Of the tragedies, Hamlet is undoubtedly the greatest, but it is the hardest to read, and must be read many times to be fully appreciated. We are struck in the very first scene by the personality of the ghost, and of Hamlet’s friend, Horatio, that quiet, calm gentleman who looks sympathetically on throughout the play, and lives to tell the story of Hamlet’s infirm will. Polonius is a conventional old fool, but full of worldly wisdom, and the father of the brave Laertes and the sweet and pathetic Ophelia. How unhappy a girl she is! She is not very strong, not very brave; but we are sorry indeed for her, and in mere reading really shed tears when she sings her sweetly crazy songs. How strange and interesting, too, is Hamlet’s mother, and his scene with her toward the end of the play! And who can forget the conversation with the grave-diggers! Throughout we feel the atmosphere of philosophy and thought. Hamlet is indeed a very great and interesting play, but one requiring much time and leisurely thought. It is impossible to hurry in reading Hamlet. Next in greatness to Hamlet is, perhaps, Lear. In the very first act we are struck with the beautiful nature of Cordelia, though she utters very few words. She does not appear again until the end; yet the poor interesting Fool is always talking about her to Lear. We detest the two ungrateful daughters, Goneril and Regan, and sympathize with Edgar, the outcast son of Gloucester. How strange it seems that this fool, this insane old man, this homeless son pretending to be crazy, and this absent daughter, should hold our interest so perfectly! More romantic, more polished, more correct in stage-craft, so that many call it Shakspere’s greatest play, is Othello. Yet we have no such love for the beautiful Desdemona as we had for Cordelia, or Juliet, or Portia. Iago is a masterpiece of scheming treachery, and we are somewhat sorry for the handsome and abused Moor Othello; but we can never like him quite as well as some of the others. Macbeth is another great tragedy, and Lady Macbeth is a marvellous portrayal of a bad woman. We are interested in the witches and their prophecies, and we know how true is Macbeth’s ambition, and the greater ambition of his wife who drives him on. But in Macbeth there is no one to love, as there is in others of the plays. In Julius Caesar it is the patriotic fervour of Brutus, mistaken though it may be, that interests us most, though we like to declaim the speech of Antony at Caesar’s funeral. Antony and Cleopatra makes an excellent play to read, for Cleopatra is so well known as a character that we already have a point of familiarity to start with. We feel that we are reading history, and these great Roman plays of Shakspere’s are probably the best history we shall ever get. With Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra we should also include Coriolanus, to be studied third in the series.