Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/132

 *icism as an absurd and grotesque wrong done to the unity of impression which a play ought to make by developing and depending upon a single idea, and to this end admitting only the feelings which belong to it. Without this, no tragedy can have its effect of gravity, but rather, to use Falstaff's quip in parrying the Chief Justice, its effect of gravy,—to leave in the palate a taste of a mixture of sauce and drippings. But Shakspeare runs the coulter of unity deeper than the obvious idea which the plot of his tragedy develops; for it passes at once through soils of diverse elements, driven by a sure but vigorous instinct to turn them all up to the fructifying light. Instead of the unity of a single strand, he weaves all the threads of human nature into the cable which holds our hearts at anchor on his spring-tide.

This rotund earth that goes wallowing eastward is an aboriginal Falstaff, and carries all sorts of humors in its unbounded stomach. It puts off night and slips into the garments of the day not more easily than its vein changes from hour to hour, as the tone of its daylight does, rolling along the whole gamut from gloom to gar-*