differences in the _Merchant of Venice_! On the other hand, when
Macbeth is meditating the murder of Duncan, the wolf howls, the owl
hoots, and the cricket cries. And since Shakespeare's characters
often act out of part, so that intelligible motive fails, while it is
important to the poet that each scene be raised to dramatic level and
viewed in a special light, Goethe's words apply:

Here everything which in a great world event passes secretly
through the air, everything which at the very moment of a
terrible occurrence men hide away in their hearts, is expressed;
that which they carefully shut up and lock away in their minds is
here freely and eloquently brought to light; we recognize the
truth to life, but know not how it is achieved.

Amorous passion in his hands is an interpreter of Nature; in one of
his sonnets he compares it to an ocean which cannot quench thirst.

In Sonnet 130 he says:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dim;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks....
And yet, by Heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied by false compare.

His lady-love is a mirror in which the whole world is reflected:

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind....
For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,
The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature,
The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature.
(Sonnet 113.)

When she leaves him it seems winter even in spring:
'For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute.'
(Sonnet 97.)

Here, as in the dramas,[2] contrasts in Nature are often used to
point contrasts in life:

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
Which like a canker in the fragrant rose
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
(Sonnet 95.)

and

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done;
Roses have thorns and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
(Sonnet 35.)

In an opposite sense is Sonnet 70:

The ornament of beauty