Shakespeare was constitutionally incapable of doing what Lyly, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson successively did—of inventing a perfectly characteristic new type of drama, and then consistently illustrating it in his practice. Probably he would have been incapable of offering concerning the dramatist’s art any views as definite as Hamlet expresses about the actor’s. What he created in the way of dramatic style and structure—and it was, of course, a great deal—seems to have come to him as the result of practice rather than speculation. What he borrowed—and it was even more—found its way into his plays by chance more often than by critical choice. In the controversy between classic and romantic theories of drama—between Jonson’s method and Marlowe’s—Shakespeare seems to take no stand and feel no interest. It happens that two particularly romantic plays, The Tempest and Othello, are in their structure nearly as classic (regular) as two of Jonson’s, while two plays of classic atmosphere and story, Julius Cæsar and Antony and Cleopatra, carry to the farthest extreme the romantic irregularities. For these things—for the whole formal side of poetry—Shakespeare doubtless cared as little as Homer. Like Homer, he can hardly be designated as either romantic or classic; and more than any other modern he has succeeded in making his art seem coextensive with life, in arrogating to himself Pope’s fine claim for Homer:
It is the indirectness of Shakespeare’s art that here accounts for its wonderful success. The perfectly clear light in which his men and women are seen implies a perfect lack of self-consciousness in their portrayer,
