Woman is based upon a variation of the same idea. Nay, the motive was a favourite with University playwrights, and presumably with their audiences. Not to mention Laelia (1595), a Latin setting of the story upon which Shakspere based Twelfth Night, we find in Silvanus, acted at St John's College, Cambridge, Jan. 13, 1596 (old style), the heroine Panthia assuming the disguise of man's apparel, and under the name of Erastus following Silvanus about like a faithful dog, while another girl called Florinda falls in love with her. So too in Labyrinthus, by Walter Hawkesworth (1603), Lepidus passes as a woman and Lucretia as a man; hence, says Professor Boas1, arises "a bewildering and unedifying series of love entanglements before they are finally united to Lidia and Horatius, the son and daughter of Cassander "2. It must be remembered that plays of this class were among the greatest successes of their authors. The presence of this device was enough to excuse the total absence of any other merit. Even that miserable performance, Cupid's Revenge, to which we have already referred, is said to have been "often acted with great applause"; and it certainly passed through three editions. Indeed, the motive gave innumerable chances for introducing the touches in which Elizabethan dramatists and audiences delighted. Little "ironies" like Viola's My father had a daughter loved a man As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman, 1 University Drama in Tudor Age, p. 320. 2 The appearance, in Soliman and Perseda (whether this play be by Kyd or by another), of Perseda "upon the walls in man's apparel" is hardly worth mentioning here. The whole scene of her disguise, if such it can be called, covers but fifty lines. tiny capriccios, scarcely deserving to be called irony, like Shylock's exclamation: How much more elder art thou than thy looks; these, and a thousand others both delicate and indelicate, must have "tickled" the Elizabethan auditor "not othergates" than a clever quibble in words, or than a confusion arising from the likeness between twins. But-and here we reach the important point-it was essential for that auditor not to forget that there was a cheat. Precisely as, to use Coleridge's expression, he must "suspend his disbelief," and allow himself—while the play lasted-to be beguiled into thinking that the boy was a girl, so he must never be allowed to forget that, despite appearances, the girl has not-within the "reality" postulated by the play-become a boy. Otherwise, the original illusion, willingly accepted by the audience, would run a great risk of being destroyed altogether. But this end was at that time, however easy now, hard indeed to compass; for what in the play was a pretence was in the actual world a reality: and the acting, if too good, would be worse than bad. It is as if, in the mock-play within Hamlet, the player-king and his queen were to acquire a far greater actuality than the Prince, Gertrude, or Claudius. There, however, a few touches made all safe; Shakspere could, and did, give to his "two-remove players" a wooden versification and a stilted style, while doubtless instructing his actors to be even more wooden and stilted than their style and their verse. So much so, that if we may believe a story of Addison's, one of the worst of conceivable actors achieved a splendid reputation by playing the part of the Mouse-trap King so badly as to do it well. But how was Shakspere to accomplish the far harder task of first making his boy a real Portia, and then turning Portia back into a boy who must not be so real a boy that we ever forget he is Portia all the while? It takes a god to perform the miracle described by Virgil: iuvenis quondam, nunc femina, Caeneus, Rursus et in veterem fato revoluta figuram: but the miracle of a Portia is fully as difficult of performance. For the stage-conventions must not be strained too far. While the audience is to see that the doctor is the lady of Belmont, the doctor's part is to be acted with sufficient skill to make it natural that the Duke, and Shylock, and even Bassanio, shall not penetrate the disguise. The groundlings must recognise her all the time, but must never be led to cry out, “What fools are those people not to know her too." To Shakspere, who, though the greatest of poets, was most emphatically a playwright, all these things were more obvious than to us; and he set about to conquer his difficulties in his usual commonsense and businesslike manner. It was his aim to make things easy for his patrons; and he knew well that while audiences will put up with a great deal of obscurity or inconsistency in phrases or sentences, an awkward situation annoys them above measure. Hence we find that, like the old musicians preparing a discord, he always "prepares" his hearers for this situation with especial care. It may be laid down as a rule that, in Shakspere's plays, a girl who masquerades as a man either is, from the very first, shown to us as of an even ultra-womanly character, or else, just before she assumes her disguise, is represented in ways, or in circumstances, which bring her femininity into a strong light. She is, in fact, either an Imogen or a Rosalind. Not a single "masculine" woman, in all Shakspere's plays, ever poses as a man. But if we get a woman of strong character, she is carefully revealed at her most "feminine" just as she dons the swashing and martial garb. Yet further, as opportunity offers, the audience is reminded, by hint or gesture, of the "true" state of affairs-and that with an iteration which is quite unnecessary on the modern stage. As one might expect, the skill with which this task is accomplished varies between wide limits. Shakspere's earlier plays are in this as in other respects comparatively rude. In the Two Gentlemen of Verona, for instance, the transformation of Julia is prepared both too carefully and not carefully enough. She is, it is true, feminine, but unlike Imogen or Viola-not so obviously and emphatically feminine that the audience, during the time of disguise, needs no reminder of the truth. The reminder accordingly is given; a preparatory scene, of an obtrusive clumsiness which would by itself prove the immaturity of the play, informs us of the coming change. The dialogue with Lucetta is to the same purport as that of Rosalind with Celia, but how different in its effect upon us! And the same boisterous feeble ness characterises the later reminders: a few asides keep our attention awake, but with difficulty. "I grant,' says Proteus to Silvia, "that I did love a lady, but she is dead."""Twere false, if I should speak it," mutters the disguised Julia, overhearing him; "for I am sure she is not buried.” The case of Jessica in the Merchant of Venice is perhaps hardly worth detailed notice. She appears in boy's dress for a space represented by but a score of lines, and she vanishes with her lover and her father's ducats to re-appear as a thorough woman at Belmont. But we may observe that, brief as is her transformatioň, the fact that it is a transformation is carefully emphasised. She dislikes her apparel, and would fain keep herself in the dark: Lorenzo informs her, and reminds us, that she is "obscured" even in the lovely garnish of a boy. Here, however, Shakspere had better things to do, though of a like kind, in the same play, and it was not his cue to dwell upon the insignificant at the cost of the important. Yet we are ready, after Jessica, to expect a great advance, in Portia, on the crudities of Julia. And a great advance indeed we find. The problem here is far harder than that of Julia, for Portia's mind is by nature more "masculine," she has far more of the intellect, the rationality, the courage, and the vigour which it pleases men, and Shakspere among them, to think the special marks of their sex. Here then, on that very account, Shakspere takes unusual pains to prepare us for the coming development. Shortly before the crisis of the play Portia, in her betrothal speech to |