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some external, but no internal part in the action. The reason of thiis unalterable and chief defect of the whole lies, it seems to me, in the subject-matter of the piece, which is not exactly happily chosen; for it must necessarily be offen- sive to a fine sense of feeling, when in courtship, woman is the wooer, and especially when this unwomanly proceeding — however well motived and excusable it may appear— is not merely narrated(as in Boccaccio's novel), but represented to us in a vivid, dramatic and palpable form. To overcome this difficulty, and more particularly to make the surprising conclusion— the heroine's attainment of her wish— appear natural, the poet had, as it were, to take into his service a number of figures simply as motives and to bring the action to a close. But the very choice of this subject and his ad- hering to it, in spite of its obvious difficulties, shows us the youthful poet, the youthful pleasure in that which is unusual, the youthful inclination to venture upon a task the difficul- ties of which have not been sufficiently considered. The significance of the whole is based rather on the main feature of love, its freedom“. Elze, who looks upon this play as a riper production, evinces for the secondary persons a better right of existence, and a closer connection with the principal idea and person, and her extraordinary endeavouring:„Should a woman’'s love in its richness and genuineness not have the same right of satisfaction as a man's? Should her heart be condemned by nature to inviolable silence and painful resignation?“ he asks and adds, that the persons mentioned by Ulrici as taking no internal part in the action, are, strange to say, just those persons that owe their existence exclusively to the invention of our poet, and that thus two principal persons, the Countess and Parolles, are ranked with very insignificant, subordinate persons.„Should Giletta (Helena) not be repulsive by unwomanliness, then it was important to moderate her orphan position, to bring her into connection with the family, in short, to give her a motherly support, and thus the creation of the Countess of Roussillon is a very happy one, her authorization gives an appearance