He feels himself to be more than a king in those moments when he tears off his own kingly mask and mirrors himself in his naked reality as man. Facing the enemies who are drawn up on the field of battle and ready to attack him, he murmurs to himself the profound words: "Besides they are our _natural consciences._ And preachers to us all; admonishing That we should dress us fairly for our end." Death reigns above all else in these dramas, death, which brings every great effort to an end, all torment of burning passion and ambition, all rage of barbarous crimes, and is therefore received as a lofty and severe matron; in her presence, countenances are composed, however ardently she has been withstood, however loudly the brave show of life has been affirmed. Death is received thus by all or nearly all the men in Shakespeare, by the tortured and elegiac Richard II, by the great sinner Suffolk, by the diabolic Richard III, down to the other lesser victims of fate. The vileness of the vile, the rascality of rascals, the brutal stupidity of acclaiming or imprecating crowds, are felt and represented with equal intensity, without once permitting anything of the struggle of life to escape, so vast in its variety. The personages of these plays arise like three-dimensional statues, that is to say they are treated with full reality, and thus form a perfect antithesis to the figures of the romantic plays. These are superficial portraits, vivid, but light and vanishing into air; they are rather types than individuals. This does not imply a judgment of greater or lesser value or a difference in the art of portraying the true; it only expresses in other words and formulas the different sentiment that animates the two different groups of artistic creations, that which springs from delight in the romantic and that due to interest in human action. A Hotspur, introduced upon the scene of the romantic dramas, would break through them like a statue of bronze placed upon a fragile flooring of boards and painted canvas. He is the true "formal" hero, volitional, inrushing, disdainful, impatient, exuberant; we walk round him, admiring his lofty stature, his muscular strength, his potent gestures. He is like a splendid bow, with its mighty string drawn tight to hurl the missile, but wherefore or whither it will strike, we cannot tell. He is all rebellion and battle, yet his wit and satire is worthy of an artist; he loves, too, with a pure tenderness. But wit and satire and the words of love, alike, bear even the imprint and are hastened by impetuosity, as of a man engaged in conversation between one combat and another, still joyful and hot from the battle that is over, already hot and joyful for that which is to begin. "Away, away, you trifler," he says to his wife, "you that are thinking of love. Love! I love thee not,