purposes gone back with me into the Middle Ages, in order to better portray my perfected ideal. The baby sitting on my right knee, while a future stage of her life was being personated by the lady at my side, might belong to any age; there was nothing incongruous in her presence on the scene. It was the entrance of my sister Bertha that broke the spell, that shattered the whole fabric I had so elaborately built. She was of the present, of to-day, of the exact second, in which she helped anything to happen. An impersonation of the Now, her coming banished every idea of the Past or Future.

Like an actor in a play, on whom his every-day clothes and the broad light of day have suddenly fallen, I walked slowly to the house. Meeting my older sister, Grace Anna, near the door, I took her aside, and said to her, "When is Mr. Glade expected here?" "What for?" she asked, with eyes dilated.

"To marry Kitty Watridge," said I. "What do you mean ?" exclaimed my sister. "That match was broken off last winter."

It may well be supposed that, remembering what Bertha had seen, and doubtless imagined; that remembering what Kitty had done and said; and recalling, too, how I felt when she did it and said it, I resolved, instead of waiting eighteen long years for another, to accept as the Francesca of my dreams, and as the veritable wife of my actual existence, this dear girl, who was able to represent at this very present the every attribute and quality of my ideal woman.

In the autumn we were married. Thus my Fate, disclaiming my efforts to assist it, no matter in what direction, rose dominant, and, attending to my affairs in its own way, gave me Kitty at last.

But I shall always feel sorry for the baby. Frank R. Stockton.

BEFORE beginning the examination of the scheme of time in separate plays of Shakespeare which were not considered in a former article, I ask the attention of Shakespeareans for a moment to the habit of the poet in dealing with the passage of hours. Whenever hours or minutes are indicated eis nominibus, Shakespeare is almost always, as I believe, quite scrupulous in regulating the length of the scene to fit the measure which he himself prescribes. Of course no playwright ever undertakes to give an exact hour of dialogue for an hour of the clock, but Shakespeare is careful that there shall be some reasonable relation between text and timepiece whenever he calls attention to the movement

of the dial hands. Many illustrations from many plays might be given on this point, but two or three will suffice. In Scene 1, Act I., of Hamlet, Horatio and the soldiers first see the Ghost at one o'clock in the morning, the hour being that of its appearance on the previous night. After its departure they sit and beguile the tedious watch with a long talk about recent Danish history and politics, and when the Ghost reappears it is near the dawn, and presently the cock crows. On the modern stage this is quite confused by reason of the heroic cutting of the dialogue. The scene in which Hamlet has his first interview with the dread visitant is proportioned in the same way, the protracted

interview between the father and the son lasting from an hour not much later than midnight to the moment when "The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,

And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire." The very long Scene 3, Act II., of Othello, which witnesses Cassio's drunkenness and degradation and the clarification of Iago's plot against his general's peace, lasts from a little before ten o'clock in the evening (vide Iago's first speech in the scene) almost to morning; "pleasure and action," as Iago says, with the finest fiendishness of humor, making "the hours seem short." The long interview in prison between the Duke and the provost lasts, in Scene 2, Act IV., of Measure for Measure, from between midnight and one o'clock to "clear dawn." The only exception to the rule which I can now recall is apparent rather than real. In Scene 2, Act II., of Cymbeline, Imogen closes her book at "almost midnight," having weakened her eyes by three hours of steady reading in bed,and presently is asleep. Iachimo emerges from the trunk in which he has made his infamous ambush, and after a rather long soliloquy retires to his hiding-place just as the clock is striking three. This seems a somewhat severe compression of three hours, but Shakespeare's intent is, I think, to indicate by the rapid conventionalism of the stage the facts that Iachimo allowed a long hour or more to pass before he ventured to infer Imogen's sound sleep from the stillness of her chamber, and that the process of examining the room and bed and the person of the pure young wife, and of taking notes of every detail, must have consumed many minutes, retarded as it was by his sensuous delight in Imogen's unconsciously exposed beauty.

III. Continuing the study of separate plays, I take up a third group of comedies, in which are included all those wherein the progress of time is indicated scantily or without precision. From the present point of view, these dramas

In the Two Gentlemen of Verona, the scene of action is often changed; being first in Verona, then in Mantua, again in Verona, and finally in Mantua and on its frontier. Little pains are taken to show the lapse of time, though the movement is evidently as swift as may consort with the constant traveling of the chief characters. In the first scene, Valentine leaves his friend, Proteus, in Verona, and sets out for the court of the prince, who is variously called the Duke and Emperor of Milan. Proteus has already begun to make love to Julia, and the interval between the delivery of his first love-letter, in the second scene of the play, and his full knowledge of his mistress's affection is apparently a few days, or a very few weeks, so long, at all events, as will suffice for him to have received, or to make pretense of having received, an epistle written by Valentine from the near city of Mantua (Scene 3, Act I.). On the day following he is compelled to follow Valentine to Mantua; and scarcely have the friends met before Valentine, like a very fresh young lover, tells the whole story of his conquest of Silvia, and of their near intended flight and secret marriage. Julia's impatience to behold her Proteus' face makes her tarrying very short in Verona, after his departure, and she becomes her false lover's page just after he has betrayed his friend, and wrought the banishment of

1 In spite of the death of Hector, I venture to put Troilus and Cressida among the comedies, because of its general quality and tone.

Valentine and the miscarriage of the scheme of elopement. Silvia's flight, the pursuit by Proteus, the happy end reached through the combination of Proteus' volatile wickedness and precipitate repentance, Julia's meekness, Silvia's courage, and Valentine's fortunate capture of the Duke, his prospective fatherin-law, these all doubtless follow one another as fast as human legs can go. Valentine's assertion to the outlaws (Scene 1, Act IV.) that he has sojourned in Milan "some sixteen months" is evidently intended, like the story of the homicide he has committed, as a mere fabrication.

The action in Love's Labor's Lost is of no consequence, and the whole interest of the play consists in the wit of the principals and the deliciously fantastic verbiage of the euphuist, Don Adriano de Armado. The time of the movement is treated nonchalantly, perhaps, rather than obscurely. The period which elapses between the first conference of the King of Navarre and his lords in Scene 1, Act I., and their interview with the Princess of France and her ladies in Scene 1, Act II., is not stated. It is evidently short, and seems to mark only the separation between two successive days; but there is no conclusive reason to be found in the text why it may not be a few hours or minutes, and why the latter scene may not belong to the same twenty-four hours as the for

mer.

At all events, the action from the opening of Act II. to the end of the comedy covers no more than two consecutive days. From the moment of the encounter of the courts of Navarre and France, the gentlemen, whose signatures to the pledge of a three years' separation from womankind are scarcely. dry, find themselves fors worn in heart, if not in deed. On the afternoon of the day of this encounter, Biron attempts to communicate with Rosaline, and the clown Costard, chosen as letter-carrier by Don Armado to Jaquenetta, and by VOL. LV. NO. 330.

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Biron to his lady-love, learns through the former gentleman that " remuneration " means "three farthings," and through the latter that a "guerdon" is a shilling. The day ends with Scene. 1, Act IV., in which the Princess tries her hand at shooting, and catches a flying glimpse of the love-lorn King. The second day begins with Scene 2, Act IV., in which the characters salute each other with "good-morrow," and discuss the Princess's exploits in killing a deer. The other scenes of the piece all occupy portions of the same day. In the forenoon the King hunts and composes loveverses; his courtiers follow his example, and find him and each other out. In the afternoon, which begins with Scene 1, Act V., soon "after dinner," the gentlemen meet the ladies, plead the various suits, which are rewarded by a promise of "Yes" a year hence, and, with a reckless indifference to decorum which Shakespeare nowhere else parallels, the Princess, just after receiving news of her father's death, is made to stay and listen to the recitation of verses in a rustic mask. But if "When daisies pied and violets blue and "When icicles hang by the wall" were not to be had on any other terms, I suppose the world would sacrifice the feelings of a hundred women to secure the songs.

The passage of the time in the Taming of the Shrew is not always made clear, but it is occasionally shown in an interesting fashion. Scene 1, Act I., is introductory, and displays the state of Baptista's household, furnished, as it is, with an elder daughter "so curst and shrewd" that "till the father rids his hands of her" the gentle junior sister has no chance of mating. There is then an interval of undisclosed length, but certainly very short, within which Lucentio disguises himself as a music teacher; and in Scene 1, Act II., the brisk and brusque Petruchio enters, and, hearing of Katharine's dowry and other charms, undertakes "not to sleep till" he has

seen her. His interview with the shrewish maiden takes place in Scene 1, Act II., wherein their wedding is fixed for the following Sunday. The period between this and the succeeding scenes is long enough to let Petruchio go to Venice to buy "rings and things and fine array," and Scene 1, Act III., is on the day before the appointed Sunday. Scene 2, Act III., is on the wedding day, and deals with the hero's eccentric behavior at the ceremony, and his affectionate haling away of the bride before she has tasted the "bridal dinner." Then succeeds the memorable wedding journey of the newly married pair to the groom's country-seat, where they arrive in Scene 1, Act IV. It is by good rights only at five hours' journey from Padua to Petruchio's house (vide the last ten lines of Scene 3, Act IV.); but Petruchio pursues such a route as to spend in travel the whole afternoon of his wedding day and nearly all the following day, as appears from the soliloquy (Scene 1, Act IV., ad fin.) in which he says that he has not only kept his bride without food during the second day of her trip, but without sleep during the first night of her wedded life, and that he purposes repeating her dose of insomnia on the second night. The movement of time in the scenes which immediately succeed is not generally plain, but it is interesting to know that the time consumed by Petruchio in working the miracle of taming his fair shrew is just a week. Near the end of Act II. Baptista names "the Sunday following" the Sunday of Katharine's nuptials as the day on which Bianca shall be married to the pseudoLucentio, if the father of the latter shall then "warrant" the payment of the promised dower. This date is reached in Scene 4, Act IV., when Baptista declares himself ready to keep his word; and upon the same day Petruchio enters Padua by "a public road," dragging in triumph at his horse's heels, so to speak, the mild Katharine, whose hot blood

seems to have been turned to cream by the conjugal chemistry, who has not only no will of her own, but no sight, no hearing, no thought, that does not wait upon the slightest whimsey of her lord and master. The rest of the play occupies the remainder of the same day, and the comedy concludes with a late supper, which involves all the characters and lasts till bedtime.

All's Well That Ends Well covers between the extreme points of its action a time which is not precisely indicated, but which may be shrewdly surmised to be about four months. The only intervals in its movement which exceed a few days in length are between the second and the third scenes of Act I., and between the fourth and the fifth scenes of Act III. The former period is probably a few weeks, its only measures being found in the facts that within it Helena's strong desire to visit Paris, in order to see Bertram and attempt to cure the sick King, has grown to such an extent as to overmaster her maiden timidity, and that Bertram has had time to be irritated with the King's gentle but repeated refusals to allow him to follow the Italian wars. (See Scene 1, Act II., ad init.) The latter period is two months long (vide speech of First Lord, Scene 3, Act IV.), and covers the time consumed by the wretched, rejected Helena in making her slow progress from her home with the Countess at Rousillon to the city of Florence and the house of Diana Capulet, the latest object of Bertram's gallantry. The succeeding consecutive scenes are separated from one another only by a few days, or by so much time as is necessary for the various marchings and countermarchings of the characters. Diana's brief but graphic description in rhyme of Helena's bodily condition, in the last scene, must be regarded as somewhat premature, though in a line of exaggeration quite natural under the circumstances.

The progress of time is treated in

Cymbeline with more indifference than Shakespeare shows in any other of his non-historical plays, the reasons therefor being, as I think, not hard to find. Yet the poet has taken pains to indicate that the period covered by the entire drama is less than one year. In Scene 1, Act I., one of the gentlemen, who is discussing the lives of Cymbeline and Posthumus, says that the King's two boys were stolen 66 some twenty years" ago; and in the last scene of the fifth act Belarius, the instigator of the abduction, says, "These gentle princes

(For such and so they are) these twenty years Have I trained up."

In the interval between these scenes the action appears to move, as in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, about as fast as will suffice for the long and frequent journeys of the characters. A journey of Posthumus from Britain to Rome, of Iachimo from Rome to Britain and back again, of Imogen from "Lud's

town

to Milford Haven, are the chief of those movements which directly bear on the question of time. The period between the departure of Cloten, with lustful and bloody intents toward Imogen and Posthumus, and his arrival at the cave of Belarius (that is to say, between Scene 5, Act III., and Scene 1, Act IV.) seems to be some ten days or two weeks; at all events, it is supposed to coincide with the time taken to convey from Rome to Lucius in Britain the will of the Emperor touching the levy of troops against the rebellious Cymbeline. (Vide Scene 7, Act III., and Scene 2, Act IV.) Imogen spends this period partly in wandering about, for directly after Pisanio leaves her she loses her way, and "for two nights together" makes the ground her bed (vide Scene 6, Act III.), — and partly at the cave of Belarius, with him and the two youths, for whose benefit she practices her "neat cookery." Afterward the movement in time seems to be as rapid as may consist with the motion of the per

sons; and the word of Belarius at the close of the play, which was cited at the beginning of this paragraph, taken in connection with the succession of scenes, makes it not unreasonable to conjecture that the entire time of the action is between six and nine months.

The action of Pericles occupies something more than fifteen years. Acts II. and III. together cover one year. Between Acts III. and IV. there is an interval of fourteen years.

I have blundered in putting Troilus and Cressida into the third class; its place is in the second. The first and second scenes of the drama introduce the Trojan heroes, Pandarus, Helen, and Cressida, with the chief intent of showing the relations between Troilus, his lady-love, and her go-between uncle. There is then an undetermined interval, which is occupied, in whole or in part, by a "dull and long-continued truce." (Vide the long speech of Eneas, Scene 3, Act I.) After Scene 3, Act I., the entire action of the play consumes parts of three consecutive days, the limits of which are shown with much precision.

In this scene Eneas bears to the Greek generals the challenge of Hector, who summons any one of them to meet him in single combat on the following day. The remainder of the day is devoted at the Greek camp to the usual declamatory exercises, to the invention and execution of the scheme to pique Achilles by advancing the fatwitted Ajax, and at night (Scene 3, Act III.) to the discussion and adoption of a plan to send Diomedes to Troy on the following day, in order to exchange the Trojan prisoner Antenor for Cressida, and to bear the responsive challenge of Ajax to Hector. Meanwhile, in Troy, Hector tells the princes of the defiance he has sent, and Pandarus arranges for the night the love-meeting of Troilus and Cressida. The second day begins with Scene 1, Act IV., very early in the morning, within the city,