Characters of Shakespeare's Plays

In 1817, a young essayist named William Hazlitt sat down to write a book that would permanently alter how we understand Shakespeare's characters. The result was a revelation. Hazlitt argued that Shakespeare's men and women seemed more real, more fully alive, than any people he had ever known - that they 'breathe, move, and live' with an autonomy that makes actual human nature appear pale by comparison. This isn't mere praise; it's a radical claim about what theater can achieve and what it means to create a character who surpasses her creator. Hazlitt moves through the plays with passionate precision, finding in Hamlet's delay, in Falstaff's fraud, in Ophelia's drowning, not just psychological depth but a kind of existential truth that reality rarely provides. The book sold out twice in weeks, then a hostile review in The Quarterly Review demolished Hazlitt's reputation entirely. He wouldn't be fully vindicated until Harold Bloom championed him centuries later, ranking him second only to Johnson among Shakespeare critics. This is essential reading for anyone who has ever felt that a fictional character understood them better than anyone real ever could.