inking of incidents so as to form an attractive story. The
vital workings of nature in the development of individual
character,--it is on these, and not on any thing so superficial or
mechanical as a mere frame-work of incident, that, the real life of
the piece depends. On this point I probably cannot do better than by
quoting the following remarks from Coleridge:

"The interest in the plot is on account of the characters, not _vice
versa_, as in almost all other writers: the plot is a mere canvas, and
no more. Take away from _Much Ado about Nothing_ all that is not
indispensable to the plot, either as having little to do with it, or,
like Dogberry and his comrades, forced into the service, when any
other less ingeniously-absurd watchmen and night-constables would have
answered the mere necessities of the action; take away Benedick,
Beatrice, Dogberry, and the reaction of the former on the character of
Hero,--and what will remain? In other writers the main agent of the
plot is always the prominent character: John is the main-spring of the
plot in this play; but he is merely shown, and then withdrawn."

* * * * *

The style and diction of this play has little that calls for special
remark. In this respect the workmanship, as before noted, is of about
the same cast and grain with that of _As You Like It_; sustained and
equal; easy, natural, and modest in dress and bearing; everywhere
alive indeed with the exhilarations of wit or humour or poetry, but
without the laboured smoothness of the Poet's earlier plays, or the
penetrating energy and quick, sinewy movement of his later ones.
Compared with some of its predecessors, the play shows a decided
growth in what may be termed virility of mind: a wider scope, a higher
reach, a firmer grasp, have been attained: the Poet has come to read
Nature less through "the spectacles of books," and does not hesitate
to meet her face to face, and to trust and try himself alone with her.
The result of all which appears in a greater freshness and reality of
delineation. Here the persons have nothing of a dim, equivocal hearsay
air about them, such as marks in some measure his earlier efforts in
comedy. The characters indeed are not pitched in so high a key, nor
conceived in so much breadth and vigour, as in several of the plays
written at earlier dates: the plan of the work did not require this,
or even admit of it; nevertheless the workmanship on the whole