It may be remarked that in every Sanskrit play the women and inferior characters speak a kind of provincial dialect or patois, called Prakrit—­bearing the relation to Sanskrit that Italian bears to Latin, or that the spoken Latin of the age of Cicero bore to the highly polished Latin in which he delivered his Orations.  Even the heroine of the drama is made to speak in the vernacular dialect.  The hero, on the other hand, and all the higher male characters, speak in Sanskrit; and as if to invest them with greater dignity, half of what they say is in verse.  Indeed the prose part of their speeches is often very commonplace, being only introductory to the lofty sentiment of the poetry that follows.  Thus, if the whole composition be compared to a web, the prose will correspond to the warp, or that part which is extended lengthwise in the loom, while the metrical portion will answer to the cross-threads which constitute the woof.

The original verses are written in a great variety of Sanskrit metres.  For example, the first thirty-four verses of ‘[S’]akoontala’ exhibit eleven different varieties of metre.  No English metrical system could give any idea of the almost infinite resources of Sanskrit in this respect.  Nor have I attempted it.  Blank verse has been employed by me in my translation, as more in unison with the character of our own dramatic writings, and rhyming stanzas have only been admitted when the subject-matter seemed to call for such a change.  Perhaps the chief consideration that induced me to adopt this mode of metrical translation was, that the free and unfettered character of the verse enabled me to preserve more of the freshness and vigour of the original.  If the poetical ideas of Kalidasa have not been expressed in language as musical as his own, I have at least done my best to avoid diluting them by unwarrantable paraphrases or additions.  If the English verses are prosaic, I have the satisfaction of knowing that by resisting the allurements of rhyme, I have done all in my power to avoid substituting a fictitious and meagre poem of my own for the grand, yet simple and chaste creation of Kalidasa.

The unrestricted liberty of employing hypermetrical lines of eleven syllables, sanctioned by the highest authority in dramatic composition, has, I think, facilitated the attainment of this object.  One of our own poets has said in relation to such lines:  ’Let it be remembered that they supply us with another cadence; that they add, as it were, a string to the instrument; and—­by enabling the poet to relax at pleasure, to rise and fall with his subject—­contribute what most is wanted, compass and variety.  They are nearest to the flow of an unstudied eloquence, and should therefore be used in the drama[4].’  Shakespeare does not scruple to avail himself of this licence four or five times in succession, as in the well-known passage beginning—­

  ‘To be or not to be, that is the question’;