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Excerpt from Lectures on Shakespeare, Vol. 2 of 2 Tempest and Midsummer-Night's Dream are the two plays in which Shakspeare has most daringly and most successfully carried nature beyond herself; his understanding and imagination having here apparently changed places with each other, to the end that the former might employ its energies and resources in building up "a local habitation and a name" for the airy sportive creations of the latter. Both plays exemplify throughout the triumph of essential truth over circumstantial falsehood; the real world undergoing a temporary suspension of its laws as if to celebrate the advent of the ideal, and the understanding cheerfully acquiescing in a sweet contradiction to give freer scope for the beautiful and the pure. The two resemble each other in respect that they proceed in part by the agency of supernatural beings: further than this, however, they have no resemblance whatever; for Shakspeare's supernatural beings are as clearly and distinctly individual in all their features and movements as his most human characters. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.