APPENDIX.
195
Iphigenia is more like one of the women Shakspeare loved than the others; she is a tender virgin, ennobled and strengthened by sentiment more than intellect, what they call a woman par excellence.
Macaria is more like one of Massinger's women. She advances boldly, though with the decorum of her sex and nation:
| Macaria. | “Impute not boldness to me that I come |
| Before you, strangers; this my first request | |
| I urge; for silence and a chaste reserve | |
| Is woman's genuine praise, and to remain | |
| Quiet within the house. But I come forth, | |
| Hearing thy lamentations, Iolaus: | |
| Though charged with no commission, yet perhaps, | |
| I may be useful.”** |
Her speech when she offers herself as the victim, is reasonable, as one might speak to-day. She counts the cost all through. Iphigenia is too timid and delicate to dwell upon the loss of earthly bliss, and the due experience of life, even as much as Jeptha's daughter did, but Macaria is explicit, as well befits the daughter of Hercules.
| “Should these die, myself |
| Preserved, of prosperous future could I form |
| One cheerful hope? |
| A poor forsaken virgin who would deign |
| To take in marriage? Who would wish for sons |
| From one so wretched? Better then to die, |
| Than bear such undeserved miseries: |
| One less illustrious this might more beseem. |
| *** |
| I have a soul that unreluctantly |
| Presents itself, and I proclaim aloud |
| That for my brothers and myself I die. |
| I am not fond of life, but think I gain |
| An honorable prize to die with glory.” |
Still nobler when Iolaus proposes rather that she shall draw lots with her sisters.
