to take a revenge upon him in
behalf of the whole sex.' Jaques, on his part, is struck by Julia's
charms as soon as he beholds them--'What can this mean? I'm wondrous ill
o' the sudden'--and is fain to sit down, lest he should fall. In the
scene which follows there is a great war of words. The lady talks,
purposely, at an agonizing speed, and the gentleman roundly tells her
that he would rather have her room than her company. At last the wrangle
is interrupted, and Julia, as a parting shot, calls Marcellus 'a bear in
breeches.' He himself is inclined, after all, to think her 'something
more than the rest of her detested sex--some being, perhaps, of a
superior order.' He praises her gay innocence and noble simplicity.
Julia, on her side, 'prays Heaven that she is not in love with the
brute,' but is afraid she must be. Then there is a scene in which, by
way of drawing him on, she pretends to love him, but afterwards says
that she was mocking him, and so covers him with confusion.
Nevertheless, he is not cured. He is still her slave, and, as he says,
what is love 'but an epidemic disease, and what all the world has, at
one time or other, been troubled with as well as myself? Why should I
endeavour to curb a passion the greatest heroes have with pride
indulged? No.... He alone is wise who nobly loves.' So he returns to the
charge, makes the lady admit the soft impeachment, and obtains the
Duke's consent to their union. He says, in the end, that he is afraid he
makes but an odd sort of figure--that he has acted a little out of
character, and a great deal below the dignity of a philosopher. But,
having the aforesaid disease, he has sought the remedy, and has found
it; for, in his view, 'Marriage is the surest cure of love.'

Georges Sand, in her 'Comme il Vous Plaira'--a comedy in three acts,
'tiree de Shakespeare, et arrangee'--diverges still further from the
original text. Her work is, even more markedly than 'The Modern
Receipt,' founded, only, on 'As You Like It.' 'In dealing with this
uncurbed genius, which owned no restraint,' she thought herself
justified in 'condensing, abstracting, and modifying' his work. But, as
a matter of fact, her play is indebted to Shakespeare only in idea.
Jaques is introduced early in the piece as sent by the banished Duke
with a message to Rosalind. Of course, he meets Celia, and at first is
_brusquerie_ itself. But in the second act he comes to think there is
something in her name 'qui re