truction, in spite of all the
modern advances in stage management. Modern dramas are realistic, but
they deal with common emotions, cramped by the restraints of an
artificial state of society, where all our feelings are more or less
artificial. Shakespeare takes human nature untrammelled, and paints it
as it is, unshackled by the commonplace laws of modern society. Compare
his pathos with modern pathos, and see the difference. The staple
element of modern pathos is the contrast between poverty and riches,
hunger and fulness, cold and warmth. The greatest pathos of
Shakespeare, in "Lear," comes out not in the storm scene, but in the
meeting of Lear and Cordelia amid luxury and comfort. The old king
hurls curses and contempt at the mere physical discomforts of the
tempest; they serve to divert his thoughts from the far greater torture
of his mind; but when his conscience makes him crave pardon of his own
child, then indeed the limit of human pathos is reached. There is
nothing artificial there. Lear might be any old man as well as a king,
and the situation would be just as terrible in its justice of
atonement. It is _truth_.

That _realism_ is the whole secret of Shakespeare's success as a
dramatist, is made more evident by the fact that he avows it himself in
"Hamlet," as the mainspring of dramatic success, in the celebrated
"advice to the players." This being the only passage on record in which
Shakespeare lays down his principles of art, has always been held as of
great value, and has probably done more to improve the English stage
than most people imagine. It has been always available as a canon to
which to refer unnatural ranters, and to prevent the robustious school
from tearing a passion to tatters. It sobered down Forrest in his old
age into a model Othello, and constitutes the secret that has placed
Lester Wallack and Joseph Jefferson at the head of their respective
lines of light comedy. I think, however, it has hardly been recognized
fully enough as the principle on which Shakespeare worked, for here at
least he does seem to have held to a rigidly defined and artificial
principle of action. This was to take a given passion and treat it with
the utmost realism from every point of view, making that the _motive_
of a play, being otherwise careless of construction.

This principle appears very clearly in "Lear," the most artificial in
construction of all Shakespeare's tragedies. His theme was _filial
ingratitude_