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 Elizabethan stage the female
parts were taken by boys made the deception easier. Viola's situation in
_Twelfth Night_ is precisely similiar to Euphrasia's, but there is a
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 start, while Euphrasia's _incognito_ is
preserved till the fifth act, and then disclosed by an accident. This
kind of mystification and surprise was a trick below Shakspere. In this
instance, moreover, it involved a departure from dramatic probability.
Euphrasia could, at any moment, by revealing her identity, have averted
the greatest sufferings and dangers from Philaster, Arethusa, and
herself, and the only motive for her keeping silence is represented to
have been a feeling of maidenly shame at her position. Such strained and
fantastic motives are too often made the pivot of the action in Beaumont
and Fletcher's tragi-comedies. Their characters have not the depth and
truth of Shakspere's, nor are they drawn so sharply. One reads their
plays with pleasure, and remembers here and there a passage of fine
poetry, or a noble or lovely trait, but their characters, as wholes,
leave a fading impression. Who, even after a single reading or
representation, ever forgets Falstaff, or Shylock, or King Lear?

The moral inferiority of Beaumont and Fletcher is well seen in such a
play as _A King and No King_. Here Arbaces falls in love with his
sister, and, after a furious conflict in his own mind, finally succumbs
to his guilty passion. He is rescued from the consequences of his
weakness by the discovery that Panthea is not, in fact, his sister. But
this is to cut the knot and not to untie it. It leaves the denouement to
chance, and not to those moral forces through which Shakspere always
wrought his conclusions. Arbaces has failed, and the piece of luck which
keeps his failure innocent is rejected by every right-feeling s