He struck this note in one of the earliest of his plays:—
Who by repentance is not satisfied,
Is nor of heaven, nor earth: for these are pleas'd.
By penitence th' Eternal's wrath's appeas'd.[57]
and the note vibrates through his works. It is the crowning moral of Measure for Measure; it is one of the dominant notes in Cymbeline. He also reflects Christianity in the beautiful optimism which discerns in evil the agent of good, and in calamity and sorrow the benevolence and mercy of God. This is the philosophy which penetrates what were probably his last three dramas, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest.
In these respects, then, it may fairly be maintained that Shakespeare is Christian. For the rest his dramas might, so far as their philosophy is concerned, have come down to us from classical antiquity. Nothing can be more Greek than the main basis on which his ethics rest—the observance of the mean, and the recognition of the relation of virtue to the becoming. When Claudio says:—
As surfeit is the father of much fast,
So every scope by the immoderate use
Turns to restraint;
when Norfolk says:—