Chapter 2

'Her'. O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low--

'Lys'. Or else misgraffed, in respect of years;

'Her'. O spite! too old to be engag'd to young--

'Lys'. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends;

'Her'. O hell! to chuse love by another's eye!

There is no authority for any alteration;--but I never can help feeling how great an improvement it would be, if the two former of Hermia's exclamations were omitted;--the third and only appropriate one would then become a beauty, and most natural.

'Ib.' Helena's speech:--

I wilt go tell him of fair Hermia's flight, &c.

I am convinced that Shakspeare availed himself of the title of this play in his own mind, and worked upon it as a dream throughout, but especially, and, perhaps, unpleasingly, in this broad determination of ungrateful treachery in Helena, so undisguisedly avowed to herself, and this, too, after the witty cool philosophizing that precedes. The act itself is natural, and the resolve so to act is, I fear, likewise too true a picture of the lax hold which principles have on a woman's heart, when opposed to, or even separated from, passion and inclination. For women are less hypocrites to their own minds than men are, because in general they feel less proportionate abhorrence of moral evil in and for itself, and more of its outward consequences, as detection, and loss of character than men,--their natures being almost wholly extroitive. Still, however just in itself, the representation of this is not poetical; we shrink from it, and cannot harmonize it with the ideal.