The idea of this delightful drama is a genuine jealousy of disposition, and it should be immediately followed by the perusal of Othello, which is the direct contrast of it in every particular. For jealousy is a vice of the mind, a culpable tendency of the temper, having certain well known and well defined effects and concomitants, all of which are visible in Leontes, and, I boldly say, not one of which marks its presence in Othello;--such as, first, an excitability by the most inadequate causes, and an eagerness to snatch at proofs; secondly, a grossness of conception, and a disposition to degrade the object of the passion by sensual fancies and images; thirdly, a sense of shame of his own feelings exhibited in a solitary moodiness of humour, and yet from the violence of the passion forced to utter itself, and therefore catching occasions to ease the mind by ambiguities, equivoques, by talking to those who cannot, and who are known not to be able to, understand what is said to them,--in short, by soliloquy in the form of dialogue, and hence a confused, broken, and fragmentary, manner; fourthly, a dread of vulgar ridicule, as distinct from a high sense of honour, or a mistaken sense of duty; and lastly, and immediately, consequent on this, a spirit of selfish vindictiveness. Act i. sc. 1--2. Observe the easy style of chitchat between Camillo and Archidamus as contrasted with the elevated diction on the introduction of the kings and Hermione in the second scene: and how admirably Polixenes' obstinate refusal to Leontes to stay-- There is no tongue that moves; none, none i' the world So soon as yours, could win me;-- prepares for the effect produced by his afterwards yielding to Hermione;--which is, nevertheless, perfectly natural from mere courtesy of sex, and the exhaustion of the will by former efforts of denial, and well calculated to set in nascent action the jealousy of Leontes. This, when once excited, is unconsciously increased by Hermione:-- Yet, good deed, Leontes, I love thee not a jar o' the clock behind What lady she her lord;-- accompanied, as a good actress ought to represent it, by an expression and recoil of apprehension that she had gone too far. At my request, he would not:-- The first working of the jealous fit;-- Too hot, too hot:-- The morbid tendency of Leontes to lay hold of the merest trifles, and his grossness immediately afterwards-- Padling palms and pinching fingers:-- followed by his strange loss of self-control in his dialogue with the little boy. Act iii. sc. 2. Paulina's speech: That thou betray'dst Polixenes,'twas nothing; That did but show thee, of a _fool_, inconstant, And damnable ingrateful.-- Theobald reads 'soul.' I think the original word is Shakspeare's. 1. My ear feels it to be Shakspearian; 2. The involved grammar is Shakspearian;--'show thee, being a fool naturally, to have improved thy folly by inconstancy;'