Note 182 — Chapter VI · THE REMAINING CHARACTERS

What a strange effect these words are apt to produce on auditor and reader! “How true!” we say, “The prophecy is fulfilled. This is happening now.” And then the reflection comes that just because that is the case there is no prophecy and no truth in the scene; the whole is being enacted, in sport. We experience a kind of vertigo, in which we cannot distinguish the real and the illusory and yet are conscious of both in their highest potence. And this is a characteristic of all poetry, though it is not always brought so clearly before the mind. In Shakespeare something of the kind is frequent: compare the reference to the “squeaking Cleopatra” in Antony and Cleopatra, which is almost exactly parallel; compare too his favourite device of the play within the play, when we see the actors of a few minutes ago, sitting like ourselves as auditors; and thus, on the one hand their own performance seems comparatively real, but on the other there is the constant reminder that we are in their position, and the whole is merely spectacular. Dr. Brandes has some excellent remarks in this connection on Tieck’s Dramas in his Romantic School in Germany.