The numberless quotations from "old plays" at the head of Scott's chapters are not without significance. At times he approaches closer to Shakespeare than any other writer, whether of prose or verse. In one scene at least in _The Bride of Lammermoor_, where he describes the "singular and gloomy delight" of the three old cummers about the body of their contemporary, he lets us know that he has in mind the meeting of the witches in _Macbeth_, and I think on the whole he excels the dramatist in his own field. After all is said, the Shakespearian witch-scene is an arbitrary exercise of the fancy, which fails to carry with it a complete sense of reality: the illusion is not fully maintained. The dialogue in the novelist, on the contrary, is instinct with thrilling suggestiveness, for the very reason that it is based on the groundwork of national character. The superstitious awe is here simple realism, from the beginning of the scene down to the warning cry of the paralytic hag from the cottage: "He's a frank man, and a free-handed man, the Master," said Annie Winnie, "and a comely personage--broad in the shouthers, and narrow around the lunyies. He wad mak a bonny corpse; I wad like to hae the streiking and winding o' him." "It is written on his brow, Annie Winnie," returned the octogenarian, her companion, "that hand of woman, or of man either, will never straught him; dead-deal will never be laid on his back, make you your market of that, for I hae it frae a sure hand." "Will it be his lot to die on the battle-ground then, Ailsie Gourlay? Will he die by the sword or the ball, as his forbears hae dune before him, mony ane o'them?" "Ask nae mair questions about it--he'll no be graced sae far," replied the sage. "I ken ye are wiser than ither folk, Ailsie Gourlay. But wha tell'd ye this?" "Fashna your thumb about that, Annie Winnie," answered the sibyl. "I hae it frae a hand sure eneugh." "But ye said ye never saw the foul thief," reiterated her inquisitive companion. "I hae it frae as sure a hand," said Ailsie, "and frae them that spaed his fortune before the sark gaed ower his head." "Hark! I hear his horse's feet riding aff," said the other; "they dinna sound as if good luck was wi' them." "Mak haste, sirs," cried the paralytic hag from the cottage, "and let us do what is needfu', and say what is fitting; for, if the dead corpse binna straughted, it will girn and thraw, and that will fear the best o' us." But more often Scott approaches the lesser lights of the Elizabethan comedians, whose work is in general subject to the same laws as the novel, and who filled their plays with whimsical creatures-- Bawd, squire, impostor, many persons more, Whose manners, now called humours, feed the stage.