No plays afford greater opportunity for scenic splendor than Shakespeare's, yet none are less dependent on the adjuncts of scenery and outward realism. Shakespeare put his realism into his characters and no inadequate surroundings can rob them of their wondrous charms; they possess such range of mental vision, such tremendous power of thought, such depth and placidity, such glowing imagination; his characters are living, breathing, speaking types of the age in which they lived, and he their creator stands out wholly beyond question or dispute, the most transcendent genius our earth has ever produced. End of Project Gutenberg's The Mormons and the Theatre, by John S. Lindsay