But the real value of his plays, the insight into human nature, the profound philosophy, “the myriad-soul” which they display, are Shakspeare’s only.  By applying just rules of evidence, we conclude that he did write thirty-five of the plays attributed to him, and that he did not write, or was not the chief writer of others.  It is certainly very strong testimony on these points, that seven years after his death, and three years before that of Bacon, a large folio should have been published by his professional friends Heminge and Condell, prefaced with ardent eulogies, claiming thirty-six plays as his, and that it did not meet with the instant and indignant cry that his claims were false.  The players of that day were an envious and carping set, and the controversy would have been fierce from the very first, had there been just grounds for it.

VARIETY OF PLAYS.—­No attempt will be made to analyze any of the plays of Shakspeare:  that is left for the private study and enjoyment of the student, by the use of the very numerous aids furnished by commentators and critics.  It will be found often that in their great ardor, the dramatist has been treated like the Grecian poet: 

    [Shakspeare’s] critics bring to view
    Things which [Shakspeare] never knew.

Many of the plays are based upon well-known legends and fictional tales, some of them already adopted in old plays:  thus the story of King Lear and his daughters is found in Holinshed’s Chronicle, and had been for years represented; from this Shakspeare has borrowed the story, but has used only a single passage.  The play is intended to represent the ancient Celtic times in Britain, eight hundred years before Christ; and such is its power and pathos, that we care little for its glaring anachronisms and curious errors.  In Holinshed are also found the stories of Cymbeline and Macbeth, the former supposed to have occurred during the Roman occupancy of Britain, and the latter during the Saxon period.

With these before us, let us observe that names, chronology, geography, costumes, and customs are as nothing in his eyes.  His aim is human philosophy:  he places his living creations before us, dressing them, as it were, in any garments most conveniently at hand.  These lose their grotesqueness as his characters speak and act.  Paternal love and weakness, met by filial ingratitude; these are the lessons and the fearful pictures of Lear:  sad as they are, the world needed them, and they have saved many a later Lear from expulsion and storm and death, and shamed many a Goneril and Regan, while they have strengthened the hearts of many a Cordelia since.  Chastity and constancy shine like twin stars from the forest of Cymbeline.  And what have we in Macbeth?  Mad ambition parleying with the devil, in the guise of a woman lost to all virtue save a desire to aggrandize her husband and herself.  These have a pretence of history; but Hamlet, with hardly that pretence, stands alone supreme in varied excellence.  Ambition, murder, resistless fate, filial love, the love of woman, revenge, the power of conscience, paternal solicitude, infinite jest:  what a volume is this!