244 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



assured that all will go as wisdom requires. Ferdinand's work and patience enable 

 Prospero to show how kindly he has regarded him. The important thing about the 

 masque is that it is bestowed upon the eyes of this young couple as a reward of their 

 purity and devotion, and that even to tediousness Ferdinand is lectured on his abstemi- 

 ousness up to the very moment when the preparations cease and the masque begins. 

 The content of the masque echoes this introduction, all the blessings promised being 

 conditional upon the temperance and goodness of the lovers, and the absence of 

 Venus and her son. 



The masque ends abruptly. Prospero starts suddenly at sight of the Reapers and 

 Nymphs dancing; after which, to a strange, hollow, and confused noise, they heavily 

 vanish. What has disturbed the magician while Ariel is executing the dream of an 

 ideal republic sanctioned and ratified by Ceres and Juno, and brimming with beauty, 

 plenty, hope, power, and purity? "I had forgot that foul conspiracy of the beast 

 Caliban." 



Thereupon follows the dismissal of the merry actors. Our revels now are ended. 

 The actors were spirits and are melted into thin air. While the actors are mortal 

 and sensual, the drama of life may be beautiful in part, but at the worst it ends in 

 heaviness and confusion. The summiim pulchrum rests in the spiritual state. All 

 that is of sense must dissolve. What, then, remains is the real self. "We are such 

 stuff as dreams are made on." The ideal commonwealth is not within "the most 

 precious square of sense;" not in the world of Antonio, Caliban, and Gonzalo, but in 

 the world of Ariel, of spirit-life. "Troubled I am " This is the manner of Theseus 

 about to wage war against Creon. Wisdom can find the way to the ideal world, but 

 the mortal brain is troubled, and the scholar feels that the pageant of life must be 

 renounced in its entirety; Milan, Naples, books and all, are transitory — an illusion; 

 "I am sufficient to tell the world, 'tis but a gaudy shadow, that old Time, as he passes 

 by, takes with him." Prospero leaves the insubstantial pageant to return to the 

 most disagreeable of his duties, the disciplining of "a devil, a bom devil." The scene, 

 which opened so brightly, ends with an air of sadness, if not of fatigue; but with the 

 customary austerity of Prospero: 



"Shortly shall all my labors end, and thou 

 Shalt have the air at freedom: for a little. 

 Follow, and do me service." 

 This is the absolute renunciation of mortality. In the spiritual state alone is immor- 

 tality and liberty. Wisdom may bring beauty, purity, peace, and plenty, but not 

 undisturbed by ignorance and the limitations of sense. A comparatively ideal com- 

 monwealth is possible even to mortals, but the summum pulchrum rests in dreamland. 



The emotion of the latter part of Act IV is a profound indication of the truth that 

 the absolute serenity that philosophy desires is beyond its reach. While it seems to 

 mar the dignity of Prospero, it restores him to the social relations and makes it possible 

 to sympathize with his austere and unattractive exterior. Perhaps it may be thought 

 a culmination of tragic subHmity. 



