follow from it. But as a picture of national
manners it has been interesting. It boots not
to follow the " grand ballet" throughout all its
many incidents: neither would space permit.
For the ballet is in three acts. But we may
select one or two more " striking situations" as
being calculated to give the English reader
what we may call a new idea, and vision of
several historical personages. Before the inn
disappears to make way for other pictures, it
becomes the scene of some rather complicated
events. Two ladies— one in a long flowing train,
the other in the briefest of tarlatan skirts—
enter masked, and go through a great deal of
exertion. On the long-robed lady removing
her mask and black domino, we discover her to
be no less a personage than the Virgin Monarch
herself. She has a face of ghastly paleness,
surmounted by a flaming wig of the hue
vulgarly called "carroty": the towering stiff curls
of which are piled high above her majestic
brow. Her manners are vehement, and free
from anything like the stiffness of court etiquette.
Her toleration of her attendant's very scant and
airy clothing, may suffice to show that Elizabeth's
notions on the subject of costume were much
more latitudinarian than we are accustomed to
suppose. We soon discover, moreover, that her
majesty is the victim of a sentimental passion for
the wayward Williams! Unhappy Bard, canst
thou not control thy notorious infirmity, so far
as to appear in the royal presence sober? Or,
at the least, not very drunk? Alas,
humiliating as is the spectacle, the haughty queen
must behold her poet, bottle in hand, reeling
helplessly, in the last depths of intoxication!
In vain she pleads, stretching forth her royal
hands, and even bending her royal knees in
supplication, Shakespeare will not relinquish
his bottle. He continues to take sip after sip,
regardless of his queen's increasing disgust
and distress, until at length he drops into a
chair and snores in drunken lethargy.

Such are the flaws in the brightness of
genius! Such are the fatal effects of the bottle!

Elizabeth and her airy maid of honour put
on their masks and fly.

The hilarious ones return, but no longer
hilarious. They have changed their dresses, and
now appear in the garb of court huntsmen,
apparently looking for the queen. Royalty is
nowhere to be found. The divine one snores,
drunk, in his chair. The landlord proposes
something to eat— by the unmistakable gesture of
putting his fingers into his mouth and making
as though he were swallowing— and  everybody
goes to dinner very cheerfully amid the jubilant
music of hunting horns.

Thus ends the first act. The second act is,
perhaps, the most wonderful of the three, but
though lengthy in action, it may be described
with brevity.

The scene represents a garden on the banks
of the Thames. Time, evening. Moon slowly
rises to illuminate the spires and towers
of London. Also to illuminate the dome of
St. Paul's— Sir Christopher Wren's St. Paul's!
— with prophetic lustre. Moreover, she shines
upon the divine one, still drunk and still sleeping.
He has been carried by majesty's command
to this romantic spot, chair and all.

There enters a tall female figure draped in
white with flowing gauzy sleeves and veil. She
contemplates the Bard with a soft melancholy,
and then, pressing her hand to her heart, raises
her eyes to Heaven. Then, she steps on a flowery
bank at one side of the stage, and seats herself
at a harp. An Erard's patent grand we should
judge the instrument to be, by its aspect.

The lady throws back her veil. Surely we
know those features! Stay; at the first notes
of the harp a numerous corps de ballet trip
lightly forth, headed by the airy maid of honour,
now attired as Titania! That white-robed figure
is the queen. Elizabeth Tudor as she appears
at the Pergola Theatre in the year of grace
1868. Ye gods, could I but faintly image forth
the spectacle of Queen Elizabeth in scarlet wig
and white muslin garments, strenuously playing
the harp for dancing girls on the banks of the
Thames by lime-light!

They are here, the innumerable twinkling legs
for which we (colto pubblico) have waited. Gracefully
they skip and bound and twinkle, to our
great delight, and apparently also to the entire
satisfaction of the Maiden Monarch, who sits
patiently thrumming her " Erard's grand" in a
corner.

How Shakespeare is aroused and surrounded
by sportive nymphs, looking (as well he may)
inexpressibly bewildered; how he goes through
many intricate evolutions, threading the mazy
rows of charmers with an accuracy which, under
the circumstances, does him great credit; how
Titania pulls from her golden sceptre various
little scrolls, bearing the words " Coriolano,"
"Il rè Lear," "Amleto," &c. &c., and presents
them to the poet; need not be particularly
chronicled. Still less need we follow a serious
under-plot, involving a duel— with rapiers, this
time— between the divine one and a gallant
young courtier.

Come we to the third and concluding act.
This is all pomp, triumph, and a kind of
terpsichorean high-jinks.

The second and third acts are to each other

            ——as moonlight unto sunlight,
             Are as water unto wine

The scene is the queen's palace— which palace
let no man try to specify— and the courtiers,
male and female, throng to do honour
to the Swan of Avon, the great national poet.
The fair Elizabeth (that amiable weakness of
the bottle all forgotten, or at least forgiven)
delights to honour our divine Bard. She takes
from a pink box which reposes on a velvet
cushion in the hands of a page, a wreath of
laurel bound with silver. This she claps on
Shakespeare's raven locks (placing it in her
agitation somewhat on one side), and then leads
him to a chair of state beside her own, whence
the illustrious pair witness a series of dances
by agile coryphées in gorgeous raiment.