The Character of Life in As You Like It and King LearThrough comedy and tragedy, Shakespeare reveals the vast expanses and profound depths of the character of life. For him, these are not separate worlds of drama and romance, but poles of a continuum. The distinction between tragedy and comedy is called into question when we turn to Shakespeare. Although characters differ in stature and power, and events vary in weight and significance, the movements of life in all of Shakespeare's plays are governed by the same universal principles that determine the events of our own lives. Through a myriad of images, Shakespeare depicts not only the character of man and society, but also the character of life itself. The difference between comedy and tragedy, success and failure, good fortune and disaster often seems to depend on a seemingly fortuitous event. In All's Well That Ends Well, Helen's pilgrimage to win back Bertram succeeds thanks to her chance encounter with the mother of a virgin Bertram is courting. Time is another crucial determinant. Often, a split second or brief interval makes the difference between life and death. It is in this small but crucial interval of time that the character of life is most clearly revealed. In As You Like It, Orlando arrives in time to save Oliver from the snake coiling around his neck. Out of context, these events would appear as a very thin and fragile fabric on which to build great comedies and tragedies if they were not true to a deeper level of causality in life. Suzanne Langer called comedy "the image of life triumphing over chance." It can be said another way that in comedy the seemingly coincidental events of life move toward a positive resolution, whereas in tragedy they seem to conspire toward disaster. Hélène Gardner observes that “comedy is full of erroneous objectives, which do not “fall on the head of the inventor” but which, fortunately, fail completely. In comedy, as often happens in life, people are mercifully saved from being as bad as they wanted to be. 5Time as well as chance events express another set of determinants, another level of causality in the broader plan of life. The critical gap between human action and its results depends on the response of surrounding life and expresses the character of life in the given circumstances..