... Nor does this passage of tinsel stand alone. When the
iron cools and Hubert says he can revive it, Arthur replies with
pinchbeck conceits:
"An if you do you will but make it blush, And glow with shame at your
proceedings,"
and so forth. The faults are bad enough; but the heavenly virtues carry
them all off triumphantly. There is no creation like Arthur in the whole
realm of poetry; he is all angelic love and gentleness, and yet neither
mawkish nor unnatural; his fears make him real to us, and the horror of
his situation allows us to accept his exquisite pleading as possible. We
need only think of Tennyson's May Queen, or of his unspeakable Arthur,
or of Thackeray's prig Esmond, in order to understand how difficult it
is in literature to make goodness attractive or even credible. Yet
Shakespeare's art triumphs where no one else save Balzac and Tourgenief
has achieved even a half-success.
I cannot leave this play without noticing that Shakespeare has shown in
it a hatred of murder just as emphatically as he has revealed his love
of gentleness and pity in the creation of Arthur.
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