he would introduce, and where the main passions of the work should be
developed. His fancy, which enabled him to see the stage and all its
characters,--almost to _be_ them,--was so under the control of his
imagination, that it did not, through any interruptions while he was at
his labor, beguile him with caprices. The _gradation_ or action of his
work, opens and grows under his creative hand; twenty or more characters
appear, (in some plays nearly forty, as in "Antony and Cleopatra" and
the "First Part of Henry the Sixth,") who are all distinguished, who
are all more or less necessary to the plot or the underplots, and who
preserve throughout an identity that is life itself; all this is done,
and the imagined state, the great power by which this evolution of
characters and scene and story be carried on, is always under the
control of the poet's will, and the direction of his taste or critical
judgment. He chooses to set his imagination upon a piece of work, he
selects his plot, conceives the action, the variety of characters, and
all their doings; as he goes on reflecting upon them, his imagination
warms, and excites his fancy; he sees and identifies himself with his
characters, lives a secondary life in his work, as one may in a dream
which he directs and yet believes in; his whole soul becomes more active
under this fervor of the imagination, the fancy, and all the powers of
suggestion,--yet, still, the presiding judgment remains calm above all,
guiding the whole; and above or behind that, the will which elects to do
all this, perchance for a very simple purpose,--namely, for filthy lucre,
the purchase-money of an estate in Stratford.

To say that he "followed Nature" is to mean that he permits his thoughts
to flow out in the order in which thoughts naturally come,--that he
makes his characters think as we all fancy we should think under the
circumstances in which he places them,--that it is the truth of his
thoughts which first impresses us. It is in this respect that he is