In reading "Hamlet" there is little opportunity of comparing it instructively with any of its predecessors. Its principal personage is entirely unlike any other created by Shakespeare. The play is all Hamlet: the other personages are mere occasions for his presence and means of his development. But Polonius is something the same kind of man as old Capulet in "Romeo and Juliet;" and although there were opportunities enough for the noble Veronese father to utter sententiously the knowledge of the world which he had gained by living in it, see how comparatively meagre and superficial his "wise saws" are compared with the counsel that Polonius gives to his son and to his daughter, and to the King and Queen; although Polonius, with all his sagacity, is garrulous and a bore; in Hamlet's words, a tedious old fool. As to Hamlet's character, Shakespeare did not mean it to be altogether admirable or otherwise, but simply to be Hamlet--a perfectly natural and not very uncommon man, although he expresses natural and not uncommon feelings with the marvellous utterance of the great master of dramatic poetry. And Hamlet's character is not altogether admirable; but it is therefore none the less, but probably the more, deeply interesting. How closely packed the play is with profound truths of life philosophy is shown by the fact that it has contributed not only very much more--four or five times more--than any other poem of similar length to the storehouse of adage and familiar phrase, but at least twice as much as any other of Shakespeare's plays. I know two boys who, going to see the play for the first time, some years before the appearance of a like story in the newspapers, came home and did actually, in the innocence of their hearts, qualify the great admiration they expressed for it by adding, "but how full it is of quotations." In fact, about one eighth of this long play has become so familiar to the world that it is in common use, and is recognized as the best expression known of the thoughts that it embodies. This, however, is not an absolute test of excellence, for it is remarkable that "King Lear" is very much behind it, and also behind "Othello," in this respect; and indeed there are several plays, including "Macbeth," "Julius Cæsar," "Henry IV.," "As You Like It," and "The Merchant of Venice," which are richer than "King Lear" in passages familiarly quoted; and yet as to the superiority of "King Lear" to the other plays I think there can be no doubt. It is the greatest tragedy, the greatest dramatic poem, the greatest book, ever written; so great is it, in fact, so vast in its style, so lofty in its ideal, that to those who have reflected upon it and justly apprehended it, it has become unplayable. As well attempt to score the music of the spheres, or to paint "the fat weed that roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf." In "King Lear" there is a personage who may be very instructively compared with others of the same kind by the student of Shakespeare's mental development. This is the Fool. Shakespeare's fools or clowns (such as those in "Love's Labor's Lost" and in "Hamlet") are among the most remarkable evidences of his ability to make anything serve as the occasion and the mouthpiece of his wit and his wisdom. He did not make the character; he found it on the stage, and a favorite with a considerable part of the play-goers. It was, however, as he found it, a very coarse character, rude as well as gross in speech, and given to practical joking. He relieved it of all the rudeness, if not of all the grossness, and reformed the joking altogether; but he also filled the Fool's jesting with sententious satire, and while preserving the low-comedy style of the character, brought it into keeping with a lofty and even a tragic view of life. In "King Lear" the Fool rises into heroic proportions, and becomes a sort of conscience, or second thought, to Lear. Compared even with Touchstone he is very much more elevated, and shows not less than Hamlet, or than Lear himself, the grand development of Shakespeare's mind at this period of its maturity. In the representation of Shakespeare's plays there has been no greater affront to common sense than the usual presentation of this Fool upon the stage as a boy, except the putting a pretty woman into the part, dressed in such a way as to captivate the eye and divert the attention by the beauty of her figure. It is disturbing enough to see Ariel, sexless, but, like the angels, rather masculine than feminine, represented by a woman dressed below the waist in an inverted gauze saucer, and above the waist in a perverted gauze nothing; but to see Lear's Fool thus unbedecked is more amazing than Bottom's brutal translation was to his fellow actors.