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and " Measure for Measure," are but partially fitted for 

 representation : indeed we may boldly say, of all these 

 four plays, that their very worst aspect is that of dramas 

 or acting plays. There is in neither of them the attention 

 to plot, to the balance of situations, to progressive de- 

 velopment of the story, to that unity of thought neces- 

 sary to enchain a spectator, which are among the first 

 laws and rules of dramatic composition. They violate 

 some of the most important of these conditions as com- 

 pletely as the productions of the merest tyro in play- 

 Avriting, and seem almost to justify what Hume charac- 

 terised as " his total ignorance of all theatrical art and 

 conduct." In " Measure for Measure " there is not only 

 a story without a hero, and a play without a striking 

 situation or an artistically-Avrought denouement ; but the 

 principal character who is to mate with the heroine, 

 opens the business of the play in defiance of the simplest 

 canons of construction. But Shakspere's plays are full of 

 faults of this kind — of rash and unadvised endings — of 

 dreadful catastrophes — of heroes going, as Dr. Johnson 

 remarked, mad without cause, and recovering without rea- 

 son ; and such unskilful endings, that the virtuous die off 

 with the guilty, or perish while the vicious survive. It 

 needs no capacity to discover this, a child might discern it. 

 They are what Mr. Hume pronounced " the irregularities 

 and absurdities of the poet," so patent as to create a 

 wonder that an artist so accomplished in some respects, 

 should have discovered so culpable an ignorance in 

 others. Not unjustly either when we consider Avith what 

 subtle knowledge, and blended artifice and art Lear is 

 made a heathen, the better to illustrate his irrational, 

 violent, and unchristian spirit ; lago, an Italian — of the 

 very age and country of Machiavelli — and Othello, a Moor ; 

 or when we perceived the labour and discrimination 

 shewn in the alternate balance of all the characters in all 

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