'"[2]
[Footnote 1: 3rd edition, sec. 115.]
[Footnote 2: Mr. Ruskin has analyzed "The Tempest," in "Munera
Pulveris," sec. 124, et seqq., but from another point of view.]
128. Now, it is perfectly clear that this criticism was written with two
or three plays, all belonging to one period, very conspicuously before
the mind. Of the illustrative exceptions that are made to the general
rule, one is derived from a play which Shakspere wrote at a very early
date, and the other from a scene which he almost certainly never wrote
at all; the whole of the rest of the passage quoted is founded upon
"Hamlet," "Macbeth," "Othello," and "Lear"--that is, upon the earlier
productions of what we must call Shakspere's sceptical period. But these
plays represent an essentially transient state of thought. Shakspere was
to learn and to teach that those who most deeply meditate and most
passionately mourn are not the men of noblest or most influential
character--that such may command our sympathy, but hardly our respect or
admiration. Still less did Shakspere finally assert, although for a time
he believed, that a blind destiny concludes into precision what we
feebly and blindly begin. Far otherwise and nobler was his conception of
man and his mission, and the unseen powers and their influences, in the
third and final stage of his thought.
129. Had Shakspere lived longer, he would doubtless have left us a
series of plays filled with the bright and reassuring tenderness and
confidence of this third period, as long and as brilliant in execution
as those of the second period.
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