In the fashioning of his knight he took Arthur, a hero whose life as it appears in the early romances is inextricably mingled with solar elements, and has built up his virtues upon other ancient solar heroes. Here are all the paraphernalia of solar mythology: invincible knights with marvelous weapons, brazen castles guarded by dragons, marriage with a beautiful maiden and parting from the bride to engage in new quests, an enchantress who turns men into animals, even the outcast child; but none of the incidents appear intact. It is as if there had been a great explosion in the ancient land of romance and that in the mending up of things the separate pieces are all recognizable, although all joined together in a different pattern, while under all is the allegory. A gentle knight is no longer a solar hero as set forth by Max Müller or Cox, but Holiness; his invincible armor is not the all-powerful rays of the sun, but truth; the enchantress not night casting a spell over mortals, but sensuous pleasure entangling them. These two poets, Chaucer and Spenser, are prototypes of two poet types of two poetical tendencies that have gone on developing side by side in English literature: Chaucer, democratic, interested supremely in the personalities of men and women, portraying the real, and Spenser, aristocratic, interested in imaging forth an ideal of manhood, choosing his subject-matter from sources that will lend themselves to such a purpose; Chaucer drawing his lessons out of the real actions of humanity; Spenser framing his story so that it will illustrate the moral he wishes to inculcate. Shakespeare, of course, ranges himself in line with Chaucer. His interest centered on character, and wherever a story capable of character development presented itself, that he chose, altered it in outline comparatively little, and when he did so it was in order to carry forward the dramatic _motif_ which he infused into his subject. The dramatic form in which he wrote furnished him a better medium for reaching a complete welding together of the external and spiritual side of his subject-matter. Where Chaucer hinted at the possibilities of an artistic development of character that would cause the events of the story to appear as the inevitable outcome of the hidden springs of action, Shakespeare accomplished it, and peopled the world of imagination with group after group of living, acting characters.