atist is
seldom a Shakespeare. That is true, but we must look deeper than that.
There are, in fact, several points to be taken into consideration. For
one thing--this is a minor point--Shakespeare had really far more
elbow-room than the playwright of to-day. _Othello_ and _King Lear_, to
say nothing of _Hamlet_, are exceedingly long plays. Something like a
third of them is omitted in modern representation; and when we speak of
their richness and complexity of characterization, we do not think
simply of the plays as we see them compressed into acting limits, but of
the plays as we know them in the study. It is possible, no doubt, for
modern playwrights to let themselves go in the matter of length, and
then print their plays with brackets or other marks to show the
"passages omitted in representation." This is, however, essentially an
inartistic practice, and one cannot regret that it has gone out of
fashion. Another point to be considered is this: are Othello and Lear
really very complex character-studies? They are extremely vivid: they
are projected with enormous energy, in actions whose violence affords
scope for the most vehement self-expression; but are they not, in
reality, colossally simple rather than complex? It is true that in Lear
the phenomena of insanity are reproduced with astonishing minuteness and
truth; but this does not imply any elaborate analysis or demand any
great space. Hamlet is complex; and were I "talking for victory," I
should point out that _Hamlet_ is, of all the tragedies, precisely the
one which does not come within the frame of the picture. But the true
secret of the matter does not lie here: it lies in the fact that Hamlet
unpacks his heart to us in a series of soliloquies--a device employed
scarcely at all in the portrayal of Othello and Lear, and denied to the
modern dramatist.[1] Yet again, the social position and environment of
the great Shakespearean characters is taken for granted. No time is
spent in "placing" them in a given stratum of society, or in
establishing their heredity, traditions, education, and so forth. And,
finally, the very copiousness of expression permitted by the rhetorical
Elizabethan form came to Shakespeare's aid. The modern dramatist is
hampered by all sorts of reticences. He has often to work rather in
indirect suggestion than in direct expression. He has, in short, to
submit to a hundred hampering conditions from which Shakespeare was
exempt; wherefore, even i