He is loth to make nature afraid in his
Playes,
like those that beget
Tales,
Tempests, and such like
Drolleries."
At the very end, the creator of Hamlet, the finest mind in the world,
was eager to show that he could write as well in any style as the author
of "Every Man in his Humour." To me the bare fact is full of interest,
and most pitiful.
Let us now turn to "The Tempest," and see how our poet figures in it. It
is Shakespeare's last work, and one of his very greatest; his testament
to the English people; in wisdom and high poetry a miracle.
The portrait of Shakespeare we get in Prospero is astonishingly faithful
and ingenuous, in spite of its idealization. His life's day is waning to
the end; shadows of the night are drawing in upon him, yet he is the
same bookish, melancholy student, the lover of all courtesies and
generosities, whom we met first as Biron in "Love's Labour's Lost." The
gaiety is gone and the sensuality; the spiritual outlook is infinitely
sadder--that is what the years have done with our gentle Shakespeare.
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