But "Lear" is not by any
means the climax. The utter despair of good in man or woman rises higher
in "Troilus and Cressida," and reaches its culminating point in "Timon,"
a fragment only of which is Shakspere's. The pen fell from the tired
hand; the worn and distracted brain refused to fulfil the task of
depicting the depth to which the poet's estimate of mankind had fallen;
and we hardly know whether to rejoice or to regret that the clumsy hand
of an inferior writer has screened from our knowledge the full
disclosure of the utter and contemptuous cynicism and want of faith with
which, for the time being, Shakspere was infected.
127. Before passing on to consider the plays of the third period as
evidence of Shakspere's final thought, it will be well to pause and
re-read with attention a summing-up of Shakspere's teaching as it has
been presented to us by one of the greatest and most earnest teachers of
morality of the present day. Every word that Mr. Ruskin writes is so
evidently from the depth of his own good heart, and every doctrine that
he enunciates so pure in theory and so true in practice, that a
difference with him upon the final teaching of Shakspere's work cannot
be too cautiously expressed. But the estimate of this which he has given
in the third Lecture of "Sesame and Lilies"[1] is so painful, if
regarded as Shakspere's latest and most mature opinion, that everybody,
even Mr.
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