temperament in taking vengeance upon the seducer of his mother and
murderer of his father. But is Ophelia essential, or merely auxiliary?
Essential, if we consider Hamlet's pessimistic feeling as to woman and
the "breeding of sinners" a necessary part of his character; auxiliary,
if we take the view that without this feeling he would still have been
Hamlet, and the action, to all intents and purposes, the same. The
remaining characters, on the other hand, are clearly auxiliary. This is
true even of the Ghost: for Hamlet might have learnt of his father's
murder in fifty other ways.

Polonius, Laertes, Horatio, and the rest might all have been utterly
different, or might never have existed at all, and yet the essence of
the play might have remained intact.

It would be perfectly possible to write a _Hamlet_ after the manner of
Racine, in which there should be only six personages instead of
Shakespeare's six-and-twenty: and in this estimate I assume Ophelia to
be an essential character. The dramatis personae would be: Hamlet, his
confidant; Ophelia, her confidant; and the King and Queen, who would
serve as confidants to each other. Indeed, an economy of one person
might be affected by making the Queen (as she naturally might) play the
part of confidant to Ophelia.

Shakespeare, to be sure, did not deliberately choose between his own
method and that of Racine. Classic concentration was wholly unsuited to
the physical conditions of the Elizabethan stage, on which external
movement and bustle were imperatively demanded. But the modern
playwright has a wide latitude of choice in this purely technical
matter. He may work out his plot with the smallest possible number of
characters, or he may introduce a crowd of auxiliary personages. The