discovers more ripeness of art and faculty than even in _The Merchant
of Venice_.

* * * * *

One of the Poet's methods was, apparently, first to mark out or else
to adopt a given course of action, and then to conceive and work out
his characters accordingly, making them such as would naturally cohere
with and sustain the action, so that we feel an inward, vital, and
essential relation between what they are and what they do. Thus there
is nothing arbitrary or mechanical in the sorting together of persons
and actions: the two stand together under a living law of human
transpiration, instead of being gathered into a mere formal and
outward juxtaposition. That is, in short, the persons act so because
they _are_ so, and not because the author _willed_ to put them through
such a course of action: what comes from them is truly rooted in them,
and is _generated_ vitally out of the nature within them; so that
their deeds are the veritable pulsations of their hearts. And so it is
in this play. The course of action, as we have seen, was partly
borrowed. But there was no borrowing in the characteristic matter. The
personal figures in the old tale are in themselves unmeaning and
characterless. The actions ascribed to them have no ground or reason
in any thing that they are: what they do, or rather _seem_ to do,--for
there is no real doing in the case,--proceeds not at all from their
own natures or wills, but purely because the author chose to have it
so. So that the persons and incidents are to all intents and purposes
put together arbitrarily, and not under any vital law of human nature.
Any other set of actions might just as well be tacked on to the same
persons; any other persons might just as well be put through the same
course of action. This merely outward and formal connection between
the incidents and characters holds generally in the old tales from
which Shakespeare borrowed his plots; while in his workmanship the
connection becomes inherent and essential; there being indeed no
difference in this respect, whether he first conceives the characters,
and then draws out their actions, or whether he first plans a course
of action, and then shapes the character from which it is to proceed.

* * * * *

_Much Ado about Nothing_ has a large variety of interest, now running
into grotesque drollery, now bordering upon the sphere of tragic
elevation, now revelling in th