The last complete play of Shakspere's, The Winter's Tale, basks in the the golden glow of the master's genius; the sweet country air runs all through it, and few, if any, of his plays leave a pleasanter picture in one's memory. "As long as men can think, Perdita shall brighten and sweeten, Hermione ennoble, mens' minds and lives".

In his earlier work Shakspere writes of young men and maidens, their loves, mirths, and griefs, as one who is among them, taking a lively personal interest in their affairs. But in the last plays the "beautiful, pathetic light" is always present. They are the sufferers, aged, experienced and tried; in them we see Shakspere bending over the joys and sorrows of youth. This we sense through a total characterization, through a feeling and a presence, rather than by incident and statement. For over youth's beauty and love is shed a clear and tender luminosity not elsewhere in his writings. Power and glory are the master's as he puts the last touches on the canvas and gives over his works to his age and to all time.

"He had the ability to put himself in your place, and then--to speak. Sympathetic knowledge of human nature we call it, and the gift of expression. . . . He could enter at will into the thoughts and feelings of a wide range of human beings in a multitude of experiences and under circumstances of infinite variety, and then he could make them speak, not as they would have spoken in real life,--for most of us are dumb or tongue-tied, particularly when we have anything to say. . . . In addition he had the gift of poetry--define it if you can. And, to close the account, he had learned the trade or art or craft of bringing plays to pass, or, in other words, of representing life and thought in action in a mimic world. That is all there is to Shakspere. It is simple enough to tell, but not so easy to be!"

The speaker lifts the pince-nez from his nose: they snap to their stations on his pearl grey waistcoat. Folding shut the little brown volume, he gathers a few odd papers, picks a soft grey fedora from the top of the desk. Students sit glued to their chairs. Gaily, resolutely, unperturbed the lecturer marches down the aisle and out the door.

Today at ten the Vagabond will journey to Harvard 6 and hear the last lecture of George Lyman Kittredge in English 22, on the fifth act of "The Winter's Tale".