Medea to the splendour of
Marlowe's Helen,--it is a small matter to remember the connection of
work or author with the stage--how long they held it, how soon they were
dispossessed, how and at what intervals and with what uncertain footing
they returned. We do not accept them because they were popular in their
day, and we do not reject them because they are not suitable to ours.
They have lost no vivacity or strength or grace by their exclusion from
the stage and their exile to literature--to that permanent theatre for
which the poet, freely using any and every form of dramatic expression,
should now work.

"There is the playhouse now, there you must sit....
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our king."

The relevancy of these remarks, as an introduction to a study of one of
Shakespeare's plays, will presently appear.

I.

Shakespeare, although a master of theatrical effect, is often found
working rather away from it than toward it, and at a meaning and beauty
beyond the limits of stage expression. This is because he is more
dramatist than playwright, and will always produce and complete his work
in its ideal integrity, even if, in so doing, he outruns the sympathy of
his audience. This disposition may be traced not only in the plays it
has banished from the stage, including such a masterpiece as "Antony and
Cleopatra," but in those that are universally popular, such as "The
Merchant of Venice," where the fifth Act, although it closes and
harmonizes the drama as a work of art with perfect grace, is but a tame
conclusion to the theatrical piece; and in the scenes that furnish us
with the delicate and finished study of Antonio, we find the audience
intent on the situation and the poet on the character; for we no more
expect to see the true Antonio on the stage than to see the true
moonlight shimmering on the trees in Belmont Park. But sometimes the
play will transcend the limits of stage expression by being too purely
and perfectly dramatic, as in "Lear." For not only is it, as Lamb points
out,[3] impossible for the actor to give the convulsions of the father's
grief, and yet preserve the dignity of the king, but the sustained
intensity of passion fatigues both voice and ear when they should be
most impressive and impressed. Had Shakespeare written with a view to
stage effect, he would not in the first two acts have stretched the
voice through all the tones and intervals of passion, and then demand
mor