Characteristics of Women (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...a mind less Pg 239 firmly tempered than her own. There is a reply of Leontes to one of her cutting speeches, which is full of feeling, and a lesson to those, who, with the best intentions in the world, force the painful truth, like a knife, into the already lacerated heart. PAULINA. If, one by one, you wedded all the world, Or, from the all that are, took something good To make a perfect woman, she you kill'd Would be unparallel'd. LEONTES. I think so. Kill'd She I kill'd? I did so: but thou strik'st me Sorely, to say I did; it is as bitter Upon thy tongue, as in my thought. Now, good now, Say so but seldom. CLEOMENES. Not at all, good lady: You might have spoken a thousand things that would Have done the time more benefit, and grac'd Your kindness better. We can only excuse Paulina by recollecting that it is a part of her purpose to keep alive in the heart of Leontes the remembrance of his queen's perfections, and of his own cruel injustice. It is admirable, too, that Hermione and Paulina, while sufficiently approximated to afford all the pleasure of contrast, are never brought too nearly in contact on the scene or in the dialogue; 50 for this would Pg 240 have been a fault in taste, and have necessarily weakened the effect of both characters: