Characters of Shakespeares Plays | Page 7

models, of those before him.
The poetry of Shakespeare was inspiration: indeed, he is not so much
an imitator, as an instrument of nature; and it is not so just to say that
he speaks from her, as that she speaks through him.
His CHARACTERS are so much nature herself, that it is a sort of
injury to call them by so distant a name as copies of her. Those of other
poets have a constant resemblance, which shows that they received

them from one another, and were but multipliers of the same image:
each picture, like a mock-rainbow, is but the reflection of a reflection.
But every single character in Shakespeare, is as much an individual, as
those in life itself; it is as impossible to find any two alike; and such, as
from their relation or affinity in any respect appear most to be twins,
will, upon comparison, be found remarkably distinct. To this life and
variety of character, we must add the wonderful preservation of it;
which is such throughout his plays, that had all the speeches been
printed without the very names of the persons, I believe one might have
applied them with certainty to every speaker.'
The object of the volume here offered to the public, is to illustrate these
remarks in a more particular manner by a reference to each play. A
gentleman of the name of Mason, [Footnote: Hazlitt is here mistaken.
The work to which he alludes, 'Remarks on some of the Characters of
Shakespeare, by the Author of Observations on Modern Gardening',
was by Thomas Whately, Under-Secretary of State under Lord North.
Whately died in 1772, and the Essay was published posthumously in
1785 [2nd edition, 1808; 3rd edition, with a preface by Archbishop
Whately, the author's nephew, 1839]. Hazlitt confused T. Whately's
Observations on Modern Gardening with George Mason's Essay on
Design in Gardening, and the one error led to the other.] the author of a
Treatise on Ornamental Gardening (not Mason the poet), began a work
of a similar kind about forty years ago, but he only lived to finish a
parallel between the characters of Macbeth and Richard III which is an
exceedingly ingenious piece of analytical criticism. Richardson's
Essays include but a few of Shakespeare's principal characters. The
only work which seemed to supersede the necessity of an attempt like
the present was Schlegel's very admirable Lectures on the Drama,
which give by far the best account of the plays of Shakespeare that has
hitherto appeared. The only circumstances in which it was thought not
impossible to improve on the manner in which the German critic has
executed this part of his design, were in avoiding an appearance of
mysticism in his style, not very attractive to the English reader, and in
bringing illustrations from particular passages of the plays themselves,
of which Schlegel's work, from the extensiveness of his plan, did not
admit. We will at the same time confess, that some little jealousy of the
character of the national understanding was not without its share in

producing the following undertaking, for 'we were piqued' that it should
be reserved for a foreign critic to give 'reasons for the faith which we
English have in Shakespeare'. Certainly, no writer among ourselves has
shown either the same enthusiastic admiration of his genius, or the
same philosophical acuteness in pointing out his characteristic
excellences. As we have pretty well exhausted all we had to say upon
this subject in the body of the work, we shall here transcribe Schlegel's
general account of Shakespeare, which is in the following words:
'Never, perhaps, was there so comprehensive a talent for the delineation
of character as Shakespeare's. It not only grasps the diversities of rank,
sex, and age, down to the dawnings of infancy; not only do the king
and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the sage and the idiot,
speak and act with equal truth; not only does he transport himself to
distant ages and foreign nations, and pourtray in the most accurate
manner, with only a few apparent violations of costume, the spirit of
the ancient Romans, of the French in their wars with the English, of the
English themselves during a great part of their history, of the Southern
Europeans (in the serious part of many comedies) the cultivated society
of that time, and the former rude and barbarous state of the North; his
human characters have not only such depth and precision that they
cannot be arranged under classes, and are inexhaustible, even in
conception:--no--this Prometheus not merely forms men, he opens the
gates of the magical world of spirits; calls up the midnight ghost;
exhibits before us his witches amidst their unhallowed mysteries;
peoples the air with sportive fairies and sylphs:--and these beings,
existing only in