His love-making
in the second part of "Henry IV." is real enough. But just because
Falstaff was taken from life, and studied from the outside, Shakespeare
having painted him once could not paint him again, he had exhausted his
model and could only echo him.
The heart of the matter is that, whereas Shakespeare's men of action,
when he is not helped by history or tradition, are thinly conceived and
poorly painted, his comic characters--Falstaff, Sir Toby Belch, and
Dogberry; Maria, Dame Quickly, and the Nurse, creatures of observation
though they be, are only inferior as works of art to the portraits of
himself which he has given us in Romeo, Hamlet, Macbeth, Orsino, and
Posthumus. It is his humour which makes Shakespeare the greatest of
dramatists, the most complete of men.
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
SHAKESPEARE'S EARLY ATTEMPTS TO PORTRAY HIMSELF AND HIS WIFE:
BIRON, ADRIANA, VALENTINE
In the preceding chapters I have considered those impersonations of
Shakespeare which revealed most distinctly the salient features of his
character.
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