Verb Tense in the Discussion of Literature

To be sure, the opening scene is as economical in the creation of atmosphere as that of Macbeth. There is the challenge of Barnardo, who nervously steals the sentry's words; the telling "I am sick at heart"; the cold and the fear. "Shakespare," says T. S. Eliot, "had worked for a long time in the theatre, and written a good many plays before reaching the point at which he could write those twenty-two lines." Out of their varied rhythms, and the beautifully unexpected speech of Marcellus, "it faded on the crowing of the cock," there arises, as Eliot says, "a kind of musical design." But meanwhile the ghost —"this thing"—has appeared.    (Frank Kermode. "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. 2^nd Ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. 1186.)