3-043-888 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Viola," by W. S. Herrick, in the exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1872. 'Viola is certainly one of the most lovable of Shakspeare's heroines; and, according to Mr. Herrick, the artist whose picture we engrave from the Academy exhibition, she is also one of the most paintable. She is beautiful, yet full of sweet, graceful humility; wit and intelligence beam in her bright eyes, yet her mien is engaging and harmless; and we know that her love for the Duke, into whose service she entered disguised as a page named Cesario, was tender, constant, and true, even before the momentary danger of death. The artist helps us, we think, to realise such a character as she stands before the Duke uttering the lines quoted in the catalogue from the fourth scene of the second act of "Twelfth Night": 'My father had a daughter loved a man, As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman, I should your lordship'. How prettily the boy's suit becomes her maiden figure! How lovingly appealing is the expression of her fair face! With what modest embarrassment does she handle her cap! Was so handsome a page ever seen? Yet, withal, sadness and hopelessness bow her head and blanch her cheek'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.