ll a winter's tale; yet it
seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have provided in the
oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2.) some ground for Hermione's seeming
death and fifteen years' voluntary concealment. This might have been
easily effected by some obscure sentence of the oracle, as for example:--

" 'Nor shall he ever recover an heir, if he have a wife before
that recovery.' "

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