He by no means neglected the external story or denied the theatrical demand for sensation. He, perhaps, did not radically change the course of events as depicted in the old play, but he unquestionably improved on any preceding tragedy in the mere effectiveness of the scenic presentation of a sensational story. How great this effectiveness is may be judged by the continued popularity of "Hamlet" as a stage performance even before unlettered auditors. We may surmise that had poetry and philosophy both perished, it would still draw its crowds as it does to-day on the remote borders of civilization. This theatrical triumph is due in part to dramatic excellence of structure and presentation. From the old play probably came a story restricted by semi-Senecan technic to a great emotional crisis; but Shakespeare at least resisted the temptation, to which his contemporaries succumbed, of extending the action over the events leading up to the murder. And assuredly to him rather than to Kyd or another is due the recognition of the dramatic values of the story's beginning, middle, and end. Magnificent as is his development of the ghost scenes at the beginning, still more important structurally is his realization of the value of the middle of the tragedy and treatment of the play within the play and its immediate sequences; and if the end is developed with an Elizabethan looseness of coherence that will not correspond to any logical scheme of structure, yet the pathos of the Ophelia scenes and the wonderful grotesquery of the graveyard excite and renew the spectator's interest to the final catastrophe. The scenic presentation, while telling a sensational story with preëminent effectiveness, becomes as never before in English drama the means for exhibiting the inner struggle of the protagonist. Parallel with the external conflict between murderer and avenger, beginning with the advent of the ghost and ending with a holocaust, there runs the story of a man's moods and thoughts; and this story of doubt and melancholy overpowering resolution imposes its unity of structure and emotional tone upon the external conflict so full of visible action. The throng of dreadful happenings becomes a foil to set off the inner struggle of thought. Their climax is only the brink of resolution from which Hamlet shrinks. Their catastrophe is the end of irresolution in silence.