These two earlier works are both distinguished from most of the succeeding tragedies in another though a kindred respect. Moral evil is not so intently scrutinised or so fully displayed in them. In _Julius Caesar_, we may almost say, everybody means well. In _Hamlet_, though we have a villain, he is a small one. The murder which gives rise to the action lies outside the play, and the centre of attention within the play lies in the hero's efforts to do his duty. It seems clear that Shakespeare's interest, since the early days when under Marlowe's influence he wrote _Richard III._, has not been directed to the more extreme or terrible forms of evil. But in the tragedies that follow _Hamlet_ the presence of this interest is equally clear. In Iago, in the 'bad' people of _King Lear_, even in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, human nature assumes shapes which inspire not mere sadness or repulsion but horror and dismay. If in _Timon_ no monstrous cruelty is done, we still watch ingratitude and selfishness so blank that they provoke a loathing we never felt for Claudius; and in this play and _King Lear_ we can fancy that we hear at times the _saeva indignatio_, if not the despair, of Swift. This prevalence of abnormal or appalling forms of evil, side by side with vehement passion, is another reason why the convulsion depicted in these tragedies seems to come from a deeper source, and to be vaster in extent, than the conflict in the two earlier plays. And here again _Julius Caesar_ is further removed than _Hamlet_ from _Othello_, _King Lear_, and _Macbeth_.