And yet on this occasion she chose to parry the Baroness's very reasonable request. "Shakespeare," she said, in her most superior tone, "did not write romances. He wrote plays."
"Will your Royal Highness please," said the Baroness, "to tell us about one of them?"
For the life of her Edna could not just then summon up a clear recollection of the plot of any Shakespearian comedy or tragedy—and it is quite possible that there are many persons as highly educated as she who might be equally at a loss.
"With so prolific a writer as Shakespeare," she hedged, "it is difficult to single out any particular play."
She was so plainly embarrassed that Daphne felt impelled to come to the rescue.
"I think, Ma'am," she said, "they would like the story of The Merchant of Venice!"
"I should hardly call it suitable myself to such an audience as this," replied Edna, who was possibly confusing it with Othello. "No, Miss Heritage, I really think something less—less objectionable would be—There's As you like it, now, quite a pleasant play. I think I can remember the outline of that. Let me see. Yes, it's about a girl called "Rosalind," who dressed up as a boy and ran away into a forest, where she met Ferdinand—or was it Bassanio?—anyway, the name is of no consequence. Well, and he carved her name on all the trees, and so they fell in love, and in the end they were married, you know."
As drama this appeared to strike the ladies-in-waiting as lacking in incident, and the Baroness von Haulemännerschen openly declared that an ancestress of hers who also ran away into a forest had the far more exciting experience of being poisoned by a jealous Queen and enclosed by dwarfs in a glass coffin.
"Oh, very well!" said Edna; "if you are going to compare your own silly traditions with works of genius, I give you up as hopeless!"
And this was the beginning and the end of the Princess Royal's attempt to infuse Culture into Court Circles.