Throughout the first act his presence lightens on us by flashes,
as his voice peals out by fits, from behind or above the too meanly
decorated altar of tragic or satiric song: in the second it is more
sensibly continuous; in the third it is all but utterly eclipsed; in the
fourth it is but very rarely intercepted for a very brief interval in the
dark divine service of a darker Commination Day: in the fifth it
predominates generally over the sullen and brooding atmosphere with the
fierce imperious glare of a "bloody sun" like that which the wasting
shipmen watched at noon "in a hot and copper sky." There is here no more
to say of a poem inspired at once by the triune Furies of Ezekiel, of
Juvenal, and of Dante.
I can imagine no reason but that already suggested why Shakespeare should
in a double sense have taken Chaucer for his model or example in leaving
half told a story which he had borrowed from the father and master of our
narrative poetry. Among all competent scholars and all rational students
of Shakespeare there can have been, except possibly with regard to three
of the shorter scenes, no room for doubt or perplexity on any detail of
the subject since the perfect summary and the masterly decision of Mr.
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