This ridiculous fustian seemed to him "very beautiful." All this was
perfectly gratuitous: no one needed to be informed that a man might have
merit as an actor and yet be without any understanding of psychology or
any taste in letters.] I venture, therefore, to assert that the portrait
we find in Romeo and Jaques first, and then in Hamlet, and afterwards in
Macbeth, is the portrait of Shakespeare himself, and we can trace his
personal development through these three stages.




CHAPTER III

DUKE VINCENTIO--POSTHUMUS

It may be well to add here a couple of portraits of Shakespeare in later
life in order to establish beyond question the chief features of his
character. With this purpose in mind I shall take a portrait that is a
mere sketch of him, Duke Vincentio in "Measure for Measure," and a
portrait that is minutely finished and perfect, though consciously
idealized, Posthumus, in "Cymbeline." And the reason I take this
careless, wavering sketch, and contrast it with a highly-finished
portrait, is that, though the sketch is here and there hardly
recognizable, the outline being all too thin and hesitating, yet now and
then a characteristic trait is over-emphasized, as we should expect in
careless work. And this sketch in lines now faint, now all too heavy, is
curiously convincing when put side by side with a careful and elaborate
portrait in which the same traits are reproduced, but harmoniously, and
with a perfect sense of the relative value of each feature. No critic,