eicester to Essex: under pretense of fatherly
friendship he was suspicious of his motives, jealous of his actions; kept
him much in the country and at college; let him see little of his mother,
and clouded his prospects in the world by an appearance of benignant
favor. Gertrude's relations with her son Hamlet were much like those of
Lettice with Robert Devereaux. Again, it is suggested, in his moodiness,
in his college learning, in his love for the theatre and the players, in
his desire for the fiery action for which his nature was most unfit,
there are many kinds of hints calling up an image of the Danish Prince.

This suggestion is interesting in the view that we find in the characters
of the Elizabethan drama not types and qualities, but individuals
strongly projected, with all their idiosyncrasies and contradictions.
These dramas touch our sympathies at all points, and are representative
of human life today, because they reflected the human life of their time.
This is supremely true of Shakespeare, and almost equally true of Jonson
and many of the other stars of that marvelous epoch. In England as well
as in France, as we have said, it was the period of the classic revival;
but in England the energetic reality of the time was strong enough to
break the classic fetters, and to use classic learning for modern
purposes. The English dramatists, like the French, used classic histories
and characters. But two things are to be noted in their use of them.
First, that the characters and the play of mind and passion in them are
thoroughly English and of the modern time. And second, and this seems at
first a paradox, they are truer to the classic spirit than the characters
in the contemporary French drama. This results from the fact that they
are truer to the substance of things, to universal human nature, while
the French seem to be in great part an imitation, having root neither in
the soil of France nor Attica. M. Guizot confesses that France, in order
to adopt the ancient models, was compelled to limit its field in some
sort to one corner of human existence. He goes on to say that the present
"demands of the drama pleasures and emotions that can no longer be
supplied by the inanimate representation of a world that has ceased to
exist. The classic system had its origin in the life of the time; that
time has passed away; its image subsists in brilliant colors in its
works, but can no more be reproduced." Our own literary monum