The only writer who would have had a chance of rivalling Shakspere in
his own walk, if he had been born in the same period of English history,
is Chaucer. He has the same gift of individualizing the general, and
idealizing the portrait. But the best of the dramatic writers of
Shakspere's time, in their desire of dramatic individualization, forget
the modifying multiformity belonging to individual humanity. In their
anxiety to present a _character_, they take, as it were, a human mould,
label it with a certain peculiarity, and then fill in speeches and forms
according to the label. Thus the indications of character, of
peculiarity, so predominate, the whole is so much of one colour, that
the result resembles one of those allegorical personifications in which,
as much as possible, everything human is eliminated except what belongs
to the peculiarity, the personification. How different is it with
Shakspere's representations! He knows that no human being ever was like
that. He makes his most peculiar characters speak very much like other
people; and it is only over the whole that their peculiarities manifest
themselves with indubitable plainness.
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