ago, and who smiles at him as a lovely shade from ancient Greek parchment times—the Helen of Sparta. How deeply and significantly does this yearning set forth the inner being of the German people!
In Troilus and Cressida Shakespeare has treated of Helen as sparingly as he did Cassandra in the previous chapter. We see her appear with Paris, and she exchanges with the grey-haired pander, Pandarus, a few lively mocking passages. She rallies him, and at last asks that he shall sing, with his old bleating voice, a love-song. But sad, sorrowful shadows of forebodings, the foregoing feelings of a terrible end, often come before her frivolous heart; the serpents stretch out their black heads from the rosiest jests, and she betrays her deeper feeling in the words:
"Let thy song be love. This love will undo us all. O Cupid! Cupid! Cupid!"[1]
VIRGILIA.
[CORIOLANUS.]
She, the wife of Coriolanus, is a shy dove who dares not so much as coo in the presence of her over-haughty
- ↑ Troilus and Cressida, act iii. sc. I.
