The title-role, unfortunately, is not the only part which has been wrongly cast. With the exception of Goneril and Regan, every character has been falsified and distorted. This is not due to want of ability in the actors, but to their physical limitations and to deficiency in training. Their reputations have been won in modern plays, and they seem quite unable to give expression to character when the medium of speech is verse. To those who think more about the actor than about the character he represents this is perhaps not a matter of much moment, but it is one of considerable importance to the play, since with all great dramatists the incidents are evolved by the characters; and if the men and women we see on the stage are not those that Shakespeare drew, his incidents are apt to appear ill-timed and ridiculous. After the title-role the most serious misconception of character is in the part of Edmund, the man whose wits control the movement of the drama. He is an offspring of the Italian Renaissance, a portrait of Machiavel's Prince, whose merit consists in his mental and physical fitness. He should be the handsomest man in the play, the most alert, the most able; he is a victim neither to sentimentality nor to self-deception, and he is fully capable of turning the weakness of others to his own advantage. It is impossible to hate the well-bred young schemer, because he is too clever, and his dupes are too silly. Unfortunately, the actor who is cast for this important part is quite unsuited for it. Another brilliant part which has suffered badly at the hands of its interpreter is Edgar, a character in which the Elizabethans delighted, because of its variety and the scope it allows for effective character-impersonation. The actor has to assume four parts--Edgar, an imbecile beggar, a peasant, and a knight-errant, and each of these characters should be a distinct creation; but the actor gave us nothing but a modern young man making himself unintelligibly ridiculous. Even more disastrous was the casting of the part of the fool, that gentle, frail lad who perishes from exposure to the storm, a child with the wisdom of a child, which is often the profoundest wisdom. Then a lady with a majestic figure cannot represent the little Cordelia, and she should not have been given the part. Of course the obvious retort to this kind of criticism is that the play must be cast from a company selected for repertory work, most of which, perhaps, will be modern. London managers, also, impose actors on the public because they have a London reputation, and this creates a monopoly which becomes a tyranny upon art. Whether the artist is suited or not for the part, he must be put into it, for box-office considerations.