JULIA  And at that time I made her weep agood,

For I did play a lamentable part –

Madam, ’twas Ariadne, passioning

For Theseus’ perjury and unjust flight –

Which I so lively acted with my tears

That my poor mistress, moved therewithal,

Wept bitterly; and would I might be dead,

If I in thought felt not her very sorrow.     (4.4.151-158)

Julia continues to reminisce about her ‘performance’ as Julia, and goes into more detail about the role that she took on: and at that time I made her—Julia—weep agood, for I did play a lamentable part. It was a pathetic role, and I made her—myself—cry, properly cry. Madam, ’twas Ariadne, passioning for Theseus’ perjury and unjust flight: Ariadne, like Dido a standard classical example of the woman abandoned by her hero lover, Theseus, who sailed away from the island of Naxos while she slept. (There were many versions of her story, the best-known and most current probably in Ovid’s Heroides, the collection of imaginary letters written mostly by classical heroines to their lovers—an apt choice not just for Julia’s own situation here, but also for a play full of letters.) Ariadne was passioning, acting with great emotion, but also suffering, lamenting, because of Theseus’s betrayal, his oath-breaking, his abandonment. And I so lively acted with my tears—I wept so realistically, so convincingly—that my poor mistress, moved therewithal, wept bitterly. I moved Julia to tears too. (Shakespeare here writes an early version of the power of dramatic art to move which he returns to with more complexity in Hamlet in relation to Hecuba; the scale is smaller, the stakes perhaps lower, but the emotional resonance and perceptiveness no less acute.) Julia’s last words—albeit apparently ventriloquizing her imagined mistress ‘Julia’–are heartfelt and desperate: and would I might be dead, if I in thought felt not her very sorrow—she is speaking for herself, for Julia in truth, and saying that she too was, and is, every bit as devastated as Ariadne, every bit as lost and desolate in her abandonment by the man whom she thought loved her. And that, perhaps, she now wants to die…