*

themselves. It will be well, therefore, to pass on to a scene in which another Katharine will show, in much fewer words, and as exemplified in her own person, what is the perfect character of a good wife, and that, too, while her loving lord' must, unhappily, be pronounced 'the graceless traitor':Have I lived thus long—a wife, a true one, A woman (I dare say, without vain glory) Never yet branded with suspicion?

Have I with all my full affections,

Still met the king? loved him next Heaven? obeyed him?
Been, out of fondness, superstitious to him?
Almost forgot my prayers to content him?
And am I thus rewarded? 'tis not well, lords.
Bring me a constant woman to her husband,
One that ne'er dreamed a joy beyond his pleasure;
And to that woman, when she has done most,
Yet will I add an honour-a great patience.

King Henry VIII. Act iii. Sc. I.

It is a curious instance of our author's tact that he employs women to teach wives their conjugal duty. We have seen this already in the Taming of the Shrew; there is another example in the Comedy of Errors, where Luciana takes to task her married sister Adriana, for want of obedience and submission to her husband, see Act ii. Sc. 1; and it is Portia, in the Merchant of Venice, who confesses

A light wife doth make a heavy husband. Act v. Sc. 1. Compare Eccles. xxv. 23: 'A wicked woman maketh an heavy countenance and a wounded heart.'

* See also the character of Portia, wife of Brutus, in Julius Cæsar.

From the consideration of the duties which arise out of the marriage tie, we naturally proceed to the relationship of parents and children; and here again our poet may speak to us from his own experience, in both relations. He was himself the eldest son (though third in order of birth) of eight childrenfour of either sex-but three of the sisters died in infancy; and his own family consisted of two daughters and a son, the son and the younger of the daughters being twins. By the marriage of his elder daughter, Susanna, to Dr. John Hall, he became a grandfather in 1608, eight years before his death. His younger daughter, Judith, married Mr. Thomas Quiney only a few weeks before that event. Our poet's father had died in 1601, and his mother, to whom he probably owed much, in 1608. These bare facts furnish nearly all the materials which we now possess, or can hope to obtain, of our poet's family history. It will be interesting to supply the deficiency, in however slight a degree, so far as we may be able, from his writings. In these, accordingly, we may discover the tenderness of a parent's heart; where the clown, in All's well that ends well, quotes the proverb, 'Bairns are blessings,'† Act i. Sc. 3; and where Lady Macduff complains of her husband :— He wants the natural touch.

:

Macbeth, Act iv. Sc. z.

See above, p. 4.

† See Psalm cxxvii. 6, cxxviii. 5, sq.

Or, again, where Lady Constance, in King John, says to Cardinal Pandulph, Act iii. Sc. 4:

He talks to me that never had a son.

In his writings, too, we seem to read that our author had learnt, and practised, and desired in his own turn to teach, the duty of children towards their parents. How pathetically, for instance, is this lesson read to Coriolanus by his mother Volumnia!

Say my request's unjust,

And spurn me back; but if it be not so,

Thou art not honest; and the gods will plague thee,
That thou restrainst from me the duty, which

To a mother's part belongs. Coriolanus, Act v. Sc. 3. And how forcibly is Goneril admonished by the Duke of Albany, that no good can be expected either from or by an undutiful child :—

O Goneril!

You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face. I fear your disposition:
That nature, which contemns its origin
Cannot be bordered certain in itself:

(i. e. cannot be restrained within any certain bounds, and will eventually shrink from no excess of sin).

She that herself will silver or disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither,

And come to deadly use. King Lear, Act iv. Sc. 2.

In these last words Warburton suggests that there is a reference to the use that witches and

• Tear off.

enchanters are said to make of withered branches in their charms. But it is Lear himself who is employed, as we might expect, to place the deformity and misery of filial ingratitude in the strongest light:

Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend,

More hideous when thou shew'st thee in a child
Than the sea-monster !

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is

To have a thankless child. King Lear, Act i. Sc. 4. There is good reason to believe that in using this strong language, Shakspeare wrote not only as he felt, but as he was justified in speaking by his own dutiful behaviour towards his parents.* On the other hand, no less forcibly and pathetically does our poet teach us, we may suppose also from his own feelings, the affection which parents cherish, or ought to cherish, towards their offspring, in the complaint of Lady Macduff before referred to, and in the rebuke which Clifford administers to King Henry VI. :

My gracious liege, this too much lenity
And harmful pity must be laid aside.

Whose hand is that the forest bear does lick?
Not his that spoils her young before her face.
The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on,
And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.
Unreasonable creatures feed their young,
And tho' man's face be fearful† to their eyes,

See the Author's Sermon preached at Stratford, p. 22. † i. e. formidable. See above, p. 32.

Yet, in protection of their tender ones,

Who hath not seen them (even with those wings
Which sometimes they have used with fearful flight),
Make war with him that climbed unto their nest,
Offering their own lives in their young's defence?
For shame, my liege, make them your precedent!
K. Henry VI. 3rd Part, Act ii. Sc. 2.

A rebuke which, whether just or no, elicited from the king in reply the noble sentiment about which there can be no question, viz. that the good deeds of parents are the best inheritance which they can bequeath to their children :

I'll leave my son my virtuous deeds behind.

Shakspeare's only son, Hamnet, who died in his twelfth year, was still alive when this play was written. Had he survived his father, his would indeed have been a glorious inheritance. The two daughters of our poet, however, did both survive him; and to them-besides the immortal works which he left behind-he bequeathed also, I doubt not, the effectual blessing of a good Christian. This I venture to say, because it may be presumed that the pious practice of children receiving benedictions from their parents-a practice common in our poet's time-was observed in his own family. That such must have been the case we may not unreasonably infer from his frequent mention of it, and from the easy natural manner in which it is

See below, Sect. 16.