it
is just the man himself--the Lear, the Shylock, the Richard--that
Shakespeare makes us for the first time acquainted with. Omit the first
scene in _Lear_, and yet everything will remain; so the first and second
scenes in the _Merchant of Venice_. Indeed it is universally true.

6. Interfusion of the lyrical--that which in its very essence is
poetical--not only with the dramatic, as in the plays of Metastasio, where
at the end of the scene comes the _aria_ as the _exit_ speech of the
character,--but also in and through the dramatic. Songs in Shakespeare are
introduced as songs only, just as songs are in real life, beautifully as
some of them are characteristic of the person who has sung or called for
them, as Desdemona's "Willow," and Ophelia's wild snatches, and the sweet
carollings in _As You Like It_. But the whole of the _Midsummer Night's
Dream_ is one continued specimen of the dramatised lyrical. And observe
how exquisitely the dramatic of Hotspur;--

"Marry, and I'm glad on't with all my heart;
I'd rather be a kitten and cry--mew." &c.

melts away into the lyric of Mortimer;--

"I understand thy looks: that pretty Welsh
Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens,
I am too perfect in," &c.

_Henry IV._ part i. act iii, sc. 1.

7. The characters of the _dramatis personae_, like those in real life, are
to be inferred by the reader;--they are not told to him. And it is well
worth remarking that Shakespeare's characters, like those in real life,
are very commonly misunderstood, and almost always understood by different
persons in different ways. The causes are the same in either case. If you
take only what the friends of the character say, you may be deceived, and
still more so, if that which his enemies say; nay, even the character
himself sees himself through the medium of his character, and not exactly
as he is. Take all together, not omitting a shrewd hint from the clown or
the fool, and perhaps your impression will be right; and you may know
whether you have in fact discovered the poet's own idea, by all the
speeches receiving light from it, and attesting its reality by reflecting
it.

Lastly, in Shakespeare the heterogeneous is united, as it is in nature.
You must not suppose a pressure or passion always acting on or in the
character!--passion in Shakespeare is that by which the individual is
distinguished from others, not that which makes a different kind of him.
Shakespeare followed the mai