prays
for music to bring some rest to his "weary spirit"; in much the same
mood Prospero desires music when he breaks his wand and resigns his
magical powers.
Here, again, in "Twelfth Night" in full manhood Shakespeare shows
himself to us as Romeo, in love with flowers and music and passion.
True, this Orsino is a little less occupied with verbal quips, a little
more frankly sensual, too, than Romeo; but then Romeo would have been
more frankly sensual had he lived from twenty-five to thirty-five. As an
older man, too, Orsino has naturally more of Hamlet-Shakespeare's
peculiar traits than Romeo showed; the contempt of wealth and love of
solitude are qualities hardly indicated in Romeo, while in Orsino as in
the mature Shakespeare they are salient characteristics. To sum up:
Hamlet-Macbeth gives us Shakespeare's mind; but in Romeo-Orsino he has
discovered his heart and poetic temperament to us as ingenuously, though
not, perhaps, so completely, as he does in the Sonnets.
CHAPTER VIII
SHAKESPEARE'S HUMOUR: FALSTAFF
Shakespeare's portraits of himself are not to be mistaken; the changes
in him caused by age bring into clearer light the indestructible
individuality, and no difference of circumstance or position has any
effect upon this distinctive character: whether he is the lover, Romeo;
the murderer, Macbeth; the courtier, Hamlet; or the warrior, Posthumus;
he is always the same--a gentle yet impulsive nature, sensuous at once
and meditative; half poet, half philosopher, preferring nature and his
own reveries to action and the life of courts; a man physically
fastidious to disgust, as is a delicate woman, with dirt and smells and
common things; an idealist daintily sensitive to all courtesies,
chivalries, and distinctions.
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