After all, life is better than death.
It was probably his daughter who led him back from the brink of the
grave. Almost all his latest works show the same figure of a young girl.
He seems now, for the first time, to have learned that a maiden can be
pure, and in his old idealizing way which went with him to the end, he
deified her. Judith became a symbol to him, and he lent her the ethereal
grace of abstract beauty. In "Pericles" she is Marina; in "The Winter's
Tale" Perdita; in "The Tempest" Miranda. It is probable when one comes
to think of it, that Ward was right when he says that Shakespeare spent
his "elder years" in Stratford; he was too broken to have taken up his
life in London again.
The assertion that Shakespeare broke down in health, and never won back
to vigorous life, will be scorned as my imagining. The critics who have
agreed to regard "Cymbeline," "The Winter's Tale," and "The Tempest" as
his finest works are all against me on this point, and they will call
for "Proofs, proofs. Give us proofs," they will cry, "that the man who
went mad and raved with Lear, and screamed and cursed in "Timon" did
really break down, and was not imagining madness and despair.
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