The two utterly beautiful scenes are not of this
kind; they deal with simple joy and with simple sorrow, with the gladness
of meeting and the sadness of parting love; but between and behind them
come scenes of more fierce emotion, full of surprise, of violence, of
unrest; and with these the poet is not yet (if I dare say so) quite
strong enough to deal. Apollo has not yet put on the sinews of Hercules.
At a later date we may fancy or may find that when the Herculean muscle
is full-grown the voice in him which was as the voice of Apollo is for a
passing moment impaired. In _Measure for Measure_, where the adult and
gigantic god has grappled with the greatest and most terrible of energies
and of passions, we miss the music of a younger note that rang through
_Romeo and Juliet_; but before the end this too revives, as pure, as
sweet, as fresh, but richer now and deeper than its first clear notes of
the morning, in the heavenly harmony of _Cymbeline_ and _The Tempest_.
The same effusion or effervescence of words is perceptible in _King
Richard II_. as in the greater (and the less good) part of _Romeo and
Juliet_; and not less perceptible is the perpetual inclination of the
poet to revert for help to rhyme, to hark back in search of support
towards the half-forsaken habits of his poetic nonage.
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