Wilt please you, sir, be gone?
[To Florizel.]
I told you what would come of this. Beseech you,
Of your own state take care; this dream of mine,
Being now awake, I'll queen it no inch further,
But milk my ewes and weep.
As Perdita, the supposed shepherdess, turns out to be the daughter
of Hermione, and a princess in disguise, both feelings of the pride
of birth and the claims of nature are satisfied by the fortunate
event of the story, and the fine romance of poetry is reconciled to
the strictest court-etiquette.
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL is one of the most pleasing of our
author's comedies. The interest is, however, more of a serious than
of a comic nature. The character of Helen is one of great sweetness
and delicacy. She is placed in circumstances of the most critical
kind, and has to court her husband both as a virgin and a wife: yet
the most scrupulous nicety of female modesty is not once violated.
There is not one thought or action that ought to bring a blush into
her cheeks, or that for a moment lessens her in our esteem. Perhaps
the romantic attachment of a beautiful and virtuous girl to one
placed above her hopes by the circumstances of birth and fortune,
was never so exquisitely expressed as in the reflections which she
utters when young Roussillon leaves his mother's house, under whose
protection she has been brought up with him, to repair to the French
king's court.
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