Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/21

 could create a Hamlet and a Falstaff, and an Iago and a Mercutio and a Caliban, a Cleopatra and a Lady Macbeth and a Perdita, must undoubtedly have been capable of an astonishing variety of moods and sympathies. That certainly gives a presumption that the creator must have been himself too complex to be easily described. The difficulty, again, is increased by the other most familiar commonplace about Shakespeare, the entire absence of deliberate didacticism. Profound critics, it is true, have discovered certain moral lessons and philosophical theories concealed in his plays. If so, they are bound to admit, though their modesty may restrain their utterance, that he concealed them so cleverly that he has had to wait for a great philosopher to perceive them. If he really meant to enforce them upon the vulgar, his attempt must be regarded as a signal failure. Anyhow, we are without one clue which is given by the didactic writer. To read Dante is to know whom he hated and why he hated them, and what, in his opinion, would be their proper place hereafter. To Shakespeare good men and bad are alike parts of the order of Nature, to be understood and interpreted with perfect impartiality. He gives a diagnosis of the case, not