better to be lowly born,
And range with humble livers in content,
Than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief,
And wear a golden sorrow.

How completely, in the few passages appropriated to Anna Bullen, is her
character portrayed! with what a delicate and yet luxuriant grace is she
sketched off, with her gayety and her beauty, her levity, her extreme
mobility, her sweetness of disposition, her tenderness of heart, and, in
short, all her _femalities_! How nobly has Shakspeare done justice to
the two women, and heightened our interest in both, by placing the
praises of Katherine in the mouth of Anna Bullen! and how characteristic
of the latter, that she should first express unbounded pity for her
mistress, insisting chiefly on her fall from her regal state and worldly
pomp, thus betraying her own disposition:--

For she that had all the fair parts of woman,
Had, too, a woman's heart, which ever yet
Affected eminence, wealth, and sovereignty.

That she should call the loss of temporal pomp, once enjoyed, "a
sufferance equal to soul and body's severing;" that she should
immediately protest that she would not herself be a queen--"No, good
troth! not for all the riches under heaven!"--and not long afterwards
ascend without reluctance that throne and bed from which her royal
mistress had been so cruelly divorced!--how natural! The portrait is not
less true and masterly than that of Katherine; but the character is
overborne by the superior moral firmness and intrinsic excellence of the
latter. That we may be more fully sensible of this contrast, the
beautiful scene just alluded to immediately precedes Katherine's trial
at Blackfriars, and the description of Anna Bullen's triumphant beauty
at her coronation, is placed immediately before the dying scene of
Katherine; yet with equal good taste and good feeling Shakspeare has
constantly avoided all personal collision between the two characters;
nor does Anna Bullen ever appear as queen except in the pageant of the
procession, which in reading the play is scarcely noticed.

To return to Katherine. The whole of the trial scene is given nearly
verbatim from the old chronicles and records; but the dryness and
harshness of the law proceedings is tempered at once and elevated by the
genius and the wisdom of the poet. It appears, on referring to the
historical authorities, that when the affair was first agitated in
council, Katherine replied to the long exposit