the nature
Whom passion could not shake--whose solid virtue
The shot of accident nor dart of chance
Could neither graze nor pierce.

(_Othello_, IV., i., 176-9.)

Stability of temperament is the finest fruit of the free exercise of
the will; it is the noblest of masculine excellences.

Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core--ay, in my heart of hearts.

(_Hamlet_, III., ii., 76-8.)

In spite of his many beautiful portrayals of the charms and tenderness
and innocence of womanhood, Shakespeare had less hope in the ultimate
capacity of women to control their destiny than in the ultimate
capacity of men. The greatest of his female creations, Lady Macbeth
and Cleopatra, stand in a category of their own. They do not lack high
power of will, even if they are unable so to commingle blood and
judgment as to master fate.

Elsewhere, the dramatist seems to betray private suspicion of the
normal woman's volitional capacity by applying to her heart and mind
the specific epithet "waxen." The feminine temperament takes the
impress of its environment as easily as wax takes the impress of a
seal. In two passages where this simile is employed,[31] the deduction
from it is pressed to the furthest limit, and free-will is denied
women altogether. Feminine susceptibility is pronounced to be
incurable; wavering, impressionable emotion is a main constituent of
woman's being; women are not responsible for the sins they commit nor
the wrongs they endure.

[Footnote 31:

For men have marble, _women waxen minds_,
And therefore are they formed as marble will;
The weak oppressed, the impression of strange kinds
Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill.
Then call them not the authors of their ill,
No more than wax shall be accounted evil,
Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.

(_Lucrece_, 1240-6.)

How easy it is for the proper-false
In _women's waxen hearts_, to set their forms!
Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we;
For, such as we are made of, such we be.

(_Twelfth Night_, II., ii., 31.)]

This is reactionary doctrine, and one of the few points in
Shakespeare's "natural" philosophy which invites dissent. But he makes
generous amends by ascribing to women a plentiful supply of humour. No
writer has proclaimed more effectively his faith in woman's bril