It is idle to attempt to separate
arbitrarily in Shakespeare, for instance, those elements in the poet's
work which were deliberately introduced from those which went into it
by the unconscious action of his whole nature; but no one can study
the plays intelligently without becoming more and more clearly aware
of those depths of life which moved in the poet before they moved in
his work; which enlarged, enriched, and silently reorganised his view
of life and his power of translating life out of individual into
universal terms. It would be impossible, for instance, to write such a
play as "The Tempest" by sheer force of intellect; in the creation of
such a work there is involved, beyond literary skill, calculation, and
deep study of the relation of thought to form, a ripeness of spirit, a
clearness of insight, a richness of imagination, which are so much
part of the very soul of the poet that he does not separate them in
thought, and cannot consciously balance, adjust, and employ them. They
are quite beyond his immediate control, as they are beyond all
attempts to imitate them.
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