The literary critic knows well enough that the merit of these three pieces--_A Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Twelfth Night_, and _Romeo and Juliet_--mainly lies in their varied wealth of poetic imagery and passion. One thing alone could render the words, in which poetic genius finds voice, tolerable in the playhouse to a spectator of Pepys's prosaic temperament. The one thing needful is inspired acting, and in the case of these three plays, when Pepys saw them performed, inspired acting was wanting. It is at first sight disconcerting to find Pepys no less impatient of _The Merry Wives of Windsor_. He expresses a mild interest in the humours of "the country gentleman and the French doctor." But he condemns the play as a whole. It is in his favour that his bitterest reproaches are aimed at the actors and actresses. One can hardly conceive that Falstaff, fitly interpreted, would have failed to satisfy Pepys's taste in humour, commonplace though it was. He is not quite explicit on the point; but there are signs that the histrionic interpretation of Shakespeare's colossal humorist, rather than the dramatist's portrayal of the character, caused the diarist's disappointment. Just before Pepys saw the first part of _Henry IV._, wherein Falstaff figures to supreme advantage, he had bought and read the play in quarto. "But my expectation being too great" (he avers), "it did not please me as otherwise I believe it would." Here it seems clear that his hopes of the actor were unfulfilled. However, he saw _Henry IV._ again a few months later, and had the grace to describe it as "a good play." On a third occasion he wrote that, "contrary to expectation," he was pleased by the delivery of Falstaff's ironical speech about honour. For whatever reason, Pepys's affection for Shakespeare's fat knight, as he figured on the stage of his day, never touched the note of exaltation. Of Shakespeare's great tragedies Pepys saw three--_Othello_, _Hamlet_, and _Macbeth_. But in considering his several impressions of these pieces, we have to make an important proviso. Only the first two of them did he witness in the authentic version. _Macbeth_ underwent in his day a most liberal transformation, which carried it far from its primordial purity. The impressions he finally formed of _Othello_ and _Hamlet_ are not consistent one with the other, but are eminently characteristic of the variable moods of the average playgoer.