sciences, trades and professions, all offer their gifts. Shakespeare's
creations are a great, animated fair, and for this richness he is
indebted to his native land.

England, sea-girt, veiled in mist and clouds, turning its active
interest toward every quarter of the globe, is everywhere. The poet
lived at a notable and momentous time, and depicted its culture, its
misculture even, in the merriest vein; indeed, he would not affect us
so powerfully had he not identified himself with the age in which he
lived. No one had a greater contempt for the mere material, outward garb
of man than he; he understands full well that which is within, and here
all are on the same footing. It is thought that he represented the
Romans admirably; I do not find it so; they are all true-blue
Englishmen, but, to be sure, they are men, men through and through, and
the Roman toga, too, fits them. When we have seized this point of view,
we find his anachronisms highly laudable, and it is this very disregard
of the outer raiment that renders his creations so vivid.

Let these few words, which do not by any means exhaust Shakespeare's
merits, suffice. His friends and worshipers would find much that might
be added. Yet one remark more It would be difficult to name another poet
each of whose works has a different underlying conception exerting such
a dominating influence as we find in Shakespeare's.

Thus _Coriolanus_ is pervaded throughout by anger that the masses will
not acknowledge the preeminence of their superiors. In _Julius Caesar_
everything turns upon the conception that the better people do not wish
any one placed in supreme authority because they imagine, mistakenly,
that they can work in unison. _Anthony and Cleopatra,_ calls out with a
thousand tongues that self-indulgence and action are incompatible. And
further investigation will rouse our admiration of this variety again
and again.

II

SHAKESPEARE COMPARED WITH THE ANCIENT AND THE MOST MODERN POETS

The interest that animates Shakespeare's great spirit lies within the
limits of the world; for though prophecy and madness, dreams,
presentiments, portents, fairies and goblins, ghosts, witches and
sorcerers, form a magic element which color his creations at the fitting
moment, yet those phantasms are by no means the chief components of his
productions; it is the verities and experiences of his life that are the
great basis upon which they rest, and that is why everything t