nd selfish, are ruled by the most charming and refined of
womankind. The tragedies with their presentation of the waste and
suffering of life, though here depravity may seem to fill the scene and
innocence share in the punishment and ruin, yet redeem us from the
terror of their devastation by their assurances of both the majesty and
the loveliness of men and women.

Shakespeare's methods in characterization have seemed to some haphazard
and bewildering. He does not fit his men and women into an analysis of
the constitution of society or into an obvious view of man's relations
in the universe. Nor does he use his characters to illustrate fixed
conceptions or processes of cause and effect. He usually started with an
old story, with certain types of character, and he was not forgetful of
theatrical necessities or dramatic construction. But as he went on he
brought all his astounding interest in human nature to focus on the old
plot and the stock type. Hamlet, the hesitating avenger, becomes the
sentimentalist, the idealist, the thinker at war with himself, the
embodiment of that conflict between circumstance and a nature unfitted
to its task, which in some measure we have all encountered in life. An
arrogant and doting old man, by the force of creative imagination,
transcends the nursery tale from which he came, and carries to us all
the implications of suffering and love that surround the aging of
parents and the growth of children. Cleopatra is a wanton, but no
analysis can explain the subtleties with which the idealism and
animalism, the sacrifice and frivolity--and how much else--of human
passion are bound together in the few hundred lines which she speaks. It
is impossible to affirm that each of the great characters is thoroughly
consistent or offers a strictly accurate motivation. Rather, they are
magnificent portraits--like the Mona Lisa--crowded with a penetrating
but question-provoking psychology. Into such parts and situations as the
drama could afford are impressed every possible revelation of our
motives; but his model was always reality and he never yielded truth to
whim or prepossession.

[Page Heading: Human Nature]

Human nature, at its best or worst, droll or tragic, is thus given
magnitude and potency. This idealization, rendered still more effective
by the verse, persuades us as we read that here are our own attributes
and conflicts exalted, now into serene beauty, again into torment and
horror, and a