Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare has no heroes;--he has only
heroines. There is not one entirely heroic figure in all his plays,
except the slight sketch of Henry the Fifth, exaggerated for the
purposes of the stage: and the still slighter Valentine in The Two
Gentlemen of Verona. In his labored and perfect plays you have no
hero. Othello would have been one, if his simplicity had not been so
great as to leave him the prey of every base practice round him; but he
is the only example even approximating to the heroic type.
Coriolanus--Caesar--Antony, stand in flawed strength, and fall by their
vanities;--Hamlet is indolent, and drowsily speculative; Romeo an
impatient boy; the Merchant of Venice languidly submissive to adverse
fortune; Kent, in King Lear, is entirely noble at heart, but too rough
and unpolished to be of true use at the critical time, and he sinks
into the office of a servant only. Orlando, no less noble, is yet the
despairing toy of chance, followed, comforted, saved, by Rosalind.
Whereas there is hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it,
steadfast in grave hope and errorless purpose: Cordelia, Desdemona,
Isabella, Hermione, Imogen, Queen Katherine, Perdita, Silvia, Viola,
Rosalind, Helena, and last, and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are all
faultless: conceived in the highest heroic type of humanity.