"The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound

Shall pass into her face."

And then turn back to the First-Period MidsummerNight's Dream, and compare with its Stratford girls, staind with the tempers and vulgarities of their day, these Fourth-Period creations of pure beauty and refinement, all earth's loveliness filld with all angels' grace; and recognise what Shakspere's growth has been. (Note too that in all the first four FourthPeriod plays are lost daughters or sons. Compare also Shakspere on his art in Midsummer-Night's Dream and in The Tempest.)

"Isabella in Measure for Measure," says Mr. Munro, "had faced the wickedness of the world, had been tried by temptation and had conquerd, and stood alone, triumphant in her unassailable purity; Ophelia, pure as she was, had past away, before the trial she had been calld upon to bear; but Miranda has never yet known the darker ways of men, and stands untainted in her plain and holy innocence. Her heart is full of mercy and tenderness. She has sufferd with the sufferers in the wreck, and begs her father to allay the storm. Her compassion is ever for others: her sorrow is not at what she herself has lost in the expulsion from Milan, but at the teen she has causd her father. Like Juliet, whose language of love is to express her inmost thoughts in their unclothed

beauty, without equivocation or false pride, she tells Ferdinand plainly what she thinks and means. To him she is the best of women, and like the best, she is prompted by love to bear the burdens of others, willingly, as a delight. See how she weeps at Ferdinand's labors, done for her sake, and thinks, like Juliet again where she speaks of Romeo, that no ill could dwell in such a temple as Ferdinand. Notice, too, how she discerns at once nobility and goodliness in men, and revolts from the monster, Caliban."

The general consent of critics and readers identifies Shakspere, in the ripeness and calmness of his art and power, more with Prospero than with any other of his characters; just as the like consent identifies him, in his restless and unsettled state, in his style of less perfect art, with Hamlet.

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Prospero," says Munro, is, above all things, a father. Before he talks to his daughter he lays down his mantle, as tho' it were best to be a man unaided in his doings with her. He affects to be irascible, as Capulet was, but how different is the signification of his demeanour! Like a good and beneficent man, with years of wisdom and sorrow behind him, he chooses marriage for his daughter, not out of family ambition or because of convention, but out of his love, content to lose her, in the knowledge that the love of a man is sufficient, and that the way of the generations gone beforehand is enough; and he causes Iris, with the promise of the heavens, and Ceres, with the promise of the earth, to appear and bless her betrothal. By his magic he brings all his

foes together at his mercy; and then his first thought is of forgiveness and tenderness. Nobly he puts vengeance away, and nobly, when his task is done, does he release his servant spirit, break his wand, and drown his book 'deeper than did ever plummet sound.' How different is this man from the Shakspere who wrote Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and Lear! Ariel's description of his office,

'I come

To answer thy best pleasure; be 't to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride

On the curled clouds'

reminds one of the fine description of the poet in A Midsummer-Night's Dream :—

'The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth

to heaven '

and Ariel has been well identified with the spirit of poetry; but Ariel is more than this, for he is like a spirit of heaven, always on the side of the good and just, and he stands as much for the diviner spirit which is in man. He is opposed in every way to Caliban, his antithesis, and yet in being subject to Prospero, is his fellow, just as the good and bad principles are fellows in men. Caliban is the embodiment of everything gross, physical and sensual, growing in ugliness with age, a monster bigger in size than a man, foul-shapen, puppy-headed and evil-smelling. He is capable of all ill, turns all good to evil, is wholly the child of ignorance and bestiality, and his use of his best attribute, speech, is only cursing. Shakspere

has warnd us before against intemperance; poor Cassio in Othello fell by it; and it is significant that Caliban loves wine and swears by it. Notice, too, how his foul conspiracy breaks and mars the masque of the spirits, Ceres, Iris, the nymphs and the reapers." When we compare Prospero's

"We are such stuff

As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep,"

with all the questionings and fears about the future life that perplext and terrified Hamlet and Claudio, we may see what progress Shakspere has himself made in soul. The links of this play with Pericles are the opening storm in each, Thaisa and Marina thought drownd or dead, and yet restored to Pericles; Ferdinand, and Prospero, and Miranda thought drownd, and yet restored to Alonso; revenge forgotten by Pericles in the fulness of his joy, revenge overcome in Prospero by his willingness to forgive. With earlier plays we can hardly help comparing the faithful, cheery Gonzalo who provides Prospero and Miranda in their danger with clothes, and food, and books, with the faithful Kent, and Gloster who provides Lear with a room and a litter to drive towards Dover. Caliban is hinted at in Troilus (Act III., sc. iii., p. 120), while Prospero's speech to Miranda about the zenith and the star, is like Brutus's on the tide in the affairs of men. In his inattention to his government, Prospero is like the Duke in Measure for Measure. With Hamlet we have the likenesses of Antonio getting rid of Prospero and seizing his

crown,

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to Claudius's murder of Hamlet's father and taking his crown; and Prospero's warning to Ferdinand that the strongest oaths are straw to the fire in the blood" is like Polonius's to Ophelia of the blazes when the blood burns, giving more light than heat. But Prospero, unlike Hamlet, has been taught by the discipline of his island life, and as soon as fortune gives him his first chance, he acts, and obtains his end. Gonzalo tries to comfort Alonso, mourning for his son, with almost the same words as the Queen uses to Hamlet on the loss of his father. As a fairyland play, the links of The Tempest with MidsummerNight's Dream are strong. But now it is no longer as in Shakspere's youth, that men and women are toys for fairies' whims to play with; in his age the poet uses his magic to wield the fairy-world and the powers of nature for the highest possible end-the winning back to good, of human souls given over to evil. Contrast, too, for a moment, Oberon's care for the lovers in the Dream, with the beautiful, tender feeling of Prospero for Miranda and Ferdinand here. He stands above them almost as a god, yet sharing their feelings and blessing them. Note, too, how his tenderness for Miranda revives in his words, "The fringed curtains of thine eyes advance," the lovely fancy of his youth, her "two blue windows faintly she upheaveth (Venus and Adonis, page 51). He has seized in Miranda, as in Perdita, on the new type of sweet country-girl unspoilt by town devices, and glorified it into a being fit for an angels' world. And as he links earth to heaven with Miranda, so he links