Act ii. Amintor’s speech:—

Act ii. Amintor’s speech:—

“Oh, thou hast nam’d a word, that wipes away All thoughts revengeful! In that sacred name, ‘The king,’ there lies a terror.”

It is worth noticing that of the three greatest tragedians, Massinger was a democrat, Beaumont and Fletcher the most servile _jure divino_ royalists, and Shakespeare a philosopher;—if aught personal, an aristocrat.

“A King And No King.”

Act iv. Speech of Tigranes:—

“She, that forgat the greatness of her grief And miseries, that must follow such mad passions, Endless and wild as women!” &c.

Seward’s note and suggestion of “in.”

It would be amusing to learn from some existing friend of Mr. Seward what he meant, or rather dreamed, in this note. It is certainly a difficult passage, of which there are two solutions;—one, that the writer was somewhat more injudicious than usual;—the other, that he was very, very much more profound and Shakespearian than usual. Seward’s emendation, at all events, is right and obvious. Were it a passage of Shakespeare, I should not hesitate to interpret it as characteristic of Tigranes’ state of mind, disliking the very virtues, and therefore half-consciously representing them as mere products of the violence of the sex in general in all their whims, and yet forced to admire, and to feel and to express gratitude for, the exertion in his own instance. The inconsistency of the passage would be the consistency of the author. But this is above Beaumont and Fletcher.

“The Scornful Lady.”