THE MIND OF SHAKESPERE
duced several plays a year, and who could have no leisure. We know also that from the first he had a fluent gift of speech; he could say what he would, with the least possible impediment of language. But for the radical secret of his mind perhaps we should look in our own experience, if we would justify the hope that he was such a man as we are.
II
What, for instance, is the effect of his plays on us? For one thing, we understand them, as we could hardly do if they were the work of superhuman intelligence. What audience was ever puzzled by a Shakspere play? It is only the theories of his critics that perplex. Further, the plays seem to the audience to be miracles not of intellect but of observation. No doubt the poet was thought-
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