Touchstone, a "clownish fool" of the Duke's household, steal from the court, and wend their way to the Forest of Arden, where Rosalind goes to seek her father. Frederick, alarmed by his daughter's absence, and having reason to suspect that Orlando, who is also missing, may be with the runaways, sends for Oliver, commands him to find his brother, and sequesters his lands and goods till he does so.

In the mean time Orlando, having information from the faithful Adam that his life is in danger from the increased bitterness of Oliver's enmity, has abandoned his brother's house, and, wandering aimlessly, comes upon the exiled Duke in the woods of Arden, and is hospitably welcomed. But adversity has by no means abated the ardor of Orlando's love for Rosalind, and to relieve his passion he writes verses in her praise, which he fastens to the trees of the forest. These Celia and Rosalind discover, and are thus made aware of Orlando's presence in their neighborhood. They soon meet him. Orlando, of course, does not recognize either of the cousins in their disguise; but finding the young forester-as he takes Rosalind to be—a sprightly youth of more refined manners than one would look to meet in "so removed a dwelling," he becomes confidential, and imparts to her something of his history and his love. Rosalind ridicules his lovesickness; tells him "love is merely a madness, and . . . deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; " that, profiting by the experience and instruction of an old religious uncle, she professes to cure such madness; that Orlando does not look like a lover-has none of her uncle's marks upon him; but she says 'there is a man haunts the forest, that abuses our young plants with carving 'Rosalind' on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies on brambles, all, forsooth, deifying the name

of Rosalind. If I could meet that fancymonger, I would give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love upon him." Orlando assures her he is the man that is so love-shaked," but does not care to be cured, doubts her ability to cure him, and asks if she has ever cured any one. "Yes, one," she answers, "and in this manner. He was to imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me; at which time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing and liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles; . . . would now like him, now loathe him; now weep for him, then spit at him," till

...

at length "I drave my suitor from his mad humor of love. And thus I cur'd him; and this way .. I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind and come every day to my cote and woo me." Orlando insists that he has no desire to be cured, but is induced to go with Celia and Rosalind to their cottage to try the efficacy of the remedy.

One day, while undergoing this treatment, Orlando, quitting Rosalind for an hour to keep an appointment with the Duke, whom he serves, chances upon a man sleeping under an oak, around whose neck a serpent is coiling itself, while near by a lioness crouches, awaiting some movement of the sleeper to spring upon him. At Orlando's approach the serpent glides away, and he discovers the imperiled man to be Oliver, the cruel brother from whose malignity he has suffered so much and so unjustly. The first impulse is to leave him to his fate;

"But kindness, nobler ever than revenge,

And nature, stronger than his just occasion,"

prevail, and he attacks and kills the lioness.

Oliver, awakening, recognizes his brother; forgiveness and reconciliation follow, and he is sent by Orlando to apologize to Rosalind for his failure to return as promised, and to exhibit a napkin which Orlando had used to stanch a wound received in his encounter with the beast. At the sight of blood Rosalind swoons, but, reviving, would have Oliver believe the fainting counterfeited, that he might report to Orlando how well she had feigned. But her agitation increasing, Oliver, at Celia's request, assists in leading Rosalind to their cottage, and on the way becomes interested in Celia, wins her love, and, returning to Orlando, says if he will consent to their marriage, he (Oliver) will surrender to his brother all the revenue that was old Sir Rowland's, and live and die a shepherd in the forest.

There is a lively episode in the play, of Phebe, a beautiful shepherdess, and Silvius, her lover, whose earnest pleadings she treats with cruel scorn. Rosalind, rambling through the wood, happens to meet with them. She rates the girl roundly for her proud and disdainful bearing, saying that though she may have some beauty she is not for all markets, and that she would do well to take her lover's offer, "and thank Heaven, fasting, for a good man's love." At the same time she tells Silvius that he is a fool for following the shepherdess, for he is "a thousand times a properer man than she a woman; " whereupon Phebe straightway falls in love with Rosalind (in her male attire), and begs her to "chide a year together; " for she would rather hear her chide than Silvius

WOO.

Rosalind, having now satisfied herself of the truth and constancy of Orlando's love for her, informs him that she can do strange things, and if he so desires she will produce his real and very Rosalind, whom, with the Duke's permission, he may marry

at the wedding of Oliver and Celia, which is to take place at the Duke's cave the next day. She also promises Phebe that she will then marry her if she (Rosalind) ever marries woman, Phebe readily agreeing to take Silvius for her husband in case she rejects Rosalind. Accordingly, when all meet at the Duke's, Rosalind, appearing in her own character, gives her hand to the astonished and delighted Orlando, Celia weds Oliver, Phebe keeps her word and accepts Silvius, and Touchstone, coming in with Audrey, an unsophisticated lass of the forest, of whom he has become enamored, adds another couple

“To join in Hymen's bands."

In the midst of these festivities the second son of Sir Rowland de Bois arrives to announce that Frederick, the usurping Duke, having set out with an armed force to take his brother and put him to the sword, was met on the skirts of the wood by an old religious man, and by him converted

"Both from his enterprise and from the world;
His crown bequeathing to his banish'd brother,
And all their lands restor'd to them again
That were with him exil'd."

And so, amid general rejoicing, the play concludes with a merry dance by the characters.

This, then, is the story of our play; and that we may the better understand and enjoy it and the other wonder-children of the great writer's imagination, we must glance at the main facts, at least, of the author's life; we ought to know something of the crude makeshifts of a stage which his genius and the art of the Elizabethan actors rendered immortal; and we should

try to locate the position of our play, approximately, in the sequence of Shakespeare's works.

Not the least of the many striking things about Shakespeare is the meagerness of our knowledge of the man and his life. The sum total of the tireless labors of innumerable investigators shows only the barest results-such bald facts as might well have been brought to light, with an equal expenditure of trained scholarship, about the humblest Englishman of Elizabeth's time. As for knowing the man, his personality, his temperament, his methods of work, we are almost entirely obliged to study him through his writings.

This necessity, however, is not altogether an unfortunate one; for among the most stimulating questions a student can set for himself about any author he reads is, What manner of man is it that takes this view of life? Any student of literature who neglects to attempt such a reconstruction of the author's personality and outlook upon life has surely missed a great opportunity in practical psychology-and this is especially true when that text is one of the Shakespeare plays.

Of Shakespeare's life we have only the following authentic facts. He was born on April 23, 1564, at Stratford-on-Avon. His father, who came of a line of farmers, was the proprietor of a prosperous general store; his mother, Mary Arden, was also of a farming family long settled and favorably known in Warwickshire. For a few years the boy probably attended the Stratford grammar school, where he picked up, among other things, what Ben Jonson referred to as "small Latin and less Greek." When William was about fourteen years old, the family fortunes declined; his father met with business reverses, mortgaged his property, and was later even arrested for debt. It is probable,