hem; Achilles's sulking is of even less interest; and the death of
Hector affects us only like a newspaper announcement of the death of
some distinguished person, so little is he really involved in the action
of the drama. There is also a singular lack of that peculiar
characteristic of Shakespeare's dramatic style, the marked distinction
and nice discrimination of the individual traits, mental and moral, of
the various personages. Ulysses is the real hero of the play; the chief,
or at least the great purpose of which is the utterance of the Ulyssean
view of life; and in this play Shakespeare is Ulysses, or Ulysses
Shakespeare. In all his other plays Shakespeare so lost his personal
consciousness in the individuality of his own creations that they think
and feel as well as act like real men and women other than their
creator, so that we cannot truly say of the thoughts and feelings which
they express, that Shakespeare says thus or so; for it is not
Shakespeare who speaks, but they with his lips. But in Ulysses,
Shakespeare, acting upon a mere hint, filling up a mere traditionary
outline, drew a man of mature years, of wide observation, of profoundest
cogitative power, one who knew all the weakness and all the wiles of
human nature, and who yet remained with blood unbittered and soul
unsoured--a man who saw through all shams and fathomed all motives, and
who yet was not scornful of his kind, not misanthropic, hardly cynical
except in passing moods; and what other man was this than Shakespeare
himself? What had he to do when he had passed forty years but to utter
his own thoughts when he would find words for the lips of Ulysses? And
thus it is that "Troilus and Cressida" is Shakespeare's wisest play. If
we would know what Shakespeare thought of men and their motives after he
reached maturity, we have but to read this drama; drama it is, but with
what other character who shall say? For, like the world's pageant, it
is neither tragedy nor comedy, but a tragi-comic history, in which the
intrigues of amorous men and light-o'-loves and the brokerage of panders
are mingled with the deliberations of sages and the strife and the death
of heroes.

The thoughtful reader will observe that Ulysses pervades the serious
parts of the play, which is all Ulyssean in its thought and language.
And this is the reason or rather the fact of the play's lack of
distinctive characterization. For Ulysses cannot speak all the time that
he is on the