Nay, it perchance will sparkle in your eyes;
And like a dog that is compelled to fight,
Snatch at his master that doth tarre him on.
All things that you should use to do me wrong
Deny their office: only you do lack

That mercy which fierce fire and iron extends,
Creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses.

Hub. Well, see to live; I will not touch thine eye
For all the treasure that thine uncle owes :

Yet am I sworn and I did purpose, boy,

With this same very iron to burn them out."

Finally, let us see what can be said for and against the extravagant ramps of some of Shakespeare's heroes. There are passages in "Julius Cæsar" and "Coriolanus" almost as bombastic as anything to be found in Shakespeare's dramatic predecessors. Cæsar's bearing in the interview with the conspirators, when they beg the repeal of Publius Cimber's banishment, is not less lofty than Tamburlaine's inflation, though more calm and dignified—

"Know Cæsar doth not wrong, nor without cause
Will he be satisfied."

And the speech beginning

"I could be well moved, if I were as you "—

may not be an offence against the modesty of nature, but taken by itself, is an offence against the modesty of art. The boasts and brags of Coriolanus out-Herod the Herod of the Mysteries. For example (i. 1, 200)

"Would the nobility lay aside their ruth,

And let me use my sword, I'd make a quarry
With thousands of these quarter'd slaves, as high
As I could pick my lance.”

And (iv. 5, 112)—

"Let me twine

Mine arms about that body, where against

My grained ash an hundred times hath broke

And scarr'd the moon with splinters."

It is a noticeable circumstance that these inflated speeches -as well as one or two in "Antony and Cleopatra ❞—are put in the mouths of Roman heroes. I am not quite sure that this is not one explanation and justification of them: they may have been Shakespeare's ideal of what appertained to the Roman character. But apart from their being true to the Roman manner, they may be justified also on the principle of variety. It must have been a relief to Shakespeare's mind, ever hungry for fresh types of character, to expatiate in the well-marked high-astounding ideal ; and it is equally a relief to the student or spectator who may have followed his career and dwelt with appreciative insight on his varied representation of humanity. This is the broadest justification: if we consider more curiously, other justifications make themselves palpable. The inflation of Coriolanus and Cæsar is not like Tamburlaine's presented to us as a thing unquestioned and admired by those around them, as being, for aught said upon the stage to the contrary, the becoming language of heroic manhood. The violent language of Coriolanus is deprecated by his friends, and raises a furious antagonism in his enemies. Side by side with Cæsar's high conception of himself, we have the humorous expression of his greatness by blunt Casca and the sneering of cynical Cassius. In the case of Cæsar, too, there is a profound contrast between his lofty declaration of immovable constancy and the immediate dethronement of the god to lifeless clay. We must not take the rant of Cæsar, Coriolanus, or Antony by itself simply as rant, and wish with Ben Jonson that it had been blotted out. We must consider whether it does not become the Roman character: we must remember that a varied artist like Shakespeare may be allowed an occasional rant as a stretch to powers weary of the ordinary level; and above all, we must observe how it is regarded by other personages in the drama-in what light it is presented to the audience.

IV. HIS DELINEATION OF CHARACTER.

One large deduction must always be made from our assertion of Shakespeare's truth to nature. All his personages, except intended Malaprops, are supposed to have the gift of perfect expression. The poet is the common interpreter. Gervinus, indeed, professes to find in some cases a correspondence between characters and their mode of expression; but we may rest assured that all such discoveries are reached by twisting accident into the semblance of design. We might as soon try to argue that it was natural for Shakespeare's personages to speak in blank verse. It is expected. of a dramatist that he shall give as perfect expression as he can to the emotions and thoughts that occur: the conditions of his art impose no limits upon him in this direction except that his personages must not illustrate their meaning by allusions flagrantly beyond the possibilities of their knowledge. If the emotions of the dramatis personæ are in keeping with their characters and their situations, and are at the same time theatrically effective, the dramatist has fulfilled the weightier part of dramatic law.

Shakespeare's personages have all their author's vividness, energy, and delicacy of language, and all the abstractness of phrase and profusion of imagery characteristic of the Elizabethans. Shakespeare could never have been what he is had he been fettered by considerations of exact truth to nature or to history. We are not to believe that when he put into Macbeth's mouth the famous adjuration of the witches, he paused to consider whether a man in such a situation would naturally have so much to say: he took a firm grasp of the heroic exaltation proper to such a moment, and gave his imagination full swing to body it forth to the audience. Nor must we take exception to the abstruse, antithetical, and metaphysical statement of the conflict of motives in Macbeth's soliloquies, and say that such coherence and figurative force of expression would have been impossible in a rude thane so violently agitated; enough that

such an internal conflict was natural to a man of Macbeth's character-the poet must be left free to express the fluctuating passion with all the force of his genius.

Nor did Shakespeare impede the free movement of his genius by vexatious attention to little details of costume and surroundings: he makes Romans toss caps in the air, and wave hats in scorn, makes Hector quote Aristotle, makes Mantuan outlaws swear by the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar. Yet such was the vivid and searching force of his intellect, the quickness of his constructive energy, that in a brief effort of intense concentration, he was able to realise a scene in its essential circumstances and feelings with a propriety that the mere scholar would not have attained after years spent in the laborious accumulation of accurate particulars. He could hardly have seized the leading features with such freshness had he stood hesitating and consulting authorities about details: he went in boldly, and his clearness of insight kept him right in the main. Hazlitt quotes his picture of Caliban as a special example of his truth to nature. Now the realisation of Caliban is not faultless. It does not seem to have been observed that though Caliban tastes intoxicating liquor for the first time from the flask of Stephano, yet, at the end of the play, he expresses a civilised contempt for a drunkard. Still we should not be disposed for a slight inadvertence like this -which doubtless might be plausibly argued to be no inadvertence at all, but a stroke of profound wisdom-to moderate very much what Hazlitt says, that "the character of Caliban not only stands before us with a language and manners of its own, but the scenery and situation of the enchanted island he inhabits, the traditions of the place, its strange noises, its hidden recesses, his frequent haunts and ancient neighbourhood, are given with a miraculous truth of nature, and with all the familiarity of an old recollection." This is very far from being literally true; yet when we compare Shakespeare's characters with what other dramatists have accomplished, we must admit that some such superhuman exaggeration is needed to give the ordinary reader a just idea of his marvellous pre-eminence.

Shakespeare's historical plays afford the most unambiguous and indisputable evidence of his close study of character, and his inexhaustible fertility in giving it expression. He could not merely sum up a character in such general language as he puts into the mouth of the Duchess of York concerning her son Richard:

"Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy;

Thy school-days frightful, desperate, wild, and furious,
Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous,
Thy age confirmed, proud, subtle, bloody, treacherous."

But he had a living and manageable knowledge of the subjective moods and objective manifestations of the character thus summed up; he could imagine the feelings, actions, and artifices of such a man under a great variety of circumstances. Many people have knowledge of character enough to draw the general outlines of Richard, but who has shown sufficient knowledge of character to embody such a conception? This power is shown in all his plays, but is most conspicuous and easily recognised in his historical plays, because there he had more definite materials for his imagination to lay hold of and work into consistent characterisations. What chiefly makes his characters so life-like is their many-sidedness. The poet's just sense of clear broad dramatic effect is shown in making his leading characters approach to well-marked types; but the various characters are much more than narrow abstractions-each has traits that individualise him, and strongly colour his behaviour. Take his soldiers, his mighty men of war, the bastard Falconbridge in "King John," Hotspur in "Henry IV.," Coriolanus, and Antony. All have a powerful theatrical effect as men of heroic strength and courage, but each is a distinct character: the Bastard is individualised by his robust hearty humour and unpretentious loyalty; Hotspur, by his wasp-stung impatience, absorbed manner, and irresistible ebullience of animal spirits; Coriolanus, by his patrician pride; Antony, by his oratorical skill, his fondness for the theatre, and his sensuality. The various qualities of each are consistent with their warlike reputation, and

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