greatness
of these characters, as compared with his earlier creations, consists in
the greater intensity and amplitude of their natures, and the wider
variety of faculties and passions included in the strict unity of their
natures. Richard III., for example, is one of his earlier characters,
and though excellent of its kind, its excellence has been approached by
other dramatists, as, for instance, Massinger, in "Sir Giles Overreach."
But no other dramatist has been able to grasp and represent a character
similar in kind to Macbeth, and the reason is that Richard is
comparatively a simple conception, while Macbeth is a complex one.
There is unity and versatility in Richard; there is unity and variety in
Macbeth. Richard is capable of being developed with almost logical
accuracy; for though there is versatility in the play of his intellect,
there is little variety in the motives which direct his intellect. His
wickedness is not exhibited in the making. He is so completely and
gleefully a villain from the first, that he is not restrained from
convenient crime by any scruples and relentings. The vigor of his will
is due to his poverty of feeling and conscience. He is a brilliant and
efficient criminal because he is shorn of the noblest attributes of man.
Put, if you could, Macbeth's heart and imagination into him, and his
will would be smitten with impotence, and his wit be turned to wailing.
The intellect of Macbeth is richer and grander than Richard's, yet
Richard is relatively a more intellectual character; for the intellect
of Macbeth is rooted in his moral nature, and is secondary in our
thoughts to the contending motives and emotions it obeys and reveals. In
crime, as in virtue, what a man overcomes should enter into our estimate
of the power exhibited in what he does.

The question now comes up,--and we suppose it must be met, though we
should like to evade it,--How, amid the individualities that Shakespeare
has created, are we to detect the individuality of Shakespeare himself?
In answer it may be said, that, if we survey his dramas in the mass, we
find three degrees of unity;--first, the unity of the individual
characters; second, the unity of the separate plays in which they
appear; and third, the unity of Shakespeare's own nature, a nature which
deepened, expanded, and increased in might, but did not essentially
change, and which is felt as a potent presence throughout his works,
binding them together as the prod