The persons of the plays spring from the old stories, and by these the study of their motives is in many ways limited. It is limited again by the types and conditions of stage-land. The bloody tyrant, the hesitating avenger, the Machiavellian villain come hence. The acts which they commit, their moods, motives, their very language depend in part on the representatives of these types that had long been familiar to the audiences of the theatres. Yet the host of individual personalities are the result of a most profound and fresh observation of an almost boundless range of life. That interest in characterization which distinguishes the early drama and finds its main illustration in Shakespeare's own practice in the preceding decade here comes to its culmination. Not only the main actor, but the most conventional part, the most absurd business, the merest supernumerary, receives its touch of truth. And something more than truth to life or knowledge of motive is manifest. The great characters are cast in large moulds. They represent the courses of the master passions. Smallness of horizon, triviality of design, feebleness of mind or body are absent. Momentous crises that try men's souls are the real subjects of the tragedies. The accidents of dress, or manner, or time, or race, the incidents of action, are forgotten as revenge, jealousy, irresolution, and lust seize their splendid prey. The greatness of human nature, the power of the human will, the responsibility of the individual remain. There is no belittling of reason even when it breaks under the crash of the storm. Iago is no mere stage villain, though he has all the characteristics of the type; nor is he merely a transcript from life, though he has all the variety and plausibility of a human being. He is the embodiment of our countless evil impulses, the incarnation of depravity. So with all the others. They are human in their truth; they are magnificent idealizations in the range and value of their manifold suggestiveness; they leave the stage to become the habitants of our imaginations, contributing to our reflections their embodiments of good and evil, folly and reason, resolution and doubt.