erent parts. What is there, thought I, in Beatrice--sprightliness
covering intense womanly feeling--that our vivacious, healthful Ruth
Brown cannot master; and what in Benedick, her masculine counterpart,
beyond the power of Moore to conceive and render? It is chiefly
girlish beauty and simple sweetness that Hero requires, so she
shall be Edith Grey. Claudio, Leonato, Don John, Pedro,--we have
clean-limbed, presentable fellows that will look and speak them all
well; and as for lumbering Dogberry, Abbot, with his fine sense of the
ludicrous, will carry it out in the best manner. A dash of the pencil
here and there through the lines where Shakespeare was suiting his own
time, and not the world as it was to be after three hundred refining
years, and the marking out of a few scenes that could be spared from
the action, and the play was ready; trimmed a little, but with not
a whit taken from its sparkle or pathos, and all its lovelier poetry
untouched.

Then came long weeks of drill. In the passage,

"O my lord,
When you went onward to this ended action,
I looked upon her with a soldier's eye," etc.,

Claudio caught the fervour and softness at last, and seemed (it
would have pleased Queen Bess better than Madame de Main tenon) like
Palamon, in love indeed. Ursula and Hero rose easily to the delicate
poetry of the passages that begin,

"The pleasantest angling is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,"

and

"Look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs."

Pedro got to perfection his turn and gesture in

"The wolves have preyed; and look, the gentle day,
Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about
Dapples the drowsy east with spots of gray."

With the rough comedy of Dogberry and the watchmen, that foils so well
the sad tragedy of poor Hero's heart-breaking, and contrasts in
its blunders with the diamond-cut-diamond dialogue of Benedick and
Beatrice, there was less difficulty. From first to last, it was
engrossing labour, as hard for the trainer as the trained, yet still
delightful work; for what is a conscientious manager, but an artist
striving to perfect a beautiful dramatic picture? The different
personages are the pieces for his mosaic, who, in emphasis, tone,
gesture, by-play, must be carved and filed until there are no flaws
in the joining, and the shading is perfect. But all was ready at last,
from the roar of Dogberry at the speech of Conrade,

"Away! you're an ass! yo