In the same play Shakespeare’s style varies from the dainty lyric touch of Ariel’s song about the cowslip’s bell and the blossoming bough, to a style unsurpassed for grandeur:—­

“The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.”

In the same passage his note immediately changes to the soft vox humana of—­

            “We are such stuff
  As dreams are made on, and our little life
  Is rounded with a sleep.”

His Influence on Thought.—­With the exception of the Scriptures, Shakespeare’s dramas have surpassed all other works in molding modern English thought.  If a person should master Shakespeare and the Bible, he would find most that is greatest in human thought, outside of the realm of science.

Even when we do not read him, we cannot escape the influence of others who have been swayed by him.  For generations, certain modes of thought have crystallized about his phrases.  We may instance such expressions as these:  “Brevity is the soul of wit.”  “What’s in a name?” “The wish was father to the thought.”  “The time is out of joint.”  “There’s the rub.”  “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends.”  “Comparisons are odorous.”  It would, perhaps, not be too much to say that the play of Hamlet has affected the thought of the majority of the English-speaking race.  His grip on Anglo-Saxon thought has been increasing for more than three hundred years.

Shakespeare’s influence on the thought of any individual has only two circumscribing factors,—­the extent of Shakespearean study and the capacity of interpreting the facts of life.  No intelligent person can study Shakespeare without becoming a deeper and more varied thinker, without securing a broader comprehension of human existence,—­its struggles, failures, and successes.  If we have before viewed humanity through a glass darkly, Shakespeare will gradually lead us where we can see face to face the beauty and the grandeur of the mystery of existence.  His most valuable influence often consists in rendering his students sympathetic and in making them feel a sense of kinship with life.  Shakespeare’s readers more quickly realize that human nature shows the shaping touch of divinity.  They have the rare joy of discovering the world anew and of exclaiming with Miranda:—­

  “How many goodly creatures are there here! 
  How beauteous mankind is!  O brave new world,
  That has such people in’t!"[28]

When we have really become acquainted with Shakespeare, our lives will be less prosaic and restricted.  After intimate companionship with him, there will be, in the words of Ariel, hardly any common thing in life—­

  “But doth suffer a sea-change
  Into something rich and strange."[29]