ABSTRACT
There is no lack of interpretative criticism of Shakespeare's last comedies; rather it is the rule. Perhaps someone has yet to ‘read a philosophy into Shakespeare’ in any rigorous way, but during the last thirty or so years many have found in these plays, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, a pattern of thought that is simple and constant. By outlining their plots, critics have shown that each involves birth, separation, tempest, remorse, penitence or patience, reconciliation and peace. By noting the juxtaposition of some scenes and recurrent phrases and ideas, they have argued that in all but Pericles civilization or art is contrasted with natural life or nature. Most persuasively, they have abstracted certain speeches which are straightforward in stating issues of life and death, and have drawn attention to their mutual echoes: I am great with woe, and shall deliver weeping. … O, come hither, Thou that beget'st him that did thee beget; Thou that wast born at sea, buried at Tarsus, And found at sea again! (Pericles, V. i. 107–99) … did you not name a tempest, A birth, and death? (Ibid., V. iii. 33–4) O, what, am I A mother to the birth of three? Ne'er mother Rejoiced deliverance more… Thou hast lost by this a kingdom. No, my lord; I have got two worlds by't. (Cymbeline, V. v. 368–74) … thou mettest with things dying, I with things new-born…. (Winter's Tale, III. iii. 116–8) Welcome hither, As is the spring to the earth…. (Ibid., V. i. 151–2) … they looked as they had heard of a world ransomed, or one destroyed…. (Ibid., V. ii. 16–7) O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! … O brave new world! (Tempest, V. i. 181–3) In one voyage … Ferdinand… found a wife Where he himself was lost, Prospero his dukedom In a poor isle and all of us ourselves When no man was his own. (Ibid., V. i. 208–13)
