nd heaps one
ghastly image upon another with all the wild luxuriance of a distempered
fancy:--

O amiable, lovely death!
Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!
Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,
Thou hate and terror to prosperity,
And I will kiss thy detestable bones;
And put my eye-balls in thy vaulty brows;
And right these fingers with thy household worms;
And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust;
And be a carrion monster like thyself;
Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil'st,
And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love,
O come to me!

Constance, who is a majestic being, is majestic in her very frenzy.
Majesty is also the characteristic of Hermione: but what a difference
between _her_ silent, lofty, uncomplaining despair, and the eloquent
grief of Constance, whose wild lamentations, which come bursting forth
clothed in the grandest, the most poetical imagery, not only melt, but
absolutely electrify us!

On the whole, it may be said that pride and maternal affection form the
basis of the character of Constance, as it is exhibited to us; but that
these passions, in an equal degree common to many human beings, assume
their peculiar and individual tinge from an extraordinary development of
intellect and fancy. It is the energy of passion which lends the
character its concentrated power, as it is the prevalence of imagination
throughout which dilates it into magnificence.

Some of the most splendid poetry to be met with in Shakspeare, may be
found in the parts of Juliet and Constance; the most splendid, perhaps,
excepting only the parts of Lear and Othello; and for the same
reason,--that Lear and Othello as men, and Juliet and Constance as
women, are distinguished by the predominance of the same
faculties,--passion and imagination.

The sole deviation from history which may be considered as essentially
interfering with the truth of the situation, is the entire omission of
the character of Guy de Thouars, so that Constance is incorrectly
represented as in a state of widowhood, at a period when, in point of
fact, she was married. It may be observed, that her marriage took place
just at the period of the opening of the drama; that Guy de Thouars
played no conspicuous part in the affairs of Bretagne till after the
death of Constance, and that the mere presence of this personage,
altogether superfluous in the action, would have complete