The Messiahship of Shakspeare

ligion. Maeterlinck abroad and Mr Yeats at home are the names most prominent to me, at this moment, in the movement, but it pervades literature, and the latest minor poet will show traces of its influence. What, at last, has visited our own minds, we can now better conceive to have visited the minds of men of a previous age. And one may dare, at last, to speak of the symbolism and religion of Shakspeare. Hitherto there has been scant recognition among the symbolists of their fraternity with Shakspeare. They are still under the spell of the purely scientific era from which we are emerging. Science has only been able to affirm itself by a war against religious symbols. In Shakspeare it has perceived the scientific mind and has tasted high joys of poetry without offence to its own spirit. Hence if one whispers, ' Shakspeare too is a symbolist, Shakspeare too is religious,' it cries, ' Avaunt! trouble not our peace!' The budding symbolist is awed by this cry, and concludes, with Zola, that Shakspeare may be left ' to his glory.' This is a great mistake. Shakspeare is symbolical in The Sonnets, and in his last three plays? The Tempest, Winters Tale andCymbeline; and the thought that he enshrines in his symbols is religious thought, essentially modern, or even ahead of us by its breadth and con- structiveness, qualities that give it great practical value. Here I may remark that when I first approached Shakspeare with critical intent, I was not a symbolist and not religi...