neral
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. But as it is we are in possession of
quite enough material to enable us to form accurate conclusions upon the
state of his final thought. It is upon "The Tempest" that we must in
the main rely for an exposition of this; for though the other plays and
fragments fully exhibit the restoration of his faith in man and woman,
which was a necessary concurrence with his return from scepticism, yet
it is in "The Tempest" that he brings himself as nearly face to face as
dramatic possibilities would allow him with circumstances that admit of
the indirect expression of such thought. It is fortunate, too, for the
purpose of comparing Shakspere's earliest and latest opinions, that the
characters of "The Tempest" are divisible into the same groups as those
of "The Dream." The gross _canaille_ are represented, but now no longer
the most accurate in colour and most absorbing in interest of the
characters of the play, or unessential to the evolution of the plot.
They have a distinct importance in the movement of the piece, and
represent the unintelligent, material resistance to the work of
regeneration that Prospero seeks to carry out, and which must be
controlled by him, just as Sebastian and Antonio form the intelligent,
designing resistance. The spirit world