I suspect Shakspere
sends the old villain off the stage at the last with more of the pity of
the audience than any of the other dramatists of the time would have
ventured to rouse, had they been capable of doing so. I suspect he is
the only human Jew of the English drama up to that time.
I have now arrived at the last and most important stage of my argument.
It is this: If Shakspere was so well aware of the artistic relations of
the parts of his drama, is it likely that the grand meanings involved in
the whole were unperceived by him, and conveyed to us without any
intention on his part--had their origin only in the fact that he dealt
with human nature so truly, that his representations must involve
whatever lessons human life itself involves?
Is there no intention, for instance, in placing _Prospero_, who forsook
the duties of his dukedom for the study of magic, in a desert island,
with just three subjects; one, a monster below humanity; the second, a
creature etherealized beyond it; and the third a complete embodiment of
human perfection? Is it not that he may learn how to rule, and, having
learned, return, by the aid of his magic wisely directed, to the home
and duties from which exclusive devotion to that magic had driven him?
In "Julius Caesar," the death of _Brutus_, while following as the
consequence of his murder of _Caesar_, is yet as much distinguished in
character from that death, as the character of _Brutus_ is different
from that of _Caesar_.
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