feeling, fitted to excite a truer sympathy. [Sidenote: Why? Because of Shakspere's self-restraint.] He has refused to stretch the chords of feeling to the utmost in favour of Desdemona; and his refusal has a design and meaning in it. [Sidenote: The mind of Othello is the centre of Shakspere's play,] There is anguish in the scene, and the most utter yielding to overpowering sorrow; but it is the Moor who feels those emotions, and it is the exhibition of his mind which is the leading end of this scene, as of the rest of the drama. [Sidenote: and the pathos of Desdemona's death must be kept down.] The suffering lady is but an inferior actor in the scene; her situation is brought out with perfect skill and genuine tenderness, so far as it is consistent with the first object and illustrative of it; but its expression is arrested at the point where its further developement would have marred the effect of the scene as a whole, and broken in on its pervading spirit. Ford had no such aim in view; and the very scene of his which is so beautiful in itself, loses almost all its force when regarded as a part of the play in which it is inserted. These principles of Shakspeare's could be traced as influencing the drama of the 'Two Noble Kinsmen,' even if there were nothing farther to shew their effect than what has been already [81:1]noticed. But their power is displayed still more admirably in a second quality in the mode of conception, less open to notice, but breathing actively through all. There is skill in the mental machinery which gives motion to the story; but there is even greater art in the application of a hidden influence, which controls the action of the moving power, and equalizes its effects. [Sidenote: Shakspere's art in subduing all _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ to one Friendship.] That secret principle is Friendship, the operation of which is shewn most distinctly in the Kinsmen, guiding every part of their behaviour except where their mutual claim to Emilia's love comes into operation, never extinct even there, though its effect be sometimes suspended, and awakening on the approach of Arcite's death, with a warmth which is natural as well as touching. [Sidenote: Love of Friends the leading idea of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.] But this feeling has a farther working: Love of Friends is in truth the leading idea of the piece: the whole drama is one sacrifice on the altar of one of the holiest influences which affect the mind of man. Palamon and Arcite are the first who bow down before the shrine, but Theseus and Perithous follow, and Emilia and her sister do homage likewise. [Sidenote: The harmony of its parts, an idea beyond Fletcher.] This singular harmony of parts was an idea perfectly beyond Fletcher's reach; and the execution of it was equally unfit for his attempting. The discrimination, the delicate relief, with which the different shades of the affection are elaborated, is inimitable. The love of the Princesses