SHAKSPEARE’S HEROINES.
Ruskin says:—Shakspeare has no heroes—he has only heroines. There is not one entirely heroic figure in all his plays, except the slight sketch of Henry the Fifth, exaggerated for the purposes of the stage, and the still slighter Valentine in the Two Gentlemen of Verona. In his labored and perfect plays you have no hero. Othello would have been one, if his simplicity had not been so great as to leave him the prey of every base practice around him; but he is the only example even approximating the heroic type. Hamlet is indolent and drowsily speculative; Romeo an impatient boy. Whereas there is hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast in grave hope and errorless purpose. Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, Imogene, Queen Katherine, Perdita, Silvia, Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless.
SHAKSPEARE AND TYPOGRAPHY.
The great Caxton authority in England—Mr. William Blades—has turned his attention to Shakspeare, and applies his knowledge as a practical printer to the poet’s works, in order to see what acquaintance they show with the compositor’s art. The result is strikingly set forth in a volume entitled “Shakspeare and Typography.” Many instances of the use of technical terms by Shakspeare are cited by Mr. Blades, such as the following:—
1. “Come we to full points here? And are et ceteras nothing?—2 Henry IV., ii. 4.”
2. “If a book is folio, and two pages of type have been composed, they are placed in proper position upon the imposing stone, and enclosed within an iron or steel frame, called a ‘chase,’ small wedges of hard wood, termed ‘coigns’ or ‘quoins,’ being driven in at opposite sides to make all tight.
By the four opposing coigns
Which the world together joins.—Pericles, iii. 1.
This is just the description of a form in folio, where two quoins on one side are always opposite to two quoins on the other, thus together joining and tightening all the separate stamps.”