heroes of the theatre or of romance: in this active world
there is nothing fantastic, nothing unsound, nothing exaggerated
nor empty: neither the poet nor the actor speaks in them, but
creative nature alone, which seems to dwell in and to animate
these images. The forms vary, as they do in life, from the
deepest to the shallowest, from the most noble to the most
deformed: a prodigal dispenses these riches; but the impression
is, that he is as inexhaustible as Nature herself. And not one
of these figures is like another in features: there are groups
which have a family likeness, but no two individuals resembling
each other: they become known to us progressively, as we find it
with living acquaintance: they make different impressions on
different people, and are interpreted by each according to his
own feelings. Hence, in the explanation of Shakespeare's
characters, it would be an idle undertaking to balance the
different opinions of men, or to insist arbitrarily on our own:
each can only express his own view, and must then learn whose
opinion best stands the test of time. For, on returning to these
characters at another time, our greater ripeness and experience
will ever lay open to us new features in them. Whoever has not
been wrecked, with his ideals and principles, on the shore of
life, whoever has not bled inwardly with sorrow, has not
suppressed holy feelings, and stumbled over the enigmas of the
world, will but half understand Hamlet. And whoever has borne
the sharpest pains of consciousness will understand
Shakespeare's characters like one of the initiated; and to him
they will be ever new, ever more admirable, ever richer in
significance: he will make out of them a school of life, free
from the danger of almost all modern poetry, which is apt to
lead us astray, and to give us heroes of romance, instead of
true men.--GERVINUS.

"That which he hath writ
Is with such judgment labour'd and distill'd
Through all the needful uses of our lives,
That, could a man remember but his lines,
He should not touch at any serious point,
But he might breathe his spirit out of him."

Shakespeare, it is true, idealizes his characters, all of them more or
less, some of them very much. But this, too, is so done from the heart
outwards, done with such inward firmness an