I would willingly change her I were not
wise," is thus beautifully paraphrased by Shakspeare:--

That man i' the world, who shall report he has
A better wife, let him in nought be trusted,
For speaking false in that! Thou art, alone,
If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness,
(Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government,
Obeying in commanding; and thy parts,
Sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out,)
The queen of earthly queens. She is noble born,
And, like her true nobility, she has
Carried herself towards me.

The annotators on Shakspeare have all observed the close resemblance
between this fine passage--

Sir,
I am about to weep; but, thinking that
We are a queen, or long have dreamed so, certain
The daughter of a king--my drops of tears
I'll turn to sparks of fire.

and the speech of Hermione--

I am not prone to weeping as our sex
Commonly are, the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities: but I have
That honorable grief lodged here, which burns
Worse than tears drown.

But these verbal gentlemen do not seem to have felt that the resemblance
is merely on the surface, and that the two passages could not possibly
change places, without a manifest violation of the truth of character.
In Hermione it is pride of sex merely: in Katherine it is pride of place
and pride of birth. Hermione, though so superbly majestic, is perfectly
independent of her regal state: Katherine, though so meekly pious, will
neither forget hers, nor allow it to be forgotten by others for a
moment. Hermione, when deprived of that "crown and comfort of her
life," her husband's love, regards all things else with despair and
indifference except her feminine honor: Katherine, divorced and
abandoned, still with true Spanish pride stands upon respect, and will
not bate one atom of her accustomed state

Though unqueened, yet like a queen
And daughter to a king, inter me!

The passage--

A fellow of the royal bed, that owns
A moiety of the throne--a great king's daughter,
... here standing
To prate and talk for life and honor 'fore
Who please to come to hear,[105]

would apply nearly to both queens, yet a single sentiment--nay, a single
sentence--could not possibly be transferred from one character to the
other. The magnanimity, the noble simplicity, th