unced its
enfranchisement. Happily for the variety of his creative genius on the
English stage, no divorce had been proclaimed between the serious and
the comic, and no division of species had been established such as he
himself ridicules as pedantic when it professes to be exhaustive. The
comedies of Shakespeare accordingly refuse to be tabulated in deference
to any method of classification deserving to be called precise; and
several of them are comedies only according to a purely technical use of
the term. In those in which the instinct of reader or spectator
recognizes the comic interest to be supreme, it is still of its nature
incidental to the progress of the action; for the criticism seems just,
as well as in agreement with what we can conclude as to Shakespeare's
process of construction, that among all his comedies not more than a
single one[185] is in both design and effect a comedy of character
proper. Thus in this direction, while the unparalleled wealth of his
invention renewed or created a whole gallery of types, he left much to
be done by his successors; while the truest secrets of his comic art,
which interweaves fancy with observation, draws wisdom from the lips of
fools, and imbues with character what all other hands would have left
shadowy, monstrous or trivial, are among the things inimitable belonging
to the individuality of his poetic genius.

His style and its influence.

The influences of Shakespeare's diction and versification upon those of
the English drama in general can hardly be overrated, though it would be
next to impossible to state them definitely. In these points,
Shakespeare's manner as a writer was progressive; and this progress has
been deemed sufficiently well traceable in his plays to be used as an
aid in seeking to determine their chronological sequence. The general
laws of this progress accord with those of the natural advance of
creative genius; artificiality gives way to freedom, and freedom in its
turn submits to a greater degree of regularity and care. In
versification as in diction the earliest and the latest period of
Shakespeare's dramatic writing are more easily recognizable than what
lies between and may be called the _normal_ period, the plays belonging
to which in form most resemble one another, and are least affected by
distinguishable peculiarities--such as the rhymes and intentionally
euphuistic colouring of style which characterize the earliest, or the
feminine