e gods
Speak to him when they please; till when, let us
Suffer and wait."

And the play ends with the words

"On lustful kings,
Unlooked-for sudden deaths from heaven are sent,
But cursed is he that is their instrument."

Aspatia, in this tragedy, is a good instance of Beaumont and Fletcher's
pathetic characters. She is troth-plight wife to Amintor, and after
he, by the king's command, has forsaken her for Evadne, she disguises
herself as a man, provokes her unfaithful lover to a duel, and dies
under his sword, blessing the hand that killed her. This is a common
type in Beaumont and Fletcher, and was drawn originally from
Shakspere's _Ophelia_. All their good women have the instinctive
fidelity of a dog, and a superhuman patience and devotion, {131} a
"gentle forlornness" under wrongs, which is painted with an almost
feminine tenderness. In _Philaster, or Love Lies Bleeding_, Euphrasia,
conceiving a hopeless passion for Philaster--who is in love with
Arethusa--puts on the dress of a page and enters his service. He
employs her to carry messages to his lady-love, just as Viola, in
_Twelfth Night_, is sent by the Duke to Olivia. Philaster is persuaded
by slanderers that his page and his lady have been unfaithful to him,
and in his jealous fury he wounds Euphrasia with his sword. Afterward,
convinced of the boy's fidelity, he asks forgiveness, whereto Euphrasia
replies,

"Alas, my lord, my life is not a thing
Worthy your noble thoughts. 'Tis not a life,
'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away."

Beaumont and Fletcher's love-lorn maids wear the willow very sweetly,
but in all their piteous passages there is nothing equal to the natural
pathos--the pathos which arises from the deep springs of character--of
that one brief question and answer in _King Lear_.

"_Lear_. So young and so untender?

"_Cordelia_. So young, my lord, and true."

The disguise of a woman in man's apparel is a common incident in the
romantic drama; and the fact, that on the Elisabethan stage the female
parts were taken by boys, made the deception easier. Viola's situation
in _Twelfth Night_ is precisely similar to Euphrasia's, but there is a
{132} difference in the handling of the device which is characteristic
of a distinction between Shakspere's art and that of his
contemporaries. The audience in _Twelfth Night_ is taken into
confidence and made aware of Viola's real nature from the st