ntly receive my medicine."

He is answered that, having learned of the world's evil by libidinous
living, he can only do evil by exposing his knowledge. He replies,
finely expressing Shakespeare's invariable artistic practice, that his
aim will be at sin, not at particular sinners.

In the middle of his speech Orlando enters, raging for food. It is
interesting to see how closely Shakespeare follows Jaques' mind in the
presence of the fierce animal want of hunger. He is too much interested
to be of help. The Duke ministers to Orlando. Jaques wants to know "of
what kind this cock should come of." He speaks banteringly, the Duke
speaks kindly. The impression given is that Jaques is heartless. The
Duke's thought is "here is one even more wretched than ourselves."
Jaques' thought, always more for humanity than for the individual, is a
profound vision of the world.

The play is a little picture of the world. The contemplative man who is
not of the world, is yet a part of the picture. We are shown a company
of delightful people, just escaped from disaster, smilingly taking the
biggest of hazards. The wise man, dismissing them to their fates with
all the authority of wisdom, gives up his share in the game to listen to
a man who has given up his share of the world. Renunciation of the world
is attractive to all upon whom the world presses very heavily, or very
lightly.

Rosalind and Phebe are of the two kinds of woman who come much into
Shakespeare's early and middle plays. Rosalind, like Portia, is a
golden woman, a daughter of the sun, smiling-natured, but limited.
Phebe, like Rosalind, is black-haired, black-eyed, black-eyebrowed, with
the dead-white face that so often goes with cruelty. Shortly after this
play was written he began to create types less external and less
limited.

_Much Ado about Nothing._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ 1600.

_Source of the Plot._ The greater part of the fable seems to have
been invented by Shakespeare. The Hero and Claudio story is found
in the twenty-second novel of Bandello, and in at least three other
books (one of them Spenser's _Faerie Queene_). It was also known to
the Elizabethans in a play now lost.

_The Fable._ Benedick, a lord of Padua, pledges himself to
bachelorhood. Beatrice, a disdainful lady, is scornful of men.

Claudio plans to marry Hero.

Don John, enemy of Claudio, plans to thwart the marriage by letti