Page:Shakespeare and astrology, from a student's point of view (IA sheakespeareastr00wils).pdf/13

 such genial freedom and at the same time never failing relevance and accuracy,

Dryden well said that Shakespeare is often flat and even insipid, that his comic wit is frequently of the poorest, and his serious swelling degenerates sometimes into bombast; but, he finely added “he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject and did not rise to meet it.” We have only to recall the knocking at the gate in “Macbeth,” the hot air of the Verona streets in “Romeo,” the instant arrestment of attention by the opening scene in “Hamlet,” Othello’s last words and Cassio’s comment on them, to be once again impressed by the truth of this. Yet in nothing was he greater than in his control of means; there can be little doubt that planetary influence was something more to kin than literary garnish, yet it is never used with faddishness. never when it can he said to be out of place and disturbing to the tenor of the scene. With the exception of the significant foreboding at the end of Act 1, Sc. d there is no word of it in “Romeo and Juliet” until the tragic crescendo commences and the lover hears the news of Juliet’s death. There the unerring dramatist strikes a chord:&mdash;

Still the climax is yet to come and his words, later, in the tomb:&mdash;“Here will I set up my everlasting test and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world-wearied flesh,” prepares us for the end, If the writers of today had even a glimmering of such instinct for the dramatic, we might leave our theatres with less of melancholy than we do,

The final scene in “Othello” gives a similar illustration:&mdash; “It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul. Let me not name it to you, ye chaste stars. *** Oh heavy hour, methinks it should be now a huge eclipse of sun and moon; but, oh vain boast, who can control his fate? Be not afraid, here is our journey’s end. Oh, ill-starr’d wench.”

Strongest, perhaps, is the poetic expression of his deduction from it all, in the sonnets, particularly the 14th, 15th, 25th, and 29th, of which the second in order is quoted in conclusion:&mdash;

“When I consider everything that grows,

Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge state presenteth naught but shows,