Sir Smile, his neighbour:  nay, there’s comfort in’t,
    Whiles other men have gates, and those gates opened,
    As mine, against their will.  Should all despair
    That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind
    Would hang themselves.  Physic for’t there’s none;
    It is a bawdy planet, that will strike
    Where ’tis predominant; and ’tis powerful, think it,
    From east, west, north and south:  be it concluded,
    No barricade for a belly, know’t;
    It will let in and out the enemy
    With bag and baggage:  many thousand on’s
    Have the disease, and feel’t not.

It is really a little difficult, in the face of such passages, to agree with Professor Dowden’s dictum:  ’In these latest plays the beautiful pathetic light is always present.’

But how has it happened that the judgment of so many critics has been so completely led astray?  Charm and gravity, and even serenity, are to be found in many other plays of Shakespeare.  Ophelia is charming, Brutus is grave, Cordelia is serene; are we then to suppose that Hamlet, and Julius Caesar, and King Lear give expression to the same mood of high tranquillity which is betrayed by Cymbeline, The Tempest, and The Winter’s Tale?  ‘Certainly not,’ reply the orthodox writers, ’for you must distinguish.  The plays of the last period are not tragedies; they all end happily’—­’in scenes,’ says Sir I. Gollancz, ’of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace.’  Virtue, in fact, is not only virtuous, it is triumphant; what would you more?

But to this it may be retorted, that, in the case of one of Shakespeare’s plays, even the final vision of virtue and beauty triumphant over ugliness and vice fails to dispel a total effect of horror and of gloom.  For, in Measure for Measure Isabella is no whit less pure and lovely than any Perdita or Miranda, and her success is as complete; yet who would venture to deny that the atmosphere of Measure for Measure was more nearly one of despair than of serenity?  What is it, then, that makes the difference?  Why should a happy ending seem in one case futile, and in another satisfactory?  Why does it sometimes matter to us a great deal, and sometimes not at all, whether virtue is rewarded or not?

The reason, in this case, is not far to seek. Measure for Measure is, like nearly every play of Shakespeare’s before Coriolanus, essentially realistic.  The characters are real men and women; and what happens to them upon the stage has all the effect of what happens to real men and women in actual life.  Their goodness appears to be real goodness, their wickedness real wickedness; and, if their sufferings are terrible enough, we regret the fact, even though in the end they triumph, just as we regret the real sufferings of our friends.  But, in the plays of the final period, all this has changed; we are no longer in the real world, but in a world of enchantment,