Of all Shakespeare's qualities, his humor is the hardest to describe because of its protean forms. Falstaff is his greatest humorous creation. So resourceful is he that even defeat enables him to rise like Antaeus after a fall. His humor is almost a philosophy of existence for those who love to use wit and ingenuity in trying to evade the laws of sober, orderly living. Perhaps it was for this very reason that Shakespeare consented to send so early to "Arthur's bosom"[26] a character who had not a little of the complexity of Hamlet. [Illustration: FALSTAFF AND HIS PAGE. _From a drawing by B. Westmacott_.] Much of Shakespeare's humor is delicately suffused through his plays. Many of them either ripple with the laughter of his characters or are lighted with their smiles. We may pass pleasant hours in the company of his joyous creations, such as Rosalind in _As You Like It_, or Portia in _The Merchant of Venice_, or Puck as the spokesman for _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, who good naturedly exclaims:-- "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" or Viola and her companions in _Twelfth Night_, or Beatrice and Benedict in _Much Ado About Nothing_, or Ariel in _The Tempest_ playing pranks on the bewildered mariners and singing of the joys of life which come as a reward for service:-- "Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough." Shakespeare is also the one English author who is equally successful in depicting the highest type of both comedy and tragedy. He has the power to describe even a deathbed scene so as to invest it with both humor and pathos. Dame Quickly's lines in _Henry V_., on the death of Falstaff, show this capacity. The next greatest English writer is lacking in this sense of humor. John Milton could write the tragedies of a _Paradise Lost_ and a _Samson Agonistes_, but he could not give us the humor of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, _The Comedy of Errors_, or _As You Like It_. We have seen that the next greatest dramatic genius, Marlowe, has little sense of humor. Mrs. Browning correctly describes the plays of Shakespeare as filled-- "With tears and laughters for all time." Moral Ideals.--To show the moral consequences of acts was the work which most appealed to him. Banquo voiced the comprehensiveness of moral law when he said, "In the great hand of God I stand." There is here great divergence between the views of Shakespeare and of Bacon. Dowden says:-- "While Bacon's sense of the presence of physical law in the universe was for his time extraordinarily developed, he seems practically to have acted upon the theory that the moral laws of the world are not inexorable, but rather by tactics and dexterity may be cleverly evaded. Their supremacy was acknowledged by Shakespeare in the minutest as well as in the greatest concerns of human life."