ABSTRACT
Over the beauty of youth and the love of youth there is shed, in these plays of Shakspere’s final period, a clear yet tender luminousness not elsewhere to be perceived in his writings. In his earlier plays, Shakspere writes concerning young men and maidens—their loves, their mirth, their griefs—as one who is among them; who has a lively, personal interest in their concerns; who can make merry with them, treat them familiarly, and, if need be, can mock them into good sense. There is nothing in these early plays wonderful, strangely beautiful, pathetic, about youth and its joys and sorrows. In the histories and tragedies, as was to be expected, more massive, broader, or more profound objects of interest engage the poet’s imagination. But in these latest plays, the beautiful pathetic light is always present. There are the sufferers, aged, experienced, tried—Queen Katharine, Prospero, Hermione. And over against these there are the children, absorbed in their happy and exquisite egoism—Perdita and Miranda, Florizel and Ferdinand, and the boys of old Belarius.
