Ariel is a higher creation, more
spiritual and charming than any other poet has ever attempted; and
Caliban, the earth-born, half-beast, half-man--these are the poles of
Shakespeare's genius.
CHAPTER XIV
SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE
Our long travail is almost at an end. We have watched Shakespeare
painting himself at various periods of his life, and at full length in
twenty dramas, as the gentle, sensuous poet-thinker. We have studied him
when given over to wild passion in the sonnets and elsewhere, and to
insane jealousy in "Othello"; we have seen him as Hamlet brooding on
revenge and self-murder, and in "Lear," and "Timon" raging on the verge
of madness, and in these ecstasies, when the soul is incapable of
feigning, we have discovered his true nature as it differed from the
ideal presentments which his vanity shaped and coloured. We have
corrected his personal estimate by that "story of faults conceal'd"
which Shakespeare himself referred to in sonnet 88. It only remains for
me now to give a brief account of his life and the incidents of it to
show that my reading of his character is borne out by the known facts,
and thus put the man in his proper setting, so to speak.
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