She fairly overwhelms the queen-mother with vituperation, and does her best to merit the contemptuous entreaty of John, “Bedlam, have done " and at length the expostula
tions of her own friend. “Eli. Thou unadvised scold, I can produce A will, that bars the title of thy son.
Comst. Ay, who doubts that? a will a wicked will A woman's will a canker'd grandame's will K. Phi. Peace, lady; pause, or be more temperate: It ill beseems this presence, to cry aim To these ill-tuned repetitions.”
She has already incurred the remonstrance of her gentle son. “Arth. Good my mother, peace I would that I were low laid in my grave ;
I am not worth this coil that's made for me.”
Her very tenderness to her child is fierce, like that of some
she-beast of prey. Had there been no motive in the mother's heart but that of love, this appeal might well have checked not only the unbridled use of speech, but the dangerous course of action into which Constance throws herself.
But at
this period, ambition is stronger than love, and it would be hard to say to what extent ambition for herself was not mixed up with that for her son. The scene affords clear insight into the natural character of Constance, as a proud ambitious woman, of irritable and ungoverned temper. The flight of her imagination, like that of her passion, is yet comparatively low. She well scolds her opponents indeed, but not until later is her unrivaled power of invective fully developed. In nothing is Shakespeare's master-hand more evident than in the manner in which he lays a true and consistent foun dation for his characters.
To have built such an one as that
of Constance, on the basis of the common female virtues, would have been monstrous. Constance, in whom fierce
passion is not the result, but the cause of madness, could only have been from the beginning, what she is plainly
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