If thou, that bid'st me be content, wert grim, Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother's womb, Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains, Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious. Patched with foul moles and eye-offending marks, I would not care--I then would be content; For then I should not love thee; no, nor thou Become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown. But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy! Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great: Of Nature's gifts thou mayest with lilies boast, And with the half-blown rose: but Fortune, O! She is corrupted, chang'd, and won from thee; She adulterates hourly with thine uncle John; And with her golden hand hath pluck'd on France To tread down fair respect of sovereignty. It is this exceeding vivacity of imagination which in the end turns sorrow to frenzy. Constance is not only a bereaved and doating mother, but a generous woman, betrayed by her own rash confidence; in whose mind the sense of injury mingling with the sense of grief, and her impetuous temper conflicting with her pride, combine to overset her reason; yet she is not mad: and how admirably, how forcibly she herself draws the distinction between the frantic violence of uncontrolled feeling and actual madness!-- Thou art not holy to belie me so; I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine; My name is Constance; I was Geffrey's wife; Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost: I am not mad; I would to Heaven I were! For then, 'tis like I should forget myself: O, if I could, what grief should I forget! Not only has Constance words at will, and fast as the passionate feelings rise in her mind they are poured forth with vivid, overpowering eloquence; but, like Juliet, she may be said to speak in pictures. For instance:-- Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum? Like a proud river peering o'er its bounds. And throughout the whole dialogue there is the same overflow of eloquence, the same splendor of diction, the same luxuriance of imagery; yet with an added grandeur, arising from habits of command, from the age, the rank, and the matronly character of Constance. Thus Juliet pours forth her love like a muse in a rapture: Constance raves in her sorrow like a Pythoness possessed with the spirit of pain. The love of Juliet is deep and infinite as the boundless sea: and the grief of Constance is so great, that nothing but the round world itself is able to sustain it. I will instruct my sorrows to be proud; For grief is proud and makes his owner stout. To me, and to the state of my great grief Let kings assemble, for my grief's so great, That no supporter but the huge firm earth Can hold it up. Here I and Sorrow sit; Here is my throne,--bid kings come bow to it!