development. But even this comforting explanation will not stand: his
earliest impersonations are all thinkers.

Let us consider, again, how preference in a writer is established.
Everyone feels that Sophocles prefers Antigone to Ismene; Ismene is a
mere sketch of gentle feminine weakness; while Antigone is a great
portrait of the revoltee, the first appearance indeed in
literature of the "new woman," and the place she fills in the drama, and
the ideal qualities attributed to her girlhood--alike betray the
personal admiration of the poet. In the same way Shakespeare's men of
action are mere sketches in comparison with the intimate detailed
portrait of the aesthete-philosopher-poet with his sensuous, gentle,
melancholy temperament. Moreover, and this should be decisive,
Shakespeare's men of action are all taken from history, or tradition, or
story, and not from imagination, and their characteristics were supplied
by the chroniclers and not invented by the dramatist. To see how far
this is true I must examine Shakespeare's historical plays at some
length Such an examination did not form a part of my original purpose.
It is very difficult, not to say impossible, to ascertain exactly how
far history and verbal tradition helped Shakespeare in his historical
portraits of English worthies. Jaques, for instance, is his own creation
from top to toe; every word given to him therefore deserves careful
study; but how much of Hotspur is Shakespeare's, and how much of the
Bastard? Without pretending, however, to define exactly the sources or
the limits of the master's inspiration, there are certain indications in
the historical plays which throw a flood of light on the poet's nature,
and certain plain inferences from his methods which it would be folly
not to draw.

Let us begin with "King John," as one of the easiest and most helpful to