The effectiveness of Shakespeare's construction, however, was not due to a formulation of system or rule but to his intuition and experience. His sense of what parts of a narrative should be acted and what parts not, had developed beyond that of most of his contemporaries. In comparison with his own earlier plays the tragedies contain little, whether comic, spectacular, or essential to the main tragic action, which had not a manifest value on the stage. His ability to create great dramatic situations was also at its height, and the great scenes are prepared for and emphasized by what precedes, so that they gain all the effect possible from the dramatic construction. Thus, the appearance of the ghost, the play within the play, the funeral of Ophelia, and the final slaughter are given a value in the mere narration of the story for which there is no parallel in the many other treatments of similar stories. Of far more importance is his use of the developments of character as the determining factors of the progress of the dramatic narrative. The rapidity with which the first two acts of "Macbeth" hurry us to the murder of Duncan, the tremendous climactic pressure of the first three acts of "Lear," are extraordinary examples of his power to compel incidents to reveal the course of motive convincingly. In each play the order of incidents becomes a logical development from the characters of the actors; each deed, thought, or speech has its sequence. There are no tricks, no surprises, no sudden conversions of character. Once admit the premises, a person of a certain temperament, facing a certain situation, and subject to a certain accident, mistake, or folly, and we cannot escape the conclusion. The dramatic necessities of character are never violated. From the clear exposition of the first scene, the progress is inevitable to the end.