"
This idyllic love of nature, this marked preference for the country over
the city, however peculiar in a highway robber, are characteristics of
Shakespeare from youth to age. Not only do his comedies lead us
continually from the haunts of men to the forest and stream, but also
his tragedies. He turns to nature, indeed, in all times of stress and
trouble for its healing unconsciousness, its gentle changes that can be
foreseen and reckoned upon, and that yet bring fresh interests and
charming surprises; and in times of health and happiness he pictures the
pleasant earth and its diviner beauties with a passionate intensity.
Again and again we shall have to notice his poet's love for
"unfrequented woods," his thinker's longing for "the life removed."
At the end of the drama Valentine displays the gentle forgivingness of
disposition which we have already had reason to regard as one of
Shakespeare's most marked characteristics. As soon as "false, fleeting
Proteus" confesses his sin Valentine pardons him with words that echo
and re-echo through Shakespeare's later dramas:
"Then I am paid,
And once again I do receive thee honest.
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