the first two. In the first
place, it can escape no careful student that the merely playwright part of
Shakespere's work is (as is the case with no other dramatic author
whatever) singularly separable. No generation since his death has had the
slightest difficulty in adapting by far the greater part of his plays to
use and popularity in its own day, though the adaptation may have varied in
liberty and in good taste with the standards of the time. At the present
day, while almost all other old dramatists have ceased to be acted at all,
or are acted merely as curiosities, the adaptation of Shakespere has become
more and more a process of simple omission (without the addition or
alteration of anything) of parts which are either unsuited to modern
manners or too long for modern patience. With the two usual exceptions,
_Pericles_ and _Titus Andronicus_ (which, despite the great beauty of
parts, are evidently less Shakesperian as wholes than any others), there is
not a single play of the whole number that could not be--there are not many
that have not been--acted with success in our time. It would be difficult
to find a stronger differentia from the work of the mere playwright, who
invariably thinks first of the temporary conditions of success, and
accordingly loses the success which is not temporary. But the second great
difference of Shakespere is, that even what may be in comparison called
the ephemeral and perishable parts of him have an extraordinary vitality,
if not theatrical yet literary, of their own. The coarser scenes of
_Measure for Measure_ and _The Comedy of Errors_, the satire on fleeting
follies in _Love's Labour Lost_, the uncomelier parts of _All's Well that
Ends Well_, the Doll Tear-sheet business of _Henry IV._, the comic by-play
of _Troilus and Cressida_, may seem mere wood, hay, and stubble in
comparison with the nobler portions. Yet the fire of time has not consumed
them: they are as delightful as ever in the library if not on the stage.

Little or nothing need be said in defence of Shakespere as an artist from
the attacks of the older or Unity criticism. That maleficent giant can now
hardly grin at the pilgrims whom he once harassed. But there are many
persons who, not dreaming of the Unities, still object in language less
extravagant than Voltaire's or George the Third's, but with hardly less
decision, to the "sad stuff," the _fumier_ of Shakespere's admixture of
comedy with tragedy, of his digressions