buted to Shakespeare
arises from his actually possessing a peculiarity which, for superficial
observers and in the play of good actors, may appear to be the capacity
of depicting character. This peculiarity consists in the capacity of
representative scenes expressing the play of emotion. However unnatural
the positions may be in which he places his characters, however improper
to them the language which he makes them speak, however featureless they
are, the very play of emotion, its increase, and alteration, and the
combination of many contrary feelings, as expressed correctly and
powerfully in some of Shakespeare's scenes, and in the play of good
actors, evokes even, if only for a time, sympathy with the persons
represented. Shakespeare, himself an actor, and an intelligent man, knew
how to express by the means not only of speech, but of exclamation,
gesture, and the repetition of words, states of mind and developments or
changes of feeling taking place in the persons represented. So that, in
many instances, Shakespeare's characters, instead of speaking, merely
make an exclamation, or weep, or in the middle of a monolog, by means of
gestures, demonstrate the pain of their position (just as Lear asks some
one to unbutton him), or, in moments of great agitation, repeat a
question several times, or several times demand the repetition of a word
which has particularly struck them, as do Othello, Macduff, Cleopatra,
and others. Such clever methods of expressing the development of
feeling, giving good actors the possibility of demonstrating their
powers, were, and are, often mistaken by many critics for the expression
of character. But however strongly the play of feeling may be expressed
in one scene, a single scene can not give the character of a figure when
this figure, after a correct exclamation or gesture, begins in a
language not its own, at the author's arbitrary will, to volubly utter
words which are neither necessary nor in harmony with its character.

V

"Well, but the profound utterances and sayings expressed by
Shakespeare's characters," Shakespeare's panegyrists will retort. "See
Lear's monolog on punishment, Kent's speech about vengeance, or Edgar's
about his former life, Gloucester's reflections on the instability of
fortune, and, in other dramas, the famous monologs of Hamlet, Antony,
and others."

Thoughts and sayings may be appreciated, I will answer, in a prose work,
in an essay, a collection of a