These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air; And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. [Illustration: TENNYSON] It is better, perhaps, to read the comedies and histories before the tragedies. The comedies and histories are simpler in motive, and through lighter thoughts give one the feeling for Shakespeare’s diction and prepare one to enter the tragedies that treat of higher matters. It is because tragedy is concerned with greater ideas, not because it ends unhappily, that it is greater poetry than comedy. It deals with more important motives and more serious events, and its thought is complete; the career of Hamlet, or of Macbeth, is finished, and the ideas of life that informed the career and shaped the events are carried out to their fullest. Tragedy does not consist in the piling up of corpses in the last act; the end of the characters is nothing in itself. Shakespeare always rounds off the conclusion with rapid strokes; having done with the ideas and motives that lead to the end he has little interest in the mere death of his characters. It is the “way to dusty death” that interests him and us and makes the tragedy profound. To those readers referred to in a previous chapter, who do not like sad endings, we can now give another answer. They put too much thought upon the ending and too little upon the story that leads to the end. Whoever does not like tragedy does not like serious ideas, and whoever does not read tragedy does not read the greatest poetry. For the greatest poetry must consist of the most important ideas. Not only upon beauty of form and magic of phrase, but on the heart, the content, depends the greatness of a poem. LIST OF BOOKS OF POETRY (_Supplementary to Chapter VI_) COLLECTIONS AND ANTHOLOGIES OF POETRY _The English Poets_, edited by T. H. WARD, and published by Macmillan, in four volumes, at $1 each. On the whole, the most satisfactory collection of English poetry. Each of the chief poets is represented by several selections, and the introductory criticisms are in themselves a liberal education. _Little Masterpieces of Poetry_, edited by HENRY VAN DYKE, in six volumes, and published by Doubleday, Page & Co.