Amina Lucchesi (Violin) and Margery Cunningham (Pianoforte)

It is not, perhaps, an accident that Edgar, the persecuted son of Gloucester, makes the only speech in the play which seems to reply to that piece of pessimism:
Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all.

Some melancholy, no doubt, lay in Shakespeare's mind when he wrote this play which swelled into the deeper melancholy and misanthropy of Timon of Athens; but the mood did not last to the end of his life. It lifted, and the great poet, remembering his 'potent art,' abjured his 'rough magic' after he had made 'some heavenly music' and broke his staff and died. The Tempest was his farewell to the world; and it is rich and lovely and full of peace. Old Lear had come to quietness at last.