Here we have another pregnant point of divergence from the Classic form.  For, as it is unnatural that a man should continue altogether the same character, or subject to the same passion, or absorbed in the same purpose, through a period of ten years; so it is equally against nature that a man should undergo much change of character, or be occupied by many passions, or get engrossed in many purposes, the same day.  If, therefore, a character is to be represented under various phases and fluctuations, the nature of the work evidently requires much length of time, a great variety of objects and influences, and, consequently, a wide range of place.  Thus, in the Gothic Drama, the complexity of matter, with the implied vicissitudes of character, was plainly incompatible with the Minor Unities.  On the other hand, the clearness and simplicity of design, which belong to the Classic Drama, necessarily preclude any great diversity of time and place; since, as the genius of the thing requires character to be represented mainly under a single aspect, the time and place of the representation must needs be limited correspondingly.

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Again:  It is admitted on all hands that in Shakespeare’s works, far more than in almost any others, every thing appears to come, not from him, but from the characters; and from these too speaking, not as authors, but simply as men.  The reason of which must be, that the word is just suited to the character, the character to the word; every thing exactly fitting into and filling the place.  Doubtless there are many things which, considered by themselves, might be bettered; but it is not for themselves that the Poet uses them, but as being characteristic of the persons from whom they proceed; and the fact of their seeming to proceed from the persons, not from him, is clear proof of their strict dramatic propriety.  Hence it is that in reading his works we think not of him, but only of what he is describing:  we can hardly realize his existence, his individuality is so lost in the objects and characters he brings before us.  In this respect, he is a sort of impersonal intelligence, with the power to make every thing visible but itself.  Had he been merely an omniloquent voice, there could hardly have been less of subjective idiom in his deliverances.  That he should have known so perfectly how to avoid giving too much or too little; that he should have let out and drawn in the reins precisely as the matter required;—­this, as it evinces an almost inconceivable delicacy of mind, is also one of the points wherein his originality is most conspicuous.

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