Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

Antonio was a rich and prosperous merchant of Venice. His ships were on nearly every sea, and he traded with Portugal, with Mexico, with England, and with India. Although proud of his riches, he was very generous with them, and delighted to use them in relieving the wants of his friends, among whom his relation, Bassanio, held the first place.

Now Bassanio, like many another gay and gallant gentleman, was reckless and extravagant, and finding that he had not only come to the end of his fortune, but was also unable to pay his creditors, he went to Antonio for further help.

“To you, Antonio,” he said, “I owe the most in money and in love: and I have thought of a plan to pay everything I owe if you will but help me.”

“Say what I can do, and it shall be done,” answered his friend.

Then said Bassanio, “In Belmont is a lady richly left, and from all quarters of the globe renowned suitors come to woo her, not only because she is rich, but because she is beautiful and good as well. She looked on me with such favor when last we met, that I feel sure that I should win her away from all rivals for her love had I but the means to go to Belmont, where she lives.”

“All my fortunes,” said Antonio, “are at sea, and so I have no ready money; but luckily my credit is good in Venice, and I will borrow for you what you need.”

There was living in Venice at this time a rich money-lender, named Shylock. Antonio despised and disliked this man very much, and treated him with the greatest harshness and scorn. He would thrust him, like a cur, over his threshold, and would even spit on him. Shylock submitted to all these indignities with a patient shrug; but deep in his heart he cherished a desire for revenge on the rich, smug merchant. For Antonio both hurt his pride and injured his business. “But for him,” thought Shylock, “I should be richer by half a million ducats. On the market place, and wherever he can, he denounces the rate of interest I charge, and--worse than that--he lends out money freely.”

So when Bassanio came to him to ask for a loan of three thousand ducats to Antonio for three months, Shylock hid his hatred, and turning to Antonio, said--“Harshly as you have treated me, I would be friends with you and have your love. So I will lend you the money and charge you no interest. But, just for fun, you shall sign a bond in which it shall be agreed that if you do not repay me in three months' time, then I shall have the right to a pound of your flesh, to be cut from what part of your body I choose.”

“No,” cried Bassanio to his friend, “you shall run no such risk for me.”

“Why, fear not,” said Antonio, “my ships will be home a month before the time. I will sign the bond.”

Thus Bassanio was furnished with the means to go to Belmont, there to woo the lovely Portia. The very night he started, the money-lender's pretty daughter, Jessica, ran away from her father's house with her lover, and she took with her from her father's hoards some bags of ducats and precious stones. Shylock's grief and anger were terrible to see. His love for her changed to hate. “I would she were dead at my feet and the jewels in her ear,” he cried. His only comfort now was in hearing of the serious losses which had befallen Antonio, some of whose ships were wrecked. “Let him look to his bond,” said Shylock, “let him look to his bond.”

Meanwhile Bassanio had reached Belmont, and had visited the fair Portia. He found, as he had told Antonio, that the rumor of her wealth and beauty had drawn to her suitors from far and near. But to all of them Portia had but one reply. She would only accept that suitor who would pledge himself to abide by the terms of her father's will. These were conditions that frightened away many an ardent wooer. For he who would win Portia's heart and hand, had to guess which of three caskets held her portrait. If he guessed aright, then Portia would be his bride; if wrong, then he was bound by oath never to reveal which casket he chose, never to marry, and to go away at once.

The caskets were of gold, silver, and lead. The gold one bore this inscription:--“Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire;” the silver one had this:--“Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves;” while on the lead one were these words:--“Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.” The Prince of Morocco, as brave as he was black, was among the first to submit to this test. He chose the gold casket, for he said neither base lead nor silver could contain her picture. So be chose the gold casket, and found inside the likeness of what many men desire--death.

After him came the haughty Prince of Arragon, and saying, “Let me have what I deserve--surely I deserve the lady,” he chose the silver one, and found inside a fool's head. “Did I deserve no more than a fool's head?” he cried.

Then at last came Bassanio, and Portia would have delayed him from making his choice from very fear of his choosing wrong. For she loved him dearly, even as he loved her. “But,” said Bassanio, “let me choose at once, for, as I am, I live upon the rack.”

Then Portia bade her servants to bring music and play while her gallant lover made his choice. And Bassanio took the oath and walked up to the caskets--the musicians playing softly the while. “Mere outward show,” he said, “is to be despised. The world is still deceived with ornament, and so no gaudy gold or shining silver for me. I choose the lead casket; joy be the consequence!” And opening it, he found fair Portia's portrait inside, and he turned to her and asked if it were true that she was his.

“Yes,” said Portia, “I am yours, and this house is yours, and with them I give you this ring, from which you must never part.”

And Bassanio, saying that he could hardly speak for joy, found words to swear that he would never part with the ring while he lived.

Then suddenly all his happiness was dashed with sorrow, for messengers came from Venice to tell him that Antonio was ruined, and that Shylock demanded from the Duke the fulfilment of the bond, under which he was entitled to a pound of the merchant's flesh. Portia was as grieved as Bassanio to hear of the danger which threatened his friend.

“First,” she said, “take me to church and make me your wife, and then go to Venice at once to help your friend. You shall take with you money enough to pay his debt twenty times over.”

But when her newly-made husband had gone, Portia went after him, and arrived in Venice disguised as a lawyer, and with an introduction from a celebrated lawyer Bellario, whom the Duke of Venice had called in to decide the legal questions raised by Shylock's claim to a pound of Antonio's flesh. When the Court met, Bassanio offered Shylock twice the money borrowed, if he would withdraw his claim. But the money-lender's only answer was--

“If every ducat in six thousand ducats,

Were in six parts, and every part a ducat,

I would not draw them,--I would have my bond.”

It was then that Portia arrived in her disguise, and not even her own husband knew her. The Duke gave her welcome on account of the great Bellario's introduction, and left the settlement of the case to her. Then in noble words she bade Shylock have mercy. But he was deaf to her entreaties. “I will have the pound of flesh,” was his reply.

“What have you to say?” asked Portia of the merchant.

“But little,” he answered; “I am armed and well prepared.”

“The Court awards you a pound of Antonio's flesh,” said Portia to the money-lender.

“Most righteous judge!” cried Shylock. “A sentence: come, prepare.”

“Tarry a little. This bond gives you no right to Antonio's blood, only to his flesh. If, then, you spill a drop of his blood, all your property will be forfeited to the State. Such is the Law.”

And Shylock, in his fear, said, “Then I will take Bassanio's offer.”

“No,” said Portia sternly, “you shall have nothing but your bond. Take your pound of flesh, but remember, that if you take more or less, even by the weight of a hair, you will lose your property and your life.”

Shylock now grew very much frightened. “Give me my three thousand ducats that I lent him, and let him go.”

Bassanio would have paid it to him, but said Portia, “No! He shall have nothing but his bond.”

“You, a foreigner,” she added, “have sought to take the life of a Venetian citizen, and thus by the Venetian law, your life and goods are forfeited. Down, therefore, and beg mercy of the Duke.”

Thus were the tables turned, and no mercy would have been shown to Shylock had it not been for Antonio. As it was, the money-lender forfeited half his fortune to the State, and he had to settle the other half on his daughter's husband, and with this he had to be content.

Bassanio, in his gratitude to the clever lawyer, was induced to part with the ring his wife had given him, and with which he had promised never to part, and when on his return to Belmont he confessed as much to Portia, she seemed very angry, and vowed she would not be friends with him until she had her ring again. But at last she told him that it was she who, in the disguise of the lawyer, had saved his friend's life, and got the ring from him. So Bassanio was forgiven, and made happier than ever, to know how rich a prize he had drawn in the lottery of the caskets.

---

TIMON OF ATHENS

Four hundred years before the birth of Christ, a man lived in Athens whose generosity was not only great, but absurd. He was very rich, but no worldly wealth was enough for a man who spent and gave like Timon. If anybody gave Timon a horse, he received from Timon twenty better horses. If anybody borrowed money of Timon and offered to repay it, Timon was offended. If a poet had written a poem and Timon had time to read it, he would be sure to buy it; and a painter had only to hold up his canvas in front of Timon to receive double its market price.

Flavius, his steward, looked with dismay at his reckless mode of life. When Timon's house was full of noisy lords drinking and spilling costly wine, Flavius would sit in a cellar and cry. He would say to himself, “There are ten thousand candles burning in this house, and each of those singers braying in the concert-room costs a poor man's yearly income a night;” and he would remember a terrible thing said by Apemantus, one of his master's friends, “O what a number of men eat Timon, and Timon sees them not!”

Of course, Timon was much praised.

A jeweler who sold him a diamond pretended that it was not quite perfect till Timon wore it. “You mend the jewel by wearing it,” he said. Timon gave the diamond to a lord called Sempronius, and the lord exclaimed, “O, he's the very soul of bounty.” “Timon is infinitely dear to me,” said another lord, called Lucullus, to whom he gave a beautiful horse; and other Athenians paid him compliments as sweet.

But when Apemantus had listened to some of them, he said, “I'm going to knock out an honest Athenian's brains.”

“You will die for that,” said Timon.

“Then I shall die for doing nothing,” said Apemantus. And now you know what a joke was like four hundred years before Christ.

This Apernantus was a frank despiser of mankind, but a healthy one, because he was not unhappy. In this mixed world anyone with a number of acquaintances knows a person who talks bitterly of men, but does not shun them, and boasts that he is never deceived by their fine speeches, and is inwardly cheerful and proud. Apemantus was a man like that.

Timon, you will be surprised to hear, became much worse than Apemantus, after the dawning of a day which we call Quarter Day.

Quarter Day is the day when bills pour in. The grocer, the butcher, and the baker are all thinking of their debtors on that day, and the wise man has saved enough money to be ready for them. But Timon had not; and he did not only owe money for food. He owed it for jewels and horses and furniture; and, worst of all, he owed it to money-lenders, who expected him to pay twice as much as he had borrowed.

Quarter Day is a day when promises to pay are scorned, and on that day Timon was asked for a large sum of money. “Sell some land,” he said to his steward. “You have no land,” was the reply. “Nonsense! I had a hundred, thousand acres,” said Timon. “You could have spent the price of the world if you had possessed it,” said Flavius.

“Borrow some then,” said Timon; “try Ventidius.” He thought of Ventidius because he had once got Ventidius out of prison by paying a creditor of this young man. Ventidius was now rich. Timon trusted in his gratitude. But not for all; so much did he owe! Servants were despatched with requests for loans of money to several friends:

One servant (Flaminius) went to Lucullus. When he was announced Lucullus said, “A gift, I warrant. I dreamt of a silver jug and basin last night.” Then, changing his tone, “How is that honorable, free-hearted, perfect gentleman, your master, eh?”

“Well in health, sir,” replied Flaminius.

“And what have you got there under your cloak?” asked Lucullus, jovially.

“Faith, sir, nothing but an empty box, which, on my master's behalf, I beg you to fill with money, sir.”

“La! la! la!” said Lucullus, who could not pretend to mean, “Ha! ha! ha!” “Your master's one fault is that he is too fond of giving parties. I've warned him that it was expensive. Now, look here, Flaminius, you know this is no time to lend money without security, so suppose you act like a good boy and tell him that I was not at home. Here's three solidares for yourself.”

“Back, wretched money,” cried Flaminius, “to him who worships you!”

Others of Timon's friends were tried and found stingy. Amongst them was Sempronius.

“Hum,” he said to Timon's servant, “has he asked Ventidius? Ventidius is beholden to him.”

“He refused.”

“Well, have you asked Lucullus?”

“He refused.”

“A poor compliment to apply to me last of all,” said Sempronius, in affected anger. “If he had sent to me at first, I would gladly have lent him money, but I'm not going to be such a fool as to lend him any now.”

“Your lordship makes a good villain,” said the servant.

When Timon found that his friends were so mean, he took advantage of a lull in his storm of creditors to invite Ventidius and Company to a banquet. Flavius was horrified, but Ventidius and Company, were not in the least ashamed, and they assembled accordingly in Timon's house, and said to one another that their princely host had been jesting with them.

“I had to put off an important engagement in order to come here,” said Lucullus; “but who could refuse Timon?”

“It was a real grief to me to be without ready money when he asked for some,” said Sempronius.

“The same here,” chimed in a third lord.

Timon now appeared, and his guests vied with one another in apologies and compliments. Inwardly sneering, Timon was gracious to them all.

In the banqueting ball was a table resplendent with covered dishes. Mouths watered. These summer-friends loved good food.

“Be seated, worthy friends,” said Timon. He then prayed aloud to the gods of Greece. “Give each man enough,” he said, “for if you, who are our gods, were to borrow of men they would cease to adore you. Let men love the joint more than the host. Let every score of guests contain twenty villains. Bless my friends as much as they have blessed me. Uncover the dishes, dogs, and lap!”

The hungry lords were too much surprised by this speech to resent it. They thought Timon was unwell, and, although he had called them dogs, they uncovered the dishes.

There was nothing in them but warm water.

“May you never see a better feast,” wished Timon “I wash off the flatteries with which you plastered me and sprinkle you with your villainy.” With these words he threw the water into his guests' faces, and then he pelted them with the dishes. Having thus ended the banquet, he went into an outhouse, seized a spade, and quitted Athens for ever.

His next dwelling was a cave near the sea.

Of all his friends, the only one who had not refused him aid was a handsome soldier named Alcibiades, and he had not been asked because, having quarreled with the Government of Athens, he had left that town. The thought that Alcibiades might have proved a true friend did not soften Timon's bitter feeling. He was too weak-minded to discern the fact that good cannot be far from evil in this mixed world. He determined to see nothing better in all mankind than the ingratitude of Ventidius and the meanness of Lucullus.

He became a vegetarian, and talked pages to himself as he dug in the earth for food.

One day, when he was digging for roots near the shore, his spade struck gold. If he had been a wise man he would have enriched himself quickly, and returned to Athens to live in comfort. But the sight of the gold vein gave no joy but only scorn to Timon. “This yellow slave,” he said, “will make and break religions. It will make black white and foul fair. It will buy murder and bless the accursed.”

He was still ranting when Alcibiades, now an enemy of Athens, approached with his soldiers and two beautiful women who cared for nothing but pleasure.

Timon was so changed by his bad thoughts and rough life that Alcibiades did not recognize him at first.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“A beast, as you are,” was the reply.

Alcibiades knew his voice, and offered him help and money. But Timon would none of it, and began to insult the women. They, however, when they found he had discovered a gold mine, cared not a jot for his opinion of them, but said, “Give us some gold, good Timon. Have you more?”

With further insults, Timon filled their aprons with gold ore.

“Farewell,” said Alcibiades, who deemed that Timon's wits were lost; and then his disciplined soldiers left without profit the mine which could have paid their wages, and marched towards Athens.

Timon continued to dig and curse, and affected great delight when he dug up a root and discovered that it was not a grape.

Just then Apemantus appeared. “I am told that you imitate me,” said Apemantus.

“Only,” said Timon, “because you haven't a dog which I can imitate.”

“You are revenging yourself on your friends by punishing yourself,” said Apemantus. “That is very silly, for they live just as comfortably as they ever did. I am sorry that a fool should imitate me.”

“If I were like you,” said Timon, “I should throw myself away.”

“You have done so,” sneered Apemantus. “Will the cold brook make you a good morning drink, or an east wind warm your clothes as a valet would?”

“Off with you!” said Timon; but Apemantus stayed a while longer and told him he had a passion for extremes, which was true. Apemantus even made a pun, but there was no good laughter to be got out of Timon.

Finally, they lost their temper like two schoolboys, and Timon said he was sorry to lose the stone which he flung at Apemantus, who left him with an evil wish.

This was almost an “at home” day for Timon, for when Apemantus had departed, he was visited by some robbers. They wanted gold.

“You want too much,” said Timon. “Here are water, roots and berries.”

“We are not birds and pigs,” said a robber.

“No, you are cannibals,” said Timon. “Take the gold, then, and may it poison you! Henceforth rob one another.”

He spoke so frightfully to them that, though they went away with full pockets, they almost repented of their trade. His last visitor on that day of visits was his good steward Flavius. “My dearest master!” cried he.

“Away! What are you?” said Timon.

“Have you forgotten me, sir?” asked Flavius, mournfully.

“I have forgotten all men,” was the reply; “and if you'll allow that you are a man, I have forgotten you.”

“I was your honest servant,” said Flavius.

“Nonsense! I never had an honest man about me,” retorted Timon.

Flavius began to cry.

“What! shedding tears?” said Timon. “Come nearer, then. I will love you because you are a woman, and unlike men, who only weep when they laugh or beg.”

They talked awhile; then Timon said, “Yon gold is mine. I will make you rich, Flavius, if you promise me to live by yourself and hate mankind. I will make you very rich if you promise me that you will see the flesh slide off the beggar's bones before you feed him, and let the debtor die in jail before you pay his debt.”

Flavius simply said, “Let me stay to comfort you, my master.”

“If you dislike cursing, leave me,” replied Timon, and he turned his back on Flavius, who went sadly back to Athens, too much accustomed to obedience to force his services upon his ailing master.

The steward had accepted nothing, but a report got about that a mighty nugget of gold had been given him by his former master, and Timon therefore received more visitors. They were a painter and a poet, whom he had patronized in his prosperity.

“Hail, worthy Timon!” said the poet. “We heard with astonishment how your friends deserted you. No whip's large enough for their backs!”

“We have come,” put in the painter, “to offer our services.”

“You've heard that I have gold,” said Timon.

“There was a report,” said the painter, blushing; “but my friend and I did not come for that.”

“Good honest men!” jeered Timon. “All the same, you shall have plenty of gold if you will rid me of two villains.”

“Name them,” said his two visitors in one breath. “Both of you!” answered Timon. Giving the painter a whack with a big stick, he said, “Put that into your palette and make money out of it.” Then he gave a whack to the poet, and said, “Make a poem out of that and get paid for it. There's gold for you.”

They hurriedly withdrew.

Finally Timon was visited by two senators who, now that Athens was threatened by Alcibiades, desired to have on their side this bitter noble whose gold might help the foe.

“Forget your injuries,” said the first senator. “Athens offers you dignities whereby you may honorably live.”

“Athens confesses that your merit was overlooked, and wishes to atone, and more than atone, for her forgetfulness,” said the second senator.

“Worthy senators,” replied Timon, in his grim way, “I am almost weeping; you touch me so! All I need are the eyes of a woman and the heart of a fool.”

But the senators were patriots. They believed that this bitter man could save Athens, and they would not quarrel with him. “Be our captain,” they said, “and lead Athens against Alcibiades, who threatens to destroy her.”

“Let him destroy the Athenians too, for all I care,” said Timon; and seeing an evil despair in his face, they left him.

The senators returned to Athens, and soon afterwards trumpets were blown before its walls. Upon the walls they stood and listened to Alcibiades, who told them that wrong-doers should quake in their easy chairs. They looked at his confident army, and were convinced that Athens must yield if he assaulted it, therefore they used the voice that strikes deeper than arrows.

“These walls of ours were built by the hands of men who never wronged you, Alcibiades,” said the first senator.

“Enter,” said the second senator, “and slay every tenth man, if your revenge needs human flesh.”

“Spare the cradle,” said the first senator.

“I ask only justice,” said Alcibiades. “If you admit my army, I will inflict the penalty of your own laws upon any soldier who breaks them.”

At that moment a soldier approached Alcibiades, and said, “My noble general, Timon is dead.” He handed Alcibiades a sheet of wax, saying, “He is buried by the sea, on the beach, and over his grave is a stone with letters on it which I cannot read, and therefore I have impressed them on wax.”

Alcibiades read from the sheet of wax this couplet--

“Here lie I, Timon, who, alive,

all living men did hate.

Pass by and say your worst; but pass,

and stay not here your gait.”

“Dead, then, is noble Timon,” said Alcibiades; and be entered Athens with an olive branch instead of a sword.

So it was one of Timon's friends who was generous in a greater matter than Timon's need; yet are the sorrow and rage of Timon remembered as a warning lest another ingratitude should arise to turn love into hate.

---

OTHELLO

Four hundred years ago there lived in Venice an ensign named Iago, who hated his general, Othello, for not making him a lieutenant. Instead of Iago, who was strongly recommended, Othello had chosen Michael Cassio, whose smooth tongue had helped him to win the heart of Desdemona. Iago had a friend called Roderigo, who supplied him with money and felt he could not be happy unless Desdemona was his wife.

Othello was a Moor, but of so dark a complexion that his enemies called him a Blackamoor. His life had been hard and exciting. He had been vanquished in battle and sold into slavery; and he had been a great traveler and seen men whose shoulders were higher than their heads. Brave as a lion, he had one great fault--jealousy. His love was a terrible selfishness. To love a woman meant with him to possess her as absolutely as he possessed something that did not live and think. The story of Othello is a story of jealousy.

One night Iago told Roderigo that Othello had carried off Desdemona without the knowledge of her father, Brabantio. He persuaded Roderigo to arouse Brabantio, and when that senator appeared Iago told him of Desdemona's elopement in the most unpleasant way. Though he was Othello's officer, he termed him a thief and a Barbary horse.

Brabantio accused Othello before the Duke of Venice of using sorcery to fascinate his daughter, but Othello said that the only sorcery he used was his voice, which told Desdemona his adventures and hair-breadth escapes. Desdemona was led into the council-chamber, and she explained how she could love Othello despite his almost black face by saying, “I saw Othello's visage in his mind.”

As Othello had married Desdemona, and she was glad to be his wife, there was no more to be said against him, especially as the Duke wished him to go to Cyprus to defend it against the Turks. Othello was quite ready to go, and Desdemona, who pleaded to go with him, was permitted to join him at Cyprus.

Othello's feelings on landing in this island were intensely joyful. “Oh, my sweet,” he said to Desdemona, who arrived with Iago, his wife, and Roderigo before him, “I hardly know what I say to you. I am in love with my own happiness.”

News coming presently that the Turkish fleet was out of action, he proclaimed a festival in Cyprus from five to eleven at night.

Cassio was on duty in the Castle where Othello ruled Cyprus, so Iago decided to make the lieutenant drink too much. He had some difficulty, as Cassio knew that wine soon went to his head, but servants brought wine into the room where Cassio was, and Iago sang a drinking song, and so Cassio lifted a glass too often to the health of the general.

When Cassio was inclined to be quarrelsome, Iago told Roderigo to say something unpleasant to him. Cassio cudgeled Roderigo, who ran into the presence of Montano, the ex-governor. Montano civilly interceded for Roderigo, but received so rude an answer from Cassio that he said, “Come, come, you're drunk!” Cassio then wounded him, and Iago sent Roderigo out to scare the town with a cry of mutiny.

The uproar aroused Othello, who, on learning its cause, said, “Cassio, I love thee, but never more be officer of mine.”

On Cassio and Iago being alone together, the disgraced man moaned about his reputation. Iago said reputation and humbug were the same thing. “O God,” exclaimed Cassio, without heeding him, “that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!”

Iago advised him to beg Desdemona to ask Othello to pardon him. Cassio was pleased with the advice, and next morning made his request to Desdemona in the garden of the castle. She was kindness itself, and said, “Be merry, Cassio, for I would rather die than forsake your cause.”

Cassio at that moment saw Othello advancing with Iago, and retired hurriedly.

Iago said, “I don't like that.”

“What did you say?” asked Othello, who felt that he had meant something unpleasant, but Iago pretended he had said nothing. “Was not that Cassio who went from my wife?” asked Othello, and Iago, who knew that it was Cassio and why it was Cassio, said, “I cannot think it was Cassio who stole away in that guilty manner.”

Desdemona told Othello that it was grief and humility which made Cassio retreat at his approach. She reminded him how Cassio had taken his part when she was still heart-free, and found fault with her Moorish lover. Othello was melted, and said, “I will deny thee nothing,” but Desdemona told him that what she asked was as much for his good as dining.

Desdemona left the garden, and Iago asked if it was really true that Cassio had known Desdemona before her marriage.

“Yes,” said Othello.

“Indeed,” said Iago, as though something that had mystified him was now very clear.

“Is he not honest?” demanded Othello, and Iago repeated the adjective inquiringly, as though he were afraid to say “No.”

“What do you mean?” insisted Othello.

To this Iago would only say the flat opposite of what he said to Cassio. He had told Cassio that reputation was humbug. To Othello he said, “Who steals my purse steals trash, but he who filches from me my good name ruins me.”

At this Othello almost leapt into the air, and Iago was so confident of his jealousy that he ventured to warn him against it. Yes, it was no other than Iago who called jealousy “the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.”

Iago having given jealousy one blow, proceeded to feed it with the remark that Desdemona deceived her father when she eloped with Othello. “If she deceived him, why not you?” was his meaning.

Presently Desdemona re-entered to tell Othello that dinner was ready. She saw that he was ill at ease. He explained it by a pain in his forehead. Desdemona then produced a handkerchief, which Othello had given her. A prophetess, two hundred years old, had made this handkerchief from the silk of sacred silkworms, dyed it in a liquid prepared from the hearts of maidens, and embroidered it with strawberries. Gentle Desdemona thought of it simply as a cool, soft thing for a throbbing brow; she knew of no spell upon it that would work destruction for her who lost it. “Let me tie it round your head,” she said to Othello; “you will be well in an hour.” But Othello pettishly said it was too small, and let it fall. Desdemona and he then went indoors to dinner, and Emilia picked up the handkerchief which Iago had often asked her to steal.

She was looking at it when Iago came in. After a few words about it he snatched it from her, and bade her leave him.

In the garden he was joined by Othello, who seemed hungry for the worst lies he could offer. He therefore told Othello that he had seen Cassio wipe his mouth with a handkerchief, which, because it was spotted with strawberries, he guessed to be one that Othello had given his wife.

The unhappy Moor went mad with fury, and Iago bade the heavens witness that he devoted his hand and heart and brain to Othello's service. “I accept your love,” said Othello. “Within three days let me hear that Cassio is dead.”

Iago's next step was to leave Desdemona's handkerchief in Cassio's room. Cassio saw it, and knew it was not his, but he liked the strawberry pattern on it, and he gave it to his sweetheart Bianca and asked her to copy it for him.

Iago's next move was to induce Othello, who had been bullying Desdemona about the handkerchief, to play the eavesdropper to a conversation between Cassio and himself. His intention was to talk about Cassio's sweetheart, and allow Othello to suppose that the lady spoken of was Desdemona.

“How are you, lieutenant?” asked Iago when Cassio appeared.

“The worse for being called what I am not,” replied Cassio, gloomily.

“Keep on reminding Desdemona, and you'll soon be restored,” said Iago, adding, in a tone too low for Othello to hear, “If Bianca could set the matter right, how quickly it would mend!”

“Alas! poor rogue,” said Cassio, “I really think she loves me,” and like the talkative coxcomb he was, Cassio was led on to boast of Bianca's fondness for him, while Othello imagined, with choked rage, that he prattled of Desdemona, and thought, “I see your nose, Cassio, but not the dog I shall throw it to.”

Othello was still spying when Bianca entered, boiling over with the idea that Cassio, whom she considered her property, had asked her to copy the embroidery on the handkerchief of a new sweetheart. She tossed him the handkerchief with scornful words, and Cassio departed with her.

Othello had seen Bianca, who was in station lower, in beauty and speech inferior far, to Desdemona and he began in spite of himself to praise his wife to the villain before him. He praised her skill with the needle, her voice that could “sing the savageness out of a bear,” her wit, her sweetness, the fairness of her skin. Every time he praised her Iago said something that made him remember his anger and utter it foully, and yet he must needs praise her, and say, “The pity of it, Iago! O Iago, the pity of it, Iago!”

There was never in all Iago's villainy one moment of wavering. If there had been he might have wavered then.

“Strangle her,” he said; and “Good, good!” said his miserable dupe.

The pair were still talking murder when Desdemona appeared with a relative of Desdemona's father, called Lodovico, who bore a letter for Othello from the Duke of Venice. The letter recalled Othello from Cyprus, and gave the governorship to Cassio.

Luckless Desdemona seized this unhappy moment to urge once more the suit of Cassio.

“Fire and brimstone!” shouted Othello.

“It may be the letter agitates him,” explained Lodovico to Desdemona, and he told her what it contained.

“I am glad,” said Desdemona. It was the first bitter speech that Othello's unkindness had wrung out of her.

“I am glad to see you lose your temper,” said Othello.

“Why, sweet Othello?” she asked, sarcastically; and Othello slapped her face.

Now was the time for Desdemona to have saved her life by separation, but she knew not her peril--only that her love was wounded to the core. “I have not deserved this,” she said, and the tears rolled slowly down her face.

Lodovico was shocked and disgusted. “My lord,” he said, “this would not be believed in Venice. Make her amends;” but, like a madman talking in his nightmare, Othello poured out his foul thought in ugly speech, and roared, “Out of my sight!”

“I will not stay to offend you,” said his wife, but she lingered even in going, and only when he shouted “Avaunt!” did she leave her husband and his guests.

Othello then invited Lodovico to supper, adding, “You are welcome, sir, to Cyprus. Goats and monkeys!” Without waiting for a reply he left the company.

Distinguished visitors detest being obliged to look on at family quarrels, and dislike being called either goats or monkeys, and Lodovico asked Iago for an explanation.

True to himself, Iago, in a round-about way, said that Othello was worse than he seemed, and advised them to study his behavior and save him from the discomfort of answering any more questions.

He proceeded to tell Roderigo to murder Cassio. Roderigo was out of tune with his friend. He had given Iago quantities of jewels for Desdemona without effect; Desdemona had seen none of them, for Iago was a thief.

Iago smoothed him with a lie, and when Cassio was leaving Bianca's house, Roderigo wounded him, and was wounded in return. Cassio shouted, and Lodovico and a friend came running up. Cassio pointed out Roderigo as his assailant, and Iago, hoping to rid himself of an inconvenient friend, called him “Villain!” and stabbed him, but not to death.

At the Castle, Desdemona was in a sad mood. She told Emilia that she must leave her; her husband wished it. “Dismiss me!” exclaimed Emilia. “It was his bidding, said Desdemona; we must not displease him now.”

She sang a song which a girl had sung whose lover had been base to her--a song of a maiden crying by that tree whose boughs droop as though it weeps, and she went to bed and slept.

She woke with her husband's wild eyes upon her. “Have you prayed to-night?” he asked; and he told this blameless and sweet woman to ask God's pardon for any sin she might have on her conscience. “I would not kill thy soul,” he said.

He told her that Cassio had confessed, but she knew Cassio had nought to confess that concerned her. She said that Cassio could not say anything that would damage her. Othello said his mouth was stopped.

Then Desdemona wept, but with violent words, in spite of all her pleading, Othello pressed upon her throat and mortally hurt her.

Then with boding heart came Emilia, and besought entrance at the door, and Othello unlocked it, and a voice came from the bed saying, “A guiltless death I die.”

“Who did it?” cried Emilia; and the voice said, “Nobody--I myself. Farewell!”

“'Twas I that killed her,” said Othello.

He poured out his evidence by that sad bed to the people who came running in, Iago among them; but when he spoke of the handkerchief, Emilia told the truth.

And Othello knew. “Are there no stones in heaven but thunderbolts?” he exclaimed, and ran at Iago, who gave Emilia her death-blow and fled.

But they brought him back, and the death that came to him later on was a relief from torture.

They would have taken Othello back to Venice to try him there, but he escaped them on his sword. “A word or two before you go,” he said to the Venetians in the chamber. “Speak of me as I was--no better, no worse. Say I cast away the pearl of pearls, and wept with these hard eyes; and say that, when in Aleppo years ago I saw a Turk beating a Venetian, I took him by the throat and smote him thus.”

With his own hand he stabbed himself to the heart; and ere he died his lips touched the face of Desdemona with despairing love.

---

Petruchio and Katherine

---

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

There lived in Padua a gentleman named Baptista, who had two fair daughters. The eldest, Katharine, was so very cross and ill-tempered, and unmannerly, that no one ever dreamed of marrying her, while her sister, Bianca, was so sweet and pretty, and pleasant-spoken, that more than one suitor asked her father for her hand. But Baptista said the elder daughter must marry first.

So Bianca's suitors decided among themselves to try and get some one to marry Katharine--and then the father could at least be got to listen to their suit for Bianca.

A gentleman from Verona, named Petruchio, was the one they thought of, and, half in jest, they asked him if he would marry Katharine, the disagreeable scold. Much to their surprise he said yes, that was just the sort of wife for him, and if Katharine were handsome and rich, he himself would undertake soon to make her good-tempered.

Petruchio began by asking Baptista's permission to pay court to his gentle daughter Katharine--and Baptista was obliged to own that she was anything but gentle. And just then her music master rushed in, complaining that the naughty girl had broken her lute over his head, because he told her she was not playing correctly.

“Never mind,” said Petruchio, “I love her better than ever, and long to have some chat with her.”

When Katharine came, he said, “Good-morrow, Kate--for that, I hear, is your name.”

“You've only heard half,” said Katharine, rudely.

“Oh, no,” said Petruchio, “they call you plain Kate, and bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the shrew, and so, hearing your mildness praised in every town, and your beauty too, I ask you for my wife.”

“Your wife!” cried Kate. “Never!” She said some extremely disagreeable things to him, and, I am sorry to say, ended by boxing his ears.

“If you do that again, I'll cuff you,” he said quietly; and still protested, with many compliments, that he would marry none but her.

When Baptista came back, he asked at once--

“How speed you with my daughter?”

“How should I speed but well,” replied Petruchio--“how, but well?”

“How now, daughter Katharine?” the father went on.

“I don't think,” said Katharine, angrily, “you are acting a father's part in wishing me to marry this mad-cap ruffian.”

“Ah!” said Petruchio, “you and all the world would talk amiss of her. You should see how kind she is to me when we are alone. In short, I will go off to Venice to buy fine things for our wedding--for--kiss me, Kate! we will be married on Sunday.”

With that, Katharine flounced out of the room by one door in a violent temper, and he, laughing, went out by the other. But whether she fell in love with Petruchio, or whether she was only glad to meet a man who was not afraid of her, or whether she was flattered that, in spite of her rough words and spiteful usage, he still desired her for his wife--she did indeed marry him on Sunday, as he had sworn she should.

To vex and humble Katharine's naughty, proud spirit, he was late at the wedding, and when he came, came wearing such shabby clothes that she was ashamed to be seen with him. His servant was dressed in the same shabby way, and the horses they rode were the sport of everyone they passed.

And, after the marriage, when should have been the wedding breakfast, Petruchio carried his wife away, not allowing her to eat or drink--saying that she was his now, and he could do as he liked with her.

And his manner was so violent, and he behaved all through his wedding in so mad and dreadful a manner, that Katharine trembled and went with him. He mounted her on a stumbling, lean, old horse, and they journeyed by rough muddy ways to Petruchio's house, he scolding and snarling all the way.

She was terribly tired when she reached her new home, but Petruchio was determined that she should neither eat nor sleep that night, for he had made up his mind to teach his bad-tempered wife a lesson she would never forget.

So he welcomed her kindly to his house, but when supper was served he found fault with everything--the meat was burnt, he said, and ill-served, and he loved her far too much to let her eat anything but the best. At last Katharine, tired out with her journey, went supperless to bed. Then her husband, still telling her how he loved her, and how anxious he was that she should sleep well, pulled her bed to pieces, throwing the pillows and bedclothes on the floor, so that she could not go to bed at all, and still kept growling and scolding at the servants so that Kate might see how unbeautiful a thing ill-temper was.

The next day, too, Katharine's food was all found fault with, and caught away before she could touch a mouthful, and she was sick and giddy for want of sleep. Then she said to one of the servants--

“I pray thee go and get me some repast. I care not what.”

“What say you to a neat's foot?” said the servant.

Katharine said “Yes,” eagerly; but the servant, who was in his master's secret, said he feared it was not good for hasty-tempered people. Would she like tripe?

“Bring it me,” said Katharine.

“I don't think that is good for hasty-tempered people,” said the servant. “What do you say to a dish of beef and mustard?”

“I love it,” said Kate.

“But mustard is too hot.”

“Why, then, the beef, and let the mustard go,” cried Katharine, who was getting hungrier and hungrier.

“No,” said the servant, “you must have the mustard, or you get no beef from me.”

“Then,” cried Katharine, losing patience, “let it be both, or one, or anything thou wilt.”

“Why, then,” said the servant, “the mustard without the beef!”

Then Katharine saw he was making fun of her, and boxed his ears.

Just then Petruchio brought her some food--but she had scarcely begun to satisfy her hunger, before he called for the tailor to bring her new clothes, and the table was cleared, leaving her still hungry. Katharine was pleased with the pretty new dress and cap that the tailor had made for her, but Petruchio found fault with everything, flung the cap and gown on the floor vowing his dear wife should not wear any such foolish things.

“I will have them,” cried Katharine. “All gentlewomen wear such caps as these--”

“When you are gentle you shall have one too,” he answered, “and not till then.” When he had driven away the tailor with angry words--but privately asking his friend to see him paid--Petruchio said--

“Come, Kate, let's go to your father's, shabby as we are, for as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, so honor peereth in the meanest habit. It is about seven o'clock now. We shall easily get there by dinner-time.”

“It's nearly two,” said Kate, but civilly enough, for she had grown to see that she could not bully her husband, as she had done her father and her sister; “it's nearly two, and it will be supper-time before we get there.”

“It shall be seven,” said Petruchio, obstinately, “before I start. Why, whatever I say or do, or think, you do nothing but contradict. I won't go to-day, and before I do go, it shall be what o'clock I say it is.”

At last they started for her father's house.

“Look at the moon,” said he.

“It's the sun,” said Katharine, and indeed it was.

“I say it is the moon. Contradicting again! It shall be sun or moon, or whatever I choose, or I won't take you to your father's.”

Then Katharine gave in, once and for all. “What you will have it named,” she said, “it is, and so it shall be so for Katharine.” And so it was, for from that moment Katharine felt that she had met her master, and never again showed her naughty tempers to him, or anyone else.

So they journeyed on to Baptista's house, and arriving there, they found all folks keeping Bianca's wedding feast, and that of another newly married couple, Hortensio and his wife. They were made welcome, and sat down to the feast, and all was merry, save that Hortensio's wife, seeing Katharine subdued to her husband, thought she could safely say many disagreeable things, that in the old days, when Katharine was free and froward, she would not have dared to say. But Katharine answered with such spirit and such moderation, that she turned the laugh against the new bride.

After dinner, when the ladies had retired, Baptista joined in a laugh against Petruchio, saying “Now in good sadness, son Petruchio, I fear you have got the veriest shrew of all.”

“You are wrong,” said Petruchio, “let me prove it to you. Each of us shall send a message to his wife, desiring her to come to him, and the one whose wife comes most readily shall win a wager which we will agree on.”

The others said yes readily enough, for each thought his own wife the most dutiful, and each thought he was quite sure to win the wager.

They proposed a wager of twenty crowns.

“Twenty crowns,” said Petruchio, “I'll venture so much on my hawk or hound, but twenty times as much upon my wife.”

“A hundred then,” cried Lucentio, Bianca's husband.

“Content,” cried the others.

Then Lucentio sent a message to the fair Bianca bidding her to come to him. And Baptista said he was certain his daughter would come. But the servant coming back, said--

“Sir, my mistress is busy, and she cannot come.” '

“There's an answer for you,” said Petruchio.

“You may think yourself fortunate if your wife does not send you a worse.”

“I hope, better,” Petruchio answered. Then Hortensio said--

“Go and entreat my wife to come to me at once.”

“Oh--if you entreat her,” said Petruchio.

“I am afraid,” answered Hortensio, sharply, “do what you can, yours will not be entreated.”

But now the servant came in, and said--

“She says you are playing some jest, she will not come.”

“Better and better,” cried Petruchio; “now go to your mistress and say I command her to come to me.”

They all began to laugh, saying they knew what her answer would be, and that she would not come.

Then suddenly Baptista cried--

“Here comes Katharine!” And sure enough--there she was.

“What do you wish, sir?” she asked her husband.

“Where are your sister and Hortensio's wife?”

“Talking by the parlor fire.”

“Fetch them here.”

When she was gone to fetch them, Lucentio said--

“Here is a wonder!”

“I wonder what it means,” said Hortensio.

“It means peace,” said Petruchio, “and love, and quiet life.”

“Well,” said Baptista, “you have won the wager, and I will add another twenty thousand crowns to her dowry--another dowry for another daughter--for she is as changed as if she were someone else.”

So Petruchio won his wager, and had in Katharine always a loving wife and true, and now he had broken her proud and angry spirit he loved her well, and there was nothing ever but love between those two. And so they lived happy ever afterwards.

---

MEASURE FOR MEASURE

More centuries ago than I care to say, the people of Vienna were governed too mildly. The reason was that the reigning Duke Vicentio was excessively good-natured, and disliked to see offenders made unhappy.

The consequence was that the number of ill-behaved persons in Vienna was enough to make the Duke shake his head in sorrow when his chief secretary showed him it at the end of a list. He decided, therefore, that wrongdoers must be punished. But popularity was dear to him. He knew that, if he were suddenly strict after being lax, he would cause people to call him a tyrant. For this reason he told his Privy Council that he must go to Poland on important business of state. “I have chosen Angelo to rule in my absence,” said he.

Now this Angelo, although he appeared to be noble, was really a mean man. He had promised to marry a girl called Mariana, and now would have nothing to say to her, because her dowry had been lost. So poor Mariana lived forlornly, waiting every day for the footstep of her stingy lover, and loving him still.

Having appointed Angelo his deputy, the Duke went to a friar called Thomas and asked him for a friar's dress and instruction in the art of giving religious counsel, for he did not intend to go to Poland, but to stay at home and see how Angelo governed.

Angelo had not been a day in office when he condemned to death a young man named Claudio for an act of rash selfishness which nowadays would only be punished by severe reproof.

Claudio had a queer friend called Lucio, and Lucio saw a chance of freedom for Claudio if Claudio's beautiful sister Isabella would plead with Angelo.

Isabella was at that time living in a nunnery. Nobody had won her heart, and she thought she would like to become a sister, or nun.

Meanwhile Claudio did not lack an advocate.

An ancient lord, Escalus, was for leniency. “Let us cut a little, but not kill,” he said. “This gentleman had a most noble father.”

Angelo was unmoved. “If twelve men find me guilty, I ask no more mercy than is in the law.”

Angelo then ordered the Provost to see that Claudio was executed at nine the next morning.

After the issue of this order Angelo was told that the sister of the condemned man desired to see him.

“Admit her,” said Angelo.

On entering with Lucio, the beautiful girl said, “I am a woeful suitor to your Honor.”

“Well?” said Angelo.

She colored at his chill monosyllable and the ascending red increased the beauty of her face. “I have a brother who is condemned to die,” she continued. “Condemn the fault, I pray you, and spare my brother.”

“Every fault,” said Angelo, “is condemned before it is committed. A fault cannot suffer. Justice would be void if the committer of a fault went free.”

She would have left the court if Lucio had not whispered to her, “You are too cold; you could not speak more tamely if you wanted a pin.”

So Isabella attacked Angelo again, and when he said, “I will not pardon him,” she was not discouraged, and when he said, “He's sentenced; 'tis too late,” she returned to the assault. But all her fighting was with reasons, and with reasons she could not prevail over the Deputy.

She told him that nothing becomes power like mercy. She told him that humanity receives and requires mercy from Heaven, that it was good to have gigantic strength, and had to use it like a giant. She told him that lightning rives the oak and spares the myrtle. She bade him look for fault in his own breast, and if he found one, to refrain from making it an argument against her brother's life.

Angelo found a fault in his breast at that moment. He loved Isabella's beauty, and was tempted to do for her beauty what he would not do for the love of man.

He appeared to relent, for he said, “Come to me to-morrow before noon.”

She had, at any rate, succeeded in prolonging her brother's life for a few hours.'

In her absence Angelo's conscience rebuked him for trifling with his judicial duty.

When Isabella called on him the second time, he said, “Your brother cannot live.”

Isabella was painfully astonished, but all she said was, “Even so. Heaven keep your Honor.”

But as she turned to go, Angelo felt that his duty and honor were slight in comparison with the loss of her.

“Give me your love,” he said, “and Claudio shall be freed.”

“Before I would marry you, he should die if he had twenty heads to lay upon the block,” said Isabella, for she saw then that he was not the just man he pretended to be.

So she went to her brother in prison, to inform him that he must die. At first he was boastful, and promised to hug the darkness of death. But when he clearly understood that his sister could buy his life by marrying Angelo, he felt his life more valuable than her happiness, and he exclaimed, “Sweet sister, let me live.”

“O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!” she cried.

At this moment the Duke came forward, in the habit of a friar, to request some speech with Isabella. He called himself Friar Lodowick.

The Duke then told her that Angelo was affianced to Mariana, whose love-story he related. He then asked her to consider this plan. Let Mariana, in the dress of Isabella, go closely veiled to Angelo, and say, in a voice resembling Isabella's, that if Claudio were spared she would marry him. Let her take the ring from Angelo's little finger, that it might be afterwards proved that his visitor was Mariana.

Isabella had, of course, a great respect for friars, who are as nearly like nuns as men can be. She agreed, therefore, to the Duke's plan. They were to meet again at the moated grange, Mariana's house.

In the street the Duke saw Lucio, who, seeing a man dressed like a friar, called out, “What news of the Duke, friar?” “I have none,” said the Duke.

Lucio then told the Duke some stories about Angelo. Then he told one about the Duke. The Duke contradicted him. Lucio was provoked, and called the Duke “a shallow, ignorant fool,” though he pretended to love him. “The Duke shall know you better if I live to report you,” said the Duke, grimly. Then he asked Escalus, whom he saw in the street, what he thought of his ducal master. Escalus, who imagined he was speaking to a friar, replied, “The Duke is a very temperate gentleman, who prefers to see another merry to being merry himself.”

The Duke then proceeded to call on Mariana.

Isabella arrived immediately afterwards, and the Duke introduced the two girls to one another, both of whom thought he was a friar. They went into a chamber apart from him to discuss the saving of Claudio, and while they talked in low and earnest tones, the Duke looked out of the window and saw the broken sheds and flower-beds black with moss, which betrayed Mariana's indifference to her country dwelling. Some women would have beautified their garden: not she. She was for the town; she neglected the joys of the country. He was sure that Angelo would not make her unhappier.

“We are agreed, father,” said Isabella, as she returned with Mariana.

So Angelo was deceived by the girl whom he had dismissed from his love, and put on her finger a ring he wore, in which was set a milky stone which flashed in the light with secret colors.

Hearing of her success, the Duke went next day to the prison prepared to learn that an order had arrived for Claudio's release. It had not, however, but a letter was banded to the Provost while he waited. His amazement was great when the Provost read aloud these words, “Whatsoever you may hear to the contrary, let Claudio be executed by four of the clock. Let me have his head sent me by five.”

But the Duke said to the Provost, “You must show the Deputy another head,” and he held out a letter and a signet. “Here,” he said, “are the hand and seal of the Duke. He is to return, I tell you, and Angelo knows it not. Give Angelo another head.”

The Provost thought, “This friar speaks with power. I know the Duke's signet and I know his hand.”

He said at length, “A man died in prison this morning, a pirate of the age of Claudio, with a beard of his color. I will show his head.”

The pirate's head was duly shown to Angelo, who was deceived by its resemblance to Claudio's.

The Duke's return was so popular that the citizens removed the city gates from their hinges to assist his entry into Vienna. Angelo and Escalus duly presented themselves, and were profusely praised for their conduct of affairs in the Duke's absence.

It was, therefore, the more unpleasant for Angelo when Isabella, passionately angered by his treachery, knelt before the Duke, and cried for justice.

When her story was told, the Duke cried, “To prison with her for a slanderer of our right hand! But stay, who persuaded you to come here?”

“Friar Lodowick,” said she.

“Who knows him?” inquired the Duke.

“I do, my lord,” replied Lucio. “I beat him because he spake against your Grace.”

A friar called Peter here said, “Friar Lodowick is a holy man.”

Isabella was removed by an officer, and Mariana came forward. She took off her veil, and said to Angelo, “This is the face you once swore was worth looking on.”

Bravely he faced her as she put out her hand and said, “This is the hand which wears the ring you thought to give another.”

“I know the woman,” said Angelo. “Once there was talk of marriage between us, but I found her frivolous.”

Mariana here burst out that they were affianced by the strongest vows. Angelo replied by asking the Duke to insist on the production of Friar Lodowick.

“He shall appear,” promised the Duke, and bade Escalus examine the missing witness thoroughly while he was elsewhere.

Presently the Duke re-appeared in the character of Friar Lodowick, and accompanied by Isabella and the Provost. He was not so much examined as abused and threatened by Escalus. Lucio asked him to deny, if he dared, that he called the Duke a fool and a coward, and had had his nose pulled for his impudence.

“To prison with him!” shouted Escalus, but as hands were laid upon him, the Duke pulled off his friar's hood, and was a Duke before them all.

“Now,” he said to Angelo, “if you have any impudence that can yet serve you, work it for all it's worth.”

“Immediate sentence and death is all I beg,” was the reply.

“Were you affianced to Mariana?” asked the Duke.

“I was,” said Angelo.

“Then marry her instantly,” said his master. “Marry them,” he said to Friar Peter, “and return with them here.”

“Come hither, Isabel,” said the Duke, in tender tones. “Your friar is now your Prince, and grieves he was too late to save your brother;” but well the roguish Duke knew he had saved him.

“O pardon me,” she cried, “that I employed my Sovereign in my trouble.”

“You are pardoned,” he said, gaily.

At that moment Angelo and his wife re-entered. “And now, Angelo,” said the Duke, gravely, “we condemn thee to the block on which Claudio laid his head!”

“O my most gracious lord,” cried Mariana, “mock me not!”

“You shall buy a better husband,” said the Duke.

“O my dear lord,” said she, “I crave no better man.”

Isabella nobly added her prayer to Mariana's, but the Duke feigned inflexibility.

“Provost,” he said, “how came it that Claudio was executed at an unusual hour?”

Afraid to confess the lie he had imposed upon Angelo, the Provost said, “I had a private message.”

“You are discharged from your office,” said the Duke. The Provost then departed. Angelo said, “I am sorry to have caused such sorrow. I prefer death to mercy.” Soon there was a motion in the crowd. The Provost re-appeared with Claudio. Like a big child the Provost said, “I saved this man; he is like Claudio.” The Duke was amused, and said to Isabella, “I pardon him because he is like your brother. He is like my brother, too, if you, dear Isabel, will be mine.”

She was his with a smile, and the Duke forgave Angelo, and promoted the Provost.

Lucio he condemned to marry a stout woman with a bitter tongue.

---

TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA

Only one of them was really a gentleman, as you will discover later. Their names were Valentine and Proteus. They were friends, and lived at Verona, a town in northern Italy. Valentine was happy in his name because it was that of the patron saint of lovers; it is hard for a Valentine to be fickle or mean. Proteus was unhappy in his name, because it was that of a famous shape-changer, and therefore it encouraged him to be a lover at one time and a traitor at another.

One day, Valentine told his friend that he was going to Milan. “I'm not in love like you,” said he, “and therefore I don't want to stay at home.”

Proteus was in love with a beautiful yellow-haired girl called Julia, who was rich, and had no one to order her about. He was, however, sorry to part from Valentine, and he said, “If ever you are in danger tell me, and I will pray for you.” Valentine then went to Milan with a servant called Speed, and at Milan he fell in love with the Duke of Milan's daughter, Silvia.

When Proteus and Valentine parted Julia had not acknowledged that she loved Proteus. Indeed, she had actually torn up one of his letters in the presence of her maid, Lucetta. Lucetta, however, was no simpleton, for when she saw the pieces she said to herself, “All she wants is to be annoyed by another letter.” Indeed, no sooner had Lucetta left her alone than Julia repented of her tearing, and placed between her dress and her heart the torn piece of paper on which Proteus had signed his name. So by tearing a letter written by Proteus she discovered that she loved him. Then, like a brave, sweet girl, she wrote to Proteus, “Be patient, and you shall marry me.”

Delighted with these words Proteus walked about, flourishing Julia's letter and talking to himself.

“What have you got there?” asked his father, Antonio.

“A letter from Valentine,” fibbed Proteus.

“Let me read it,” said Antonio.

“There is no news,” said deceitful Proteus; “he only says that he is very happy, and the Duke of Milan is kind to him, and that he wishes I were with him.”

This fib had the effect of making Antonio think that his son should go to Milan and enjoy the favors in which Valentine basked. “You must go to-morrow,” he decreed. Proteus was dismayed. “Give me time to get my outfit ready.” He was met with the promise, “What you need shall be sent after you.”

It grieved Julia to part from her lover before their engagement was two days' old. She gave him a ring, and said, “Keep this for my sake,” and he gave her a ring, and they kissed like two who intend to be true till death. Then Proteus departed for Milan.

Meanwhile Valentine was amusing Silvia, whose grey eyes, laughing at him under auburn hair, had drowned him in love. One day she told him that she wanted to write a pretty letter to a gentleman whom she thought well of, but had no time: would he write it? Very much did Valentine dislike writing that letter, but he did write it, and gave it to her coldly. “Take it back,” she said; “you did it unwillingly.”

“Madam,” he said, “it was difficult to write such a letter for you.”

“Take it back,” she commanded; “you did not write tenderly enough.”

Valentine was left with the letter, and condemned to write another; but his servant Speed saw that, in effect, the Lady Silvia had allowed Valentine to write for her a love-letter to Valentine's own self. “The joke,” he said, “is as invisible as a weather-cock on a steeple.” He meant that it was very plain; and he went on to say exactly what it was: “If master will write her love-letters, he must answer them.”

On the arrival of Proteus, he was introduced by Valentine to Silvia and afterwards, when they were alone, Valentine asked Proteus how his love for Julia was prospering.

“Why,” said Proteus, “you used to get wearied when I spoke of her.”

“Aye,” confessed Valentine, “but it's different now. I can eat and drink all day with nothing but love on my plate and love in my cup.”

“You idolize Silvia,” said Proteus.

“She is divine,” said Valentine.

“Come, come!” remonstrated Proteus.

“Well, if she's not divine,” said Valentine, “she is the queen of all women on earth.”

“Except Julia,” said Proteus.

“Dear boy,” said Valentine, “Julia is not excepted; but I will grant that she alone is worthy to bear my lady's train.”

“Your bragging astounds me,” said Proteus.

But he had seen Silvia, and he felt suddenly that the yellow-haired Julia was black in comparison. He became in thought a villain without delay, and said to himself what he had never said before--“I to myself am dearer than my friend.”

It would have been convenient for Valentine if Proteus had changed, by the power of the god whose name he bore, the shape of his body at the evil moment when he despised Julia in admiring Silvia. But his body did not change; his smile was still affectionate, and Valentine confided to him the great secret that Silvia had now promised to run away with him. “In the pocket of this cloak,” said Valentine, “I have a silken rope ladder, with hooks which will clasp the window-bar of her room.”

Proteus knew the reason why Silvia and her lover were bent on flight. The Duke intended her to wed Sir Thurio, a gentlemanly noodle for whom she did not care a straw.

Proteus thought that if he could get rid of Valentine he might make Silvia fond of him, especially if the Duke insisted on her enduring Sir Thurio's tiresome chatter. He therefore went to the Duke, and said, “Duty before friendship! It grieves me to thwart my friend Valentine, but your Grace should know that he intends to-night to elope with your Grace's daughter.” He begged the Duke not to tell Valentine the giver of this information, and the Duke assured him that his name would not be divulged.

Early that evening the Duke summoned Valentine, who came to him wearing a large cloak with a bulging pocket.

“You know,” said the Duke, “my desire to marry my daughter to Sir Thurio?”

“I do,” replied Valentine. “He is virtuous and generous, as befits a man so honored in your Grace's thoughts.”

“Nevertheless she dislikes him,” said the Duke. “She is a peevish, proud, disobedient girl, and I should be sorry to leave her a penny. I intend, therefore, to marry again.”

Valentine bowed.

“I hardly know how the young people of to-day make love,” continued the Duke, “and I thought that you would be just the man to teach me how to win the lady of my choice.”

“Jewels have been known to plead rather well,” said Valentine.

“I have tried them,” said the Duke.

“The habit of liking the giver may grow if your Grace gives her some more.”

“The chief difficulty,” pursued the Duke, “is this. The lady is promised to a young gentleman, and it is hard to have a word with her. She is, in fact, locked up.”

“Then your Grace should propose an elopement,” said Valentine. “Try a rope ladder.”

“But how should I carry it?” asked the Duke.

“A rope ladder is light,” said Valentine; “You can carry it in a cloak.”

“Like yours?”

“Yes, your Grace.”

“Then yours will do. Kindly lend it to me.”

Valentine had talked himself into a trap. He could not refuse to lend his cloak, and when the Duke had donned it, his Grace drew from the pocket a sealed missive addressed to Silvia. He coolly opened it, and read these words: “Silvia, you shall be free to-night.”

“Indeed,” he said, “and here's the rope ladder. Prettily contrived, but not perfectly. I give you, sir, a day to leave my dominions. If you are in Milan by this time to-morrow, you die.”

Poor Valentine was saddened to the core. “Unless I look on Silvia in the day,” he said, “there is no day for me to look upon.”

Before he went he took farewell of Proteus, who proved a hypocrite of the first order. “Hope is a lover's staff,” said Valentine's betrayer; “walk hence with that.”

After leaving Milan, Valentine and his servant wandered into a forest near Mantua where the great poet Virgil lived. In the forest, however, the poets (if any) were brigands, who bade the travelers stand. They obeyed, and Valentine made so good an impression upon his captors that they offered him his life on condition that he became their captain.

“I accept,” said Valentine, “provided you release my servant, and are not violent to women or the poor.”

The reply was worthy of Virgil, and Valentine became a brigand chief.

We return now to Julia, who found Verona too dull to live in since Proteus had gone. She begged her maid Lucetta to devise a way by which she could see him. “Better wait for him to return,” said Lucetta, and she talked so sensibly that Julia saw it was idle to hope that Lucetta would bear the blame of any rash and interesting adventure. Julia therefore said that she intended to go to Milan and dressed like a page.

“You must cut off your hair then,” said Lucetta, who thought that at this announcement Julia would immediately abandon her scheme.

“I shall knot it up,” was the disappointing rejoinder.

Lucetta then tried to make the scheme seem foolish to Julia, but Julia had made up her mind and was not to be put off by ridicule; and when her toilet was completed, she looked as comely a page as one could wish to see.

Julia assumed the male name Sebastian, and arrived in Milan in time to hear music being performed outside the Duke's palace.

“They are serenading the Lady Silvia,” said a man to her.

Suddenly she heard a voice lifted in song, and she knew that voice. It was the voice of Proteus. But what was he singing?

“Who is Silvia? what is she,

That all our swains commend her?

Holy, fair, and wise is she;

The heaven such grace did lend her

That she might admired be.”

Julia tried not to hear the rest, but these two lines somehow thundered into her mind--

“Then to Silvia let us sing;

She excels each mortal thing.”

Then Proteus thought Silvia excelled Julia; and, since he sang so beautifully for all the world to hear, it seemed that he was not only false to Julia, but had forgotten her. Yet Julia still loved him. She even went to him, and asked to be his page, and Proteus engaged her.

One day, he handed to her the ring which she had given him, and said, “Sebastian, take that to the Lady Silvia, and say that I should like the picture of her she promised me.”

Silvia had promised the picture, but she disliked Proteus. She was obliged to talk to him because he was high in the favor of her father, who thought he pleaded with her on behalf of Sir Thurio. Silvia had learned from Valentine that Proteus was pledged to a sweetheart in Verona; and when he said tender things to her, she felt that he was disloyal in friendship as well as love.

Julia bore the ring to Silvia, but Silvia said, “I will not wrong the woman who gave it him by wearing it.”

“She thanks you,” said Julia.

“You know her, then?” said Silvia, and Julia spoke so tenderly of herself that Silvia wished that Sebastian would marry Julia.

Silvia gave Julia her portrait for Proteus, who would have received it the worse for extra touches on the nose and eyes if Julia had not made up her mind that she was as pretty as Silvia.

Soon there was an uproar in the palace. Silvia had fled.

The Duke was certain that her intention was to join the exiled Valentine, and he was not wrong.

Without delay he started in pursuit, with Sir Thurio, Proteus, and some servants.

The members of the pursuing party got separated, and Proteus and Julia (in her page's dress) were by themselves when they saw Silvia, who had been taken prisoner by outlaws and was now being led to their Captain. Proteus rescued her, and then said, “I have saved you from death; give me one kind look.”

“O misery, to be helped by you!” cried Silvia. “I would rather be a lion's breakfast.”

Julia was silent, but cheerful. Proteus was so much annoyed with Silvia that he threatened her, and seized her by the waist.

“O heaven!” cried Silvia.

At that instant there was a noise of crackling branches. Valentine came crashing through the Mantuan forest to the rescue of his beloved. Julia feared he would slay Proteus, and hurried to help her false lover. But he struck no blow, he only said, “Proteus, I am sorry I must never trust you more.”

Thereat Proteus felt his guilt, and fell on his knees, saying, “Forgive me! I grieve! I suffer!”

“Then you are my friend once more,” said the generous Valentine. “If Silvia, that is lost to me, will look on you with favor, I promise that I will stand aside and bless you both.”

These words were terrible to Julia, and she swooned. Valentine revived her, and said, “What was the matter, boy?”

“I remembered,” fibbed Julia, “that I was charged to give a ring to the Lady Silvia, and that I did not.”

“Well, give it to me,” said Proteus.

She handed him a ring, but it was the ring that Proteus gave to Julia before he left Verona.

Proteus looked at her hand, and crimsoned to the roots of his hair.

“I changed my shape when you changed your mind,” said she.

“But I love you again,” said he.

Just then outlaws entered, bringing two prizes--the Duke and Sir Thurio.

“Forbear!” cried Valentine, sternly. “The Duke is sacred.”

Sir Thurio exclaimed, “There's Silvia; she's mine!”

“Touch her, and you die!” said Valentine.

“I should be a fool to risk anything for her,” said Sir Thurio.

“Then you are base,” said the Duke. “Valentine, you are a brave man. Your banishment is over. I recall you. You may marry Silvia. You deserve her.”

“I thank your Grace,” said Valentine, deeply moved, “and yet must ask you one more boon.”

“I grant it,” said the Duke.

“Pardon these men, your Grace, and give them employment. They are better than their calling.”

“I pardon them and you,” said the Duke. “Their work henceforth shall be for wages.”

“What think you of this page, your Grace?” asked Valentine, indicating Julia.

The Duke glanced at her, and said, “I think the boy has grace in him.”

“More grace than boy, say I,” laughed Valentine, and the only punishment which Proteus had to bear for his treacheries against love and friendship was the recital in his presence of the adventures of Julia-Sebastian of Verona.

---

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

In the year thirteen hundred and something, the Countess of Rousillon was unhappy in her palace near the Pyrenees. She had lost her husband, and the King of France had summoned her son Bertram to Paris, hundreds of miles away.

Bertram was a pretty youth with curling hair, finely arched eyebrows, and eyes as keen as a hawk's. He was as proud as ignorance could make him, and would lie with a face like truth itself to gain a selfish end. But a pretty youth is a pretty youth, and Helena was in love with him.

Helena was the daughter of a great doctor who had died in the service of the Count of Rousillon. Her sole fortune consisted in a few of her father's prescriptions.

When Bertram had gone, Helena's forlorn look was noticed by the Countess, who told her that she was exactly the same to her as her own child. Tears then gathered in Helena's eyes, for she felt that the Countess made Bertram seem like a brother whom she could never marry. The Countess guessed her secret forthwith, and Helena confessed that Bertram was to her as the sun is to the day.

She hoped, however, to win this sun by earning the gratitude of the King of France, who suffered from a lingering illness, which made him lame. The great doctors attached to the Court despaired of curing him, but Helena had confidence in a prescription which her father had used with success.

Taking an affectionate leave of the Countess, she went to Paris, and was allowed to see the King.

He was very polite, but it was plain he thought her a quack. “It would not become me,” he said, “to apply to a simple maiden for the relief which all the learned doctors cannot give me.”

“Heaven uses weak instruments sometimes,” said Helena, and she declared that she would forfeit her life if she failed to make him well.

“And if you succeed?” questioned the King.

“Then I will ask your Majesty to give me for a husband the man whom I choose!”

So earnest a young lady could not be resisted forever by a suffering king. Helena, therefore, became the King's doctor, and in two days the royal cripple could skip.

He summoned his courtiers, and they made a glittering throng in the throne room of his palace. Well might the country girl have been dazzled, and seen a dozen husbands worth dreaming of among the handsome young noblemen before her. But her eyes only wandered till they found Bertram. Then she went up to him, and said, “I dare not say I take you, but I am yours!” Raising her voice that the King might hear, she added, “This is the Man!”

“Bertram,” said the King, “take her; she's your wife!”

“My wife, my liege?” said Bertram. “I beg your Majesty to permit me to choose a wife.”

“Do you know, Bertram, what she has done for your King?” asked the monarch, who had treated Bertram like a son.

“Yes, your Majesty,” replied Bertram; “but why should I marry a girl who owes her breeding to my father's charity?”

“You disdain her for lacking a title, but I can give her a title,” said the King; and as he looked at the sulky youth a thought came to him, and he added, “Strange that you think so much of blood when you could not distinguish your own from a beggar's if you saw them mixed together in a bowl.”

“I cannot love her,” asserted Bertram; and Helena said gently, “Urge him not, your Majesty. I am glad to have cured my King for my country's sake.”

“My honor requires that scornful boy's obedience,” said the King. “Bertram, make up your mind to this. You marry this lady, of whom you are so unworthy, or you learn how a king can hate. Your answer?”

Bertram bowed low and said, “Your Majesty has ennobled the lady by your interest in her. I submit.”

“Take her by the hand,” said the King, “and tell her she is yours.”

Bertram obeyed, and with little delay he was married to Helena.

Fear of the King, however, could not make him a lover. Ridicule helped to sour him. A base soldier named Parolles told him to his face that now he had a “kicky-wicky” his business was not to fight but to stay at home. “Kicky-wicky” was only a silly epithet for a wife, but it made Bertram feel he could not bear having a wife, and that he must go to the war in Italy, though the King had forbidden him.

Helena he ordered to take leave of the King and return to Rousillon, giving her letters for his mother and herself. He then rode off, bidding her a cold good-bye.

She opened the letter addressed to herself, and read, “When you can get the ring from my finger you can call me husband, but against that 'when' I write 'never.' ”

Dry-eyed had Helena been when she entered the King's presence and said farewell, but he was uneasy on her account, and gave her a ring from his own finger, saying, “If you send this to me, I shall know you are in trouble, and help you.”

She did not show him Bertram's letter to his wife; it would have made him wish to kill the truant Count; but she went back to Rousillon and handed her mother-in-law the second letter. It was short and bitter. “I have run away,” it said. “If the world be broad enough, I will be always far away from her.”

“Cheer up,” said the noble widow to the deserted wife. “I wash his name out of my blood, and you alone are my child.”

The Dowager Countess, however, was still mother enough to Bertram to lay the blame of his conduct on Parolles, whom she called “a very tainted fellow.”

Helena did not stay long at Rousillon. She clad herself as a pilgrim, and, leaving a letter for her mother-in-law, secretly set out for Florence.

On entering that city she inquired of a woman the way to the Pilgrims' House of Rest, but the woman begged “the holy pilgrim” to lodge with her.

Helena found that her hostess was a widow, who had a beautiful daughter named Diana.

When Diana heard that Helena came from France, she said, “A countryman of yours, Count Rousillon, has done worthy service for Florence.” But after a time, Diana had something to tell which was not at all worthy of Helena's husband. Bertram was making love to Diana. He did not hide the fact that he was married, but Diana heard from Parolles that his wife was not worth caring for.

The widow was anxious for Diana's sake, and Helena decided to inform her that she was the Countess Rousillon.

“He keeps asking Diana for a lock of her hair,” said the widow.

Helena smiled mournfully, for her hair was as fine as Diana's and of the same color. Then an idea struck her, and she said, “Take this purse of gold for yourself. I will give Diana three thousand crowns if she will help me to carry out this plan. Let her promise to give a lock of her hair to my husband if he will give her the ring which he wears on his finger. It is an ancestral ring. Five Counts of Rousillon have worn it, yet he will yield it up for a lock of your daughter's hair. Let your daughter insist that he shall cut the lock of hair from her in a dark room, and agree in advance that she shall not speak a single word.”

The widow listened attentively, with the purse of gold in her lap. She said at last, “I consent, if Diana is willing.”

Diana was willing, and, strange to say, the prospect of cutting off a lock of hair from a silent girl in a dark room was so pleasing to Bertram that he handed Diana his ring, and was told when to follow her into the dark room. At the time appointed he came with a sharp knife, and felt a sweet face touch his as he cut off the lock of hair, and he left the room satisfied, like a man who is filled with renown, and on his finger was a ring which the girl in the dark room had given him.

The war was nearly over, but one of its concluding chapters taught Bertram that the soldier who had been impudent enough to call Helena his “kicky-wicky” was far less courageous than a wife. Parolles was such a boaster, and so fond of trimings to his clothes, that the French officers played him a trick to discover what he was made of. He had lost his drum, and had said that he would regain it unless he was killed in the attempt. His attempt was a very poor one, and he was inventing the story of a heroic failure, when he was surrounded and disarmed.

“Portotartarossa,” said a French lord.

“What horrible lingo is this?” thought Parolles, who had been blindfolded.

“He's calling for the tortures,” said a French man, affecting to act as interpreter. “What will you say without 'em?”

“As much,” replied Parolles, “as I could possibly say if you pinched me like a pasty.” He was as good as his word. He told them how many there were in each regiment of the Florentine army, and he refreshed them with spicy anecdotes of the officers commanding it.

Bertram was present, and heard a letter read, in which Parolles told Diana that he was a fool.

“This is your devoted friend,” said a French lord.

“He is a cat to me now,” said Bertram, who detested our hearthrug pets.

Parolles was finally let go, but henceforth he felt like a sneak, and was not addicted to boasting.

We now return to France with Helena, who had spread a report of her death, which was conveyed to the Dowager Countess at Rousillon by Lafeu, a lord who wished to marry his daughter Magdalen to Bertram.

The King mourned for Helena, but he approved of the marriage proposed for Bertram, and paid a visit to Rousillon in order to see it accomplished.

“His great offense is dead,” he said. “Let Bertram approach me.”

Then Bertram, scarred in the cheek, knelt before his Sovereign, and said that if he had not loved Lafeu's daughter before he married Helena, he would have prized his wife, whom he now loved when it was too late.

“Love that is late offends the Great Sender,” said the King. “Forget sweet Helena, and give a ring to Magdalen.”

Bertram immediately gave a ring to Lafeu, who said indignantly, “It's Helena's!”

“It's not!” said Bertram.

Hereupon the King asked to look at the ring, and said, “This is the ring I gave to Helena, and bade her send to me if ever she needed help. So you had the cunning to get from her what could help her most.”

Bertram denied again that the ring was Helena's, but even his mother said it was.

“You lie!” exclaimed the King. “Seize him, guards!” but even while they were seizing him, Bertram wondered how the ring, which he thought Diana had given him, came to be so like Helena's. A gentleman now entered, craving permission to deliver a petition to the King. It was a petition signed Diana Capilet, and it begged that the King would order Bertram to marry her whom he had deserted after winning her love.

“I'd sooner buy a son-in-law at a fair than take Bertram now,” said Lafeu.

“Admit the petitioner,” said the King.

Bertram found himself confronted by Diana and her mother. He denied that Diana had any claim on him, and spoke of her as though her life was spent in the gutter. But she asked him what sort of gentlewoman it was to whom he gave, as to her he gave, the ring of his ancestors now missing from his finger?

Bertram was ready to sink into the earth, but fate had one crowning generosity reserved for him. Helena entered.

“Do I see reality?” asked the King.

“O pardon! pardon!” cried Bertram.

She held up his ancestral ring. “Now that I have this,” said she, “will you love me, Bertram?”

“To the end of my life,” cried he.

“My eyes smell onions,” said Lafeu. Tears for Helena were twinkling in them.

The King praised Diana when he was fully informed by that not very shy young lady of the meaning of her conduct. For Helena's sake she had wished to expose Bertram's meanness, not only to the King, but to himself. His pride was now in shreds, and it is believed that he made a husband of some sort after all.

---

QUOTATIONS FROM SHAKESPEARE

---

ACTION.

Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant

More learned than their ears.

Coriolanus -- III. 2.

ADVERSITY.

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

As You Like It -- II. 1.

That, Sir, which serves and seeks for gain,

And follows but for form,

Will pack, when it begins to rain,

And leave thee in the storm.

King Lear -- II. 4.

Ah! when the means are gone, that buy this praise,

The breath is gone whereof this praise is made:

Feast won--fast lost; one cloud of winter showers,

These flies are couched.

Timon of Athens -- II. 2.

ADVICE TO A SON LEAVING HOME.

Give thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportioned thought his act

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried

Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;

But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel: but, being in,

Bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee.

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:

Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment,

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not expressed in fancy: rich, not gaudy:

For the apparel oft proclaims the man;

And they in France, of the best rank and station,

Are most select and generous, chief in that.

Neither a borrower, nor a lender be:

For loan oft loses both itself and friend;

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all. --To thine ownself be true;

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Hamlet -- I. 3.

AGE.

My May of life Is

fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf:

And that which should accompany old age,

As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,

I must not look to have; but, in their stead,

Curses not loud, but deep, mouth-honor, breath,

Which the poor heart would feign deny, but dare not.

Macbeth -- V. 3.

AMBITION.

Dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. And I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is but a shadow's shadow.

Hamlet -- II 2.

I charge thee fling away ambition;

By that sin fell the angels, how can man then,

The image of his Maker, hope to win by 't?

Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee;

Corruption wins not more than honesty.

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,

To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not!

Let all the ends, thou aim'st at, be thy country's,

Thy God's, and truth's.

King Henry VIII. -- III. 2.

ANGER.

Anger is like

A full-hot horse, who being allowed his way,

Self-mettle tires him.

King Henry VIII. -- I. 1.

ARROGANCE.

There are a sort of men, whose visages

Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,

And do a willful stillness entertain,

With purpose to be dressed in an opinion

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,

As who should say, “i am Sir Oracle,

And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!”

O! my Antonio, I do know of these

That therefore are reputed wise

For saying nothing, when, I am sure,

If they should speak, would almost dam those ears,

Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools.

The Merchant of Venice -- I. 1.

AUTHORITY.

Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar?

And the creature run from the cur?

There thou might'st behold the great image of authority

a dog's obeyed in office.

King Lear -- IV. 6.

Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,

For every pelting, petty officer

Would use his heaven for thunder: nothing but thunder--

Merciful heaven!

Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,

Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,

Than the soft myrtle! --O, but man, proud man!

Drest in a little brief authority --

Most ignorant of what he's most assured,

His glassy essence,--like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,

As make the angels weep.

Measure for Measure -- II. 2.

BEAUTY.

The hand, that hath made you fair, hath made you good: the

goodness, that is cheap in beauty, makes beauty brief in goodness;

but grace, being the soul of your complexion, should keep the body

of it ever fair.

Measure for Measure -- III. 1.

BLESSINGS UNDERVALUED.

It so falls out

That what we have we prize not to the worth,

Whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost,

Why, then we rack the value; then we find

The virtue, that possession would not show us

Whiles it was ours.

Much Ado About Nothing -- IV. 1.

BRAGGARTS.

It will come to pass,

That every braggart shall be found an ass.

All's Well that Ends Well -- IV. 3.

They that have the voice of lions, and the act of bares,

are they not monsters?

Troilus and Cressida -- III. 2.

CALUMNY.

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,

thou shalt not escape calumny.

Hamlet -- III. 1.

No might nor greatness in mortality

Can censure 'scape; back-wounding calumny

The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong,

Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?

Measure for Measure -- III. 2.

CEREMONY.

Ceremony

Was but devised at first, to set a gloss

On faint deeds, hollow welcomes.

Recanting goodness, sorry ere 'tis shown;

But where there is true friendship, there needs none.

Timon of Athens -- I. 2.

COMFORT.

Men

Can counsel, and speak comfort to that grief

Which they themselves not feel; but tasting it,

Their counsel turns to passion, which before

Would give preceptial medicine to rage,

Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,

Charm ache with air, and agony with words:

No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience

To those that wring under the load of sorrow;

But no man's virtue, nor sufficiency,

To be so moral, when he shall endure

The like himself.

Much Ado About Nothing -- V. 1.

Well, every one can master a grief, but he that has it.

Idem -- II.

COMPARISON.

When the moon shone, we did not see the candle.

So doth the greater glory dim the less;

A substitute shines brightly as a king,

Until a king be by; and then his state

Empties itself, as does an inland brook

Into the main of waters.

Merchant of Venice -- V. 1.

CONSCIENCE.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;

And enterprises of great pith and moment,

With this regard, their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

Hamlet -- III. 1.

CONTENT.

My crown is in my heart, not on my head;

Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,

Nor to be seen; my crown is called “content;”

A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy.

King Henry VI. , Part 3d - III. 1.

CONTENTION.

How, in one house,

Should many people, under two commands,

Hold amity?

King Lear -- II. 4.

When two authorities are set up,

Neither supreme, how soon confusion

May enter twixt the gap of both, and take

The one by the other.

Coriolanus -- III. 1.

CONTENTMENT.

'Tis better to be lowly born,

And range with humble livers in content,

Than to be perked up in a glistering grief,

And wear a golden sorrow.

King Henry VIII. -- II. 3.

COWARDS.

Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Julius Caesar -- II. 2.

CUSTOM.

That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat

Of habit's devil, is angel yet in this:

That to the use of actions fair and good

He likewise gives a frock, or livery,

That aptly is put on: Refrain to-night:

And that shall lend a kind of easiness

To the next abstinence: the next more easy:

For use almost can change the stamp of nature,

And either curb the devil, or throw him out

With wondrous potency.

Hamlet -- III. 4.

A custom

More honored in the breach, then the observance.

Idem -- I. 4.

DEATH.

Kings, and mightiest potentates, must die;

For that's the end of human misery.

King Henry VI. , Part 1st -- III. 2.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear;

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come, when it will come.

Julius Caesar -- II. 2.

The dread of something after death,

Makes us rather bear those ills we have,

Than fly to others we know not of.

Hamlet -- III. 1.

The sense of death is most in apprehension.

Measure for Measure -- III. 1.

By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death

Will seize the doctor too.

Cymbeline -- V. 5.

DECEPTION.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

An evil soul, producing holy witness,

Is like a villain with a smiling cheek;

A goodly apple rotten at the heart;

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

Merchant of Venice -- I. 3.

DEEDS.

Foul deeds will rise,

Though all the earth o'erwhelm them to men's eyes.

Hamlet -- I. 2.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds,

Makes deeds ill done!

King John -- IV. 2.

DELAY.

That we would do,

We should do when we would; for this would changes,

And hath abatements and delays as many,

As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;

And then this should is like a spendthrift sigh,

That hurts by easing.

Hamlet -- IV. 7.

DELUSION.

For love of grace,

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul;

It will but skin and film the ulcerous place;

Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,

Infects unseen.

Hamlet -- III. 4.

DISCRETION.

Let's teach ourselves that honorable stop,

Not to outsport discretion.

Othello -- II. 3.

DOUBTS AND FEARS.

I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in

To saucy doubts and fears.

Macbeth -- III. 4.

DRUNKENNESS.

Boundless intemperance.

In nature is a tyranny; it hath been

Th' untimely emptying of the happy throne,

And fall of many kings.

Measure for Measure -- I. 3.

DUTY OWING TO OURSELVES AND OTHERS.

Love all, trust a few,

Do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy

Rather in power, than use; and keep thy friend

Under thy own life's key; be checked for silence,

But never taxed for speech.

All's Well that Ends Well -- I. 1.

EQUIVOCATION.

But yet

I do not like but yet, it does allay

The good precedence; fye upon but yet:

But yet is as a gailer to bring forth

Some monstrous malefactor.

Antony and Cleopatra -- II. 5.

EXCESS.

A surfeit of the sweetest things

The deepest loathing to the stomach brings.

Midsummer Night's Dream -- II. 3.

Every inordinate cup is unblessed,

and the ingredient is a devil.

Othello -- II. 3.

FALSEHOOD.

Falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent,

Three things that women hold in hate.

Two Gentlemen of Verona -- III. 2.

FEAR.

Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds

Where it should guard.

King Henry VI. , Part 2d -- V. 2.

Fear, and be slain; no worse can come, to fight:

And fight and die, is death destroying death;

Where fearing dying, pays death servile breath.

King Richard II. -- III. 2.

FEASTS.

Small cheer, and great welcome, makes a merry feast.

Comedy of Errors -- III. 1.

FILIAL INGRATITUDE.

Ingratitude! Thou marble-hearted fiend,

More hideous, when thou showest thee in a child,

Than the sea-monster.

King Lear -- I. 4.

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is

To have a thankless child

Idem -- I. 4.

FORETHOUGHT.

Determine on some course,

More than a wild exposure to each cause

That starts i' the way before thee.

Coriolanus -- IV. 1.

FORTITUDE.

Yield not thy neck

To fortune's yoke, but let thy dauntless mind

Still ride in triumph over all mischance.

King Henry VI. , Part 3d -- III. 3.

FORTUNE.

When fortune means to men most good,

She looks upon them with a threatening eye.

King John -- III. 4.

GREATNESS.

Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!

This is the state of man: To-day he puts forth

The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,

And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;

The third day, comes a frost, a killing frost;

And,--when he thinks, good easy man, full surely

His greatness is ripening,--nips his root,

And then he falls, as I do.

King Henry VIII. -- III. 2.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness,

and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Twelfth Night -- II. 5.

HAPPINESS.

O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness

through another man's eyes.

As You Like It -- V. 2.

HONESTY.

An honest man is able to speak for himself,

when a knave is not.

King Henry VI. , Part 2d -- V. 1.

To be honest, as this world goes, is to be

one man picked out of ten thousand.

Hamlet -- II. 2.

HYPOCRISY.

Devils soonest tempt,

resembling spirits of light.

Love's Labor Lost -- IV. 3.

One may smile, and smile,

and be a villain.

Hamlet -- I. 5.

INNOCENCE.

The trust I have is in mine innocence,

And therefore am I bold and resolute.

Troilus and Cressida -- IV. 4.

INSINUATIONS.

The shrug, the hum, or ha; these petty brands,

That calumny doth use;--

For calumny will sear

Virtue itself:--these shrugs, these bums, and ha's,

When you have said, she's goodly, come between,

Ere you can say she's honest.

Winter's Tale -- II. 1.

JEALOUSY.

Trifles, light as air,

Are, to the jealous, confirmations strong

As proofs of holy writ.

Othello -- III. 3.

O beware of jealousy:

It is the green-eyed monster, which does mock

The meat it feeds on.

Idem.

JESTS.

A jest's prosperity lies in the ear

of him that hears it.

Love's Labor Lost -- V. 2.

He jests at scars,

that never felt a wound.

Romeo and Juliet -- II. 2.

JUDGMENT.

Heaven is above all; there sits a Judge,

That no king can corrupt.

King Henry VIII, -- III. 1.

LIFE.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Macbeth -- V. 5.

We are such stuff

As dreams are made of, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest -- IV. 1.

LOVE.

A murd'rous, guilt shows not itself more soon,

Than love that would seem bid: love's night is noon.

Twelfth Night -- III. 2.

Sweet love, changing his property,

Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate.

King Richard II. -- III. 2.

When love begins to sicken and decay,

It useth an enforced ceremony.

Julius Caesar -- II. 2.

The course of true-love

never did run smooth.

Midsummer Night's Dream -- I. 1.

Love looks not with the eyes,

but with the mind.

Idem.

She never told her love,--

But let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud,

Feed on her damask check: she pined in thought

And, with a green and yellow melancholy,

She sat like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

Twelfth Night -- II. 4.

But love is blind, and lovers cannot see

The pretty follies that themselves commit.

The Merchant of Venice -- II. 6.

MAN.

What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason!

How infinite in faculties! in form, and moving,

how express and admirable! in action, how like

an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the

beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!

Hamlet -- II. 2.

MERCY.

The quality of mercy is not strained:

it droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven,

Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd;

It blesses him that gives, and him that takes:

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown:

His scepter shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above this sceptered sway;

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,

When mercy seasons justice.

Consider this,--

That, in the course of justice, none of us

Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.

Merchant of Venice -- IV. 1.

MERIT.

Who shall go about

To cozen fortune, and be honorable

Without the stamp of merit! Let none presume

To wear an undeserved dignity.

Merchant of Venice -- II. 9.

MODESTY.

It is the witness still of excellency,

To put a strange face on his own perfection.

Much Ado About Nothing -- II. 3.

MORAL CONQUEST.

Brave conquerors! for so you are,

That war against your own affections,

And the huge army of the world's desires.

Love's Labor's Lost -- I. 1.

MURDER.

The great King of kings

Hath in the table of his law commanded,

That thou shalt do no murder.

Take heed; for he holds vengeance in his band,

To hurl upon their heads thatbreak his law.

King Richard III. -- I. 4.

Blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries,

Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth.

King Richard II. -- I. 1.

MUSIC.

The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,

Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;

The motions of his spirit are dull as night,

And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted.

Merchant of Venice -- V. 1.

NAMES.

What's in a name? that, which we call a rose,

By any other name would smell as sweet.

Romeo and Juliet -- II. 2.

Good name, in man, and woman,

Is the immediate jewel of their souls:

Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing.

'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands:

But he, that filches from me my good name,

Robs me of that, which not enriches him,

And makes me poor indeed.

Othello -- III. 3.

NATURE.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

Troilus and Cressida -- III. 3.

NEWS, GOOD AND BAD.

Though it be honest, it is never good

To bring bad news. Give to a gracious message

An host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell

Themselves, when they be felt.

Antony and Cleopatra -- II. 5.

OFFICE.

'Tis the curse of service;

Preferment goes by letter, and affection,

Not by the old gradation, where each second

Stood heir to the first.

Othello -- I. 1.

OPPORTUNITY.

Who seeks, and will not take when offered,

Shall never find it more.

Antony and Cleopatra -- II. 7.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows, and in miseries:

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.

Julius Caesar -- IV. 3.

OPPRESSION.

Press not a falling man too far; 'tis virtue:

His faults lie open to the laws; let them,

Not you, correct them.

King Henry VIII. -- III. 2.

PAST AND FUTURE.

O thoughts of men accurst!

Past, and to come, seem best; things present, worst.

King Henry IV. , Part 2d -- I. 3.

PATIENCE.

How poor are they, that have not patience! --

What wound did ever heal, but by degrees?

Othello -- II. 3.

PEACE.

A peace is of the nature of a conquest;

For then both parties nobly are subdued,

And neither party loser.

King Henry IV. , Part 2d -- IV. 2.

I will use the olive with my sword:

Make war breed peace; make peace stint war; make each

Prescribe to other, as each other's leech.

Timon of Athens -- V. 5.

I know myself now; and I feel within me

A peace above all earthly dignities,

A still and quiet conscience.

King Henry VIII. -- III. 2.

PENITENCE.

Who by repentance is not satisfied,

Is nor of heaven, nor earth; for these are pleased;

By penitence the Eternal's wrath appeased.

Two Gentlemen of Verona -- V. 4.

PLAYERS.

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts.

As You Like It -- II. 7.

There be players, that I have seen play,--

and heard others praise, and that highly,--

not to speak it profanely, that,

neither having the accent of Christians,

nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor man,

have so strutted, and bellowed,

that I have thought some of nature's journeymen

had made men and not made them well,

they imitated humanity so abominably.

Hamlet -- III. 2.

POMP.

Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?

And, live we how we can, yet die we must.

King Henry V. Part 3d -- V. 2.

PRECEPT AND PRACTICE.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good

to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's

cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that

follows his own instructions: I can easier teach

twenty what were good to be done, than be one of

twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may

devise laws for the blood; but a hot temper leaps

o'er a cold decree: such a bare is madness, the

youth, to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel,

the cripple.

The Merchant of Venice -- I. 2.

PRINCES AND TITLES.

Princes have but their titles for their glories,

An outward honor for an inward toil;

And, for unfelt imaginations,

They often feel a world of restless cares:

So that, between their titles, and low name,

There's nothing differs but the outward fame.

King Richard III. -- I. 4.

QUARRELS.

In a false quarrel these is no true valor.

Much Ado About Nothing -- V. 1.

Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just;

And he but naked, though locked up in steel,

Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.

King Henry VI. , Part 2d -- III. 2.

RAGE.

Men in rage strike those that wish them best.

Othello -- II. 3.

REPENTANCE.

Men shall deal unadvisedly sometimes,

Which after-hours give leisure to repent.

King Richard III. -- IV. 4.

REPUTATION.

The purest treasure mortal times afford,

Is--spotless reputation; that away,

Men are but gilded loam, or painted clay.

A jewel in a ten-times-barred-up chest

I-- a bold spirit in a loyal breast.

King Richard II. -- I. 1.

RETRIBUTION.

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices

Make instruments to scourge us.

King Lear -- V. S.

If these men have defeated the law,

and outrun native punishment,

though they can outstrip men,

they have no wings to fly from God.

King Henry V. -- IV. 1.

SCARS.

A sear nobly got, or a noble scar,

is a good livery of honor.

All's Well that Ends Well -- IV. 6.

To such as boasting show their scars,

A mock is due.

Troilus and Cressida -- IV. 5.

SELF-CONQUEST.

Better conquest never can'st thou make,

Than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts

Against those giddy loose suggestions.

King John -- III. 1.

SELF-EXERTION.

Men at some time are masters of their fates;

The fault is not in our stars,

But in ourselves.

Julius Caesar -- I. 2.

SELF-RELIANCE.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,

Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky

Gives us free scope; only, doth backward pull

Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.

All's Well that Ends Well -- I. 1.

SILENCE.

Out of this silence, yet I picked a welcome;

And in the modesty of fearful duty

I read as much, as from the rattling tongue

Of saucy and audacious eloquence.

Midsummer Night's Dream -- V. 1.

The silence often of pure innocence

Persuades, when speaking fails.

Winter's Tale -- II. 2.

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy:

I were but little happy, if I could say how much.

Much Ado About Nothing -- II. 1.

SLANDER.

Slander,

Whose edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue

Outvenoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath

Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie

All corners of the world; kings, queens, and states,

Maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave,

This viperous slander enters.

Cymbeline -- III. 4.

SLEEP.

The innocent sleep;

Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care,

The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,

Chief nourisher in life's feast.

Macbeth -- II. 2.

SUICIDE.

Against self-slaughter

There is a prohibition so divine,

That cravens my weak hand.

Cymbeline -- III. 4.

TEMPERANCE.

Though I look old, yet am I strong and lusty:

For in my youth I never did apply

Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood;

Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo

The means of weakness and debility:

Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,

Frosty, but kindly.

As You Like It -- II. 3.

THEORY AND PRACTICE.

There was never yet philosopher,

That could endure the tooth-ache patiently;

However, they have writ the style of the gods,

And made a pish at chance and sufferance.

Much Ado About Nothing -- V. 1.

TREACHERY.

Though those, that are betrayed,

Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor

Stands in worse case of woe.

Cymbeline -- III. 4.

VALOR.

The better part of valor is--discretion.

King Henry IV. , Part 1st -- V. 4.

When Valor preys on reason,

It eats the sword it fights with.

Antony and Cleopatra -- III. 2.

What valor were it, when a cur doth grin

For one to thrust his band between his teeth,

When he might spurn him with his foot away?

King Henry VI. , Part 1st -- I. 4.

WAR.

Take care

How you awake the sleeping sword of war:

We charge you in the name of God, take heed.

King Henry IV. , Part 1st -- I. 2.

WELCOME.

Welcome ever smiles,

And farewell goes out sighing.

Troilus and Cressida -- III. 3.

WINE.

Good wine is a good familiar creature,

if it be well used.

Othello -- II. 3.

O thou invisible spirit of wine,

if thou hast no name to be known by,

let us call thee --devil!. . . O, that

men should put an enemy in their mouths,

to steal away their brains!

that we should with joy, revel,

pleasure, and applause,

transform ourselves into beasts!

Othello -- II. 3.

WOMAN.

A woman impudent and mannish grown

Is not more loathed than an effeminate man.

Troilus and Cressida -- III. 3.

WORDS.

Words without thoughts

never to heaven go.

Hamlet -- III. 3.

Few words shall fit the trespass best,

Where no excuse can give the fault amending.

Troilus and Cressida -- III. 2.

WORLDLY CARE.

You have too much respect upon the world:

They lose it, that do buy it with much care.

Merchant of Venice -- I. 1.

WORLDLY HONORS.

Not a man, for being simply man,

Hath any honor; but honor for those honors

That are without him, as place, riches, favor,

Prizes of accident as oftas merit;

Which when they fall, as being slippery standers,

The love that leaned on them, as slippery too,

Do one pluck down another, and together

Die in the fall. But 'tis not so with me.

Troilus and Cressida -- III. 3.