salind, Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, Miranda,
Cleopatra, and Cordelia. Great actresses have testified to their
amazement at his discovery of feminine secrets which they had thought
no man could ever divine.

[Illustration: HENRY IRVING AS HAMLET.]

Universality.--Shakespeare's sympathy might have been broad enough
to include all the people of his own time and their peculiar
interests, but might have lacked the power to project itself into the
universal heart of humanity. Sometimes a writer voices the ideals and
aspirations of his own day so effectively that he is called the
spokesman of his age, but he makes slight appeal to future
generations. Shakespeare was the spokesman of his own time, but he had
the genius also to speak to all ages. He loved to present the eternal
truths of the human heart and to invest them with such a touch of
nature as to reveal the kinship of the entire world.

His contemporary, the dramatist, Ben Jonson, had the penetration to
say of Shakespeare:--

"He was not of an age but for all time."

He meant that Shakespeare does not exhibit some popular conceit,
folly, or phase of thought, which is merely the fashion of the hour
and for which succeeding generations would care nothing; but that he
voices those truths which appeal to the people of all ages. The grief
of Lear over the dead Cordelia, the ambition of Lady Macbeth, the
loves of Rosalind and Juliet, the questionings of Hamlet, interest us
as much today as they did the Elizabethans. Fashions in literature may
come and go, but Shakespeare's work remains.

[Illustration: ELLEN TERRY AS LADY MACBETH. _From the painting by
Sargent_.]

Humor.--Shakespeare had the most comprehensive sense of humor of any
of the world's great writers,--a humor that was closely related to his
sympathy. It has been said that he saved his tragedies from the fatal
disease of absurdity, by inoculating them with his comic virus, and
that his sense of humor kept him from ever becoming shrill. This
faculty enabled him to detect incongruity, to keep from overstressing
a situation, to enter into the personality of others, to recover
quickly from "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," and in one
of his last plays, _The Tempest_, to welcome the "brave young world"
as if he would like to play the game of life again. It was largely
because of his humor that the tragedies and pain of life did not sour
and subdue Shakespeare.

He soon wearies of a vacant laugh. He