[1] There is some (ironic) discussion of a possible criticism that might be brought against a playwright: "That the argument of his comedy might have been of some other nature, as of a duke to be in love with a countess, and that countess to be in love with the duke's son, and the son to love the lady's waiting-maid; some such cross wooing, with a clown to their serving-man...."
[2] See the footnote 7 in chapter XXII:
"A dance of all the gods upon Olympus,
With fauns and graces and the muses twined."
From a poem by Tegnér on Bellman, the Swedish convivial lyrist.
[3] "It is in some sort a farewell to mirth, and the mirth is of the finest quality, an incomparable ending. Shakespeare has done greater things, but he has never done anything more delightful."—Arthur Symons.
[XXX]
THE REVOLUTION IN SHAKESPEARE'S SOUL—THE GROWING MELANCHOLY OF THE FOLLOWING PERIOD—PESSIMISM, MISANTHROPY
For the time is now approaching when mirth, and even the joy of life, are extinguished in his soul. Heavy clouds have massed themselves on his mental horizon—their nature we can only divine—and gnawing sorrows and disappointments have beset him. We see his melancholy growing and extending; we observe its changing expressions, without knowing its causes. This only we know, that the stage which he contemplates with his mind's eye, like the material stage on which he works, is now hung with black. A veil of melancholy descends over both.