As artists advance in life, they develop, by growing familiar with the
conditions of their art, the power of concealing its limitations,--a
faculty in which even the greatest artists are often deficient in their
early years. There is an anecdote of Schumann which somewhat crudely
illustrates this. It is said that in one of his early symphonies he
introduced a passage leading up to a climax, at which the horns were to
take up the aria in triumph. At the rehearsal, when the moment came for
the horns to trumpet forth their message of victory, there was heard a
sort of smothered braying which made everybody laugh. The composer had
arranged his climax so that it fell upon a note which the horns could
not sound except with closed stops. The passage had to be rewritten. The
young painter is frequently found struggling with subjects, with effects
of light, which are almost impossible to render, and which perhaps an
older man would not attempt. It is not surprising to find among the
early works of Shakespeare that some of the characters, however true to
life,--nay, because true to life,--are almost impossible to be
represented on the stage. Certainly Romeo presents us with a character
of the kind.

Shakespeare's knowledge of human nature seems to have antedated his
knowledge of the stage. In imagining the character of Romeo, a character
to fit the plot of the old story, he took little thought for his actors.
In conjuring up the probabilities which would lead a man into such a
course of conduct as Romeo's, Shakespeare had in his mind the
probabilities and facts in real life rather than the probabilities
demanded by the stage.

Romeo must be a man almost wholly made up of emotion, a creature very
young, a lyric poet in the intensity of his sensations, a child in his
helplessness beneath the ever-varying currents and whirlpools of his