(He begins to know her.)
This should be that so famous Queen
For unquell’d valour and disdain.—
In these Enchanted Woods is seen
Nothing but illusions vain.
Zel. What stares the man at?
Fel. I compare
A Picture—I once mine did call—
With the divine Original.
Zel. Fall’n again asleep you are:
We poor human Shepherd Lasses
Nor are pictured, nor use glasses.
Who skip their rank, themselves and betters wrong:
To our Dames, god bless ’em, such quaint things belong.
Here a tiny brook alone,
Which fringed with borrow’d flowers (he has
Gold and silver enough on his own)
Is heaven’s proper looking-glass,
Copies us: and its reflections,
Shewing natural perfections,
Free from soothing, free from error.
Are our pencil, are our mirror.
Fel. Art thou a Shepherdess?
Zel.—and bore
On a mountain, called There.
Fel. Wear’st thou ever heretofore
Lady’s clothes?
Zel. I Lady’s gear?—
Yes—what a treacherous poll have I!—
In a Country Comedy
I once enacted a main part;
Still I have it half by heart:
The famous History it was
Of an Arabian—let me see—
No, of a Queen of Tartary,
Who all her sex did far surpass
In beauty, wit, and chivalry:
Who with invincible disdain
Would fool, when she was in the vein,
Princes with all their wits about ’em;
But, an they slept, to death she’d flout ’em.
And, by the mass, with such a mien
My Majesty did play the Queen;
Our Curate had my Picture made,
In the same robes in which I play’d.
To my taste this is fine, elegant, Queen-like raillery; a second part of Love’s Labours Lost, to which title this extraordinary Play has still better pretensions than even Shakspeare’s: for after leading three pair of Royal Lovers thro’ endless mazes of doubts, difficulties; oppositions of dead fathers’ wills; a labyrinth of losings and findings; jealousies; enchantments; conflicts with giants, and single-handed against armies; to the exact state in which all the Lovers might with the greatest propriety indulge their reciprocal wishes—when, the deuce is in it, you think, but they must all be married now—suddenly the three Ladies turn upon their Lovers; and, as an exemplification of the moral of the Play, “Loving for loving’s sake,” and a hyper-platonic, truly Spanish proof of their affections—demand that the Lovers shall consent to their mistresses’ taking upon them the vow of a single life; to which the Gallants with becoming refinement can do less than consent.—The fact is that it was a Court Play, in which the Characters; males, giants, and all; were played by females, and those of the highest order of Grandeeship. No nobleman might be permitted amongst them; and it was against the forms, that a great Court Lady of Spain should consent to such an unrefined motion, as that of wedlock, though but in a play.
Appended to the Drama, the length of which may be judged from its having taken nine days in the representation, and me three hours in the reading of it—hours well wasted—is a poetical account of a fire, which broke out in the Theatre on one of the nights of its acting, when the whole Dramatis Personæ were nearly burnt, because the common people out of “base fear,” and the Nobles out of “pure respect,” could not think of laying hands upon such “great Donnas;” till the young King, breaking the etiquette, by snatching up his Queen, and bearing her through the flames upon his back, the Grandees, (dilatory Æneases), followed his example, and each saved one (Anchises-fashion), till the whole Courtly Company of Comedians were got off in tolerable safety.—Imagine three or four stout London Firemen on such an occasion, standing off in mere respect!
C. L.
[210] She affects rusticity.
[211] The Enchanted Queen of Araby, of whom Zelidaura is jealous.