If the reader who has gone thoughtfully through the plays in the course which I have indicated will take up this one, he will find in the very first scene evidence and illustration of these views. It is almost entirely in prose, which itself shows the weight of Shakespeare's mature hand. The first blank verse is the speech of the Countess, in which she gives a mother's counsel to Bertram as he is setting out for the wars, as is pointed out above, and which is unmistakably of the "Hamlet" period. Then comes a speech by Helen beginning, O were that all! I think not on my father: And these great tears grace his remembrance more Than those I shed for him-- and ending with this charming passage, referring to the growth of her love for Bertram: 'Twas pretty, though a plague, To see him every hour; to sit and draw His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls In our heart's table; heart too capable Of every line and trick of his sweet favor: But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy Must sanctify his reliques. Who comes here? It is needless to say to the advanced student of Shakespeare's style that this is in his later manner. A little further on is Helen's speech to the detestable Parolles, beginning with the mutilated line, "Not my virginity yet," which is followed by some ten, in which she pours out in Euphuistic phrase her love for Bertram, saying that he has in her "a mother, and a mistress, and a friend, a counsellor, a traitress, and a dear"; and yet further, His humble ambition, proud humility, His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet, His faith, his sweet disaster, with a world Of pretty, fond, adoptious Christendoms That blinking Cupid gossips. This will remind the reader of Scott's Euphuist, Sir Piercie Shafton, who, if I remember aright, uses some of these very phrases, in which Shakespeare has beaten Lilly at his own weapons, and made his affected phraseology the vehicle of the touching utterance of real feeling. "Euphues" was published in 1580, when Shakespeare was only sixteen years old; and this passage, although it may have been written or perhaps altered later, was probably a part of the play as it was first produced. The scene ends with the following speech by Helen, which, for its peculiar characteristics, is worth quoting entire. The reader who will compare it with "Love's Labor's Lost" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" will have not a moment's doubt as to the time when it was written: