But the critic’s disparaging thoughts in this case are well accounted for in what himself had unhappily witnessed.  “I once knew such a pair,” says he; “the lady was a perfect Beatrice:  she railed hypocritically at wedlock before her marriage, and with bitter sincerity after it.  She and her Benedick now live apart, but with entire reciprocity of sentiments; each devoutly wishing that the other may soon pass into a better world.”  So that the writer’s strong dislike of Beatrice is a most pregnant testimony to the Poet’s truth of delineation; inasmuch as it shows how our views of his characters, as of those in real life, depend less perhaps on what they are in themselves than on our own peculiar associations.  Nature’s and Shakespeare’s men and women seem very differently to different persons, and even to the same persons at different times.  Regarded, therefore, in this light, the censure of the lady infers such a tribute to the Poet, that I half suspect the author meant it as such.  In reference to the subject, however, my judgment goes much rather with that of other critics:  That in the unamiable passages of their deportment Benedick and Beatrice are playing a part; that their playing is rather to conceal than to disclose their real feelings; that it is the very strength of their feelings which puts them upon this mode of disguise; and that the pointing of their raillery so much against each other is itself proof of a deep and growing mutual interest:  though it must be confessed that the ability to play so well, and in that kind, is a great temptation to carry it to excess, or to use it where it may cause something else than mirth.  This it is that justifies the repetition of the stratagem for drawing on a match between them; the same process being needed in both cases in order “to get rid of their reciprocal disguises, and make them straightforward and in earnest.”  And so the effect of the stratagem is to begin the unmasking which is so thoroughly completed by the wrongs and sufferings of Hero:  they are thus disciplined out of their playing, and made to show themselves as they are:  before we saw their art; now we see their virtue,—­the real backbone of their characters; and it becomes manifest enough that, with all their superficial levity and caustic sportiveness, they yet have hearts rightly framed for the serious duties and interests of life.

It is very considerable, also, how their peculiar cast of self-love and their pride of wit are adroitly worked upon in the execution of the scheme for bringing them together.  Both are deeply mortified at overhearing how they are blamed for their addiction to flouting, and at the same time both are highly flattered in being made each to believe that the other is secretly dying of love, and that the other is kept from showing the truth by dread of mocks and gibes.  As they are both professed heretics on the score of love and marriage, so both are tamed out of their heresy in the glad persuasion that they have each proved too