The Shakespeare Story-Book
INTRODUCTION
Literary critics have many times during the past two thousandyears waged battle with one another over the question whether dramaowes its excellence chiefly to plot or chiefly to character. Is itthe business of the dramatist, critics ask successively through theages, to inspire the playgoer with a deeper interest in the externalcircumstances which mould the fortunes of his heroes and heroines thanin their individual temperaments and the inner workings of their mindsand hearts? But critics commonly “count it a bondage to fix a belief,”and after clothing their question in the complexity of disquisition,they rarely “stay” for a clear and decisive answer. The glimmeringlight of dialectics usually involves in shadow one or other commanding[Pg viii]phase of the problem. To the plain observer it would seem that bothplot and character are essential constituents of perfect drama;that the strength of the one depends on the strength of the other;and that, except to the questioning critic, it is a matter of smallpractical consequence to which the greater importance be attachedby the refinements of theory. In the best plays of Shakespeare theinterest evoked respectively by plot and character is so evenlybalanced that he must be exceptionally short-sighted who would setthe value of the one above the value of the other. The externalcircumstances that mould the fortunes of Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear,Othello, rivet the playgoer’s and the reader’s attention in no lessa degree than the individual temperaments of these great dramaticpersonages or the inner workings of their minds and hearts. It isthe perfectly harmonious co-operation of plot and character that isresponsible for Shakespeare’s noblest triumphs.
Close and constant study of the great plays of Shakespearemust ultimately rouse in the student a moreabsorbing interest in their characters than in their plots.That is the final effect of supreme dramatic genius. Butthe full appreciation of Shakespeare’s sure and illimitableinsight into character can never be reached until we havemade ourselves thoroughly familiar with the plot in whichthe character has its substantive being. It follows, therefore,that if one would realise completely in due time thewhole eminence of Shakespeare’s dramatic achievement,one should be encouraged at the outset to study closely thestories of the plays rather than the characters apart fromtheir settings. When the youthful mi