the merriment of the comic muse. It is the tragic goddess who is very much more before us in this play, only that she here would fain be gay for once, and move to mirth. It is as if we saw Melpomene at a grisette-ball, dancing the chahut, bold laughter on her pale lips and death in her heart.
CASSANDRA.
[TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.]
It is the prophetic daughter of Priam whose picture is here preesented. She bears in her heart the awful foreknowledge of the future, she announces the fall of Troy, and now she stands and wails where Hector weapons himself to battle with the dreadful Pelides. She sees in the spirit her beloved brother bleeding from the open wound of death, she groans and grieves—in vain! No one heeds her counsel, and as hopeless of rescue as the whole deluded race, she sinks into the abyss of a dark destiny.
Shakespeare gives the beautiful seeress scanty and not very significant speech; she is to him only an ordinary prophetess of evil who, with her
