Virginibus Puerisque, and Other Papers

"With the single exception of Falstaff, all Shake-speare‟s characters are what we call marrying men. Mercutio, as he was own cousin to Ben-edick and Biron, would have come to the same end in the long run. Even Iago had a wife, and, what is far stranger, he was jealous. People like Jacques and the Fool in Lear, although we can hardly imagine they would ever marry, kept sin-gle out of a cynical humour or for a broken heart, and not, as we do nowadays, from a spirit of in-credulity and preference for the single state. For that matter, if you turn to George Sand‟s French version of As You Like It (and I think I can prom-ise you will like it but little), you will find Jacques marries Celia just as Orlando marries Rosalind."