It is true
that he wrote for his audiences, and that his art is not every-where and
at all points perfect. But a great artist will contrive, as Shakspere
did, to reconcile practical exigencies, like those of the public stage,
with the finer requirements of his art. Strained interpretations have
been put upon this or that item in Shakspere's plays; and yet it is
generally true that some deeper reason can be assigned for his method in
a given case than that "the audience liked puns," or, "the audience
liked ghosts." Compare, for example, his delicate management of the
supernatural with Marlowe's procedure in _Faustus_. Shakspere's age
believed in witches, elves, and apparitions; and yet there is always
something shadowy or allegorical in his use of such machinery. The ghost
in _Hamlet_ is merely an embodied suspicion. Banquo's wraith, which is
invisible to all but Macbeth, is the haunting of an evil conscience. The
witches in the same play are but the promptings of ambition, thrown into
a human shape, so as to become actors in the drama. In the same way, the
fairies in _Midsummer Night's Dream_ are the personified caprices of the
lovers, and they are unseen by the human characters, whose likes and
dislikes they control, save in the instance where Bottom is "translated"
(that is, becomes mad) and has sight of the invisible world.
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