And what reconciliation can be heard m this>—
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or you, most wicked sir, whom to call brotherWould even infect my mouth, I do forgiveThy rankest fault . . . —to which Shakespeare wisely gives Anthonio no reply. The generalview taken of human nature here^ Not high, not high To see in thelast plays, as recent critics do, a sort of ministry of reconciliationseems to me to sentimentalize them and falsify our experience of theirreality. Everybody does by no means kiss and make up— not even inThe Winters Tale^ which (as villainless) I should call the most chari-table of them. Now virtue for a ruler consists in the production of virtue mhimself and his subjects— or, where it exists already, the encourage-ment, refinement, and maintenance of it, as in Prospero himself, inMiranda, in Ferdinand, in Gonzalo. But where it does not exist, itmust be produced in whatever degree is practicable, according to thenature of the subject; and this brings us to the fates of Alonso,Anthonio, Sebastian, of Stephano and Trinculo, of Caliban. Take the first group. Without insisting upon my term ‘‘redemp-tion,” I thmk we need not hesitate over the fact, which is thatAlonso, Anthonio, and Sebastian are redeemed— reclaimed, ransomed, 8o
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