and naked subjects, we may determine at once that the scene preserves not one stroke of Shakspeare's pen. The lines seem suffocating in a close and tainted place. What a brisk draught ventilates the honest coarseness of the Porter! what a light, bantering touch hits off the vice which is needful to finish the portrait of Falstaff! Even Parolles, his prototype, only ventures far enough to make a scene coherent with Helena's unspoken thought.[1]
Let us see if Nature was not fortunate in finding the Porter at his post at an hour when he was needed as never before.
The air around the castle of Macbeth "nimbly and sweetly" recommended itself to Duncan's senses; and Banquo noticed that the swallow, most confiding and unsuspicious of birds, approves the place "by his lov'd mansionry." On every frieze, buttress, coigne of vantage, Nature had colonized this domestic wing, as if to hint to the wayfarer "a pleasant seat," peace and un-*violated sleep within. But we remember that a raven had croaked the fatal entrance of Duncan into the castle. The swallows twittering in the delicate air cannot drown this omen of insecurity: as we enter with the unconscious Duncan, the weird sisters slip by us from
- ↑ All's Well that Ends Well, Act i. 7. Though I suspect here either a fragment of an early form of the play that kept its place in the stage copy and passed into print unchastened, or some phrases interpolated by actors. Something has been dropped out between Parolles's "Will you do any thing with it?" and Helena's recurrence to Bertram's leaving for the court, "There shall your master have a thousand loves;" so that the scene is in an imperfect condition.
