fortitude he had neither Roman restraint nor Roman simplicity. He loves striking an attitude. Twice he challenges Octavius to single combat, and in language so vainglorious that Octavius exclaims: ‘He calls me boy’ (this time he is too angry to misrepresent Antony, and we may take it that his version of the challenge is true): —

Timon of Athens’s last message to the world is melancholy reading! Its fierce and savage cynicism shows our gentle Shakespeare in a new light. Timon makes his grave on the ‘beached verge of the salt flood,’ and erects his own tomb, —

A soldier takes an impression in wax of the inscription scratched on it, and brings it to Alcibiades: —

Alcibiades, with a generosity that we should imitate, finds the noble element in this last effort after consistency of a consistent hater of men: —

Those are good words with which to bring this little study of a corner of the great, world of Shakespeare’s mind to an end!