There is room for differences of taste and preference as regards the style and versification of the end of Shakespeare’s Second Period, and those of the later tragedies and last romances.  But readers who miss in the latter the peculiar enchantment of the earlier will not deny that the changes in form are in entire harmony with the inward changes.  If they object to passages where, to exaggerate a little, the sense has rather to be discerned beyond the words than found in them, and if they do not wholly enjoy the movement of so typical a speech as this,

     Yes, like enough, high-battled Caesar will
     Unstate his happiness, and be staged to the show,
     Against a sworder!  I see men’s judgements are
     A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward
     Do draw the inward quality after them,
     To suffer all alike.  That he should dream,
     Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will
     Answer his emptiness!  Caesar, thou hast subdued
     His judgement too,

they will admit that, in traversing the impatient throng of thoughts not always completely embodied, their minds move through an astonishing variety of ideas and experiences, and that a style less generally poetic than that of Hamlet is also a style more invariably dramatic.  It may be that, for the purposes of tragedy, the highest point was reached during the progress of these changes, in the most critical passages of Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.[31]

2

Suppose you were to describe the plot of Hamlet to a person quite ignorant of the play, and suppose you were careful to tell your hearer nothing about Hamlet’s character, what impression would your sketch make on him?  Would he not exclaim:  ’What a sensational story!  Why, here are some eight violent deaths, not to speak of adultery, a ghost, a mad woman, and a fight in a grave!  If I did not know that the play was Shakespeare’s, I should have thought it must have been one of those early tragedies of blood and horror from which he is said to have redeemed the stage’?  And would he not then go on to ask:  ’But why in the world did not Hamlet obey the Ghost at once, and so save seven of those eight lives?’

This exclamation and this question both show the same thing, that the whole story turns upon the peculiar character of the hero.  For without this character the story would appear sensational and horrible; and yet the actual Hamlet is very far from being so, and even has a less terrible effect than Othello, King Lear or Macbeth.  And again, if we had no knowledge of this character, the story would hardly be intelligible; it would at any rate at once suggest that wondering question about the conduct of the hero; while the story of any of the other three tragedies would sound plain enough and would raise no such question.  It is further very probable that the main change made by Shakespeare