The matter is too
huge, and too strictly poetic, for analysis. I may observe that in our
present theatres, owing to the use of elaborate scenery, the three
Storm-scenes are usually combined, with disastrous effect. Shakespeare,
as we saw (p. 49), interposed between them short scenes of much lower
tone.]
[Footnote 149: 'justice,' Qq.]
[Footnote 150: =approve.]
[Footnote 151: The direction 'Storm and tempest' at the end of this
speech is not modern, it is in the Folio.]
[Footnote 152: The gods are mentioned many times in _King Lear_, but
'God' only here (V. ii. 16).]
[Footnote 153: The whole question how far Shakespeare's works represent
his personal feelings and attitude, and the changes in them, would carry
us so far beyond the bounds of the four tragedies, is so needless for
the understanding of them, and is so little capable of decision, that I
have excluded it from these lectures; and I will add here a note on it
only as it concerns the 'tragic period.'
There are here two distinct sets of facts, equally important, (1) On the
one side there is the fact that, so far as we can make out, after
_Twelfth Night_ Shakespeare wrote, for seven or eight years, no play
which, like many of his earlier works, can be called happy, much less
merry or sunny.
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