It would then be possible to suggest
that Shakespeare grew from a bold roistering youth into a melancholy,
thoughtful old age, touching both extremes of manhood in his own
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.
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