In judging his fellow-men this is Shakespeare's harshest word.
Posthumus, then, is presented to us in the beginning of the play as
perfect, a model to young and old, of irreproachable virtue and of all
wonderful qualities. In the course of the play, however, he shows
himself very nimble-witted, credulous, and impulsive, quick to anger and
quicker still to forgive; with thoughts all turned to sadness and to
musing; a poet--ever in extremes; now hating his own rash errors to the
point of demanding the heaviest punishment for them; now swearing that
he will revenge himself on women by writing against them; a
philosopher--he jests with his gaoler and consoles himself with
despairing speculation in the very presence of the Arch-Fear. All these
are manifestly characteristics of Hamlet, and Posthumus possesses no
others.

So far, then, from finding that Shakespeare never revealed himself in
his dramas, I have shown that he pictured himself as the hero [Footnote:
A hypercritic might contend that Jaques was not the hero of "As You Like
It"; but the objection really strengthens my argument. Shakespeare makes
of Jaques, who is merely a secondary character without influence on the
action, the principal person in the play simply because in Jaques he
satisfied his own need of self-revealing.] of six plays written at
widely different times; in fact that, like Rembrandt, he painted his own
portrait in all the critical periods of life: as a sensuous youth given
over to love and poetry in Romeo; a few years later as a melancholy
onlooker at life's pageant in Jaques; in middle age as the passionate,
melancholy, aesthete-philosopher of kindliest nature in Hamlet and
Macbeth; as the fitful Duke incapable of severity in "Measure for
Measure," and finally, when standing within the shadow, as Posthumus, an
idealized yet feebler replica of Hamlet.