Imogen, too, has no
trace of natural passion in her: she is a mere washing-list, so to
speak, of sexless perfections. In this last period Shakespeare will have
nothing to do with sensuality, and his characters, and not the female
characters alone, are hardly more than abstractions; they lack the blood
of emotion; there is not one of them could cast a shadow. How is it that
the critics have mistaken these pale, bloodless silhouettes for
Shakespeare's masterpieces?
In his earliest works he was compelled, as we have seen, to use his own
experiences perpetually, not having had any experience of life, and in
these, his latest plays, he also uses when he can his own experiences to
give his pictures of the world from which he had withdrawn, some sense
of vivid life. For example, in "Winter's Tale" his account of the death
of the boy Mamillius is evidently a reflex of his own emotion when he
lost his son, Hamnet, an emotion which at the time he pictured
deathlessly in Arthur and the grief of the Queen-mother Constance.
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