Take for example the most popular of the really Romantic dramas, _Macbeth_ and _Hamlet_. No one need be told how the unities are violated in the first of these pieces: that it begins on a heath in Morayshire, where the witches appear to the victorious Thane; that the murder of the King takes place in the Castle of Inverness; that the usurper is slain by Macduff in front of Dunsinnane Castle near the Tay. But none can either have read the play, or seen it acted, without feeling that the real interest lies in the events which occurred, and the ambitious feelings which were awakened in Macbeth and his wife, when temptation was put in their way within their own halls. Sophocles would have laid the scene there, and made one of the characters narrate in the outset the appearance of the witches on the heath, and brought Macduff to the gates of Macbeth's castle shortly after the murder of Duncan to avenge his death. Shakspeare has not done this; but he has painted the scenes in the interior of the castle, before and after the murder, with such force and effect, that the mind is as much riveted by them, as if no previous or subsequent deviation from the unities had been introduced. _Hamlet_ begins in a strain of unparalleled interest; had the last four acts proceeded in the same sublime style as the first, and the filial duty devolved by the ghost on his son of avenging his murder been discharged as rapidly as it should have been, and as the feelings of the audience lead them to desire, it would have been perhaps the most powerful tragedy in the world. Had Shakspeare proceeded on the principles of the Greek drama, he would have done this, and produced a drama as universally admired as the _Agamemnon_ of AEschylus. But every one feels that the interest is weakened and wellnigh lost as the play proceeds; new characters are introduced, the burlesque succeeds the sublime, the original design is forgotten; and when the spectre appears a second time "to whet your almost blunted purpose," his appearance is felt to be as necessary to revive the decaying interest of the piece, as to resuscitate the all but forgotten fervour of the Prince of Denmark.