This admirable comedy used to be frequently acted till of late years.  Mr. Garrick’s Benedick was one of his most celebrated characters; and Mrs. Jordan, we have understood, played Beatrice very delightfully.  The serious part is still the most prominent here, as in other instances that we have noticed.  Hero is the principal figure in the piece, and leaves an indelible impression on the mind by her beauty, her tenderness, and the hard trial of her love.  The passage in which Claudio first makes a confession of his affection towards her conveys as pleasing an image of the entrance of love into a youthful bosom as can well be imagined.

     Oh, my lord,
     When you went onward with this ended action,
     I look’d upon her with a soldier’s eye,
     That lik’d, but had a rougher task in hand
     Than to drive liking to the name of love;
     But now I am return’d, and that war-thoughts
     Have left their places vacant; in their rooms
     Come thronging soft and delicate desires,
     All prompting me how fair young Hero is,
     Saying, I lik’d her ere I went to wars.

In the scene at the altar, when Claudio, urged on by the villain Don John, brings the charge of incontinence against her, and as it were divorces her in the very marriage-ceremony, her appeals to her own conscious innocence and honour are made with the most affecting simplicity.

   Claudio.  No, Leonato,
     I never tempted her with word too large,
     But, as a brother to his sister, show’d
     Bashful sincerity, and comely love.

   Hero.  And seem’d I ever otherwise to you?

   Claudio.  Out on thy seeming, I will write against it: 
     You seem to me as Dian in her orb,
     As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown;
     But you are more intemperate in your blood
     Than Veilus, or those pamper’d animals
     That rage in savage sensuality.

   Hero.  Is my lord well, that he doth speak so wide?

   Leonato.  Are these things spoken, or do I but dream?

   John.  Sir, they are spoken, and these things are true.

   Benedick.  This looks not like a nuptial.

   Hero.  True!  O God!

The justification of Hero in the end, and her restoration to the confidence and arms of her lover, is brought about by one of those temporary consignments to the grave of which Shakespeare seems to have been fond.  He has perhaps explained the theory of this predilection in the following lines: 

   Friar.  She dying, as it must be so maintain’d,
     Upon the instant that she was accus’d,
     Shall be lamented, pity’d, and excus’d,
     Of every hearer:  for it so falls out,
     That what we have we prize not to the worth,
     While we enjoy it; but being lack’d and lost,
     Why then we rack the value; then we find
     The virtue, that possession would not show us