written Shakespeare was contented
and prosperous. He restored the fortunes of his family and he was hailed
as a master of English without a peer. It is therefore a priori quite
unlikely that the tragic atmosphere of this period should go back
to purely personal disappointments. The case is more likely this:
Shakespeare had grown in power of sympathy with his fellows and his
time. He had become sensitive to the needs and sorrows of the society
about him. He could put himself in the place of those who are sick in
mind and heart. And in consequence of this he could preach to this
generation the simple gospel of right living and show to them the
psychic weakness whence comes all human sorrow.

And through this expansion of his ethical consciousness what had
he gained? Not merely a fine insight as in _Macbeth_, _Antony and
Cleopatra_, and _Coriolanus_, an insight which enables him to treat with
comprehending sympathy even great criminals and traitors, but a high
serenity and steady poise which enables him to write the romances of his
last years--_Cymbeline_, _A Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_. He had
come to feel that human life, after all, with its storms, is a little
thing, a dream and a fata morgana, which soon must give place to a
permanent reality:

We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

In 1904 Collin wrote in _Nordisk Tidskrift foer Vetenskap, Konst och
Industri_[23] a most suggestive article on Hamlet. He again dismisses
the widely accepted theory of a period of gloom and increasing pessimism
as baseless. The long line of tragedies cannot be used to prove this.
They are the expression of a great poet's desire to strengthen mankind
in the battle of life.

[23: This article is reprinted in _Det Geniale Menneske_ above
referred to. It forms the second of a group of essays in which
Collin analyzes the work of Shakespeare as the finest example of
the true contribution of genius to the progress and culture of
the race. Preceding the study of _Hamlet_ is a chapter called
_The Shakespearean Controversy_, and following it is a study of
Shakespeare the Man. This is in three parts, the first of which
is a reprint of an article in _Samtiden_ (1901).

In _Det Geniale Menneske_ Collin defines civilization as that
higher state which the human race has attained by means of
"psychic organs"--superior to the physical organs.