in this plot. If Shakespeare's spirit, as manifested in this Play, had
been more influential practically, do you think a different road would
have been taken? (For hints upon this line of thought see Introduction
in the "First Folio Edition"). How far is Berowne to be taken as the
spokesman of Shakespeare? Note what Pater says of him as "a reflex of
Shakespeare himself," and trace the truth of this as concerns the fact
that he is never "quite in touch" with the level of the understanding
shown by others of the Play, and state the bearing this has upon the
Moral of the Play. (See Pater's "Appreciations" or extract from same
in "Selected Criticism," pp. 242-248, "First Folio Edition").

Why does so frolicsome a Comedy end so seriously? Does that make it
funnier?

QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION

Is there really a moral in the Play in favor of nature and sincerity
or is it merely read into it?

Is Dowden right, who says "there is a serious intention in the play,"
or Barrett Wendell who says: "like modern comic opera, such
essentially lyric work as this has no profound meaning; its object is
just to delight, to amuse; whoever searches for significance in such
literature misunderstands it."

In comparison with other comedies of Shakespeare, is a serious
undercurrent discernible in all of them, but none in this?


IX