Chapter XXIII Man's Relations to Man as Shown in 'agk

Midsummer Night* s Dream, Hamlet , and The Tempest . 276
Summary of previous lecture — embarrassment of riches in illustrating Shakspere's widening view of man's relation to his fellow-man — study here to be confined to the three plays- within-playsy or anti -masques, that occur in these dramas: Pyramus and This be. The Mouse- trap (as Hamlet calls the terrible murder scene of the players), and that masque of the beneficent gods, Juno, Ceres, Iris, etc., arrayed by Pros- pero before his young lovers — in the first Shakspere is plainly laughing at somebody; its motive is Ridicule — the motive of the second is plainly Revenge — and the third begins and con- tinues and ends in Blessing — evidence in Harvey's letters and in a work of Greene's that Shakspere in the Dream was satiris- ing Greene — the controversy between Greene and Shakspere and Greene and Harvey — Shakspere never replied to his enemy's abuse — Harvey answers on his own and Shakspere's account — the flood of pamphlets augmented after Greene's death by four from Harvey — Shakspere doubtless knew these pamphlets well — various catchwords in these traceable through the Dream: Greene's beggary, a dissertation on asses, and a mention ot Greene's Arcadia, wherein occurs a passage singularly like Pyramus's apostrophe to Thisbe — it seems evident from these and allied clues that Shakspere in the Dream was merrily paying off Greene for the Groatstoorth of Wit — from this mild revenge of ridicule we pass to the desperate horror of the revenge upon which the Hamlet anti-masque is founded — and from this we advance to the 'Marge blue heaven of moral width and delight" in The Tempest anti-masque — here Prospero calls down the gods to shower blessings on his beloved — other plays show this mature moral exaltation as well as The Tempest — in Pericles^ for instance, the picture of Cerimon is a notable illustration — extracts from Pericles covering the casting overboard and revival of Thaisa — in connection with the use of music as physic, Herrick's poem «*To Music, to Becalm his Fever."