and takes an active part in life and its affairs, then the language, even where it merely expresses internal conditions, will have to take part in the more rapid movement, the restless, sometimes obstructed, sometimes accelerated and occasionally digressing course, as well as in the exertions, the decisiveness and terseness of active life. The breadth and flow which belong to the mode of expressing feelings, contemplation and philosophical research, is in general undramatic and unhistorical; the historical language requires force, conciseness of wit, sharpness of thought. The language must necessarily be as varied, great and small, sublime and low, beautiful and ugly as the historical act itself. But as, at the same time, it is only a living member of one great action, of the idea which directs the course of events, we lose sight of the low, ugly and commonplace in the importance, grandeur and beauty of the idea; supported and animated by this, it becomes idealised itself.

As regards versification, Shakspeare shows the deepest appreciation of those great advantages which, as we have seen, blank verse offered to the dramatic poet. No one handles it with greater skill; no one knows better how to adapt it to all turns of the action; no one is more capable of raising it to the height of the most highsounding lyrical rhythms, and of again lowering it into the plains of prose; no one knows better how to make use of the change between metrical and non-metrical language for enlivening the representation. Here also the variety of the forms-which sometimes pass gently one into the other, sometimes contrasted sharply-corresponds with the change, elasticity and the many-sidedness of historical life.

CHAPTER VI.

SHAKSPEARE'S MODE OF CHARACTERISATION.

SHAKSPEARE'S mode of characterisation is no less entirely the expression and organ of his idea of the nature of the drama than his diction. His profound knowledge of mankind, as Schlegel says, has become proverbial; and yet with him this is by no means the result of shrewd, empirical observations; such a knowledge of the world and of man might make a good diplomatist, moralist or trader, but not a poet. His accurate descriptions of so many various, most abnormal and unusual states of the mind, such as melancholy, idiotcy, madness, somnambulism, etc., all of which he cannot possibly have learned from his own experience, prove rather that they must have been the result of his deep poetical insight into human nature and life in general. The poet, owing to his creative imagination, always has the true archetype (cidos-idea) of man in view; the greater the poet, the purer and clearer, the more perfect, the more independent is he of external influences. This is the true ideal of all art. It neither contradicts, nor does it in any way deviate from, or in any way go beyond reality, it rather, so to say, contains all reality and embraces the whole variety of every possible individual character. It can be exhibited only in separate characters, without being quite exhausted by them, either singly or collectively. For it always appears in some new and peculiar form in every individual limitation, in every special position of circumstances, at every new turn of history; for, of course, all sides of the external world invariably belong to it as co-operating organs of its development and formation. It is itself nothing more than the spirit of humanity in its original nature, and in its historical development. All Shakspeare's characters are but so many different forms of the archetype deter

mined by time and locality, and individualised by the measure and the special composition of general human qualities, powers and capabilities, virtues and defects, in short, special impersonations of one primary personality. And this is the case with every genuine poet.

Shakspeare's peculiarity and greatness consist, on the one hand, in the fact that while in other poets this primary personality has received a more or less special form, a physiognomy of its own, from the character of its century and its nation, and is obscured by one-sided interests, ideas and tendencies of the age, in him this primary personality is conceived with greater purity and originality, and for this very reason is exhibited in greater completeness and in a preponderating variety of individual characters. This is why, after more than two hundred years, we meet with many old acquaintances among his characters; this is why his Romans, although 'incarnate Englishmen,' as Goethe calls them, are nevertheless thorough Romans as well; for even Englishmen, under Roman institutions and in Roman times, would think and act precisely in the same manner; this is why his Frenchmen and Italians, his Danes and Germans, and those characters belonging to the most different epochsalthough to some extent 'incarnate Englishmen of the sixteenth century-are nevertheless complete and life-like personalities such as may still be met with on this earth of ours, in different dresses and forms, and in different relations and circumstances. C. Hebler makes the excellent remark: 'Goethe's characters reflect his own self; Schiller's, in the first place, rise above him up to his own ideals, but in this short circuitous path, they also point to the poet who is personally full of these ideals; in Shakspeare's characters, however, we completely forget the poet himself. He, as a rule, neither gives his own experience like Goethe, nor does he pass before us as a person full of feeling and of thought, like Schiller, but makes the im-pression of being able to represent the life of every possible kind of foreign character as if it were his own;

he shows a power of transformation and self-abnegation, in which no Garrick can equal him.'

The greatness and peculiarity of Shakspeare's genius is

manifested, on the other hand, in the fact that without passing beyond the limits of individuality, without in the slightest degree idealizing the special figures-in other words, in spite of the sharpest and fullest individualisation of his characters-he nevertheless contrives to give the whole an ideal and generally applicable significance. This he indeed accomplishes more especially by his mode of composition, of which we shall have to speak presently; but he also accomplishes it by his mode of individualisation. He does not individualise like Ben Jonson, by setting forth onesidely, special features of character, or like Beaumont and Fletcher, by exaggeration and distortion, but by displaying the full wealth of the elements, forces and qualities of human nature in the character of his hero, and at the same time by knowing how to give this fulness of features, a peculiar and individual form in combining them, and rounding them off into the personal I. If, accordingly, we examine the elements of the material of which his figures consist, we might fancy that we have before us but the one, general and ever the same substance of human nature; but if we examine the form which this substance has received at his hands, we perceive the great atest variety of special and individual features. How different, for instance, are Romeo and Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth, Juliet and Desdemona, and yet the elements of which all these characters are formed are essentially the same. The complete and perfect man, however, at the same time, always has something ideal, something of a proto- or archetype, it depends only upon his not being represented piecemeal, but in his entirety, only upon his inmost nature being revealed; the depth of the individuality-provided only it has true depth-always contains the general and eternal idea of human nature, but this is frequently stunted and deformed. Hence because in Shakspeare's characters we see clearly into their inmost nature, they appear as Goethe says, to be mere natural men, and yet are not so,' that is, they appear only to be individuals of a perfectly individual form and colour, and are nevertheless in reality ideal figures of a higher and more general significance.

We have already shown that Shakspeare, as a poet,

seems to have been but little affected by the special tendencies and ideas of his time. It is only the genuine poetical colouring of life-the considerate power of action, the strength of will and of character, the enthusiastic rise of a nation which, after long internal struggles, again feels itself at unity, and its power preserved by brilliant actions abroad-in short, only the general principles in the mind of the English nation towards the end of the sixteenth century--that are reflected in Shakspeare's poems, and which stamp them with the impress of their age. These, however, were in fact genuine dramatic features. In the drama, for the very reason that it is as much history as poetry, every figure must appear in the light of a general poetico-historical view of life, as the expression of some general feature of the time and nation, but pre-eminently from the side of its energy of mind, its strength of character and of will. All other qualities and faculties, conditions and states of mind can assert themselves only in so far as they are penetrated and determined by this energy, and stand in living relation to the doings of the several persons, as well as to the action of the whole.

This is Shakspeare's method of delineating character this historical form of characterisation, at least, is the general principle followed by him in his descriptions of character, and is the second peculiar merit of his dramatic style.

If this is the correct method, it follows as a matter of course that it is an error if as some critics think necessary- every dramatic figure is delineated down to the smallest detail, in all its special relations, merits and defects, feelings and thoughts, inclinations and disinclinations; in short, if every character is laid perfectly bare before the spectator. In such a case we should have one psychological section after the other, as in an anatomical theatre; every hero would, there, be his own chamberlain, and himself conduct us through the various recesses and crevices of his nature, and long-spun soliloquies, unmotived confessions, would alternate with ebullitions of sentiment and reflection. But this detailed account, and the complete register of all qualities and quantities, would

VOL. I.

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