For further illustration of Shakespeare's clear understanding that the emotions of well-characterized figures are better means of controlling an audience than a merely horrific situation, study his handling of the ghost scene in _Richard III_ or _Julius Cæsar_ in contrast with similar places in _Hamlet_. What most transmuted the _Ur-Hamlet_ of Thomas Kyd into one of the greatest tragedies of all time was the characterization Shakespeare put into it. Certainly, characterization makes for dramatists the stepping-stones on which they may rise from dead selves to higher things.
How may all this needed characterization best be done? A dramatist should not permit himself to describe his characters, for in his own personality he has no proper place in the text. There the characters must speak and act for themselves. There has been, however, an increasing tendency lately to describe the _dramatis personæ_ of the play in programs, either in the list of characters or in a summary of the plot. Some writers apparently assume that every auditor reads his program carefully before the curtain goes up. Such an assumption is false: more than that it is lazy, incompetent, and thoroughly vicious, putting a play on the level with the motion pictures, which cannot depend wholly on themselves but would often be wholly vague without explanatory words thrown upon the canvas. Nor can the practice of the older dramatists like Wycherley and Shadwell, who often prefixed to their printed plays elaborate summaries describing the _dramatis personæ_, be cited as a final defense.
Sir William Belfond, a Gentleman of above 3,000 per annum, who in his youth had been a spark of the town, but married and retired into the country, where he turned to the other extreme, rigid and morose, most sordidly covetous, clownish, obstinate, positive, and froward.
Sir Edward Belfond, his Brother, a merchant, who by lucky hits had gotten a great estate, lives single, with ease and pleasure, reasonably and virtuously. A man of great humanity and gentleness and compassion towards mankind; well read in good books possessed with all gentleman-like qualities.
Belfond, Senior, eldest son to Sir William; bred after his father's rustic, swinish manner, with great rigour and severity; upon whom his father's estate is entailed; the confidence of which makes him break out into open rebellion to his father, and become lewd, abominably vicious, stubborn, and obstinate.