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SHAKESPEARE'S MAIDENS AND WOMEN.

I will repeal thee, or, be well assured,
Adventure to be banislied myself:
And banislied I am, if but from thee.
Go, speak not to me ; even now be gone.
O, go not yet ! Even thus two friends, condemn'd, ,
Embrace, and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves,
Loather a hundred times to part than die.
Yet now farewell ; and farewell life with thee 1
Suf. Thus is poor Suffolk ten times banished,
Once by the king, and three times thrice by thee.
'Tis not the land I care for, wert thou hence :
A wilderness is populous enough,
So Suffolk had thy heavenly company :
For where thou art, there is the world itself,
V/ith every several pleasure in the world :
And where thou art not, desolation.
I can no more : Live thou to joy thy life ;
Myself no joy in nought, but that thou liv'st."[1]

And later, when Margaret, bearing the bloody head of her beloved in her hand, wails forth the wildest despair, she reminds us of the terrible Chrimhilda of the " Nibelungenlied." What iron-mailed agonies whence all words of comfort glance aside in vain!

I have already shown in the introduction that I intended as regarded the English historical dramas of Shakespeare to refrain from historical and philosophical reflections. The theme of those dramas will never be fully discussed, so long as the strife of the modern requirements of indus-

  1. Second Part of King Henry VI., act iii. sc. 2.