SONG.

The

'Heigh, ho! sing heigh, ho! unto the green holly."

memory of the manner in which I have heard this sung and said by intelligent people, suggests to me that it is perhaps worth noticing that this "heigh ho!" is 'hey ho!' and not the heigh ho! (pronounced 'high, ho!') of a sigh. It should be pronounced 'hay-ho!'

ACT III. SCENE 2.

"Cel. Atalanta's better part."

There has been much learned and ingenious conjecture as to what was "Atalanta's better part." As is common with the editors, the obvious meaning of the phrase has been passed by. Whiter is lauded by Mr. Knight for suggesting that, because of Atalanta's successful contests in running with her lovers, it is an allusion to maiden modesty, such as would characterize a woman who was zealous to preserve her virgin purity even by the death of her lovers," and which is spoken of as her "better part." In the first place, this is superfluous, as "Lucretia's modesty" is enumerated in the next line; and it is, in the second place, inconsistent with the story of Atalanta, who, when won by Hippomenes by means of the golden apples, impatient to yield what Mr. Whiter represents her as so zealous to preserve, desecrated with her lover the temple of Cybele, who turned the offenders to lions. Atalanta was a finely-formed woman, and a remarkably swift and graceful runner. Her "better part" was evidently her leg. Orlando enumerates in his verses personal as well as mental charms; and it is a matter of wonder that the obvious allusion could have escaped any reader.

"Ros. Good my complexion! dost thou think though I am caparison'd like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition?"

Rosalind is, perhaps, the most generally preferred of those of Shakespeare's heroines who are put upon the stage. She has vivacity and wit enough to captivate those who Ike a woman of spirit; and yet with this there is interwoven so much womanly tenderness and delicacy, and even when wearing doublet and hose, she is, in her gayest moods, so truly, sometimes so touchingly, feminine, that she wins more admirers than she dazzles. It is a very difficult undertaking, the acting of this part of Rosalind; and I have seen artists of far more than ordinary talent, and of the best histrionic education, utterly fail in giving a consistent and faithful representation of the character. In the first Scene they are sprightly and well conducted, which is all that they have need to be; though even here, they are apt to lack a little dignity. But, according to their interpretation, when Orlando approaches Rosalind, she fairly flings herself at his head, and makes love to him in the most formidable and alarming nanner. So does not Shakespeare's Rosalind. True, she loves at once, and with her whole heart; but she does not advertise the state of her affections to Orlando and all her uncle's court, upon the spot. She hardly knows it herself, until she is about to part with him; and then, as she tells him that he has "wrestled well and overthrown more than his enemies," it is with a trembling modesty, all the more shrinking because of its frankness.

In the Forest of Arden, Rosalind is, at first, in her element. She plays the "saucy lackey" with unction; and, contrary to her own plea, seems to have, in very deed, "a doublet and hose in her disposition." But when Orlando appears, love makes all the feminine traits of Shakespeare's Rosalind display themselves beneath the veil of her assumed character. This her representatives seem not to know. No sad earnest

ness appears under their gayety as they ask Orlando if he is "so much in love as his rhymes speak." Again, Rosalind,-archly, but ever timidly, questioning,-asks Orlando,

"What would you say to me now, an

I were your very, very Rosalind?"

and yet again, when the sham marriage has taken place,— "Now how long would you have her after you have possessed her?"

How can they fail to ask those questions with trembling apprehension, but half concealed under a veil of saucy badinage !—and yet they do. Poor Rosalind! When Orlando, not knowing to whom he speaks, replies that he would have her "for ever and a day," the shadow of a fearful sorrow falls upon her light heart, as she answers :

"Say a day without the ever. No, no, Orlando: men are April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when they are maids but the sky changes when they are wives."

'But she fears he has betrayed herself, and with a gush of assumed gayety, she breaks out :

"I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock pigeon over his hen; more clamorous than a parrot against rain," &c.

But how rarely do we see this light and shade! The eye of the stage Rosalind never quails, is never dimmed; neither does her voice know that tender pathos which is the utterance of a woman's heart who has laid the priceless treasure of an unasked love at the feet of one whom she feels may spurn it.

But to these remarks, what devotee of Shakesperian representations in recent times will not make one bright exception,-Mrs. Charles Kean. The womanly charm,

which she possesses in greater perfection than any other actress of her day, and which pervades more or less every one of her performances, appears in her every look and tone and movement while she plays Rosalind. There is, perhaps, in the whole range of the drama, but one other character which requires for its truthful conception and embodiment a more perfect development of the highest histrionic genius than this. I am convinced that long after an artist has attained the mastery of such strongly pronounced characters as Beatrice, Juliet, Lady Macbeth, and Julia in the Hunchback, she must labor still to reach the deep and quiet power and the subtle delicacy requisite to embody the earnest and impulsive, though merry Rosalind, and still more for that required by the pure, gentle, long-suffering, self-sacrificing Viola.

Mrs. Kean leaves nothing to be desired in her representation of either of these characters. As Rosalind, the expression of her face alone, when, after she has looked a while at Orlando, she asks, "Is yonder the man?" shows that her heart is stricken, and that indeed the young wrestler has already "overthrown more than his enemies,' and from this time till she steps forward to deliver so bewitchingly that characteristic epilogue, with what delicate perception and flexible skill does she present the ever changing but ever loving Rosalind! Who can forget the deep, almost sad earnestness, with which in the midst of her raillery she asks Orlando, "But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?" How daintily does she speak to Silvius and Phoebe that speech so full of mingled wit, mischief and wisdom!-And what a key to the character is her reproachful delivery of "Say a day without the ever," with the instantaneous change to the merry threat, "I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock pigeon over his hen."

But her Viola is the crowning excellence of all her performances. The first two Acts of Twelfth Night are those in which she produces the greatest impression; and in these the Scene with Olivia and that with the Duke, in which Viola tells the story of her love, live longest in the memory.

"Ros. By no means, sir: Time travels in divers paces with divers persons: I'll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal.

Orl. I pr'ythee, who doth he trot withal?

Ros. Marry, he trots hard with a young maid, between the contract of her marriage, and the day it is solemnized: if the interim be but a se'nnight, time's pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven years.

Ros. With a priest that lacks Latin, and a rich man that hath not the gout; for the one sleeps easily, because he cannot study; and the other lives merrily, because he feels no pain: the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning; the other knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury: These Time ambles withal."

Upon this passage Mr. Hunter remarks:

"This portion of this very sprightly dialogue appears to have undergone dislocation at a very early period, for the old copies and the new are alike. To trot hard, at least in the present use of the phrase, is a rapid motion, only just below the gallop. How, then, can it be said that Time 'trots hard' when a se'n-night seems as long as seven years? A slow motion is intended, such as is meant by the word ambling.

"Again, Time passes swiftly with the easy priest and the luxurious rich man who is free from gout: He 'trots hard' with them."

New Illustrations of Shakespeare, Vol. I. p. 349.

He would therefore read: