ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an extract from an article published in Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 1 (1867). To say that Shakespeare excels others by virtue of the genius which enables him to throw himself for the time completely into each of the characters he represents, is to say a very common-place thing, and yet it will bear repeating. His spirit was so many-sided, so universal, that it was able to take all forms and perfectly to fit itself to each, so that he always gives us a consistent character. His personages are individuals whose every word agrees with every other they have spoken, and while the spirit which moves in them is Shakespeare, he is all, yet no one of them.
