It is from Shakespeare's works that we get the clearest picture
of Elizabethan times. And yet, although we learn from him so
much of what people did in those days, of how they talked and
even of how they thought, the chief thing that we feel about
Shakespeare's characters is, not that they are Elizabethan, but
that they are human, that they are like ourselves, that they
think, and say, and do, things which we ourselves might think,
and say, and do.

There are many books we read which we think of as very pretty,
very quaint, very interesting--but old-fashioned. But
Shakespeare can never be old-fashioned, because, although he is
the outcome of his own times, and gives us all the flavor of his
own times, he gives us much more. He understood human nature, he
saw beneath the outward dress, and painted for us real men and
women. And although fashion in dress and modes of living may
change, human nature does not change. "He was not of an age but
for all time," it was said of him about seven years after his
death, and now that nearly three hundred years have come and gone
we still acknowledge the truth of those words.

Shakespeare's men and women speak and act and feel in the main as
we might now. Many of his people we feel are our brothers and
sisters. And to this human interest he adds something more, for
he leads us too through "unpathed waters" to "the undreamed
shores" of fairyland.

Shakespeare's writing time was short. Before he left Stratford
he wrote nothing unless it may have been a few scoffing verses
against the Justice of the Peace who punished him for poaching.