‘To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.’ The ‘_petty_ pace,’ coming from Macbeth! The ‘out, out, brief candle,’ should be spoken in the same musing tone. Johnson says of a learned apology by Heath for a line in _Macbeth_ which is defective in metre: ‘This is one of the effects of literature in minds not naturally perspicacious’—a criticism which might be extended to much Shakespearean comment. * * * * * _Cymbeline_.—The wager is loathsome. If any man with whom we were acquainted had laid it, should we not scorn and brand him? It was a crime to mention Imogen’s name in such society as that which met at Philario’s house. The only excuse is Boccaccio, but what shall we say of Iachimo’s interview with Imogen, invented by Shakespeare! After his beastly experiment upon her, he excuses himself: ‘I have spoke this, to know if your affiance Were deeply rooted.’ She begs him to prolong his visit! The apology is worse than the original insult. The royal behaviour, or what Shakespeare means us to take for royal behaviour, in the two youths is overdone and sometimes repulsive. Arviragus goes out of his way to put his love for Imogen higher than that for his supposed father, Belarius, who is present. ‘The bier at door, And a demand who is’t shall die, I’d say My father, not this youth.’ Yet the point of the scene is the nobility of blood in these youths! Lucius, who had protected Imogen, hopes she will plead for his life, and she turns on him: ‘No, no; alack! There’s other work in hand: I see a thing Bitter to me as death: your life, good master, Must shuffle for itself.’ In the fifth act Posthumus believes his wife to be guilty, and yet breaks out into strains like these: ‘So I’ll die, For thee, O Imogen! even for whom my life Is every breath a death. . . . For Imogen’s dear life take mine; and though ’Tis not so dear, yet ’tis a life; you coin’d it.’ Shakespeare surely ought to have made Posthumus revert to perfect faith. He ought to have borrowed something from his own Beatrice. Posthumus wishes Imogen saved, because, if her life had been spared, she might have repented. Iachimo is impossible, simple blackness, worse than Iago. He is unactable, for some motivation is necessary.