What a significant speech is that
given to Paulina in the "Winter's Tale," act v. scene 1: "How? Not
women?" Paulina is a thorough partisan, siding with women against men,
and strengthened in this by the treatment her mistress has received from
her husband. One has just said to her, that, if Perdita would begin a
sect, she might "make proselytes of who she bid but follow." "How? Not
women?" Paulina rejoins. Having received assurance that "women will love
her," she has no more to say.
I had the following explanation of a line in "Twelfth Night" from a
stranger I met in an old book-shop:--Malvolio, having built his castle
in the air, proceeds to inhabit it. Describing his own behaviour in a
supposed case, he says (act ii. scene 5): "I frown the while; and
perchance, wind up my watch, or play with my some rich jewel"--A dash
ought to come after _my_. Malvolio was about to say _chain_; but
remembering that his chain was the badge of his office of steward, and
therefore of his servitude, he alters the word to "_some rich jewel_"
uttered with pretended carelessness.
In "Hamlet," act iii. scene 1, did not Shakspere intend the passionate
soliloquy of Ophelia--a soliloquy which no maiden knowing that she was
overheard would have uttered,--coupled with the words of her father:
"How now, Ophelia?
You need not tell us what lord Hamlet said,
We heard it all;"--
to indicate that, weak as Ophelia was, she was not false enough to be
accomplice in any plot for betraying Hamlet to her father and the King?
They had remained behind the arras, and had not gone out as she must
have supposed.
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