, and hardly a scene in the whole drama turns aside from
that theme. It appears in the two plots about Lear and Gloucester, both
having exactly the same lines of actors, the last obviously a reflex of
the first. It is perhaps the only play of Shakespeare in which the
_moral_ obtrudes itself forcibly all through the action, as plainly as
in the stories of an old-fashioned primer, and I cannot help thinking
that if the whole story of Edgar and Edmund had been left out, the play
would have gained in unity and nature.

In "Richard III." ambition is the ruling passion, treated in the same
realistic fashion, conjoined with the extreme sensitiveness of personal
deformity to strictures on itself. In "Macbeth" ambition pure and
simple is treated from every point, first in man, then in woman;
afterward remorse is dissected with equal skill. The ruling passion in
"Hamlet" is somewhat more difficult to analyze than the rest, but I
think that the renowned soliloquy of "To be or not to be" discloses it
more clearly than any other part of the play. It is _fear_. Fear
appears in Hamlet all through the play, from the first ghost scene to
the death of Ophelia--an excessive caution, a hesitation, a timidity, a
want of resolution, mental more than physical, which lasts till he
returns from his travels and is stung into manliness over poor
Ophelia's grave. Then at last he does what he ought to have done at
first, but for his lack of good, honest pluck--gets savage and breaks
things, and so works poetical justice.

If the tragedies of Shakespeare reveal their principal secret to be the
realistic treatment of master passions, what shall we say to such
comedies as "Midsummer Night's Dream," "As You Like It," "Much Ado
About Nothing," and such? It is very difficult to define in what
consists their success, apart from the beauty of their love stories,
their dainty language, their charming feminine characters, and a cloud
of accessories, none of which can properly be called the main secret.
The first two, I think, owe their beauty principally to the dissection
of that passion of love which forms the motive of "Romeo and Juliet."
The author treats us to nothing but love scenes and scenes in mockery
of love, and yet we never tire of them. In "Much Ado About Nothing," to
be sure, there is an artificial plot of villany to hinder the
love-making, but after all it is Benedick and Beatrice, making fun of
love and getting caught in its toils, that make