This joyful news, as unexpected as it was welcome, came opportunely to heighten the festivity and rejoicings at the wedding of the princesses. Celia complimented her cousin on this good fortune which had happened to the duke, Rosalind’s father, and wished her joy very sincerely, though she herself was no longer heir to the dukedom, but by this restoration which her father had made, Rosalind was now the heir; so completely was the love of these two cousins unmixed with anything of jealousy or of envy.
The duke had now an opportunity of rewarding those true friends who had stayed with him in his banishment; and these worthy followers, though they had patiently shared his adverse fortune, were very well pleased to return in peace and prosperity to the palace of their lawful duke.
=Biography.= Charles Lamb (1775-1834) was an English writer who spent his entire life in London. He was a classmate of the poet Coleridge. His father was a clerk in a lawyer’s office, and Charles was an accountant until he was fifty years of age. He was, however, a great reader and spent his hours of leisure at the bookstalls and printshops or at home reading with his sister Mary. He and Mary wrote _Tales from Shakespeare_, giving the story or plot of many of Shakespeare’s plays. In a letter to his friend Mr. Manning, Lamb said of his sister: “She is doing for Godwin’s bookseller twenty of Shakespeare’s plays, to be made into children’s tales. Six are already done by her: _The Tempest_, _Winter’s Tale_, _Midsummer Night_, _Much Ado_, _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, and _Cymbeline;_ and the _Merchant of Venice_ is in forwardness. I have done _Othello_ and _Macbeth_, and mean to do all the tragedies. I think it will be popular among the little people, besides money. It is to bring in sixty guineas. Mary has done them capitally, I think you’d think.” Lamb’s rich personality gave flavor and enduring fame to his writings.
=Discussion.= 1. Be prepared to tell the story in the fewest possible words. 2. Make an outline giving the principal events of the story. 3. Note all that is said of the forest of Arden; where may such a forest be found? 4. Is the forest described a real one? 5. What impression of the elder duke’s character do you get from the story? 6. What evidences of true friendship did Celia show? 7. Who are the important characters? The most important? 8. Give your opinion of these: Rosalind, Celia, Orlando. 9. Are the characters real and lifelike or are they improbable? 10. What humorous situations do you find? 11. Pronounce the following: haunts; wrestling; fatigue.