THE

HEROINES OF SHAKSPEARE:

COMPRISING

The Principal Female Characters

IN THE

PLAYS OF THE GREAT POET.

ENGRAVED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF

MR. CHARLES HEATH,

FROM DRAWINGS BY EMINENT ARTISTS.

LONDON:

DAVID BOGUE, 86, FLEET STREET.

M DCCC XLVIII.

ADDRESS.

WHAT a celebrated critic (Mrs. Jameson) has applied to one of Shakspeare's Female characters may without much licence be extended to all. Darting her far-glancing look from earth to heaven for some exquisite comparison, "to what," she asks, "shall we compare them? —to the silvery summer clouds which, even while we gaze on them, shift their hues and forms, dissolving into air and light and rainbow showers? to the May morning, flush with opening blossoms and roseate dews, and charm of earliest birds'?

to some wild and beautiful melody, such as some shepherd-boy might pipe to Amarillas in the shade'?-to a mountain streamlet, now smooth as a mirror, in which the skies may glass themselves, and now leaping and sparkling in the sunshine-or rather, to the very sunshine itselffor so His general spirit touches into life and beauty whatever it shines on!"

"No one," remarks Hazlitt, in his "Characters of Shakspeare's Plays,"" no one ever hit the true perfection of the female character -the sense of weakness leaning on the strength of its affections for support so well as SHAKSPEARE; no one ever so well painted natural tenderness, free from affectation and disguise; no one ever so well showed how delicacy and timidity, when driven to extremity, grow romantic and extravagant, for the romance of his heroines (in which they abound) is only an excess of the habitual prejudices of their sex, scrupulous of being false to their vows, truant to their