n
path to depict, in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," the happy country life
and manners of his day, he at the same time returns to fairyland again,
and brings out the Windsor children trooping to pinch and plague the
town-bred, tainted Falstaff.

[Footnote 1: For an elaborate and masterly investigation of the question
of the chronological order of the plays, which must be assumed here, see
Mr. Furnivall's Introduction to the Leopold Shakspere.]

118. But this is not by any means all that this subject reveals to us
about Shakspere; if it were, the less said about it the better. To look
upon "The Tempest" as in its essence merely a return to "The Dream"--the
end as the beginning; to believe that his thoughts worked in a weary,
unending circle--that the Valley of the Shadow of Death only leads back
to the foot of the Hill Difficulty--is intolerable, and not more
intolerable than false. Although based upon similar material, the ideas
and tendencies of "The Tempest" upon supernaturalism are no more
identical with those of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" than the thoughts of
Berowne upon things in general are those of Hamlet, or Hamlet's those of
Prospero. But before it is possible to point out the nature of this
difference, and to show that the change is a natural growth of thought,
not a mere retrogression, a few explanatory remarks are necessary.

There is no more insufficient and misleading view of Shakspere and his
work than that which until recently obtained almost universal credence,
and is even at the present time somewhat loudly asserted in some
quarters; namely, that he was a man of considerable genius, who wrote
and got acted some thirty plays more or less, simply for commercial
purposes and nothing more; made money thereby, and died leaving a will;
and that, beyond this, he and his works are, and must remain, an
inexplicable mystery. The critic who holds this view, and finds it
equally advantageous to commence a study of Shakspere's work by taking
"The Tempest" or "Love's Labour's Lost" as his text, is about as
judicious as the botanist who would enlarge upon the structure of the
seed-pod without first explaining the preliminary stages of plant
growth, or the architect who would dilate upon the most convenient
arrangement of chimney-pots before he had discussed the laws of
foundation. The plays may be studied separately, and studied so are
found beautiful; but taken in an approximate chronological order, like a
strin