The feeling of interest and admiration thus excited for Celia at the first, follows her through the whole play. We listen to her as to one who has made herself worthy of our love; and her silence expresses more than eloquence.JAMESON, Shakespeare's Heroines.

DUKE FREDERICK

That Duke Frederick is not constitutionally cruel, is indicated in his endeavor to stay the wrestling, "in pity of the challenger's youth," first by personal dissuasion of Orlando, then by suggesting to the princesses to use their influence, while he stands considerately aside, and then by restricting the encounter to one fall; and thus, tyrant as he is, he is in sympathy with the assembled crowd, who so deeply compassionate the bereaved father. Again, he is better than his class in his care of the grasping and disabled prizer "How dost thou, Charles?" and "bear him away." Ambition and avarice control his better nature, which regains its elasticity, however, when he is brought under the genial influences of a clearer air and an altered scene. Certain it is that such a change has a healthy moral, as well as physical influence; it is one of the rescuing energies of nature, and if in actual nature it has not always the permanent vigor that is desirable, and loses its force when we return again into the circle of old local influences and associations, the more delightful is it for a time to revel in a fiction which exhibits one of the most beautiful resources of nature, operating with a vitality that brings aid to faltering virtue and corrects the flaws of fortune, and turns the odds of the great combat of life to the side of the excellent and the admirable.-LLOYD, Critical Essays.

DUKE FREDERICK AND OLIVER

Duke Frederick is called even by his daughter a man of harsh and envious mind; he appears to be perpetually actu

ated by gloomy fancies, by suspicion and mistrust, and to be urged on by covetousness. He has banished his brother and usurped the throne, he has robbed all the lords of their property who have gone with his brother, he has regarded with hostile suspicion all honorable men, the old Rowland de Bois as well as his brave Orlando, and he has surrounded himself with the dishonorable, who nevertheless, like Le Beau, are not devoted to him. Orlando's victory over the wrestler is enough to kindle his suspicion against him; once awakened, it lights upon the hitherto spared Rosalind, for no other reason than that she throws his daughter into the shade, and thus excites the father's envy, a passion which he wishes the inoffensive Celia to share also. When both the friends upon this disappear at the same time with Orlando, Frederick's suspicion and covetousness fall upon Oliver, whom he had hitherto favored. In this eldest son of the brave Rowland de Bois there flows the same vein of avarice and envy as in the Duke. He strives to plunder his brother of his poor inheritance, he undermines his education and gentility, he first endeavors to stifle his mind, and then he lays snares for his life; all this he does from an undefined hatred of the youth, whom he is obliged to confess is "full of noble device," but who for this very reason draws away the love of all his people from Oliver to himself; and on this account excites his envious jealousy. Both the Duke and Oliver equally forfeit the happiness which they seek, the one the heritage of his usurped dukedom, the other his lawful and unlawful possessions. And in this lies the primary impulse and the material motive for their subsequent renunciation of the world; a more moral incentive to this change of mind is given to Oliver in the preservation of his life by Orlando, and to the Duke in the warning voice of a religious man who speaks to his conscience and his fear. These are only sketches of characters, not intended to play conspicuous parts; but we see that they are drawn by the same sure hand which we have seen at work throughout Shakespeare's works.-GERVINUS, Shakespeare Commentaries.

THE EXILED DUKE

The exiled Duke is a perfect exemplar of what should comprise a Christian's course—a cheerful gratitude for the benefits that have been showered upon him; a calm, yet firm endurance of adversity; a tolerance of unkindness; and a promptitude to forgive injuries. How sweet, and yet how strong is his moral nature! It seems as though no trial, social or physical, could change the current of his gracious wisdom. In a scene subsequent to that containing his celestial confession of moral faith, we have the proof that his philosophy is no cold profession merely,— no lip-deep ostentation, no barren theory without practice. His conduct shows that his cheerful morality nestles in his heart, and inspires his actions. It is the seventh Scene of the second Act, where he and his followers are about to sit down to their woodland meal, when Orlando rushes in with his drawn sword, and demands food. There is in every point of the Duke's behavior on this occasion, the forbearance, the gentleness, the charity, and the cordial courtesy which grow out of such philosophy as histhat of unaffected contentment. "Sweet are the uses of adversity," indeed, when they teach such lessons as these! We cannot fancy that this true-hearted gentleman could have so perfected his native character had he never known the reverse of fortune, which exiled him from his court, and sent him among the forest-trees to learn wisdom from all-bounteous Nature; to know the worth of his true friends, who forsook land and station to share his seclusion; and to secure a peace of soul seldom known to those who live perpetually in the turmoil of public life. We find how dear his sylvan haunts have become to him; how happy have been the hours spent among them with his friends; how entirely their calm has penetrated his soul, and made part of his existence, by the unwillingness with which he prepares to quit these scenes at the end of the play, when his dukedom is restored to him. He receives the news with his own philosophic composure; and, by a

word or two that he lets fall, it may be shrewdly suspected that he only intends returning to repossess himself of his birthright, in order to secure it for his daughter Rosalind, and her future husband, Orlando; and then that he will quietly leave the young people at court, and steal back with a few of his faithful friends to close their days in retirement on the spot where they have been so contentedly happy. Mayhap, as the years creep on, and age-aches warn him not to disregard the "seasons' difference," he will exchange the table under the greenwood tree for one beneath the oaken roof. But be sure that his house will be close upon the forest glades, and on his table will smoke a haunch of the red deer for old lang syne.-CLARKE, Shakespeare-Characters.

JAQUES

Jaques envies no one. He is satirical, but not venomous. He is drawn to Rosalind and Orlando, though they will not have anything to do with his melancholy egotism, which, in their eyes, makes him wearisome. He seeks peo

ple who think which the wornout sensualist does not; who have what the Duke calls "matter" in them for which the mere cynic does not care. He is really interested in the fate of the wounded deer, though he makes it a text for his moralizing only, and will not stir from his couch of moss to help it. He is vain of his brooding thoughtfulness, and of course he has plenty to think of. His wild life has given him knowledge of the purlieus of human nature, and their many problems. When he remembers all this matter of humanity, he is sullen, but not savage; and then old gentlemen, like the banished Duke, who are void of his storied experience of life, seek him out and taste through his moralizing a pleasant savour of far-off naughtiness, of a world fuller and more varied than the forest. This was sure to please an exile from the world like the Duke, who, though he makes the best of the wild wood, will not be sorry to get back to the court. The

good stuff of thought in Jaques somewhat excuses his egotism. But he is over-vain of it, and when Rosalind laughs at his apparent wisdom and tells him it is really folly, he is hurt; and the hurt is the deeper, because an inward whisper tells him Rosalind is right.—BROOKE, On Ten Plays of Shakespeare.

Jaques has clearly morbid traits; yet he represents a type very characteristic of the early seventeenth century, and one which, as the minute and elaborate drawing shows, greatly interested Shakespeare. The staple of his "melancholy" was the vague sadness of a sated brain, the despondent waking after the glorious national revelry of Elizabeth's prime. But there are glimpses in it of a profounder and nobler melancholy, which Shakespeare himself, it can hardly be doubted, came to share, melancholy of a profound sensitiveness to wrong and suffering. Jaques's effusive pathos over the wounded stag, strange and untimely note as it sounds among the blithe horns and carols of the hunters, preludes a deeper, more comprehensive pity, -the stuff of which, in the next years, the great tragedies were to be wrought.—HERFORD, The Eversley Shakespeare.

Jaques is Shakespeare's embodiment of a doctrine that is scattered in fragments about his early plays, the doctrine of Aristotle which associates melancholy with certain abnormal or highly-developed mental power; this melancholy, vulgarized into a "humour" which came mostly from France, had not long before played its part in Jonson's Every Man in his Humor; but Shakespeare dignifies the conception, though Jaques can "suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs."-LUCE, Handbook to Shakespeare's Work.

In the character of Jaques it is very evident that Shakespeare intended to represent a certain delicate shade of incipient melancholia. The melancholy of Jaques