s Prometheus
not merely forms men, he opens the gates of the magical world of
spirits, calls up the midnight ghost, exhibits before us the witches
with their unhallowed rites, peoples the air with sportive fairies and
sylphs; and these beings, though existing only in the imagination,
nevertheless possess such truth and consistency that even with such
misshapen abortions as Caliban, he extorts the assenting conviction
that, were there such beings, they would so conduct themselves. In a
word, as he carries a bold and pregnant fancy into the kingdom of
nature, on the other hand he carries nature into the region of fancy
which lie beyond the confines of reality. We are lost in astonishment
at the close intimacy he brings us into with the extraordinary, the
wonderful, and the unheard-of.

Pope and Johnson appear strangely to contradict each other, when the
first says, "all the characters of Shakespeare are individuals," and
the second, "they are species." And yet perhaps these opinions may
admit of reconciliation. Pope's expression is unquestionably the more
correct. A character which should be merely a personification of a
naked general idea could neither exhibit any great depth nor any great
variety. The names of genera and species are well known to be merely
auxiliaries for the understanding, that we may embrace the infinite
variety of nature in a certain order. The characters which Shakespeare
has so thoroughly delineated have undoubtedly a number of individual
peculiarities, but at the same time they possess a significance which
is not applicable to them alone: they generally supply materials for a
profound theory of their most prominent and distinguishing property.
But even with the above correction, this opinion must still have its
limitations. Characterization is merely one ingredient of the dramatic
art, and not dramatic poetry itself. It would be improper in the
extreme, if the poet were to draw our attention to superfluous traits
of character at a time when it ought to be his endeavor to produce
other impressions. Whenever the musical or the fanciful preponderates,
the characteristical necessarily falls into the background. Hence many
of the figures of Shakespeare exhibit merely external designations,
determined by the place which they occupy in the whole: they are like
secondary persons in a public procession, to whose physiognomy we
seldom pay much attention; their only importance is derived from the
solemnity