Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/153

Rh Or it hath drawn me rather:—but 'tis gone.— No, it begins again.

The courtship between Ferdinand and Miranda is one of the chief beauties of this play. It is the very purity of love. The pretended interference of Prospero with it heightens its interest, and is in character with the magician, whose sense of preternatural power makes him arbitrary, tetchy, and impatient of opposition. The is a finer play than the Midsummer Night's Dream, which has sometimes been compared with it; but it is not so fine a poem. There are a greater number of beautiful passages in the latter. Two of the most striking in the are spoken by Prospero. The one is that admirable one when the vision which he has conjured up disappears, beginning "The