strange and wonderful. These plays were tales of romance dramatised, and
they were meant in part to satisfy the same love of wonder to which the
romances appealed. It is no defect in the Arthurian legends, or the old
French romances, or many of the stories in the _Decameron_, that they
are improbable: it is a virtue. To criticise them as though they were of
the same species as a realistic novel, is, we should all say, merely
stupid. Is it anything else to criticise in the same way _Twelfth Night_
or _As You Like It_? And so, even when the difference between comedy and
tragedy is allowed for, the improbability of the opening of _King Lear_,
so often censured, is no defect. It is not out of character, it is only
extremely unusual and strange. But it was meant to be so; like the
marriage of the black Othello with Desdemona, the Venetian senator's
daughter.

To come then to real defects, (_a_) one may be found in places where
Shakespeare strings together a number of scenes, some very short, in
which the _dramatis personae_ are frequently changed; as though a
novelist were to tell his story in a succession of short chapters, in
which he flitted from one group of his characters to another. This
method shows itself here and there in the pure tragedies (_e.g._ in the
last Act of _Macbeth_), but it appears most decidedly where the
historical material was undramatic, as in the middle part of _Antony and
Cleopatra_. It was made possible by the absence of scenery, and
doubtless Shakespeare used it because it was the easiest way out of a
difficulty. But, considered abstractedly, it is a defective method, and,
even as used by Shakespeare, it sometimes reminds us of the merely
narrative arrangement common in plays before his time.

(_b_) We may take next the introduction or excessive development of
matter neither required by the plot nor essential to the exhibition of