It is not every woman, even of the irreproachable kind, who wields so prompt a lightning of her chastity. And here Shakspeare has marked the difference between unconsciousness and prudery. I think that Isabella would have understood Iachimo much earlier, for the matter of her virtue was constantly in her thoughts, as a thing to be guarded against an undermining world. Her indignation is voluble; and she undertakes to reason in a priggish fashion with Angelo. But Imogen simply calls her servant that Iachimo may be taken in an instant out of the room. Many a woman whose life has been without a stain is still less intolerant than Isabella, and more complaisant than Imogen. Race and climate are largely implicated in these natural differences. When Madame de Sévigné heard of her husband's infidelities, it was through the interested malice of her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, who was in love with her. He proposed that she should seek to be revenged: "I will go halves in your revenge; for, after all, your interests are as dear to me as my own." She quietly replied: "I am not so exasperated as you think." Iachimo said,-- "Revenge it. I dedicate myself to your sweet pleasure, And will continue fast to your affection." Imogen's white-heat of honor shrivels up the wit of the French lady. Her mind can make but one motion, to cry out, "What ho, Pisanio!" "Away!--I do contemn mine ears, that have So long attended thee." Thou dost solicit a lady "That disdains Thee and the devil alike." Iachimo now pretends that he was only making trial of her by a false report and by a counterfeited overture,--and all for the sake of the love he bore her husband. This is quite enough: her frankness returns as suddenly as it was dismissed. For, as Iachimo well said,-- "The gods made you, Unlike all others, chaffless." And that is a statement of the limit placed by Nature to her womanly shrewdness of observation. In the historical dramas, Shakspeare seldom introduces women in order to make them convey to us impressions of character, traits of mind or heart. They are not so much feminine shapes as persons implicated in the play by the accident of relationship to the men. The parts are not particularized by them. Lady Percy, with one or two light touches of eager inquisitiveness, hints her fond and simple love. Queen Katherine fills out the proportions of a pathetic figure. But in "Henry V." Mrs. Quickly monopolizes all the point and savor: the Queen of France and her daughter are only lay-figures of the plot. In "1, 2 Henry IV.," it is the same. In "Richard II." the Queen seems merely born to this,-- "That my sad look Should grace the triumph of great Bolingbroke." And her gardener plants a bank of rue "In the remembrance of a weeping queen."