“To favour and to prettiness”; the definition of his utmost merit and demerit, his final achievement and shortcoming, is here complete and exact.  Witness the sweet quiet example of idyllic work which I extract from a scene beginning in the regular amoebaean style of ancient pastoral.

   Edward.  Thou hear’st me say that I do dote on thee.

Countess.  If on my beauty, take it if thou canst; Though little, I do prize it ten times less:  If on my virtue, take it if thou canst; For virtue’s store by giving doth augment:  Be it on what it will that I can give And thou canst take away, inherit it.

   Edward.  It is thy beauty that I would enjoy.

Countess.  O, were it painted, I would wipe it off, And dispossess myself to give it thee:  But, sovereign, it is soldered to my life; Take one and both; for like an humble shadow It haunts the sunshine of my summer’s life.

   Edward.  But thou mayst lend it me to sport withal.

Countess.  As easy may my intellectual soul Be lent away, and yet my body live, As lend my body, palace to my soul, Away from her, and yet retain my soul.  My body is her bower, her court, her abbey, And she an angel, pure, divine, unspotted; If I should lend her house, my lord, to thee, I kill my poor soul, and my poor soul me.

Once more, this last couplet is very much in the style of Shakespeare’s sonnets; nor is it wholly unlike even the dramatic style of Shakespeare in his youth—­and some dozen other poets or poeticules of the time.  But throughout this part of the play the recurrence of a faint and intermittent resemblance to Shakespeare is more frequently noticeable than elsewhere. {252} A student of imperfect memory but not of defective intuition might pardonably assign such couplets, on hearing them cited, to the master-hand itself; but such a student would be likelier to refer them to the sonnetteer than to the dramatist.  And a casual likeness to the style of Shakespeare’s sonnets is not exactly sufficient evidence to warrant such an otherwise unwarrantable addition of appendage to the list of Shakespeare’s plays.

A little further on we come upon the first and last passage which does actually recall by its wording a famous instance of the full and ripened style of Shakespeare.

   He that doth clip or counterfeit your stamp
   Shall die, my lord:  and will your sacred self
   Commit high treason ’gainst the King of heaven,
   To stamp his image in forbidden metal,
   Forgetting your allegiance and your oath? 
   In violating marriage’ sacred law
   You break a greater honour than yourself;
   To be a king is of a younger house
   Than to be married:  your progenitor,
   Sole reigning Adam on the universe,
   By God was honoured for a married man,
   But not by him anointed for a king.