Alan MacDonald (@alanmacdonald)

A. Quiller Couch on Shakespeare's the TEMPEST And I conclude by asseverating that were a greater than Ariel to wing down from Heaven and stand and offer me to choose which, of all the books written in the world, should be mine, I should choose— not the Odyssey not the Aeneid, not the Divine Comedy, not Paradise Lost; not Othello nor Hamlet nor Lear; but this little SHAKESPEARE’S WORKMANSHIP matter of 2,000 odd lines—The Tempest rather than Othello or than Lear. Yes: for I can just imagine a future age of men, in which their characterization has passed into a curiosity, a pale thing of antiquity; as I can barely imagine, yet can just imagine, a world in which the murder of Desdemona, the fate of Cordelia, will be considered curiously, as brute happenings proper to a time outlived; and again, while I reverence the artist who in Othello or in Lear purges our passion, forcing us to weep for present human woe, The Tempest^ as I see it, forces diviner tears, tears for sheer beauty; with a royal sense of this world and how it passes away, with a catch at the heart of what is to come. And still the sense is royal: it is the majesty of art: “we feel that we are greater than we know”. So on the surge of our emotion, as on the surges ringing Prosperous island, is blown a spray, a mist. Actually it dwells in our eyes, bedimming them: and ^ involuntarily we would brush it away, there rides in it a rainbow; and its colours are wisdom and charity, with forgiveness, tender ruth for all men and women growing older, and perennial trust in young love. Sir Arthur Quiller Couch. Notes On Shakespeares' Workmanship (Kindle Locations 3864-3872).