For he
does not mould a character from the outside, but is truly inside of
it, nay, _is_ the character for the time being, and yet all the while
he continues just as much Shakespeare as if he were nothing else. His
own proper consciousness, and the consciousness of the person he is
representing, both of these are everywhere apparent in his
characterization; both of them working together too, though in a
manner which no psychology has been able to solve. In other words,
Shakespeare is perfectly in his persons and perfectly out of them at
the same time; has his consciousness and theirs thoroughly identified,
yet altogether distinct; so that they get all the benefit of his
intellect without catching the least tinge of his personality. There
is the mystery of it. And the wonder on this point is greatly enhanced
in his delineations of mental disease. For his consciousness takes on,
so to speak, or passes into, the most abnormal states without any
displacement or suspension of its normal propriety. Accordingly he
explores and delivers the morbid and insane consciousness with no less
truth to the life than the healthy and sound; as if in both cases
alike he were inside and outside the persons at the same time. With
what unexceptional mastery in Nature's hidden processes he does this,
must be left till I come to the analysis of particular instances.

* * * * *

It is to be noted further that Shakespeare's characters, generally,
are not exhibited in any one fixed state or cast of formation. There
is a certain vital limberness and ductility in them, so that upon
their essential identity more or less of mutation is ever supervening.
They grow on and unfold themselves under our eye: we see them in
course of development, in the act and process of becoming; undergoing
marked changes, passing through divers stages, animated by mixed and
various motives and impulses, passion alternating with passion,
purpose with purpose, train of thought with train of thought; so that
they often end greatly modified from what they were at the beginning;
the same, and yet another. Thus they have to our minds a past and a
future as well as a present; and even in what we see of them at any
given moment there is involved something both of history and of
prophecy.

Here we have another pregnant point of divergence from the Classic
form. For, as it is unnatural that a man should continue altogether
the same character, or s