Cymbeline - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

and still return to gaze even more.
7.
Unfortunately, Gregory's rapture is interrupted by a
severely perplexing suggestion. As he concludes his
praise of Imogen , he stops short:
But let us pause. Did we actually say
Shakespeare * g heroines? We be^ pardon
for doing BO, for a voice fron across
the Atlantic exclaims, "Not at all,
Britisher, you i>et. !;
This voice is the voice of Mr. Donelly, whose The u-reat
(1866) proves Bacon the author of Shakespeare,
Tha Aaatouiy of Melancholy. Karlowe, Montaigne's Essays,
and Qost of the Shakespearean Apocrypha, ignatius Donelly
holds up a portrait of Bacon, and Is heard by Gregory to
exclaim, "Guess, Britisher, this is what your immortal bard
was like." Gregory is scornful and dismissive, and takes
comfort in the ooservntion that, at any rate, Francis Bacon
was an "nglishman.
Gregory arranges the heroines he discusses in ascending
order of excellence: Desdetaona, Isabella, aud Imogen. * ut
for differing circumstances, they tti^ht as well be one woraan
Shakespeareart ' oT?an. This bein^ is favoured by John Kusi.in,
in his lecture Of 4ueen * a G-ard ens . 1 ^ nuskin observes t-iat,
with the excoytiorj of the exaggerated. Henry V, and the
botched falentine, there are no heroes in Shakespeare:
Uote broadly in the outset, "htjcespeare has no
heroes; he has only heroines, There is not
one entirely heroic figure in all his plays....
In his laboured and perfect plays you have no
hero.... whereas there is hardly a play that has
not a perfect woman it. it, stedfast in ^rave hope,
and ©rrorler-s in purpose: Cordelia, DesdeiiionL.,
Isabella, Hermione, Imogen, Queen uatharine,
ierdita, oylvia, Viola, i.oseliuu, &eler>.a, and
last, an'.; perhaps loveliest, VirL;ilia, are all
faultless; coneelved in the highest heroic type
of humanity .
(Section