"By my troth!" exclaims the Prince, wholly charmed, "a pleasant-spirited lady!"
Which was the opinion of all, both on the stage and off. Esther seemed to have forgotten the danger she had run, the emotion she had experienced; or, rather, this danger and emotion lent to her eyes and voice a lively, incisive charm of gayety and extraordinary audacity. She was the very embodiment of that wit "quick as the greyhound's mouth," which forms the motive of the play. The quips and cranks of the poet seemed born upon her lips with the freedom and supreme grace of improvisation, and if here and there there occur certain rather weak or coarse sallies, she allowed the audience no time to perceive them. It was a rain, a very hail-storm which fell upon the heads of Benedick, Leonato, and Don Pedro, mixed with blinding lightning. With a glance of the eye she addressed her most trenchant words to Mowbray, whom she descried standing at the back of the Prince of Wales's chair. But it was surely no longer against him that she defended herself, since she felt herself assailed by every one in the theatre. She pitted herself against the game with elation. She no longer played a part, but was herself; she was no exceptional creature, but a young English girl of all times, who accosts love with a mocking air, though with a beating heart, with defiance upon her lips, backed by a pretty, mutinous insolence and a belligerent effervescence of words. Upon this battlefield of love, like her brothers in veritable combats, she had no wish to bite the dust. Though vanquished, she knows it not.
There was a genuine sigh, a shudder throughout the auditorium, when Beatrice, deceived by stratagem and thrown off her guard, bows her head and gives vent to those charming words:—
"'Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu!'"
Fate is a strange manipulator of effects! At the moment that she raised her eyes her glance met that of a young man who stood at the back of the parterre, pallid with emotion; it was Francis Monday! Then they saw their Beatrice wholly transformed; moved, vibrant, saddened. How well she understood the grief of her cousin Hero, unjustly suspected by her bethrothed! Now that she loved, how swiftly her heart divined and sympathized with the pangs of love! With what a burst of pity, sympathy, and feminine heroism she cried:—
"'Oh, that I were a man for his sake! or that I had any friend would be a man for my sake! But manhood is melted into courtesies, valor into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too: he is now as valiant as Hercules that only tells a lie, and swears it.—I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving.'"
Then with a short sob she fell upon a chair. Suffering and joy,—she had traversed the whole domain o'er which woman reigns. Those tears consecrated the defeat of Beatrice, the triumph of Esther.
The audience burst into rapturous applause, and when the play was over the young actress was informed that his Majesty desired to see her.
Thereupon she was conducted to the royal box, or, rather, to the reception room which adjoined it. The gentlemen-in-waiting made way for her, and in the space left vacant, the cynosure of every eye, the young girl paused for a moment confused.