I must notice here another pragmatic after-thought, although it has no connection with the character of Bottom. Heraud is so bent upon forcing a conscious Protestant motive upon Shakspeare that he spoils one of the best passages in the play of Cymbeline. When Imogen, in consequence of a note brought to her from her husband, Leonatus Posthumus, goes to Milford Haven with Pisanio, whom the husband has commissioned to kill her for supposed adultery, she first learns the object of the journey: this converts the beguiling note into something false, unlike her husband, inexplicable. She has thrust it into her bosom: there it lies. "Come, here's my heart," as she invites Pisanio to perform his duty. Then her hand comes into contact with the paper which she had put there. It shall not stand in the way: "The scriptures of the loyal Leonatus all turned to heresy?" That is, she has put the note in a place where it might divert the stroke which the spirit of the note intended:-- "Away, away, Corrupters of my faith! You shall no more Be stomachers to my heart!" The constant and innocent wife disdains even the slight chance that a bit of paper might turn or deaden the stroke despatched by a loyal husband. She is as loyal as he, but he knows it not: so it is better to die at once than live on thus misconceived. For what is life without the confidence of a loyal husband? The canon against self-slaughter is so divinely engraven in the conscience that it suspends her own hand. Therefore, since life is no longer of value and interest to her, let Pisanio finish. This is the drift of Imogen's speech. But Heraud imputes to Shakspeare a theological motive in the use of the word "scriptures," as if he meant to include, by secondary allusion, the Bible; and he adds that Shakspeare, although "a critical reader of the Bible and an extreme Protestant," felt the danger of letting the Reformation lapse, by the abuse of reason, into heresies, the only preventive of which was the Catholic principle of authority watching over the use of the Bible. The German commentators of Shakspeare have done some magnificent work, open occasionally to the English charge of over-subtlety. But no German can yet vie with this English straining to impute to the text an unnatural and ponderous motive. Bottom said that he could "see a voice," and went to the chink to spy if he could hear his Thisbe's face. But these modern observations are far more preternatural.