many glorious and ideal forms of Shakespeare's art; no I opened the dance with that dame of dubious fame because I, should I publish Shakespeare's works, would begin with the drama entitled Troilus and Cressida. Steevens, in his magnificent edition, did the same; I do not know why, but I conjecture that this English publisher had a reason, which I will here set forth.
Troilus and Cressida is the only drama by Shakespeare in which he puts upon the stage the same heroes which the Greek poets also chose for a subject of their dramas, so that the method of Shakespeare is very clearly revealed by comparison with the manner and style in which the elder poets treated the same theme. While the classical poets of Greece strove for the most elevated transfigurations of real life and soared to ideality, our modern tragedian penetrates more into the depth of things, digging with a sharply whetted spiritual spade into the silent soil of what appears to be, and lays bare before us its hidden roots. In opposition to the ancient tragedians who, like the sculptors of their time, only aimed at beauty and nobility, and glorified the form at the expense of the subject, Shakespeare directed his views first to truth and the thing in itself, hence his mastery of the characteristic, whence it comes that he often touches on tho most provoking caricature,
