Not one of the spectators who have witnessed Mr.C.'s exertions in that part, but has come away with a proper conviction that Richard is a very wicked man, and kills little children in their beds, with something like the pleasure which the giants and ogres in children's books are represented to have taken in that practice; moreover, that he is very close and shrewd, and devilish cunning, for you could see that by his eye.
But is, in fact, this the impression we have in reading the Richard of Shakspeare?
Do we feel anything like disgust, as we do at that butcherlike representation of him that passes for him on the stage?
A horror at his crimes blends with the effect which we feel, but how is it qualified, how is it carried off, by the rich intellect which he displays, his resources, his wit, his buoyant spirits, his vast knowledge and insight into characters, the poetry of his part,--not an atom of all which is made perceivable in Mr.C.'s way of acting it.

Nothing but his crimes, his actions, is visible; they are prominent and staring; the murderer stands out, but where is the lofty genius, the man of vast capacity,--the profound, the witty, accomplished Richard?
The truth is, the characters of Shakspeare are so much the objects of meditation rather than of interest or curiosity as to their actions, that while we are reading any of his great criminal characters,--Macbeth, Richard, even Iago,--we think not so much of the crimes which they commit, as of the ambition, the aspiring spirit, the intellectual activity, which prompts them to overleap these moral fences.

Barnwell is a wretched murderer; there is a certain fitness between his neck and the rope; he is the legitimate heir to the gallows; nobody who thinks at all can think of any alleviating circumstances in his case to make him a fit object of mercy.

Or to take an instance from the higher tragedy, what else but a mere assassin is Glenalvon?
Do we think of anything but of the crime which he commits, and the rack which he deserves?
That is all which we really think about him.

Whereas in corresponding characters in Shakspeare, so little do the actions comparatively affect us, that while the impulses, the inner mind in all its perverted greatness, solely seems real and is exclusively attended to, the crime is comparatively nothing.