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“A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.”

The cause of this sadness we are left to conjecture. Antonio himself professes not to know. But such a disposition, even if it be not occasioned by any definite event or object, will generally associate itself with one; and when Antonio is accused of being in love, he repels the accusation with only a sad “Fie! fie!” This, and his whole character, seem to me to point to an old but ever cherished grief.

Into the original story upon which this play is founded, Shakspere has, among other variations, introduced the story of Jessica and Lorenzo, apparently altogether of his own invention. What was his object in doing so? Surely there were characters and interests enough already!–It seems to me that Shakspere doubted whether the Jew would have actually proceeded to carry out his fell design against Antonio, upon the original ground of his hatred, without the further incitement to revenge afforded by another passion, second only to his love of gold–his affection for his daughter; for in the Jew having reference to his own property, it had risen to a passion. Shakspere therefore invents her, that he may send a dog of a Christian to steal her, and, yet worse, to tempt her to steal her father’s stones and ducats. I suspect Shakspere sends the old villain off the stage at the last with more of the pity of the audience than any of the other dramatists of the time would have ventured to rouse, had they been capable of doing so. I suspect he is the only human Jew of the English drama up to that time.

I have now arrived at the last and most important stage of my argument. It is this: If Shakspere was so well aware of the artistic relations of the parts of his drama, is it likely that the grand meanings involved in the whole were unperceived by him, and conveyed to us without any intention on his part–had their origin only in the fact that he dealt with human nature so truly, that his representations must involve whatever lessons human life itself involves?

Is there no intention, for instance, in placing Prospero, who forsook the duties of his dukedom for the study of magic, in a desert island, with just three subjects; one, a monster below humanity; the second, a creature etherealized beyond it; and the third a complete embodiment of human perfection? Is it not that he may learn how to rule, and, having learned, return, by the aid of his magic wisely directed, to the home and duties from which exclusive devotion to that magic had driven him?

In “Julius Caesar,” the death of Brutus, while following as the consequence of his murder of Caesar, is yet as much distinguished in character from that death, as the character of Brutus is different from that of Caesar. Caesar’s last words were Et tu Brute? Brutus, when resolved to lay violent hands on himself, takes leave of his friends with these words:

“Countrymen,
My heart doth joy, that yet, in all my life,
I found no man, but he was true to me.”

Here Shakspere did not invent. He found both speeches in Plutarch. But how unerring his choice!

Is the final catastrophe in “Hamlet” such, because Shakspere could do no better?–It is: he could do no better than the best. Where but in the regions beyond could such questionings as Hamlet’s be put to rest? It would have been a fine thing indeed for the most nobly perplexed of thinkers to be left–his love in the grave; the memory of his father a torment, of his mother a blot; with innocent blood on his innocent hands, and but half understood by his best friend–to ascend in desolate dreariness the contemptible height of the degraded throne, and shine the first in a drunken court!