The passion of Posthumus is noble, and potent the poison of Iachimo;
Cymbeline has enough for Shakespeare's present purpose of "the
king-becoming graces"; but we think first and last of her who was "truest
speaker" and those who "called her brother, when she was but their
sister; she them brothers, when they were so indeed." The very crown and
flower of all her father's daughters,--I do not speak here of her human
father, but her divine--the woman above all Shakespeare's women is
Imogen. As in Cleopatra we found the incarnate sex, the woman
everlasting, so in Imogen we find half glorified already the immortal
godhead of womanhood. I would fain have some honey in my words at
parting--with Shakespeare never, but for ever with these notes on
Shakespeare; and I am therefore something more than fain to close my book
upon the name of the woman best beloved in all the world of song and all
the tide of time; upon the name of Shakespeare's Imogen.
APPENDIX.
NOTE ON THE HISTORICAL PLAY OF KING EDWARD III.
1879.
The epitaph of German criticism on Shakespeare was long since written by
the unconscious hand which penned the following sentence; an inscription
worthy of perpetual record on the registers of Gotham or in the daybook
of the yet unstranded Ship of Fools.
Pages:
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230