jar o' the clock behind
What lady she her lord;"--

accompanied, as a good actress ought to represent it, by an expression and
recoil of apprehension that she had gone too far.

"At my request, he would not:"--

The first working of the jealous fit;--

"Too hot, too hot:"--

The morbid tendency of Leontes to lay hold of the merest trifles, and his
grossness immediately afterwards,--

"Paddling palms and pinching fingers;"--

followed by his strange loss of self-control in his dialogue with the
little boy.

Act iii. sc. 2. Paulina's speech:--

"That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing;
That did but show thee, of a _fool_, inconstant,
And damnable ingrateful."

Theobald reads "soul."

I think the original word is Shakespeare's. 1. My ear feels it to be
Shakespearian; 2. The involved grammar is Shakespearian--"show thee, being
a fool naturally, to have improved thy folly by inconstancy;" 3. The
alteration is most flat, and un-Shakespearian. As to the grossness of the
abuse--she calls him "gross and foolish" a few lines below.

Act iv. sc. 3. Speech of Autolycus:--

"For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it."

Fine as this is, and delicately characteristic of one who had lived and
been reared in the best society, and had been precipitated from it by dice
and drabbing; yet still it strikes against my feelings as a note out of
tune, and as not coalescing with that pastoral tint which gives such a
charm to this act. It is too Macbeth-like in the "snapper up of
unconsidered trifles."

_Ib._ sc. 4. Perdita's speech:--

"From Dis's waggon! daffodils."

An epithet is wanted here, not merely or chiefly for the metre, but for
the balance, for the aesthetic logic. Perhaps "golden" was the word which
would set off the "violets dim."

_Ib._--

... "Pale primroses
That die unmarried."

Milton's--

"And the rathe primrose that forsaken dies."

_Ib._ Perdita's speech:--

"Even here undone:
I was not much afraid; for once or twice
I was about to speak, and tell him plainly,
The self-same sun, that shines upon his court,
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but
Looks on alike. Will't please you, Sir, be gone!
(_To Florizel._)
I told you, what would come of this. Beseech you,
Of your own state take care: this dream of mine,
Being now awake, I'll queen it no inch farther,
But milk my ewes, and weep."

O how more than exquisite is this whole speech! And that profound