let us hear the testimony they have left respecting what they held
to be the true dignity of woman, and her mode of help to man.

And first let us take Shakespeare.

Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare has no heroes;--he has only
heroines. There is not one entirely heroic figure in all his plays,
except the slight sketch of Henry the Fifth, exaggerated for the
purposes of the stage; and the still slighter Valentine in The Two
Gentlemen of Verona. In his laboured and perfect plays you have no
hero. Othello would have been one, if his simplicity had not been
so great as to leave him the prey of every base practice round him;
but he is the only example even approximating to the heroic type.
Coriolanus--Caesar--Antony stand in flawed strength, and fall by
their vanities;--Hamlet is indolent, and drowsily speculative; Romeo
an impatient boy; the Merchant of Venice languidly submissive to
adverse fortune; Kent, in King Lear, is entirely noble at heart, but
too rough and unpolished to be of true use at the critical time, and
he sinks into the office of a servant only. Orlando, no less noble,
is yet the despairing toy of chance, followed, comforted, saved by
Rosalind. Whereas there is hardly a play that has not a perfect
woman in it, steadfast in grave hope, and errorless purpose:
Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, Imogen, Queen Catherine,
Perdita, Sylvia, Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and perhaps
loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless; conceived in the highest
heroic type of humanity.

Then observe, secondly,

The catastrophe of every play is caused always by the folly or fault