^ ^ VA
ST. MICHAEL'S COLLEGE
TORONTO 5, CANADA
LIBRARY) i
THE EELIGION OF SHAKESPEAKE
i^ifjil flljgtat:
GULIELMUS GILDEA, S.T.U.,
Censor Deputattis.
Imprimatur :
HERBERTUS CARDINALIS VAUGHAN,
Archiepiscopus Westmonast.
Die 28 Apr. 1899.
THE RELIGION OF
SHAKESPEARE
CHIEFLY FROM THE WRITINGS OF THE
LATE MR. RICHARD SIMPSON, M.A.
BY
HENRY SEBASTIAN BOWDEN
OF THE ORATORY
?§ I UOmRY I S
LONDON : BURNS & GATES, Limited
NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO : BENZIGER BROTHERS
1899
MAY 1 8 1956
PREFACE
The following work has little claim to originality,
the greater portion of it being based on manuscripts
of the late Mr. Richard Simpson. From his singu-
lar acquaintance with Elizabethan literature, these
writings offer a sound foundation for the study of
Shakespeare in relation to the religious thought of
his day. The State Paper documents, the Harleian,
Ashmolean, Sloane, and Lansdowne collections, the
Rutland and Salisbury Papers, Visitation Returns,
the libraries of Paris and Lille, the archives of
the English College at Rome, the Douay Registers,
the Registers of the Jesuit Colleges of Malines
and Bruges, the Stonyhurst MS., were all within
the range of his research. It must be remembered
also that many of these documents, now printed,
indexed, and ready to hand, existed in Mr.
Simpson's time only in manuscript, and thus their
contents could only be acquired by laborious
personal investigation. His note-books are an
abiding memorial of his exploring zeal. They
contain autograph copies of every rare play, tale,
or ballad, cognate to his subject, and abound with
varied and recondite data and references.
But Mr. Simpson was not merely a collector of
rare or curious material. As Shakespeare's plays
VI PREFACE
were professedly composed under " tlie pressure
of the time," Mr. Simpson's object was to inquire
what contemporary event may have furnished the
pohtical motive of the play, or at least suggested
some of its incidents and characters. The political
allegory, did it reflect on the Government, would
be necessarily veiled, and would pass unheeded by
the ignorant or the inattentive, but would have
spoken clearly to the wise. Doubtless this desire
of solving the dramatic riddles of the past may
lead to merely fanciful and arbitrary assertions,
but the art of the interpreter, soberly exercised,
discovers in a play a real though hidden motive,
which would otherwise be lost, and is of genuine
historic value. Thus Professor Gardiner, from his
intimate knowledge with the times of James I.
and Charles I., has been able to trace the political
element in the plays of Massinger. In these
dramas, Mr. Gardiner says, " Massinger treated of
the events of the day under a disguise hardly less
thin than that which shows off the figures in the
caricatures of Aristophanes or the cartoons of
Punch} Now Mr. Simpson's political interpretation
of " Richard II." and " Measure for Measure " rests
on evidence as sound, we think, as that produced
by Mr. Gardiner in his solution of "The Emperor
of the East," or " The Maid of Honour." In any
case Mr. Simpson's power to decipher the political,
religious, and dramatic allusions in Shakespeare can
be gauged by his writings published in the New
Shakespeare Society, Tramadwis, 1874-187 5, and
^ "Political Element in Massinger," New Shakespeare Society,
Transactions, 316. 1875.
PREFACE Vll
in various separate treatises. It is true, indeed,
that occasionally his interpretations may seem
strained and far-fetched, but even then they are
interesting as proofs of his ingenuity and research.
The present work is based on a folio MS. of Mr.
Simpson's of some 200 pages, which was composed
under the following circumstances. In 1858 Mr.
Simpson published three articles in the Bamhler, in
which he defended the probability of Shakespeare
being a Catholic. In 1864 there appeared a work
on the subject from the pen of M. Rio, the author
of L'Art Chretien. Taken with Simpson's argument,
Rio allowed his imagination free rein, and described
the poet as an ardent and avowed champion of
the Catholic faith, a conclusion far beyond that
of Simpson's. The two writers, notwithstanding
the totally different character of their works, were
however made the object of a common attack in
an article in the Edinburgh i^mew?, January 1866,
which was publicly attributed to Lord Mahon. It
was primarily as a reply to this article that the
folio above mentioned was written, but it developed
into a comprehensive treatise on the subject of
Shakespeare's philosophy and religion as manifested
in his writings.
But Mr. Simpson's treatise has needed both
remodelling and additions. In Simpson's day
Shakespeare was regarded, at least by such writers
as Knight and Bishop Wordsworth, as an orthodox
Protestant, a faithful follower of the established
religion. He is now represented as a pioneer of
" modern thought." Thus Professor Dowden,
Professor Caird, Mr. Tyler, and in Germany Itreysig
vm PREFACE
and Dr. Vehse, amongst others regard him as a
positivist, a pantheist, a fatahst, in short, a typical
agnostic.
By both these classes of critics Shakespeare, how-
ever, is claimed as the product of the Reformation.
And it is against this claim that the first chapter is
directed, where an endeavour is made to show that
Shakespeare, so far from being the product of his
times, or the voice of his times, was in direct an-
tagonism to his time. And this point is further
developed in Chapter III., in which the marked
contrast between Shakespeare and his contemporary
dramatists is set forth. That Shakespeare's prin-
ciples are as little in accord with the prevalent
solution of ethical questions as with the principles
intellectual, social, and moral of the Reformation,
from which those solutions are professedly derived.
Chapter IX. purposes to establish.
These three chapters have then been added to
Mr. Simpson's work by the present writer, who,
however, has derived valuable assistance from Mr.
Simpson's MS.
The other six chapters are mainly Mr, Simpson's.
Chapter II., "External Evidence," is drawn chiefly
from the JlamUers article (1858), save the addi-
tions called for by Mr. Carter's recent book, " Shake-
speare, Puritan and Protestant." Chapter IV., " The
English Historical Plays," is recast from the papers
read before the New Shakespeare Society, 1875.
Chapter V., " The Sonnets,*' is a summary of Mr.
Simpson's "Philosophy of the Sonnets" (1868), a
book undeservedly long since out of print. Chapter
VI., "The Love Plays"; Chapter VII., "The
PREFACE IX
Tragedies"; Chapter VIII., "The Didactic Plays,"
are now published for the first time, with such
additions or modifications as seemed necessary.
To preserve the unity of the whole, the parts
contributed by the present writer to the work are
incorporated with Mr. Simpson's ; but with the
above indication, their respective portions may be
sufficiently recognised. Any salient point of differ-
ence in their opinions is duly noted when it occurs.
The evidence adduced from Shakespeare's writings
in the following pages, which might be indefinitely
strengthened, brings out, we think, two points
clearly. First, that Shakespeare was not on the
winning side in his day in politics or religion ;
that he carefully avoided all those appeals to
popular prejudice about monks and nuns, popes
and cardinals, which form the farcical element of so
many plays of his time ; nay, more, that in adaf)ting
old plays he carefully expunged every satire of the
ancient faith. Secondly, that he not only habitually
extols the old order of things, but that he
studiously depreciates the new. He surveyed his
own times with an anguish, he says, that made
him " cry for death " (Sonnet 66). He speaks
to his contemporaries in language like that of
John Nichols — language couched on the lines,
we are told, of the Catholic sermons of the day.
" They told them how their forefathers lived,
how that in coming to churches they were very
diligent, in worshipping of images they were devout,
how painful in visiting holy places, how liberal with
the poor, how merciful with the afflicted, and how
careful to keep God's commandments. Where now
X PREFACE
are these good works (say they) ? What is become
of them ? Now one man seeketh to beguile another,
one man speaketh evil of another, their devotion to
the Church is waxen cold, charity towards the poor
is more than frozen." ^ This judgment of Nichols
on his times is, we believe, also that of Shakespeare.
The evidence in support of that opinion is now
submitted to the judgment of our readers.
Grateful thanks are due to the Very Rev. F.
Gasquet, D.D., O.S.B., the present possessor of Mr.
Simpson's papers, for the kind permission to make
free use of these documents ; to Rev. W. Gildea,
D.D., for his careful correction and revision of the
following work ; and to Brother Vincent Hayles, of
the Oratory, London, for many details obtained by
his varied research.
^ "John Nichols, A Declaration of the Recantation of." London:
Barker, February 19, 1591. Sig. L.iiii.
CONTENTS
Chapter (y
Shakespeare and the Reformation.
Drama, threefold purpose of
Its philosophy and religion
Catholicism and Protestantism
A poet and his Age
Reformation and Renaissance
The true Renaissance in Eng
land ....
Destructiveness of the Reform
Spenser's testimony
Origin of the Elizabethan
Drama
Shakespeare's imagery .
Catholic characteristics .
Two views of Nature
Protestantism and Nature
Catholicism and Nature .
Nature'sjgiO£l^_teafibij?£ ■
Flowers and animals
Employment of myths .
Nature's witness to God
Harmony of creation
Shakespeare and Montaigne
Pagan Love
True Love
Teaching of the Sonnets .
And the Plays
Isabella ....
Different judgments on her
" Romeo and Juliet "
Passion and Love ,
Sacrifice ....
PACK
I
2
3
4
5
6
7
9
lo
II-
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29.
Not in Protestantism
PAGK
30
Milton and Puritanism .
31
Keble and Anglicanism .
32
Protestant Ritual .
33
Shakespeare and scholasticism
34
Preference for Aristotle ,
35-
Shakespeare's use of casuistry
36
Equivocation .
37
Shakespeare and Architecture
38
Ruined shrines
39
Avarice of the Reformers
40
Hidden misery
41
Criminal prosecutions
42
Absolutism
43
Shakespeare's hatred of Tudoi
policy ....
44
Antagonism to his times .
45
Love of feudalism .
46
Use of Scripture
47
Satire on the New Gospel
48
Personal characteristics .
49
His reserve
50
Detachment .
51
World- weariness
52
Use of comedy
53
Self-condemnation .
54
Secret of his power .
55
Chapter II.
External Evidence.
State of religion in England .
56-
Visitation Returns .
57
Xll
CONTENTS
Early Christians and Catholics
Religion in Warwickshire
Guild of the Holy Cross ,
Ordinances of the Guild ,
Hospitality and Education
Religious discord . -
A wedding sermon .
The poet's parents .
John Shakespeare a burgess
Oath of Supremacy .
Comparative tolerance .
Religion in Stratford
Destruction of vestments
John Shakespeare's reverses
Ejected from the Corporation
The Recusancy-Returns ,
The penal statute .
The Warwickshire Commission
Its origin and purpose
Search for Papists .
The lists of Recusants
John Shakespeare's excuse
The plea of debt
List of conformed persons
Recusants in Shakespeare'
plays ....
Sham conformity
John Shakespeare's spiritual
testament .
Similar forms
Internal objecti<ms .
History of the document
Jordan's alleged forgery
Proofs of its genuineness
William Shakespeare's
tism ....
Marriage and burial
Leicester and Ardeu
Arden's death as a traitor
The deer-killing incident
Testimony of Davis
The Earl of Southampton
First successes
The Essex Conspiracy
bap
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78, 79
80
81
82
83
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
PAGE
" Richard II." . , .100
Failure of the conspiracy . loi
Accession of James . .102
Gunpowder Plot . . .103
Retirement to Stratford . .104
Jonson and Donne . . . 105
The minister at " New Place" 106
Protestant ministers . . 107
The poet's children . . 108
Death as a Papist . . .109
Burial in the chancel . 1 10, 1 1 1
Chaptkb III.
Contemporary Dramatists.
Religion and the stage . .112
Controversial dramas . • 113
Greene, Peele, and Marston . 114
Marlowe . . . . -US
Dekker and Webster . .116
"King John " . . .117
A canon of criticism . .118
Bale's " King John " . . II9
The Royal supremacy . .120
The anti-Papal speech . .121
Two interpretations . .122
Elizabeth and Catholics . .123
Shakespeare on tyrannicide . 124
Pandulph . . . .125
Vows and oaths . . .126
Shakespeare's alterations . 127
The excommimication . .128
Divine justice . . .129
Fauloonbridge . . .130
The death of John . . • 131
Moral of the play . . .132
Historical parallels . . .133
Result of Pandulph's action . 134
Falstaff 135
The forged play . . .136
Oldcastle, the "Lollard Mar-
ty" 137
The type of a hypocrite . .138
CONTENTS
XUl
Falstaff's use of Scripture 139
PACK
, 140
Sympathy with the poor .
PAGE
180
His attractiveness .
141
Types of nobleness .
181
A compound of opposites
142
False equality .
182
Dismissed the Court
143
The Lollard revolt .
183
Falstaff's death
144
Socialistic doctrines
184
Point of the satire .
145
Cade's communism .
185
Lollard morality
186
Norwich registers . .187
, 188
Chapter IV.
Precursors of the Reformation
189
English Historical Plays.
The Church .
The "Politicians" .
190
191
A drama, not a chronicle
146
Commodity
192
Idea of royalty
147
Liberty of conscience
193
The anointing
148
Churchmen
194
The " king's evil " . . 149
, 150
Cardinal Beaufort .
195
Forfeiture of the crown , 151
152
Cardinal Wolsey
196
Bolingbroke .
153
The Church and scandals
197
Neither Republican nor Abso-
Campion on Wolsey
198
lutist ....
'54
Wolsey's portrait
199
Miseries of royalty .
15s
Cranmer ....
200
The nobility .
156
" Henry VIIL," Act V. .
201
Evils of rebellion
157
Evidently an addition
202
Rebels mistrusted .
158
An anti- climax
203
Warnings repeated .
159
B. Thomas More
204
Condition of Catholics .
160
The minor prelates .
205
Foreign intrigues .
161
Archbishop Scroop .
206
Disaffected nobles .
162
The northern rising
207
Insurrection and religion
163
Archbishop Chicheley
208
Archbishop Scroop .
164
Cessation of miracles . 209
, 210
Henry V. . . .
165
The Black Art
211
The Eve of Agincourt
166
The trial of the priests .
212
Henry's piety .
167
The Duchess of Gloucester
213
"Non nobis " .
168
An ideal prince
169
"Henry VI."'
170
Chapter V.
The trilogy
171
The Sonnets.
Decline of the nobles
172
House of York
173
Their importance
214
Rise of the Commons
174
Not autobiographical
215
"Henry VIII." .
175
Anachronisms
216
Promotion of upstarts
176
Numerous sonneteers
217
The new nobility .
177
Serious and frivolous
218
Hypocrisy of Henry VIII.
. 178
Christian doctrine of Love
219
The people
• 179
Dante, Boetius
220
XIV
CONTENTS
PAGE
221
222
224,
223
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
False Love 236
237
238
239
240
Spenser's Hymns .
Love, earthly and spiritual
Theme of the Sonnets
Love of the senses
Imaginative Love
Its three stages
Ideal Love
Spirit and flesh
Spiritual desolation
Evils of his times
His rivals
Errors rectified
Self-accusation
Final oblation
The second series.
The tyranny of sin
Mutual degradation
Sparks of goodness
Final enslavement
AgreementofSonnetsandPlays 241
Patronage of Southampton . 242
Lamentations over his times . 243
The Southampton Library . 244
Chapter VI.
The Love Plays.
Origin of knowledge . . 245
Scholastic definitions . , 246
Love and philosophy . . 247
Love and religion . . . 248
** Love's Labour's Lost " . . 249
Comedy of the play . . 250
" Two Gentlemen of Verona " . 251
Idolatry, true and false . . 252
Love and friendship . . 253
Fire drives out fire . . . 254
" Comedy of Errors " . .255
The Abbess .... 256
" Merry Wives of Windsor " . 257
Clandestine marriages . . 258
" Midsummer-Night's Dream " 259
Imaginative Love . . 260-61
PAOE
Benedictio Thalami . . . 262
" Romeo and Juliet " . . 263
Friar Laurence . . . 264
The Friars and science . . 265
The Friar's influence . . 266
Consolations of philosophy . 267
Religious allusions . . . 268
Catholic phraseology . . 269
Old English hymns and rhymes 270
Evening Mass , . . .271
Ancient usage . . . 272
Liturgically correct . . . 273
" All's Well that Ends Well"
274, 275
The clown and the countess . 276
Belief in the supernatural . 277
" Taming of the Shrew " . . 278
" Much Ado about Nothing " . 279
"Twelfth Night" . . . 280-^
Malvolio the Puritan . .281,
The clown .... 282
" As You Like It " . . . 283
Political exiles . . 284
Wisdom in fools . . 285
A Convertite .... 286
Adam and Corin . . . 287
Models of dignity . . . 288
" Winter's Tale " . . .289
The solemn sacrifice . . 290
"The Tempest" . . . 291
Dantesque imagery. . . 292
Prayer to Our Lady . . 293
" Love's Labour's Won " , . 294
Ohaptkk VII.
Tragedies,
" Hamlet " literature . . 295
Hamlet's reserve . . . 296
The ghost .... 297
Moral diflBculties . . . 298
A perplexed conscience . . 299
Vindictive justice . . . 300
CONTENTS
XV
of
PAGE
304
305
306
The final resolve
The sovereign task
Ophelia ,
Hamlet's treatment of her
Hamlet and Brutus
Judicial execution
Shakespeare's view
spiracy.
Hamlet's mother
True beauty inward
Moral of "Hamlet "
Tragedy and suicide
Catholic allusions .
The last sacraments
Catholic oaths .
Prayei's for the dead
Laertes and the priest
The dirge for Ophelia
The Phoenix and Turtle
Polonius and Burghley
The ghost of Lord Stourton
320, 321
Father Cornelius
Hamlet and Essex
" Lear" .
Lear's absolutism
Religious allusions
Sacrificial conclusion
Edgar's devils .
Possessed persons
Shakespeare's belief
Angels .
Devils
Belief in portents
Omens
"Othello"
Religious allusions
Chaptee VIII.
Didactic Plays.
in spirits
307
308
309
310
3"
312
313
314
315
316
317
3<8
319
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
• 331
• 332
• 333
• 334
• 335
336, 337
Use of allegory
Political allusions
338
339
The stage and the Govern-
ment ....
" Merchant of Venice " .
Plea for toleration .
Effect of persecution
Ceremonial religion .
The guiled shore
A smiling villain
The rack ....
Order and degree .
^Measure for Measure " .
James I. and Catholics . 350
The Duke and Lucio
The penal code
Traitors by birth
External acts alone crimes
Judges should be holy
Absolution before execution
St. Bernard and the criminal
Votaress of St. Clair
The doctrine of penance .
The obligation of truth-tell
ing . ...
When necessary
Father Southwell's defence
Political deception .
The porter in " Macbeth "
"Cymbeline"
The Roman question
Invasion of Britain .
Adherence to custom
Posthumus and penance .
Preparation for death
Royal severity
"Troilus and Cressida" .
Theatrical strife
Religious allusion .
Thersites a preacher
The service and the God.
A state of grace
Grace and perseverance .
The engrafted word
The marriage service
Minor religious allusions .
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
XVI
CONTENTS
Chapter IX.
Shakespeare's Ethics.
PAGE
Modern morality
"The Manxman" .
Calvinism and fatalism .
383
"Othello" . . . .
Professor Caird's theory .
384
Shakespeare's heroines .
Human responsibility
38s
Essentially feminine
Key to his dramas .
386
Man's rational nature
Character result of act .
387
Moral dignity
Conscience
388
Nature and Tennyson
"Macbeth" .
389
Nature and Friar Laurence .
Consciousness of guilt
390
Modern pessimism .
Remorse ....
391
Failure of all things
Milton and Shakespeare .
392
Shakespeare's belief in God
Tenderness of Shakespeare
393
A personal Creator .
Moral maxims
394
Not God's spy
Avoidance of occasions .
395-
Devotion to Christ .
Religion and morality
396-
A Christian knight .
Eternal punishment'
397-
Preparation for death
Need of grace .
398-
Ripeness is all . . .
Prayer ....
399-
Pagan death . . . .
Prayer and sacrifice
400-
A Catholic death -bed
Unanswered prayer
40 L
Cleansing the sick soul .
THE
EELIGION OF SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER I.
SHAKESPEAEE AND THE REFORMATION.
Dramatic representation had with Shakespeare a
threefold end. Artistically its aim was, he says, to
reflect the image of creation, to " hold the mirror up
to nature." Hence it was essentially objective. His
creations were not arbitrarily drawn from his own
phantasy, but from existing types. Morally his in-
tention was to exhibit the great characteristics of
virtue and vice, to show virtue " her own image,
scorn her own feature," to portray what was essentially
and necessarily good or evil in its nature, origin,
development, and result. Historically, or politically,
its purpose was to set forth the "very form or
pressure of the age and body of the time." And
this meant, not the pedantic reading in of lessons
from parallel passages of history, nor a caricature
of passing events, drawn by the pen of a partisan,
A
2 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
but tlie presentation of the great questions of the
age, with what he conceived to be the best method
of their solution.
A Drama, then, according to Shakespeare, was a
moral discourse, and an historical and philosophical
essay, as well as a great poem. Hence, the ques-
tion arises, what system of morals or philosophy
is apparent in Shakespeare's plays ? And since
philosophy and religion alike profess to teach the
knowledge of things by their higher causes, and the
laws and principles of human conduct, we are
brought at once to the question of his creed, the
subject discussed in the following pages.
We are indeed sometimes told that such a dis-
cussion is useless, that the poet's writings furnish
no trustworthy data on this matter, that the scenes
and actions of his drama are strictly mundane,
that the characters work out their development
from purely natural causes and motives. Yet, in
spite of all this, the question is ever proposed
and answered anew. And this is so, because the
very nature of the poet's writings forbids the ex-
clusion of such an inquiry. He puts before us
types of good and evil ; what is his attitude towards
them ? He treats of human nature ; does he make
man a free and responsible agent, or the mechanical
slave of destiny ? He constantly speaks of God ;
does he mean a personal and intelligent, omniscient,
omnipotent, and all- perfect Creator, or a mere
anima mundi, coincident with the phenomena of
CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM 3
the universe, and bound by its laws ? He is the
poet of love ; is his theme sensual passion or the
celestial fire ? Lastly, every play is a comment on
human life; where, with Shakespeare, is its final
purpose found, in this world, or the next ?
These questions then arise, and according to some
writers, English and German, Shakespeare in setting
forth their solution proves himself the representative
of the positive practical view of life inaugurated by
the Reformation, In the past, Catholicism with its
mysticism, dogmatism, and asceticism, taught man
that he was a stranger in this world, and that his
true home and 'patria were in heaven. According
to Protestantism, on the other hand, the spirit of
England in the time of Elizabeth, " to be great, to do
great things [here] seemed better than to enter the
celestial city, and forget the city of destruction;
better than to receive in ecstasy the vision of a
divine mystery, or to be fed with miraculous food." ^
" A vigorous mundane vitality thus constitutes the
basis of the Elizabethan drama," ^ and as Shakespeare
was the product of this time, he was necessarily the
exponent of its spirit.^
^ Dowden, "Mind and Art of Shakespeare," 18 (1892).
^ Ibid., p. 23.
3 The following passage, quoted from Professor Dowden with
approval from Dr. Edward Vehse, is in substance his own view of
Shakespeare's philosophy : " Shakespeare der ungelehrte, unstudirte
Dichter ist der erste in welchem sich der moderne Geist, der von
der Welt weiss, der die gesammte Wirklichkeit zu begreifen sucht,
energisch zusammenfasst. Dieser moderne Geist ist der gerade
Gegensatz des mittelalterlichen Geistes ; er erfasst die Welt und
4 SHAKESPEARE ANJ) THE REFORMATION
Now we admit that tlie poet usually is, in a sense,
the product of his age, and speaks with its voice,
and where an age has been stamped by one dominant
idea, the poet has often been its exponent and
panegyrist. Thus Homer represents the Hellenic
world of his day; he adopts its crude notions of
heaven and earth, its human gods, its simple customs ;
while its unceasing combats and its heroes' valiant
deeds, as sung by him, tend to glorify the Greek
nation. Virgil discovers in the mythological descent
of the Latin race a prophecy of its future triumph,
culminating in the empire of Augustus and in the
inauguration of a reign of peace. Dante, again, gives
us in the Commedia the whole culture of his time.
Its philosophy, astronomy, arts, politics, history, to-
gether with pagan myths and mediaeval legends, all
serve to illustrate his theme and are brought into
unity and order by the theology of the Church. He
calls his work
" The sacred poem that hath made
Both heaven and earth copartners in the toil." ^
The sixteenth century was, however, a transitional
period, and embraced three very diverse systems
of thought. First came Catholicism. This included
the whole Christian tradition of the past fifteen
centuries, the learning of East and West, the philo-
namentlich die innere Welt als ein StUck des Himmels, and das
Leben als einen Theil der Ewigkeit." — Shakespeare als Protestant,
Politiker, Pyschdog und Dichier, i. 62 ; "Mind and Art," 13.
* Par. XXV. I.
REFORMATION AND RENAISSANCE 5
sophy of Greece, as found in the writings of St.
Augustine and the Fathers, of St. Thomas and the
Scholastics, and also the Christian Renaissance with
its classic scholarship, its critical examination of texts
and codices, and its revival in the arts and architec-
ture as guided and sanctioned by the Church. Next
came the heathenising Renaissance. Its aim, whether
in the arts, learning, or philosophy, was the revival
of Paganism, to the exclusion of Christianity, and
its ultimate end was solely man's temporal pleasure
and satisfaction. Thirdly came the religious revolt
of Luther, Calvin, and Cranmer, which was slightly
differentiated in each country by the special influ-
ences determining its development. The latter two
systems, though united in their rejection of the Papal
authority, and in a common materialistic tendency,
were by no means in complete agreement ; for the
dominant party in the reform was alike opposed to
learning or art of any kind, and it is strange that
the Reformation and the Renaissance should ever
be spoken of as one and the same movement.^
When, then, and where do we find the true
Renaissance in England ? The sixty years following
on the wars of the Roses, and immediately preceding
the Reformation; i.e. from about 1470 to the fall
of Wolsey, witnessed ,the new birth in learning and
architecture. The chief leaders of the new learn-
ing were William Sellyng, the Benedictine monk
^ Of. Professor Dowden, "Mind and Art of Shakespeare," 11
(1892). Professor Caird, Contemporary Review, Ixx. 820.
6 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
of Canterbury, the pioneer of Greek scholarship
in this country, Grocyn, Linacre, Dean Colet, Sir
Thomas More, Archbishop Warham, and Abbot Bere
of Canterbury, to whom Erasmus sent his Greek
Testament for revision.-^
The ecclesiastical revival was manifested in the
quantity and magnificence of the work done in
church-building, restoration, and decoration. Among
the more notable examples may be mentioned
King's College, Cambridge, 1472-15 15; Eton Col-
lege, founded 1441, completed about 1482-3; St.
George's Chapel, Windsor, 147 5-1 52 1 ; Henry VII.'s
Chapel, Westminster, 1502-15 15, both the work of
Sir Reginald Braye ; Bath Abbey, rebuilt by Bishop
King, 1495-1503, and Prior Birde, and finished
under Prior Holloway only six years before the
surrender of the Abbey to Henry VIII. in 1533;
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, built by Bishop
Fox of Winchester, i 501-1528, in conjunction with
Prior Silkstede ; also Fox's beautiful chantry at Win-
chester, and the carved wooden pulpit of Silkstede ;
Jesus College, Cambridge ; the Collegiate Church at
Westbury, founded by John Alcock, Bishop of Ely,
1 486- 1 500; the chantries in Ely of Bishop Red-
man, 1 501-1506, and of Bishop West, 15 15-1534;
Brazenose College, Oxford, founded by William
Smith, Bishop of Lincoln, 1496, and Sir Richard
Sutton; St. John's College, Cambridge, founded at
the advice of Bishop Fisher, by Margaret Beaufort,
^ Gasquet, " The Old English Bible and other Essays, "317 (1897).
DESTRUCTIVENESS OF THE REFORM 7
Countess of Riclamond, who also built a school and
chantry and other works at Wimbome Minster;
Christ Church, Oxford, and Ipswich College, founded
by Cardinal Wolsey ; St. Asaph's Cathedral, rebuilt
by Bishop Redman, 1471-1475 ; Bangor Cathedral,
rebuilt by Bishops Dene and Skevington, 1496-
1533-
Such, then, is a brief and imperfect outline of
the work effected and the spirit shown by the true
Renaissance in England. That it was Catholic and
Roman is seen both from the character of its pro-
moters and the nature of their works. Now what
was the action of the Reformation ? Did it give a
fresh stimulus to learning, or found a new era in
religious art ? The colleges and schools founded
under Elizabeth and Edward VI. are sometimes
quoted as marking the dawn of education in the
country. As a fact, they represent a miserably in-
adequate attempt to repair the losses effected by
the new barbarism.
The Reformation was inaugurated by the dis-
solution of the monasteries, the dispersion of their
libraries with their unique treasures of codices and
manuscripts, and completed with the spoliation of
the churches and the destruction of the highest works
of art in the kingdom. The mural decorations of
cathedral, church, and shrine, some of which, as
the retable of Westminster Abbey, were of very
high excellence, and only just completed, were all
obliterated by whitewash or distemper. The wood-
8 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
carving, the rood-screen with its "goodly images,"
the carved stalls, canopies, and magnificent embossed
roofs, perished under the hands of the reforming
iconoclasts. The metal-work, the silver and gilt
shrines, images, reliquaries, lamps, crucifixes, candle-
sticks, chalices, patens, monstrances, pyxes, proces-
sional and pastoral staves, spoons, cruets, ewers,
basins, the jewelled clasps for missals, antiphonaries,
and copes, all these works of an art which, in Italy,
was stimulating the genius of a Cellini, in England
passed into the royal melting-pot, to the value of
some ;^85o,ooo of present money, or nearly a
million sterling.^ The painting of the needle shared
a similar fate. The richly embroidered chasubles,
copes, dalmatics, maniples, stoles, were consumed in
huge bonfires, or became furniture in the palaces of
the king and the new nobles, and the art of em-
broidery, as of metal-work, for religious purposes
ceased to be.
That this account is not exaggerated may be seen
in Spenser. As a courtier he extolled Elizabeth
and all her works, and vilified grossly the ancient
faith. But as a poet and philosopher he was wholly
opposed to the new order of things. In the " Tears
of the Muses," while paying, of course, the usual com-
pliment to the " divine Eliza," he deplores the degra-
dation of the public taste, the contempt for learning,
the universal sway of " ugly barbarism " and brutish
1 Gasquet, " Henry VIH. and the Monasteries," vol. ii, 3rd ed.,
417.
tHE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 9
ignorance, of " scoffing scurrility and scornful folly."
Spenser was in truth very far from being the Puritan
that Mr. Carter would make him.^ His whole
theory of sacrificial love is, as we shall see, directly
opposed to the school of Geneva. In the " Faerie
Queene " itself the Red-Cross Knight is purified on
the lines of Catholic asceticism, and under the
character of the " Blatant Beast," Puritanism with
its destroying hand and railing bitter tongue, is thus
described : —
" From thence into the sacred church he broke
And robbed the chancel, and the desks downthrew
And altar fouled and blasphemy spoke,
And the images for all their godly hue
Did cast to ground, whilst none there was to rue
So all confounded and disordered there."
— Book vi.
Was, then, a movement so levelling and destructive
likely to produce the dramatic and poetic outburst
of the Shakespearian age ? That movement, with
its brief duration of some fifty years, came indeed
in spite of the Reformation, not because of it. No
doubt the circumstances of the time, the wealth and
ease of the court and its supporters, called for such
entertainment as the drama supplied. But the plots
as well as the style and art of the great English poets
and dramatists came, not from Germany or Switzer-
land, but from Italy. Dante, Ariosto, Petrarch, not
Luther or Calvin, were the masters of Wyatt and
^ "Shakespeare, Puritan and Recusant," 79.
10 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
Surrey and of their disciples. An impartial exam-
ination of Shakespeare's writings will, we believe,
make clear that Shakespeare was no " product of
the Reformation."^
First, consider one of his chief poetic characteristics,
his imagery. It is only by symbols that the poet's
theme, the spiritual, the ideal, the supersensuous,
finds expression ; and of all poets, Shakespeare is
perhaps the richest in his creative power. He has
a figure, a metaphor for every thought ; his images
seem to come spontaneously and to express exactly
their maker's idea. He speaks himself as if these
operations of his phantasy were produced in a kind
of ecstasy.
" The poet's eye, in a fine phrenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven ;
And as imagination bodies forth
The form of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothings
A local habitation and a name."
— Midsummer -NighVs Dream, v. i.
Now, much of his imagery is drawn from religious
subjects ; of what kind, then, is it ? He was per-
fectly free to choose either the new creed or the
old, for he never allowed himself to be hampered
by dramatic conventionalities, and he frequently
commits glaring anachronisms. We find, then, that
' " And remark here as rather curious, that Middle Age Catholi-
cism was abolished as far as Acts of Parliament could abolish it,
before Shakespeare, the noblest product of it, made his appear-
ance."— Carlyle, Heroes and Ilero Worship.
CATHOLIC IMAGERY II
the object ot his predilection is the ancient faith,
and he introduces the Church of Rome, her minis-
ters and doctrines and rites, not, after the manner of
Spenser, as a type of falsehood and corruption, nor
like Marlowe and Greene, as the symbol of exploded
superstition, but as the natural representative of
things high, pure, and true, and therefore to be treated
with reverence and respect. Take, for example, his
illustration, drawn from vestments, of how royalty
enhances its dignity by habitual seclusion ; and
remember that, when he wrote, vestments were
being publicly burnt, as has been said, for popish,
massing, idolatrous stuff.
" Thus did I keep my person fresh and new,
My presence like a robe pontifical,
Ne'er seen but wondered at ; and so my state,
Seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast,
And won by rareness such solemnity."
— I Henry IV., iii. 2.
The same idea is expressed in the Sonnets, where
he compares, and in the same religious tone, the
visits of his beloved in their rareness and worth to
great feasts, precious pearls, and costly robes : —
" Therefore are Feasts so solemn and so rare
Since seldom coming in the long year set,
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
Or captain-jewels in the carcanet.
So is the time that keeps you as my chest,
Or as the wardrobe which the robe does hide,
To make some special instant special blest
By new unfolding his imprisoned pride."
— Sonnet cii.
12 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
The readiness and aptitude with which he avails
himself of Catholic imagery are manifested again
and again. He puts before us temples, altars,
priests, friars, nuns, the mass, sacrifices, patens of
gold, chalices, incense, relics, holy crosses, the invo-
cation of saints and angels, the sign of the cross,
the sacraments of baptism, penance, holy eucharist,
extreme unction, details of the ritual, as for instance
the Benedidio Thalami. All these and many other
CathoHc rites and usages are introduced with a
delicacy and fitness possible only for a mind habi-
tuated to the Church's tone of thought. Nay
more, when he is recasting an anti-Catholic play,
as in the case of " King John," he is careful to ex-
punge the ribald stories against Nuns and Friars,
notwithstanding the popularity of such tales with
the audiences of the time. He drew indeed from
the new creed his Falstaif, Malvolio, and Holofernes,
types of the hypocrite, the canting knave, the
pedant, but turned to the ancient faith for his
images of what was noble and sacred.
The other chief source of Shakespeare's imagery
was Nature itself. There are, broadly speaking
two views of Nature — the Catholic, the Protestant.
What may be the Protestant view at the present
day is perhaps difficult to determine, for Protes-
tantism is fluctuating and manifold. But the Pro-
testantism of Shakespeare's day was clearly defined.
Nature was a synonym for discord. Man through
his fall was in essential discord with God; the
PROTESTANTISM AND NATURE 1 3
lower world was in discord with man. The Re-
demption had brought no true healing of this
rupture ; for salvation was wrought, not by internal
restoration, but by mere outward acceptance. Saint
and sinner were intrinsically alike. In saint as in
sinner there was, to use the words of a reformed
confession of faith, " an intimate, profound, inscru-
table, and irreparable corruption of the entire nature,
and of all the powers, especially of the superior and
principal powers of the soul." ^ The saint, a sinner
in his nature and his powers, is a sinner also in
all his works, for the products of corruption must
be themselves corrupt. His corruption is subjec-
tive and intrinsic; his justification is objective and
extrinsic. He has apprehended by faith the merits
of Christ, and God no longer imputes the sin that
is truly there. Nor will God impute to him the
sinfulness of his works, so long as by faith he
continues to apprehend the saving merits of Christ.
But the essential corruption of his nature always
remains. The lower world is as divorced from
man as man has become divorced from God. The
destiny of inferior creatures had been a higher one
than that of ministering to the earthly needs of
man. Their oflSce had been to speak to him of
God, to inspire him with the love of God, to be
as the steps of a ladder which leads the soul to
^ Solida Declaratio, i. 31. The Solida Declaratio drawn up (1577)
after Luther's death was the authorised Lutheran Confession of
Faith.
14 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
God. But their power of appeal has vanished.
The mind of man has grown darkened; he cannot
see in creatures the beauty of Him that made
them. The will of man has grown hardened; he
can no longer see in creatures the bounty and
goodness of the Lord. Creatures can teach man
no moral lesson, for man is no longer a moral being.
His freedom of will has left him ; his instincts are
all towards vice. Nature can only find food for his
passions and minister to the vices of his fallen estate.
Catholicism, on the other hand, presents a pic-
ture the reverse of this. Man has indeed forfeited
his supernatural estate by sin; but his nature
though fallen remains unchanged ; and every crea-
ture by nature is good, and by grace man can and
does recover his supernatural condition. From God
all things proceed, and to Him they return by
obedience to His law and by the mutual offices
they respectively discharge. No creature is a sepa-
rate or independent unit, but each is in a necessary
relation and correspondence with its fellows. From
the lowest to the highest, all things in their genera,
classes, kingdoms are in an ascending scale, in
which the lower order ministers to the higher, and
is ennobled thereby.
From which point of view does Shakespeare re-
gard nature ? He dwells at times on its fairness.
He can speak of the glorious morn —
" Kissing with golden face the meadow green,
Bathing the pale stream with heavenly alchemy."
NATURES MORAL TEACHING 15
To him nature is no accursed thing. It is a scene
of wondrous beauty. But he valued nature chiefly
as a storehouse whence he drew moral lessons. To
Shakespeare nature was the mirror of the human
soul with its joys and sorrows, and its virtues and
vices. " Each drama," says Heine,^ " has its own
special elements, its definite season, with all its
characteristics. Heaven and earth bear as marked
a physiognomy as the personages of the play."
" Romeo and Juliet," with its theme of passionate
love, speaks of summer heat and beauty and fra-
grance. Lear's wreck, political and physical, is
attested by the thunder and drenching storm.
Macbeth's crime is conceived on the blasted heath
and in the witches' cave. Flowers and plants, again,
each have their significance. The rose, above all,
as with the classics and with Dante, is the chief
symbol of innocence, purity, and love. Of the
murdered princes Forrest says —
" Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,
Which in their summer beauty kissed each other."
— Richard III., iv. 3.
Percy compares Richard II. as the sweet rose to
the thorn Buckingham. Hamlet says his mother's
second marriage was such an act
" That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of innocent love,
And sets a blister there." — Hamlet, iii. 4.
1 Works, iii. 312, ed. Rotterdam (1895).
1 6 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
The whole story of Viola's secret attachment is thus
related : —
" She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek." — Twelfth Night, ii. 4.
Lilies, again, are the emblems of chastity, but
" Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."
— Sonnet xciv.
Ophelia in "Hamlet" and Perdita in "Winter's Tale"
teach many a lesson on the symbolism of flowers ;
and the gardener in "Richard II." finds in the
neglected garden the image of the king's misrule : —
" The whole land
Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up,
Her fruit trees all unpruned, her hedges mixed,
Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars." — Richard II., iii. 4,
The animal world supplies images mostly of the
evil passions of man. Shy lock has a " tiger's heart,"
Goneril, "boarish fangs." Edgar describes himself
as a "hog in sloth, a fox in stealth, a wolf in
greediness, a dog in madness, a lion in prey."
Richard III. is a bloody and usurping boar, a foul
swine. On the other hand, the lark in its rising
typifies prayer ; the swallow in its swiftness, hope
piercing every obstacle ; the eagle, strength, majesty,
loyalty.
Nature, then, with Shakespeare furnishes a theme,
not for mere pastoral melodies or idyllic strains,
though of these we have some exquisite examples.
EMPLOYMENT OF MYTHS 17
but for deep moral lessons ; and this parable teach-
ing of the visible world is rendered more forcible
and more graphic by being frequently presented
through the medium of classic myths and deities.
For with Shakespeare, as with Dante, the pagan
fable is made the preacher of Christian truth. One
of his most Christian and Catholic dramas in its
moral teaching is perhaps " The Tempest " ; and its
lessons are inculcated by the aid of witches and
fairies ; of Isis, Ceres, and Juno ; of nymphs and
spirits, the demi-puppets evoked by Prospero's staff;
nor without them would the tale or moral ever
have had the same dramatic force.-^ The same may
be said of " Cymbeline," of " Midsummer - Night's
Dream," and many others, where the Christian idea
is conveyed through a heathen rite or myth. To
take what was true in Paganism, while rejecting ly^
what was false, had been the work of the Christian
poets and philosophers from the first. But what
we wish to draw special attention to is that such a
philosophy of nature, which finds
" Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything "
— As You Like, It, ii. i,
is in its very essence opposed to the fundamental
doctrine of the Reformation, as we have already
shown.
^ Ariel imprisoned in the cloven pine and Caliban immersed in
the foul lake are distinctly Dantesque images. Cf. Inferno, cantos
vii. and viii.
B
1 8 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
But more. In the doctrine of the Catholic Church
not only does Nature in its individual and several
parts inculcate and illustrate moral lessons, but
Nature in its entirety is like a magnificent sym-
phony proclaiming the praises of God. Thus
creation becomes a many-tongued choir, and the
elements, plants, animals, man himself, intone to-
gether, in union with the angels, the praises of their
Creator. In perhaps the oldest inspired poem we
read of the music of the spheres, " The stars praising
me together, the sons of God making glad melody "
(Job xxviii. 7). The same theme repeats itself in
the Psalms, and is the kejrnote of the Paradiso —
" When as tlie whieel which thou dost ever guide,
Desired Spirit ! with its harmony
Tempered of thee and measured, charmed mine ear,
Then seemed to me so much of heaven to blaze
With the sun's flame, that rain or flood ne'er made
A lake so broad. The newness of the sound,
And that great light, inflamed me with desire,
Keener than e'er was felt, to know their cause."
— Paradiso, i. 74-81.
Here, then, it is light, as the instrument of God's
power and the witness of His presence, which both
produces the motion and evokes the harmony of
the spheres, and this light and motion are love —
Luce intellettual pien d'amore. And so in Shake-
speare. In the sweetness of the moonlight and the
effulgence of the stars the music of the heavens
becomes audible, and the smallest orb joins in alter-
HARMONY OF CREATION 1 9
nate choirs with, the angels, and each immortal soul
gives forth its own harmony, inspired and moved by
love.
" How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank !
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears : soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold !
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Stil quiring to the young-eyed cherubims :
Such harmony is in immortal souls ;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it,"
— Merchant of Venice, v. i.
Now it might have been thought that such a
conception of creation and of men and their rela-
tion to God shows clearly the Catholic character
of Shakespeare's cosmology. But no. Though the
poet's idea is found in the revealed Word, in the
works of Dionysius the Areopagite, in St. Augustine,
in St. Thomas, and Dante, it is derived from none
of these sources, but, according to Professor Elze,^
from Montaigne. Now Montaigne nowhere teaches
the existence of unity, order, or harmony in crea-
tion. On the contrary, he held that all knowledge,
whether acquired by sense or reason, was necessarily
uncertain ; and of the music of the spheres he inci-
dentally observes, that it is inaudible to us, because
our hearing is so dulled by the ceaseless clamour of
^ I. 22 ; Hense, " Shakespeare," 361.
20 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
created things.^ Here, then, the unbroken and uni-
versal tradition of some fifteen centuries is to be
ignored in favour of the shallow casual remark of
this French sceptical essayist. But Shakespeare's
teaching finds too commonly a spurious origin.
Does Hamlet say that there is nothing good or evil
(in the physical order), but thinking makes it so ? ^
This idea of his is borrowed from the pantheist,
Giordano Bruno, who was in London from 1583
to 1586, just after Shakespeare's arrival there, and
who denied the existence (in the moral order) of
either absolute good or evil.^ Again, Hamlet's
* " We need not go seek what our neighbours report of the
cataracts of the Nile, and what Philosophers deem of the
Celestial music, which is that the bodies of its circles being solid,
smooth, and in their roving motion touching and rubbing against
one another, must of necessity produce a wonderful harmony ; by
the changes and entercaprings of which, the revolutions, motions,
cadences, and carols of the asters and planets are caused and
transported. But that universally the hearing and senses of these
old worlds' creatures, dizzied and lulled asleep, as those of the
Egyptians are, by the continuation of that sound, how loud and
great soever it be, cannot sensibly perceive or distinguish the
same." — Montaigne's Essays (Florio's trans.), i. 22, ed. 1892, modern-
ised spelling.
It is only fair to Montaigne to state, that though philosophically
a sceptic in matters of belief, he professed entire and loyal allegi-
ance to the Church of Rome. His position was that of an extreme
Traditionalist, and with the strange want of logic that is char-
acteristic of the Traditionalist position he held that P'aith is best
honoured by divorcing it from reason. In his essay " On Prayer "
he submits "his rhapsodies," as he calls his writings, to the
judgment of the Church, and he died, having received the last
sacraments.
^ B. Thomas More expresses the same thought in " Dialogues of
Comfort."
' Tschifschwiz, Shakespeare- For schurv/en (1568), i. 65.
PAGAN LOVE 21
praise of Horatio's equanimity, which " takes buffets
and reward with equal thanks," proves Shakespeare
a Stoic. The poet's desire for the immortaHty of
his verse in praise of his beloved, indicates his dis-
belief in the immortality of the soul. His phrase,
" the prophetic soul of the world," proves his pan-
theism; and the duty of meeting necessities as
necessities clearly shows his determinism.
With these various points in his philosophy we
shall deal later as occasion arises. We now proceed
to take the one essential point of his philosophy,
namely, his teaching on love. It will mark for us
the distinction between the true and false Renais-
sance already spoken of; for the Renaissance poets
were pagan or Christian according to their teaching
on this theme. The object of the pagan love was
the satisfaction of the senses, the pleasure that could
be derived here and now at any cost. Lorenzo Valla,
the leader of the heathen Renaissance, in his "Gospel
of Pleasure," made sensuality a virtue, because it was
natural.^ Beccadelli in his Epigrams,^ which are of
singular poetic grace, is even more materialistic, and
the majority of Shakespeare's contemporaries fol-
lowed this teaching. " If I may have my desire
Avhile I live, I am satisfied ; let me shift after death
as I may," writes Greene in his " Groatsworth of
Wit." And though he confessed his vices with tears,
his life and his poetry were based on these lines.
^ Be Voluptate et Vera bono, Libri iii.
^ Hermaphroditus, v. ; Pastor, "History of the Popes," vol. i. 13.
2 2 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
The triumph, of sensuahsm, the glorification of
beauty, the gratification of the passions, with the
consequent profligacy, crime, treachery, cruelty,
poisoning, and murder — these form the basis of
Marlowe's "Jew of Malta," Webster's "Duchess of
Malfi," of his "White Devil," of Ford's "'Tis Pity,"
among many others. A picture of this school is seen
in Jonson's " Every Man out of His Humour " ; and
it reads like a chapter from Symond's " Renaissance
in Italy." But there was another school of Eng-
lish dramatists, including Surrey, Sidney, Spenser,
whose theme indeed was love, but the object of love
with them was not the outward fairness of form
or face, but the inward beauty of truth and holi-
ness, as sung by Catholic poets in all time. Thus
Sidney writes : —
" Leave me, 0 love, wliich reacheth but to dust,
And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things ;
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust ;
Whatever fades but fading pleasure brings.
Oh, take fast hold, let that light be thy guide
In this small course which birth draws out of death."
— Last Sonnet.
Thus Spenser : —
" For love is Lord of truth and loyalty,
Lifting himself out of the lowly dust
On golden plumes up to the purest sky,
Above the reach of loathly sinful lust,
Wliose base affect, through cowardly distrust
Of his weak wings, dare not to heaven fly,
But like a moldwark in the earth doth lie."
— Hymn in Honour of Love, i';^6-i82.
TEACHING OF THE SONNETS 23
If we find vestiges of Catholic teaching on this
subject in Sidney and Spenser, we find the doc-
trine fully worked out in Shakespeare. We do
not include the poems " Venus and Adonis " and
" Lucrece." It is true that the poet deals with the
subject as a spectator, not as an actor, and teaches
incidentally some deep moral truths ; yet his theme
in these poems and his descriptions are of " loathly
sinful lust,'' not of pure Christian love. Like
Chaucer, like Spenser, Shakespeare had reason for
bewailing these, the compositions of his youth. It
is far otherwise with the work of his life, the sonnets
and the plays.
In the sonnets which, according to Simpson,
embody the poet's philosophy of love cast in alle-
gorical form, the battle of life, as experienced in his
own soul, is fought between true and intellectual
and false and sensual love, or the " loves of comfort
and despair." The object of true love is described
now as a youth of exceeding beauty, now as an
angel ; of false love, " a woman coloured ill." In
the first series of sonnets (1-125) the youth leads
the poet, much as Beatrice did Dante, not without
severe conflict, much failure, and many tears, above
the pleasure of sense, above the creation of phantasy,
to the stage of ideal love ; and with each succeeding
step a higher conception is formed of the purity
and devotion his love requires, and of the falsehood
and nothingness of the world in which he lives. At
last, by a supreme act of oblation and consecration,
24 SHAKESPEAEE AND THE REFORMATION
the poet dedicates himself, in words taken from the
Church's Liturgy, to the one, eternal, and only, fair.
The second series (123-146) show the misery of
false, sensual love, and of the soul vanquished and
wrecked by the siren's charms. The delusion con-
sequent upon such a state, the degradation and
blindness of the soul enslaved, its vain attempts
at freedom, the fickleness and tyranny of the des-
troyer are clearly portrayed, and mark the essential
opposition in the poet's mind between sensual and
spiritual love.
And if it be said that this conclusion is only
obtained by a strained, allegorical interpretation of
the sonnets, at least of the first series, if we turn
to the comedies and tragedies we find the same
truth. The action of the play, the development
of the characters for good or evil, the final issue
for happiness or woe, are determined as the domi-
nating principle is true, pure love or disordered
passion. Nor does Shakespeare ever allow this
issue to be confused. The principle of degree,
order, priority, which he considers a fundamental
law in the physical universe and also, as we shall see,
in the body politic, applies with equal strictness to
the moral sphere, the government of the appetites
in the human soul. The lower appetite must yield
to the higher, sense to reason, and this at any cost.
All love, true or false, demands the surrender of all
else for the one object : but in the one case the
sacrifice ennobles and perfects the victim, in the
ISABELLA 2 5
other, it degrades and destroys. " Omnis disor-
dinatio poena sua" — Every disordered act brings
its own punisliment. Isabella, in " Measure for
Measure," is the most perfect type of true love.
Votarist or Postulant of St. Clare, she is " dedicate
to nothing temporal." " By her renouncement " she
had become, even in the eyes of the licentious and
scurrilous Lucio, a " thing enskied and sainted," an
immortal spirit. Yet hers is no spectral figure,
devoid of human feeling. She is not a spirit, but
a woman, and her natural affections are intensifi.ed,
because purified by her supernatural love ; and she
undertakes the advocacy of Claudio, " though his
is the vice she most abhors." The nature of true
love is seen in the choice made between her honour
and her brother's life. In both Cinthio's "Epitia"
and Whetstone's " Cassandra," the sources of Shake-
speare's plot, the heroines yield their chastity for
their brother's sake ; and, were domestic love the
highest, their conduct would be worthy of praise.
Isabella has no doubt ; and her decision is inflexibly
rooted, not from any principle of independent
morality, but because her love of the All pure was
her life, her life eternal, and
" Better it were, a brother died at once,
Than that a sister, by redeeming him,
Should die for ever,"
— Measure for Measure, ii. 4.
She had rather be scourged and flayed than yield
26 SHAKESPEARE AND THE EEFORMATION
her body " to such abhorred pollution." She casts
off her brother and his sophistries as a foul tempter,
defies him, and bids him perish. No wonder that
her conduct has been so generally criticised for
its gloom and ascetism. Hazlitt " has not much
confidence in the virtue that is sublimely good at
other people's expense." Knight finds the play full
of revolting scenes. Coleridge thinks it the most
painful of Shakespeare's plays. To the Catholic,
Isabella represents the noblest ideal, the brightest,
most blessed of Shakespeare's heroines, as the type
of supernatural charity or of the highest sacrificial
love.
In contradiction of what has been said, " Romeo
and Juliet " is quoted by rationalist critics to show
that Shakespeare knew nothing of this distinction of
spiritual and sensual love. Romeo and Juliet are his
ideals of perfect love, and the character of their affec-
tion was passionate throughout. " Such love," says
Kreyzig, " is its own reward : life has nothing further
to offer." But, all would admit, we suppose, that the
poet never intended to exhibit in each play a type
of absolute morality, but such a manner of conduct
as essentially befitted the character represented.
Thus Cleopatra and Cressida are dramatically perfect
characters ; but morally they are a shame to their
sex. Now, Romeo and Juliet are types of passionate
love, that is, love in which passion, not reason, is
the dominant principle. The passions indeed are not
evil, they are part of our nature, and are powerful
ROMEO AND JULIET 2/
agencies for good, but within their proper sphere,
and under the control of reason. Without such
control, when the senses or feelings master reason,
misery and disorder follow ; and this is exactly what
we find in " Komeo and Juliet." The whole play
portrays the consequences of ill-regulated passion.
The scene is laid in an Italian summer, and the
emotions of Komeo and Juliet are at fever heat.
Impetuosity, vehemence, agitation, disturbance, mark
their conduct throughout. The whole action con-
sumes but five days from the Sunday to the follow-
ing Friday morning. Within this space of time
are the first meeting of the lovers, the stolen
interview, the secret marriage, the duel, Tybalt's
death, Romeo's banishment, and the double suicide
of Romeo and Juliet. The whole lesson of the
play is taught by Friar Lawrence in explicit
terms : —
" These violent delights have violent ends,
And in their triumph die ; like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss, consume : the sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,
And in the taste confounds the appetite :
Therefore love moderately ; long love doth so ;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow."
— Romeo and Juliet, ii. 6.
Just as the " Midsummer-Night's Dream " shows
the folly of love based merely on the imagination,
so " Romeo and Juliet " manifests the ruin which
follows in love, which, though not coarse or sensual,
2 8 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
is still determined mainly by passion. Thus Hamlet
repeats Friar Lawrence's teaching : —
" What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending doth the purpose lose.
The violence of either grief or joy
Their own enactions with themselves destroy."
— Hamlet, in. 2.
And the reason is that the object of passion is
something here and now, and therefore temporal
and passing, and when it passes leaves a blank, for
" this world is not for aye." The object of true
love must be, like Silvia, " holy, fair, and wise " ; the
love it inspires knows neither doubt nor fear nor
change, and the bond it forms is eternal.
" Love is not love
Which alters when it alterations finds
Or bends with the remover to remove :
Oh no ! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken ;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken ;
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come ;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out, even to the edge of doom."
— Sonnet ^x^
We have now said enough to determine a further
characteristic in Shakespeare's love philosophy, since
the object of true love with him is the eternal
truth, goodness, and beauty, and is only to be won
by the renouncement of all else for its sake, love
and reUgion with Shakespeare become identified, and
SACRIFICE 29
religion like love bears an essentially sacrificial
character, as we shall see in detail in our considera-
tion of the love plays. In what religions, then, is
the idea of sacrifice found ?
We find it in the old-world religions, and obscured
indeed, but still expressed in the Greek tragedies
in their doctrine of the nemesis consequent on sin,
and the possibility and hope of a Divine atonement.
It is seen again, but in its fulness and completeness,
in the Catholic Church, and in the miracle and
mystery plays of the Middle Ages, which were based
in one way or other on the central mystery of the
atoning sacrifice of the Redemption. But we may
look for it in vain in the teaching of the Reformers.
Their theory of salvation by election alone, already
noticed, and its correlative doctrine of the worth-
lessness of works, excluded all idea of any sacrificial
action being needed on the part of the believer.
Nor does it find a place in the form of Protestantism
dictated and enforced by the Crown in England.
The surest way to wealth and preferment was the
first purpose in the new Erastianism ; and creed and
discipline were accommodated to keep the royal
favour. Men like Cranmer could boast with the
poet in Timon of Athens : —
" My free drift
Halts not particularly, but moves itself
In a wide sea of wax." — Timon of Athens, i. i.
" The Church of England," says Dr. DoUinger,
" is content with taking up just so much share in
30 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
life as commerce, the enjoyment of riches, and the
habitudes of a class desirous before all things of
comfort, may have left to it." ^ Hence it abolished
celibacy, the religious state, with its three vows of
poverty, chastity, and obedience, and the ascetic
exercises of the ancient faith, and made the celebra-
tion of mass, on which they were all based, a capital
offence. Such a system, whatever temporal advan-
tages it might ofifer, was essentially of the earth,
earthy, and could never have evoked the veneration
of Shakespeare, or kindled, as did the proscribed
creed, the fire of his muse.
The Reformed creed was then, we think, from its
negative and materialistic tendency, unfitted to give
birth to a poet.^ " Catholicism," says Mr. Matthew
Arnold, " from its antiquity, its pretensions to univer-
sality, from its really widespread prevalence, from
its sensuousness, has something European, august,
and imaginative ; Protestantism presents, from its
inferiority in all these respects, something pro-
vincial, mean, and prosaic." ^ Nor are Milton and
Keble, the poets respectively, according to Professor
^ "The Church and Churches," 119, 146 (1862). He quotes
Hallam to the effect that the supremacy " is the dog's collar which
the State puts on the Church in return for food and shelter." —
Hallara, " Constitutional History," iii. 44.
2 The late Archbishop Trench, in his comparison of Calderon
and Shakespeare, takes a precisely opposite view, and speaks of
the advantages enjoyed by the latter, because "as the child of the
Keformation," "he moved in a sphere of the highest truth." — Life
and Oenius of Calderon, 78 (1880). What that truth was or where
it is found in Shakespeare we are not told.
3 "Essays on Criticism," 133, ed. 1869.
MILTON AND PURITANISM 3 1
Dowden, of Puritanism and Anglicanism, proofs to
the contrary. Milton is great in his theme. He
sings " in glorious hymns the equipage of God's
almightiness, the victorious agonies of saints and
martyrs, the deeds and triumphs of just nations,
doing valiantly in faith against the enemies of
Christ." As an epic poet he has been ranked
above Homer and Dante, yet his vision of the other
world is materialistic, prosaic, and dull, and he
fails just where the voice of the seer should speak.
This is so because his Calvinistic creed forbade
mystery.
He was deaf to Dante's constant warning, " State,
umana gente alia quia." Everything must be ex-
plained— the secrets of the divine counsel ; the strife
between good and evil; the precise cause of each
individual fall — all must be laid bare. Hence God
justifies himself, Adam excuses himself, and Satan
is defiant. Adam and Eve, at dinner with the
angel in Paradise, talk and act, says M. Taine, like
Colonel Hutchinson and his wife ; and their want of
clothing is felt to be wholly incongruous. "What
dialogues ! " that somewhat caustic critic goes on to
say. " Dissertations capped by politeness, mutual
sermons concluded by bows. What bows ! Philo-
sophical compliments and moral smiles. . . . This
Adam entered Paradise vid England." ^ The " Para-
^ " English Literature," i. 443. Col. Hutchinson sat in the
Long Parliament for Nottingham, and in the High Court of Justice,
which sentenced Charles I. to death. His memoirs were written
by his wife, Lucy Hutchinson, and were printed in 1806.
32 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
dise Lost" could never be called divine. How is
it that Dante, in spite of his detailed, precise, and
realistic treatment of the supernatural, succeeds in
creating an impression so precisely spiritual ? It
is because he works on the lines of dogma and
mystery, the ideal of the supernatural fixed for him
by his faith. The Puritan poet, on the other hand,
had to draw exclusively on his own human and
utterly inadequate conceptions, and thus instead of
sublime he becomes grotesque. Milton brings down
heaven to earth and makes spiritual things terres-
trial. Dante transports earth to heaven, and shows
all transformed in the light of God's anger or of
His love.
So too with Keble. Professor Dowden calls him
the poet of Anglicanism, but in ritual, liturgy, doc-
trine, what material did it present for his muse ?
" The Catholic Church," says Cardinal Newman, " is
the poet of her children, full of music to soothe the
sad and control the wayward, wonderful in story for
the imagination of the romantic, rich in symbol and
imagery, so that gentle and delicate feelings, which
will not bear words, may in silence intimate their
presence or commune with themselves. Her very
being is poetry ; every psalm, every petition, every
collect, every versicle, the cross, the mitre, the
thurible, is a fulfilment of some dream of childhood
or aspiration of youth." ^ How much of this divine
element did Keble find in the Anglican system ?
1 "Essays Critical and Historical," vol. ii. 443, 9th edit.
PEOTESTANT RITUAL 33
" A ritual dashed to the ground, trodden on and
broken piecemeal ; prayers clipped, pieced, torn,
shuffled about at pleasure, until the meaning of the
composition perished, and what had been poetry
was no longer even good prose — antiphons, hymns,
benedictions, invocations shovelled away ; Scripture
lessons turned into chapters, heaviness, feebleness,
unAvieldiness . . . and for orthodoxy a frigid, un-
elastic, inconsistent, dull helpless dogmatic, which
could give no just account of itself, yet was intole-
rant of all teaching which contained a doctrine
more or a doctrine less, and resented every attempt
to give it a meaning." ^ And then Cardinal New-
man goes on to show how Keble's " happy magic
made the Anglican Church seem what Catholicism
was and is." ^ How the bishops, to their surprise,
were told of " their gracious arm outstretched to
bless," and the communion table became " the
dread altar," and " holy lamps were blazing " and
" perfumed embers quivering bright," with " stoled
priests ministering at them," while the "floor was
by knees of sinners worn."
Two other points call for notice in contrasting
Shakespeare's teaching with that of the Reforma-
tion. The one system of philosophy attacked, ridi-
culed, and vilified by Luther and his followers in y
every land, was the scholastic. Hence, new theories
constantly sprang into existence, even within the
1 " Essays Critical and Historical," vol. ii. 443, 9th edit.
2 Ibid.
C
34 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
Church, and the doctrines of Pythagoras, Plato, and
Aristotle were interpreted anew, and in an anti-
scholastic sense, with the purpose of harmonising
Catholic doctrine with the new modes of thought.
The attempt was an utter failure, the new systems
perished of themselves, or were obliterated in the
wild doctrines to which they gave birth. Now
among this multitude of systems and confusion of
ideas, it is remarkable how constantly Shakespeare
adheres in philosophical questions to the scholastic
system. He is distinctly Thomist on the following
points : his doctrine of the genesis of knowledge
and its strictly objective character ; ^ the power of
reflection as distinctive of rational creatures ; ^ the
formation of habits,^ intellectual and moral ; the
whole operation of the imaginative faculty.* And
he shows his opposition to the Pantheism of Gior-
dano Bruno and others in insisting on the individual
and permanent subsistence of each human being —
the " I am that I am," and on the law of self-pre-
servation, as flowing therefrom. This insistence on
the individual is seen again in his teaching of the
eternal consequences of single acts, in his reprobation
of suicide, and in such lines as the following : —
"The single and peculiar life is bound,
With all the strength and ardour of the mind.
To keep itself from 'noyance." — Hamlet, iii. 3.
1 "Troilus and Cressida," iii. 3. " Ibid.
* " Hamlet," iii. 4. * " Midsuramer-Night'.s Dream."
PREFERENCE FOR ARISTOTLE 3 5
From the same principle was derived, as we
believe, Shakespeare's extraordinary and perhaps
unequalled power of delineating character. Each
individual, with him, is a separate creation of his
genius. Each stands by itself in its beginning,
growth, and term. The growth may be from evil
to good, as with Henry V., or from bad to worse, as
with Antony ; but with each, the germ of the im-
provement or the declension is seen in its beginning
and throughout its course, till it bears its legitimate
fruit, as the voice of conscience or of self-love has
been followed. And these individual creations are
so real and lifelike, because the poet believed in the
" peculiar and single " reality of each human life.
Shakespeare's adherence to the scholastic philo-
sophy in these and other points, and the predilection
which he generally manifests for a system so un-
popular, and essentially unprotestant, is a further
proof of his antagonism to his times. He may
ridicule Pythagoras and his transmigration of souls,
the Stoics and their affected indifference as to suf-
ferings they had never experienced, the philosophical
persons who account for everything by natural causes.
But of Aristotle he speaks with respect. Lucentio,
at Padua, is not to be so absorbed in Aristotle as to
forget Ovid ; but the teaching of that philosopher
is for the serious and sincere, not for the shallow
and superficial, those " young men whom Aristotle
thought unfit to hear moral philosophy."^ The ease
^ "Troilus and Cressida," ii. 2.
36 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
and accuracy again with which, he employs scholas-
ticism as the vehicle for his deepest thoughts show,
that with a master mind like his, as with Dante
and Calderon, poetic and philosophic truth are one,
and that a nomenclature, superficially regarded as
crabbed, meaningless, and obsolete, can furnish ex-
pression for the richest poetry.
Another distinctive characteristic of Shakespeare
is his use of casuistry, or the science which decides
the application in particular cases of a general moral
laAv or principle ; there being many cases when such
a decision is, for unaided reason, extremely difficult.
For instance, does a rash oath bind ? Must the
truth be always told, even to one who has no right
to know, and when its disclosure inflicts a grievous
injury on an innocent person ? The dilemma in
both cases is, that if the obligation hold, wrong is
done, whichever course is taken. Now, according
to the main principles of Protestantism, by which
each man is the sole interpreter of the moral law, as
of revealed doctrine, and human engagements are
supreme, the oath or word must be kept at any
cost; and the difficulty of the sinful consequences
would be met by the Calvinistic axiom, that " some
commandments of God are impossible." Now
Shakespeare discusses both these cases, and teaches
exactly the contrary doctrine. He shows by the
mouth of Pandulph that the sanctity of an oath or
vow is based primarily on our reverence to God,
whose name has been invoked, and that a rash
CASUISTRY 37
or sacrilegious oath must not be kept, else art
thou
" Most forsworn to keep what thou didst swear."
— King John, iii. i.
And a complete exposition of when an unlawful
oath may be kept, not vi juramenti, but through a
notable change of circumstances, is found in the same
speech, as will be seen in Chapter III. Similarly,
the lawfulness of the use of equivocation, when the
truth is unjustly demanded, is laid down by the
Duke in " Measure for Measure " in precise terms : —
" Pay with falsehood false exacting."
— Measure for Measure, iii. 2.
Truth is a coin, and we may pay a thief in false
money. Isabella feels the difficulty of following the
Duke's advice and " speaking thus indirectly " ; but
she is advised to do it " to veil full purpose." That
is, the truth and fidelity we owe to some may be at
times only discharged by veiling truth to others.
This is so, of course, as regards the professional
secrets of lawyers, physicians, priests; but though
recognised and acted on in practice, the theory of
equivocation was denounced in Shakespeare's time
as Jesuitical and vile, as much as it is now ; and it
is remarkable that he should be again found defend-
ing the unpopular and Catholic side.
Proceeding now from Shakespeare's philosophy to
his portraiture of his age and its politics, his an-
tagonism will, we think, be found equally apparent.
38 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
It has been remarked that Shakespeare, in spite of
the all-embracing character of his verse, makes no
allusion to ecclesiastical architecture, " a fact the
more remarkable because of the number of grand
churches, abbeys, and shrines he must have passed
in his annual journey from Stratford to London." ^
The omission is doubtless remarkable, but it be-
comes intelligible when we remember that church-
building practically ceased in England from the
accession of Elizabeth till the reign of Charles I.,
and that the ancient fanes and sanctuaries had been
wrecked and gutted. What Shakespeare did see
was, not the noble abbeys and religious houses in
their sacred grandeur and beauty, but
" Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang."
— Sonnet Ixxiii.
There have been repeated suppressions of reli-
gious orders ; but nowhere as in England has the
work of the spoiler left so indelible a mark. In
the French revolution the monastic buildings were
quarried or otherAvise effaced. In Italy, in our own
times, the religious houses when secularised have
been converted into hospitals or barracks, or pre-
served as national monuments. In our own country
they fell into the hands of the king or his
favourites, who unroofed and gutted them for the
lead and valuables they contained, but left the walls
as a Avitness to their work of destruction.
' Ouardian, March 19, 1897.
RUINED SHRINES 39
Now, besides the ruins of the Augustinian monas-
tery at Kenilworth, and of the Benedictine monks
at Coventry in his own Warwickshire, there lay in
or about his London journey, ruined, dismantled, or
secularised, St. Frideswide's priory of Augustinian
friars, six Benedictine monasteries and colleges at
Oxford, the Benedictine nunneries at Godstone,
Abingdon, and VVallingford, the Augustinian Canons
at Goring and Dorchester ; the vast remains of
Eeading Abbey, the last superior of which. Abbot
Cook, had been hanged and martyred at the Abbey
Gate, November 15, 1539; Medenham Abbey of
the Augustinian Canons, and the Benedictine nun-
nery at Marlow, both on the river-side. Again,
on the Thames, at Twickenham, of the Brigettine
nuns of Sion, and the Carthusians at Sheen, built
by Henry V., as Shakespeare himself tells us, in
expiation of his father's dethronement of Richard
II., the
" Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard's soul." — Henry V., iv. i.
The poet knew then the origin of the monastic
foundations and some of the purposes they served ;
and the two last named had been restored by Mary,
and suppressed only on Elizabeth's accession.
And what was the motive of all this wreck and
ruin ? The visitation conducted by the king's com-
missioners had proved the religious houses, great
and small, free from scandals, observant, and reli-
40 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
gious, as became their state. One motive alone
destroyed these abodes of hospitality, learning, and
prayer — the greed of gold. How does Shakespeare
regard this religion of naturalism ? In what lan-
guage of bitter scathing invective does he denounce
covetousness and its effects ? —
" Gold ? yellow, glittering, precious gold ? —
No, gods, I am no idle votarist.^
Roots, you clear heavens ! Thus much of this will make
Black, white ; foul, fair ; wrong, right ;
Base, noble ; old, young ; coward, valiant.
Ha, you gods ! why this ? What this, you gods ? Why this
Will lug your priests and servants from your sides ;
Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads ;
This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions ; bless the accurs'd ;
Make the hoar leprosy ador'd ; place thieves.
And give them title, knee, and approbation,
With senators on the bench : this is it
That makes the wappened widow wed again :
She whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores
Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices
To the April day again." — Timon of Athens, iv. 3.
And if his purpose was to represent " the very
age and pressure of the time," is the picture of it
drawn here favourable or not ? And observe that
the effect of avarice is to " knit and break religions " ;
and this is precisely what it did. It unmade the
old faith, and constructed the new.
And when he arrived in London, he would have
seen, besides the religious houses secularised and
ruined, the widespread misery wrought by their
^ Religious.
HIDDEN MISERY 4 1
destruction. Professor Dowden dwells with com-
placency on the visible pomp and splendour of life,
which burst forth in the Tudor age ; on Raleigh's
silver armour and his shoes worth 600 gold pieces ;
and tells with evident pleasure of the charm exer-
cised by the new mundane ritual on Bacon as shown in
his Essays on Buildings and Gardens. Shakespeare
himself describes in " Cymbeline " the interior of
a lady's room with all its artistic beauty, showing
the luxury of the age. But the picture had its
reverse. This very display was obtained only at
the expense of much suffering. What Shakespeare
writes of Henry VIII. may equally be applied to
Elizabeth's courtiers. Her entertainers might appear
in their pageants
"All clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods."
— Henry VII L, i. i.
each new masque might be " cried incomparable " :
but with what result ? The irreparable impoverish-
ment of many a fair estate, and the bankruptcy of
many a noble house, without a hope of compensation
or gratitude from the royal guest.
"0, many
Have broke their backs with laying manors on them
For this great journey. What did this vanity,
But minister communication of
A most poor issue?"— If enri/ VIII., i. 1.
Yet one issue it had. The peasantry, once the
prosperous tenants of churchman and abbot, now
the oppressed vassals of the new spendthrift nobles,
42 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
were in a starving condition ; and their miserable
and desperate appearance alarmed the queen in
her royal progresses, and with reason. For such
suffering
" Makes bold mouths :
Tongues spit their duties out, and cold hearts freeze
Allegiance in them ; their curses now
Live where their prayers did ; and it's come to pass
That tractable obedience is a slave
To each incensed will. — Henry VIII., i. 2.
Elizabeth felt the truth of this, and in 1595
ordered that all vagabonds near London should be
hanged ; and along with the religious and priests —
peaceable citizens put to death for practising the
Faith, which the queen at her coronation had sworn
to defend — some 500 criminals or vagrants were
executed every year. Hentzner says that he counted
above thirty heads on London Bridge.^ Elizabeth's
merciless decree seems indeed to have been carried
out in the spirit of Timon's speech : —
" Put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes ;
Whose proof, nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes,
Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeeling.
Shall pierce a jot." — Timon of Athens, iv. 3.
And the condition of the new nobility revealed
equally the weight of the new despotism now pressing
on the country. Mere upstarts and adventurers,
like Cecil and Paulet, without name or lineage,
with no principle but their own gain, the servile
instruments of the Crown, were wholly incapable of
1 "Travels in England " (edited by H. Walpole, 1797), 3.
ABSOLUTISM 43
resisting its encroacliments, and were poor substitutes
for the Neviles, Percys, Howards, who, whatever their
faults, had repeatedly saved the liberties of their
country. The Commons also were reduced to a
state of vassalage. Elizabeth informed her first
Parliament, through Bacon, that she consulted them
not from necessity, but from choice, to render her
laws more acceptable to the people. Parliaments
were in fact summoned only to legalise some act of
royal oppression. So too with the executive : the
judge ruled and the jury found, not according to
law or fact, but as the sovereign willed ; and with
the army of spies and informers ready to offer any
evidence required, no subject's life was safe. The
Tudor sovereignty, then, represented a new Csesarism;
all the intermediary checks on absolutism were swept
away; the body politic consisted of two factors,
the monarch and the multitude.
Now, such a system was in Shakespeare's judg-
ment destructive of the very life of a State. In
Ulysses' speech, condemning the factions in the
Grecian camp, we have the poet's principle of govern-
ment. All things in nature, he says, are in a
graduated scale, and their strength and stability
depend on the due subordination or relation of
part to part.
" The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order."
— Troilus and Gressida, i, 3.
44 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
" Degree being vizarded," without this order and the
due nexus of Hnk to Hnk, " the unity and married
calm of states is rent and cracked." By degree
alone or the ordered juncture of successive grades,
merit is recognised, scholarship, civil and commercial
life, are advanced and secured. Degree gone, when
all men are kept under the mask of a dead level,
there is no distinction between the unworthiest and
the most deserving. To respect of superiors succeeds
an " envious fever " of those in authority. Justice
is no more ; force alone is right ; and force is but
the instrument of appetite or greed, " an universal
wolf," which, after consuming all else, " last eats up
himself."
Such was Shakespeare's view of a levelling
tyranny, and he saw his country the victim to this
scourge. The England, then, which he loved,
" This dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation throughout the world,"
was not the England of his day. No, his country
might be great in naval adventure, in industrial
and commercial enterprise ; new fields of wealth
might be opened out to certain classes, but its
true greatness and ancient liberty, its former glory,
its true chivalry were gone, and
" That England which was wont to conquer others,
Is now made a shameful conquest to itself."
The Elizabethan pageants might dazzle others, to
him they were but pinchbeck splendour and tinsel
ANTAGONISM TO HIS TIMES 45
pomp, the trappings of oppression and shame. Thus
he delivers his soul : —
" Tired witli all these, for restful death I cry, —
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
And purest faith unhajipily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill.
And simple truth miscalled simplicity.
And captive good attending captain ill :
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone.
Save that to die, I leave my love alone."
— Sonnet Ixvi.
Professor Dowden says that Shakespeare must
have been the product of his age, unless he were
in antagonism to it. We think we have already-
given considerable proof of the existence of such
antagonism, and the proof will be confirmed if we
consider his historical plays.
In dealing with English history, consider then
the subjects he might have chosen, had he been
the product of the Elizabethan era. The over-
throw of the Pope, as treated by Bale in "The
Troublesome Reign of King John," or by Spenser
in " The Faerie Queene " : the Gunpowder Plot de-
nounced by Ben Jonson in his " Catiline " ; the
destruction of the Armada, as sung by Dekker;
the glorification of Elizabeth, as added by Fletcher
to "Henry VIII." — all these themes, instinct with
46 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
the triumphs of the new order, were before him,
yet not one of them finds mention in his song.
On the contrary, his Muse is occupied, almost
exclusively, with the men and women, the spirit
and temper, the speech and customs of feudal
times. His ideal prince is Henry V., and his
portraiture is drawn in markedly Catholic lines.
King John, the accepted representative of a Pro-
testant king, the prototype of Henry VIII. in his
triumphant conflict with the Pope, becomes in
Shakespeare's hands a mean villain and the van-
quished suppliant to the Roman Legate. Henry
VIII. himself is depicted as a cruel, selfish, base
hypocrite, with an audacity which made Dr. Dol-
linger remark, as Simpson tells us, that, seeing
what Shakespeare might have made of him as the
founder of Protestantism, this play furnishes the
strongest proof of the poet's Catholic sympathies.
Elizabeth herself is passed over in silence; and
even at her death, when all the contemporary
poets were chiming her glories and virtues, Shake-
speare alone was silent ; and to mark still further
the contrast, the heroine of his choice in Tudor
times is the pure, noble. Catholic queen, the
divorced and dethroned Katherine.
In opposition to what has been said, Shake-
speare's frequent biblical references and quotations
are advanced as a convincing argument on behalf
of his Protestantism ; especially by the late Bishop
Wordsworth of St. Andrews, and recently, by the
USE OF SCRIPTURE 47
Rev. T. Carter in his " Shakespeare, a Puritan and
Recusant." The use of the Bible was indeed a test
question in the poet's time. The Reformers alleged
that Rome had withheld the Bible from the laity
or obscured its meaning. Luther was the first,
they said, to place it within reach of the people
by the translation he had prepared. Thus the
Homilies exhort all "to diligently search the well
of life in the Old and New Testaments, and not
run to the stinking puddles of men's traditions,"
meaning thereby, of course, the Church's authority.
The shibboleth, then, "the Bible only," signified
both that the Bible was the sole rule of faith,
and that each individual was its authorised inter-
preter, and was free to choose his own text and
to put his own interpretation upon it ; even though
the sense selected was explicitly contradicted by
other passages of the sacred volume.
" I am Sir Oracle,
And when I speak, let no dog ope liis mouth."
— Merchant of Venice, i. i
fitly expresses the new mode of biblical Herme-
neutics, and it is precisely in this manner that
Shakespeare's Bible Christians use, or rather abuse,
the Holy Scriptures. The characters conspicuous
in this respect are Jack Cade and his followers.
Costard and Holofernes, Quince and Bottom, Parson
Evans, in a very mixed fashion, and above all
FalstafF. All these, as will be seen, quote individual
48 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
texts or apply scriptural references in some strained
sense for their own ends, just as the Presbyterians
or Covenanters do in the Waverley novels. The
method of reasoning, then, used to prove Shake-
speare a Protestant from this kind of biblical
quotation would equally make Scott a Puritan.
So evident is Shakespeare's satire that Bowdler
repeatedly omits these biblical quotations because
of their profaneness. Wordsworth takes him to
task for so doing, and the point of many a speech
and the individualisation of the speaker are un-
doubtedly lost by such omission. But though
Shakespeare did not intend to be profane himself,
for " Reverence," as he says, " is the angel of the
world," he did intend the speaker to be so, and
to show by his profanity the abuse which must
result from " the Bible only " theory, and that
"there is no damned error but a sober brow will
write a text on," or that " the devil himself can
quote Scripture." With this well-known power of
irony, could he have chosen a more efficacious
method of exposing the abuse of the new " Gospel
method," than by making it the favourite weapon
of canting fools, knaves, and hypocrites ?
With regard to the version employed by Shake-
speare, we do not think any trustworthy argument
can be drawn for either side; and we willingly
concede to the followers of Bishop Wordsworth any
consolation they may derive from Shakespeare's em-
ployment of the "Amen" sixty times, in proof of
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 49
his being a member of the Church of England. But
could it be proved demonstrably that the poet had
used exclusively a Protestant version, it would only
be what we should expect. If he meant his Bible
Christians to speak as Protestants did, he would
naturally make them use the phrases proper to that
body ; and his doing so would show nothing as to
his OA\Ti religious belief.
The foregoing pages will, we think, have shown
that Shakespeare's ideas, whether philosophical or
political, moral or religious, were in no way those
of the Elizabethan era; and the opposition is en-
hanced if we consider the poet himself and some
of his characteristics. We know how hard it is
to speak of a character so silent and reserved as
Shakespeare. Unlike Ben Jonson, who loved to
talk himself, and to have his conversation reported,
Shakespeare, though loving and loved, has left no
record of himself or his friends. We can gather
from his writings that constancy, fidelity, secrecy,
truth, were the qualities he most esteemed. His
ideal man is true to himself, true to his friends.
He scorns to betray even the devil, and despises
" graceless spies " and " suborned informers." He
hates " encounterers glib of tongue,"
" That wide unclasp the tables of their hearts
To every ticklish reader ! " — Troilus and Gressida, iv. 5.
The self-revelation made in the sonnets, though
most obscure, is yet like personal pain, the " goring
D
50 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
his own thought," a sort of sacrilege, selHng cheap
by the fact of pubhcity " what was most dear."
Others may win respect by truth of words ; his
thoughts should be dumb, " speak only in effect "
(by facts). Nay, he would be dead to all else but
to one dear friend, his own secret love.
" None else to me, nor I to none alive,"
— Sonnet cxii.
His was a soul, then, that dwelt apart, evoking
out of its own depths his mighty works, but veiling
its still greater self. This secrecy is consistent with
his philosophical doctrine that the mind is nothing
till it has gone out of itself and is " married " to its
true object. It is consistent also with the kind of
development his character would have taken, were
his sympathies wholly with a proscribed religion
whose followers knew each other by secret signs
and communicated in passwords. But such a dis-
position, so reserved, sensitive, fastidious, bears no
resemblance to certain modern portraitures of him.
To our mind, Shakespeare, with his high and hidden
ideals, was far more like a veiled prophet than the
mere Hooker and Bacon combination of utilitarian
common-sense and experimental science described by
Professor Dowden. Had he been a " sort of Grad-
grind," a man " wanting nothing but facts, who knows
that two and two make four and nothing more," he
would doubtless have been satisfied with the eccle-
siastical compromise, the most concrete fact of his
DETACHMENT 5 1
age, and he would not have satirised its originators
under such personages as Polonius and Shallow,
or its ministers in the figures of Sir Topas and
Holofernes,
It is strange, indeed, how prejudice may blind
the eyes of otherwise acute critics to evident fact.
The one indisputable characteristic of his writings,
as manifested in his dramas and poems, is his deep
discontent with, and contempt for, the world in
which he lived. Reserved as he is about himself,
of his age and its evils he speaks openly. The most
sacred natural ties dissolved, oppression, falsehood,
treachery, ingratitude, faith forsworn, imposture tri-
umphant, truth and goodness held captive — these
are the main features of his portrait of his times,
and their originals are easily recognised. And this
is the poet whom we are told to regard, not as a
teacher of dry dogma, or a sayer of hard sayings,
but
" A priest to us all
Of the wonder and bloom of the world." ^
Far from extolling the pride and pomp of earthly
greatness, no poet more constantly reminds us how
soon " mightiness meets with misery," that this
world is not for aye, and that we all " owe a death
to God." How solemnly he warns us that
" The great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve ;
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind." — Tempest, iv. i .
^ Bagehot in Dowden, "Mind and Art," 40.
52 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
And the moral is drawn with the same sternness and
power —
" What win I, if I gain the thing I seek ?
A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.
Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week,
Or sells eternity to get a toy ] " — Lucrece.
And this confcmptus smculi ^ and world- weariness
grows with his advancing years. Even Professor Dow-
den, who paints him as a Positivist, admits that the
last period of his writings shows a growing disgust
with the base facts of this life. His works in their
usually accepted sequence demonstrate this. The
comedies and lighter pieces, together with the Eng-
lish historical plays, appear before 1600; while from
1 600 to 1 6 1 1 succeed tragedies of the most solemn
cast and dramas of more or less tragic colouring.
But while his writings manifest a growing serious-
ness of thought, and an increased conviction of the
utter vanity, which the multitude around him made
their sole and final aim, yet he is never a pessi-
mist, nor ever leaves us oppressed with a sense of
morbid or sentimental gloom. With him the tragic
and comic were so marvellously blended, that the
darkest scenes of woe and catastrophe are illumined
with rays of light, while the lightest pieces are not
^ Mr. George Wyndham, in his valuable introduction to his
edition of the Poems of Shakespeare (1898), calls special attention
to the world-weariness manifested in the Sonnets (p. Ixxviii), and
again in "Lucrece" (p. xcvii), almost Shakespeare's earliest work.
But we have tried in vain to agree with Mr. Wyndham that the
"Venus and Adonis" "contains nowhere an appeal to lust."
USE OF COMEDY 53
without some solemn warnings. Cordelia relieves
the horrors of Lear, and Theseus speaks like a sage
in " Midsummer-Night's Dream."
He thus teaches again, in opposition to the reform,
that man himself is neither wholly bad nor wholly
good, but " that the best men are moulded out of
faults," and that " the web of our life is a mingled
yarn of good and evil together," which serve in turn
for our probation and support.
Shakespeare's use of comedy served yet another
purpose. In every age there have been wolves in
sheep's clothing, and we do not forget Chaucer's
caricatures of the Friars, or Boccaccio's of priests
and religious. But the Reformation produced, as its
natural child, a special type of sanctimoniousness
and cant. Religion was valueless unless it appeared
under the mask of sour faces and Geneva cloaks.
Since man's soul was destitute of grace, propriety
took the place of holiness, and rigid primness and
affected solemnity were the marks of the elect.
Now, against the tyranny of a religion of manner-
ism, texts, and phrases, Shakespeare's irony was a
most effective weapon. Far more powerfully than
any formal polemic does his treatment of Falstaff,
Malvolio, and Holofernes expose the hollowness of a
system productive of such types. He taught men to
laugh at the solemn pretentiousness, and to despise
the wiles and hypocrisy of many a self-canonised
saint. But at what was truly high, noble, or pure,
no shaft of his sarcasm was ever winged. In this,
54 SHAKESPEARE AND THE REFORMATION
as in so many other points, he exhibits a close
resemblance to the Blessed Thomas More, of whom
Shakespeare speaks with deep respect. Both show
the same mixture of humour and sarcasm, of lightest
wit and deepest pathos ; both lived in antagonism to
their times; both employed their marvellous intel-
lectual power to expose its abuses. But the saintly
Chancellor had the courage of his convictions, and
sealed them with his blood, while the poet, we admit,
kept his concealed.
While, however, we have no wish to ignore
the poet's weakness and defects, we do not be-
lieve that he was ever himself reconciled to them.
At times he may have been inclined " to envy
a blessed fellow like Poins, who thought as every
one else thought, and whose mind was always in
the beaten track " ; but he was in reality far more
like Hal than Poins. Like the madcap Hal, he may
have given rein to his unruly youth, and lived only
for the pleasures of the hour. But like Hal also he
could recognise the call to higher things, and be no
longer his former self. The motley once his garb
and its surroundings, " the ready nothing trimmed
in jollity," were to him a reproach, and his later
years of solitude and seclusion in his Midland home,
when " every third thought was to be his grave,"
mark the contrast with his youth. That death, on
which he so often ponders, was to him with its pangs
and horrors a fearful thing, but to die unprepared
was vile. " Ripeness is all " ; and he shows us in all
SECRET OF HIS POWER 55
his penitents how that ripeness is secured, sin for-
given, and heaven won, only on the lines of Catholic
dogma, and by the sacraments of the Church ; and
there is evidence, as we shall see, that this was so in
his own case.
Neither from single texts nor isolated phrases,
but from the whole tenor of his writings, from the
principles he constantly advocates, from the chosen
objects of his praise or scorn, we arrive at the
conclusion that the greatest of English poets was
not the product of the Tudor age, nor of any past
mediaeval system, but of that Catholicism revealed
and divine which is in all time. And herein we
believe lies the secret of his marvellous power and
the impenetrable vitality of his work.
CHAPTER II.
EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
We found our argument in favour of Shakespeare's
Catholicism on the internal evidence offered by his
writings. Nevertheless, as it has been urged that
Shakespeare was a Protestant on the ground that
his parents had conformed to the new religion, it
will not, we trust, be considered out of place if we
investigate the evidence as to the religion of the
poet's parents. Of those that maintain the con-
formity to the new order of Shakespeare's parents,
some advance no better proof than the assumption
that as under Elizabeth all England had become
Protestant by statute law, every Englishman must
be presumed to have embraced the new creed
unless evidence be produced to the contrary.
Let us consider the value of this assumption.
Macaulay quotes Cardinal Bentivoglio's " State of
Religion in England " as well deserving attention :
" The zealous Catholics Bentivoglio reckoned at one
thirtieth part of the nation. The people who would
without the least scruple become Catholics if the
Catholic religion were established, he estimated at
four -fifths of the nation." " We believe," says
56
VISITATION RETURNS 57
Macaulay, " this account to have been very near
the truth." ^ In support of the supposed uni-
versal and instantaneous conformity of England
to the Keformed religion, the Edinburgh Reviewer
uses the old argument of the Visitation-returns.
" Out of 9,400 parochial clergy," he says, re-
ferring evidently to the Visitation of 1559, " less
than 200 refused to give in their allegiance to the
supremacy of the Queen." " Now, these records still
exist, and were studied and analysed by Mr. Simp-
son, who reports as follows: Out of 8,911 parishes
and 9,400 beneficed clergymen, only 806 clergymen
took the oath of supremacy ; 8 5 absolutely refused.
The remaining 8,509 either evaded appearing, or
were unsummoned by the Commissioners.
Thus the true inference from these returns is
exactly the contrary to that which is commonly
drawn. Instead of its being true that only an in-
significant fraction of the clergy held aloof from the
new order of things, the fact is that eight-tenths
of the whole did not take the oath, many of them,
indeed, not being called upon to do so. In the
province of York, in August and September 1559,
to give a single instance of the working of the Com-
mission, out of 89 clergymen summoned to take the
oath, 20 appeared and took it, 36 came and refused
to take it, 1 7 were absent, unrepresented by Proctors,
while 16 sent Proctors.^ Such results proved the
^ " Critical and Historical Essays : Burleigh and his Times," 230,
ed. 1877. 2 Yoi cxxiii. p. 147. » Dom. Eliz., vol. x.
58 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
futility of the commission, which in December 1559
was ordered to suspend its proceedings, and only
terminate cases already commenced.^
The change in religion was indeed effected slowly
and gradually, and this was equally the case
with the laity and clergy. What proportion re-
mained firm it is very hard to determine. The
position of Catholics under the penal laws of
Elizabeth was very similar to that of Christians
under the persecutions of Nero and Diocletian. At
neither period were there professed Christians or
Catholics, for the public profession of the Faith
meant grave risk of life, if not certain death ; and
such risk might not be voluntarily incurred. An
individual was supposed to be a member of a
proscribed creed, rather from his abstaining from
any participation in the worship ordained by the
State, and from his family antecedents, friends,
birthplace, and political party, than from any overt
religious act. As the first Christians practised
their faith in secret when opportunities occurred,
and took part in public life as far as was possible
for them without doing violence to their conscience,
so did the Elizabethan Catholics. And the temper
of the rulers in both periods favoured intervals of
comparative truce ; for men of tried ability and
position were valuable to the State, and were worth
winning, if position, honour, or power could win
them. It was only when a policy of persecution
^ Dom. Eliz., vol. vii. No. 79.
RELIGION IN WARWICKSHIRE 59
was deemed expedient, that a formal profession of
faith was demanded with the alternative of apos-
tasy or death. Thus a Sebastian could remain
unmolested in the bodyguard of Diocletian, and
a Howard among the courtiers of Elizabeth, till
the summons to the tribunal or the rack-chamber
was heard. These facts, showing the condition
of Catholics at the period under discussion, must
be borne in mind, if we are to estimate rightly the
kind of historical evidence available as to Shake-
speare's religious belief.
That evidence will be necessarily, as a rule, cir-
cumstantial, consisting of indications, inferences,
probabilities, as all direct external proof of their
religion, whether in documents, goods, words, or
acts, was studiously concealed by Catholics during
the period treated of. But it should be remembered
that while with direct evidence its strength is
measured by its weakest link, in circumstantial
evidence, facts which taken singly are of no appre-
ciative value, combined together may produce moral
certitude.
What then was the religious condition of Strat-
ford and of Warwickshire in the sixteenth century ?
The most prominent institution of Stratford, and one
which tells us most of its religious history, was its
Guild of the Holy Cross.^ " The Guild has lasted,"
^ The following particulars of the Guild are taken from Halliwell,
"Descriptive Calendar of the Records of Stratford-on-Avon, 1863,"
and from S. Lee, "Stratford-on-Avon in the Time of the Shake-
speares."
60 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
wrote the chief officer in 1309, "and its beginning
was from time whereimto the memory of man
reacheth not." The earliest extant documents are
from the reign of Henry III., 12 16- 1272, and
include a deed of gift by one William Sude of a
tenement to the Guild, and an indulgence granted
October 7, 1270, by Giffard, Bishop of Worcester, of
forty days to all "sincere penitents who had duly
confessed and had conferred benefits on the Guild."
By the close of the reign of Edward I. (1307) the
Guild was wealthy in houses and lands, and the
foundation was laid of its chapel and almhouses,
which, with the hall of meeting, the " Rode " or
" Reed Hall," stood where the Guildhall is at this
day. In 1332 Edward III. granted the Guild a
charter confirming its rights. They were again
confirmed by Richard II. in 1384, who sent com-
missioners to report on the ordinances of all the
Guilds throughout England. During the fifteenth
century the Guild increased in importance and
wealth. Gifts in kind are recorded, of silver cups,
spoons, chalices, vestments, missals, statues of saints,
wax ; also of corn, wine, and malt. A schedule of
1434 is remarkable for the numerous and costly
offerings registered. In 148 1 the Guild acquired the
Rectory and Chapelry of Little Wilmcote, the home
of the Ardens and of the poet's mother. About
the close of the century, the Guild chapel was rebuilt
by Hugh Clopton, the head of the great Catholic
family of Stratford.
ORDINANCES OF THE GUILD 6 1
This marks the most j&oiirishing epoch in the
history of the Guild. Of purely local origin, its fame
had now spread so wide as to attract to its ranks
noblemen like George, Duke of Clarence, brother of
Edward IV., together with his wife and children;
the Earl of Warwick and the Lady Margaret; Sir
Thomas Littleton, the eminent judge; and also
merchants of towns as distant as Bristol and Peter-
borough.
We now come to the objects of the Guild as set
forth in its ordinances.
The first object was mutual prayer. The Guild
maintained (in 1444) five priests or chaplains who
were to say five masses daily, hour by hour, from
six to ten o'clock. They were to live in one house
under strict discipline, and were to walk in pro-
cession with the Guild in their copes and surplices,
with crosses and banners. Out of the fees of the
Guild, one wax candle was to be kept alight every
day throughout the year at every mass in the
church, before the blessed cross, " so that God and
our Blessed Virgin and the Venerated Cross may
keep and guard all the Brethren and Sisters of the
Guilds from every ill."
A second object was mutual charity and works of
mercy. The needs of any brother or sister who had
fallen into poverty or been robbed were to be pro-
vided for " as long as he bears himself rightly
towards the Brethren. When a Brother died, all
the Brethren were bound to follow the body to the
62 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
churcli and to pray for his soul at its burial. The
Guild candle and eight smaller ones were to be
kept burning by the body, from the decease till the
burial. When a poor man died in the town, or a
stranger without means, the Brethren and Sisters
were ' for their souls' health ' to find four wax
candles, a sheet, and a hearse-cloth for the corpse.
Once a year, in Easter week, a feast was held for
the upholding of peace and true brotherly love.
Offerings of ale were made for the poor, and prayer
was offered by all the Brethren and Sisters," that
" God and our Blessed Virgin and the Venerated
Cross, in whose honour they had come together, will
keep them from all ills and sins." The framers of
this ordinance evidently believed with Corin —
" To find the way to heaven
By doing deeds of hospitality."
— As You Like It, ii. 4.
Thirdly, the Guild provided for the education of
the young by establishing, about 1453, a free
grammar-school for the children of the members.
The schoolmaster was forbidden to take anything
from the children. At this school, as reconstituted
under Edward VI., the poet was educated, and he
has given us a picture of his master in the peda-
gogues Holofernes and Sir Hugh Evans.
Lastly, the Guild was a self - governing body
founded and ruled by lay persons only, the clergy
belonging to it acting solely as its chaplains. Its
RELIGIOUS DISCORD 63
corporation was in fact the sole guardian of order
in tlie town. This was seen when, on its dissolu-
tion in 1547, Stratford found itself in a chaotic
state with no security of the life or property of its
inhabitants. Hence they petitioned Edward VI. to
reconstitute the Guild as a civil corporation, which
he did by charter 1553.
The history of this Guild shows Stratford both
in its civil and religious life to have been essen-
tially a CathoHc stronghold down to the middle of
the sixteenth century, and its traditions, customs,
ordinances, and observances still remaining or re-
membered in the poet's time may help to explain his
remarkable familiarity with the usages and ways of
the ancient faith.
We now come to the first sign of religious discord.
We will begin with an incident which occurred in
the year 1537, seven-and-twenty years before the
birth of Shakespeare, and some fifteen years before
his father had removed from Snitterfield into Strat-
ford, when fierce contests about the doctrine of the
Reformation were first disturbing the rural districts
of England. On Easter Monday of that year, the
sister of a churchwarden of Bishop Hampton was
married to a substantial man of Stratford, and the
event was celebrated with a church ale. Sir Edward
Large, the curate of Hampton, " noted for one of
the new learning, as they commonly call those that
preach that pure, true, and sincere word of God,
and also all that favour them that preach the
64 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
same," was glad of the opportunity of holding forth
to a crowd. In the course of his sermon he said
divers strange things — some probably misunder-
stood by his rustic audience — that " all those that
use to say Our Lady's psalter shall be damned ; "
and that the Ember-days were instituted by " a
Bishop of Rome who had a paramour named Imber,
who desired that she might have, every quarter,
three fasting days ; whence the said Bishop for
her sake caused the fasting days to be had which
are now called Ember-days." A poor man named
Robert Cotton interrupted the preacher ; for which
he was brought before the king's commissioners —
William Lucy, John Greville, and John Combe —
and sent to gaol. His case was taken up by Master
Clapton or Clopton, of Stratford, who defended
Cotton so vigorously that he got him out of prison,
and brought Lucy into trouble both with the men
of Stratford, who were heartily opposed to any
innovations in religion, and with Mr. Justice Fitz-
herbert, the founder of the family that still per-
petuates his name and his faith.-^
Here then is the first glimpse we get of the state
of religious feeling in the neighbourhood of Strat-
ford— on the one side, the Lucys, Grevilles, and the
Coombes of Stratford all favouring the new learning ;
on the other, the Cloptons and the men of Strat-
^ The document from which these facts are gleaned was published
in the Athenwum of April 8, 1857, from the original iu the Rolls-
Chapel Record Office.
THE poet's parents 6$
ford remaining steadfast in the old ways. Of the
neighbouring families, the Catesbys, the Middlemores,
the Throckmortons, the Ardens, were Catholics ; and
of the last-named family came Mary Arden, the
poet's mother ; and this brings us to the question
of the religion of his parents.
There were numerous families of Shakespeares
in various parts of England, especially in Warwick-
shire, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ;
and there were two John Shakespeares, one a glover
and the other a shoemaker or corvizer, in Stratford
at the same time. Our poet's father, John Shake-
speare, the glover, and later a wool merchant,
apparently removed from Snitterfield to Stratford
in 1 5 5 1 , and in 1557 we find him a Burgess of
Stratford, and in 1558-59 one of the four petty
constables for the town. This tenure of municipal
office by him in 1557—59, when the laws against
heretics were rigidly enforced, is our first direct evi-
dence of his Catholicism. Mr. Carter, in fact, says,
speaking of Robert Perrot, then High Bailiff of
Stratford, that none but " an ardent and pronounced
Roman Catholic " ^ could have accepted so high an
office in times of bitter persecution under a most
bigoted king and queen. He, however, entirely
overlooks the fact that the same reasoning must
apply proportionately to the other members of the
corporation at this date, among whom we find, be-
sides John Shakespeare, John Wheeler, his constant
^ Ibid., p. 20.
66 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
associate in his various vicissitudes. The poet's
mother was, as has been said, Mary Arden of Wilm-
cote in Snitterfield, of an old and stanch Catholic
stock, and through her he was connected with the
Montagues (Browne), Catesbys, Throckmortons, lead-
ing Catholic families, and distantly with Henry, the
Earl of Southampton, the poet's munificent friend
and patron.^
Mrs. John Shakespeare, then, was undoubtedly a
Catholic ; nor is there any proof that she ever
changed her religion, though Mr, Carter pictures
her as a strict Puritan, teaching her son William
the Holy Scriptures from the Genevan Bible.
But did John Shakespeare, who, if Mr. Carter's
reasoning be valid, must have been a Catholic
under Mary, become a Protestant under Elizabeth ?
It is argued that he must have done so, inas-
much as he continued to hold various municipal
offices up to I 5 7 1 , when the Oath of Supremacy,
passed 1559,^ was in force. But, as we have
seen in the case of the clergy, it is one thing to
pass a new enactment, another to carry it out.
1 Mary Arden was descended from Thomas, a brother of Sir John
Arden (ob. 1526), esquire of the body to Henry VII. ; from whom
came Edward Arden of Parkhall, not far from Snitterfield, who
was married to Mary, daughter of Sir George and sister of Sir
Robert Throckmorton of Coughton, and consequently aunt of Sir
Robert's daughter, the wife of Sir William Catesby of Bushwood
Park in Stratford. Anne, the daughter of Lady Catesby, was married
to Sir Henry Browne, son of the first Lord Montague ; and Sir
Henry Browne's sister Mary was Countess of Southampton and
mother of Henry, Earl of Southampton.
- I Eliz. c. I.
OATH OF SUPREMACY ^J
At first the lay peers were exempt from taking
the oath, which was aimed specially at the bishops
and clergy, and it was not till 1579 that it
was required of the justices ; and in Warwickshire,
out of thirty magistrates. Sir John Throckmorton,
Simon Arden, and eight others refused to be thus
sworn. Up to 1579, then, one third of the magis-
trates of Warwickshire were Catholics. There is
no proof whatever that John Shakespeare ever had
the oath of supremacy tendered to him as a quali-
fication for his municipal office. On the contrary,
it is in the highest degree improbable that the
Sheriff of the County (1568-69), Robert Middle-
more, himself a recusant, should have administered
to him an oath which he refused to take himself.
As regards the oath of supremacy, then, there is no
valid argument for John Shakespeare's Protestantism
during these years.
Mr. Carter argues that the Protestantism of John
Shakespeare is sufficiently proved by the fact that
he remained a member of the Corporation, which
under Elizabeth became strongly Puritan, as is seen,
he says, by the defacement of crosses, images, and
the sale of vestments effected under their rule.
Let us consider the value of this argument. In
Elizabeth's first parliament Mass was suppressed
throughout the kingdom, and by the Queen's in-
junction (1559), all shrines and altar-candlesticks,
pictures, &c., were to be destroyed " so that not a
memory of them remains," and inventories of the
68 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
vestments, plate, and books were to be given to the
visitors. These measures were universally carried
out. But though shrines and altars were muti-
lated and desecrated, and the churches had become
" barns," Protestantism only slowly made its way.
With equal violence Catholicism had been sup-
pressed under Edward VI. to be reintroduced four
years later under Mary. Nor did the mass of
the people know now what the new creed meant,
or whither it would lead. It must further be
remembered that for the first years of her reign,
before the northern rising (1569) and the excom-
munication of Elizabeth by Pius V. (i 570), Catholics,
apart from the open exercise of their religion, were
comparatively tolerated. " Until the eleventh year
of Queen Elizabeth," writes Sir Robert Cotton, " a
recusant's name was scarcely known." -^ So, too,
Parsons and Creswell write to the Queen : " In the
beginning of thy kingdom thou didst deal some-
thing more gently with Catholics. None were then
urged by thee, or pressed either to thy sect or to
the denial of their Faith. All things did seem in-
deed to point to a far milder course. No great
complaints were heard. Then were seen no extra-
ordinary contentions or repugnancies. Some there
were that to please and gratify you went to your
churches." ^
In fact, Elizabeth, as long as she could usurp
1 " Posthuma," 149(1651).
' Watson's " Important Considerations," 1601.
EELIGION IN STEATFORD 69
unquestioned, the Church's authority and appro-
priate its goods, was content to let things be. And
Catholics, it must be said, whether in good or bad
faith, offered no opposition. " The majority," writes
Father Parsons, " attended the heretical church and
services, opinions being divided on the subject." ^
The priests who had conformed and publicly cele-
brated the " spurious liturgy," said Mass in private
for the benefit of the more faithful Catholics, and
would even bring consecrated hosts to the public
service to communicate those who would not receive
the bread prepared according to the heretical rite. ^
" It was indeed a mingle-mangle which every man
made at his pleasure, as he thought would be most
grateful to the people." ^
Thus the fact that John Shakespeare was a
member of the Corporation of Stratford during this
period proves absolutely nothing as to his change of
religion. On the contrary there are strong indica-
tions that the Corporation of Stratford was far more
inclined to Catholicism than to Puritanism at this
time. First, John Brethgirdle, the vicar appointed
on February 27, 1560, in succession to Roger Dios,
the Marian priest, was both unmarried and had no
licence to preach ; the Bishop of Worcester appa-
rently being unsatisfied as to his orthodoxy. Both
these facts point to the probability of his having
^ " Brief Apologie," 2.
2 Sander's " Anglican Schism," 269.
3 Parsons, "Three Conversions of England," ii. 206, ed. 1688.
yo EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
been one of the numerous conforming priests. In
any case, as he had no licence to preach, the new
doctrines must have made but Httle progress up to
June 1565, when he died from his labours in the
plague.^ From 1565 to 1569 Stratford was appa-
rently without a vicar. In 1569 Henry Heycroft
was appointed, but he again had no licence to
preach till January 7, i 5 7 1 , when, as we shall see,
a change began. From all, then, that can be
gathered from the registers, Stratford never heard
a sermon for eleven years : and John Shakespeare's
ears were unassailed during this period by the
eloquence of any Puritan Boanerges.
But Mr. Carter quotes the sale of church vest-
ments by the Corporation as an additional proof
of John Shakespeare's Puritanism. Now, the time
and manner in which the Queen's injunctions on
this subject were carried out in any place, offer a
fair indication of the state of religious feeling then
prevalent. In London, for instance, where the
Puritan feeling was strong, at St. Bartholomew's
Fair, August 24, 1559, or within a few months of
the issue of the injunction, there were blazing in
St. Paul's Churchyard two great bonfires for three
whole days, of church furniture and vestments.^
Again, at St, Mary's, Woolnote, in the same year
^ His will, made the day before his death, of which we have seen
a copy by the courtesy of Mr. Savage, Librarian of the Shakespeare
Memorial Library, Stratford, gives no indication of his religious
belief.
2 " Maehyn Diary," 207, 208. Stow, 640.
JOHN SHAKESPEARE S REVERSES 7 I
(1559)) the copes, vestments, and ornaments were
sold with consent. Again, at St. Martin's, Leicester,
in I 561, the vestments were sold for 42s. 6d.^ In
contrast with this prompt action, we find that the
vestments at Stratford were not sold till September
I 5 7 1 , and their sale then coincides with the con-
cession of a preaching licence to Heycroft, and was
probably due to his newly kindled zeal. Thus, as
far as this sale proves anything, its late date points
to the predominance of a Catholic rather than of a
Puritan element in Stratford up to 1570. In that
year a new penal statute against Catholics, Elizabeth's
answer to the excommunication, was passed. By this
act, reconciliation to the Roman faith was made a
capital offence ; any person harbouring any one hold-
ing any Bull or instrument from Rome became guilty
of treason, and the possession of crosses, pictures,
beads, or an Agnus Dei blessed by the Pope or his
authority, incurred forfeiture of all goods and im-
prisonment.^ Such a measure evidently rendered
Catholics subject to continuous and harassing perse-
cution, and from the date of its enactment the fortune
of John Shakespeare appears to decline. In i 5 7 5 he
begins to sell and mortgage his property. In i 5 7 7 he
was assessed at a lower rate than the other alder-
men. In 1578 he was not rated for the poor at
all. In 1579 his name occurs among the defaulters
for the armour and weapon tax, and in the Spring
^ Churchwarden Accounts ; Month, December 1897,
2 13 ElizL_c. 2.
72 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
of the same year he mortgaged the revenue of his
wife's property to one of her relations for ^^40, and
sold some of his property at Snitterfield for £4.
These facts may point to real losses in trade or to
a practice common with suspected recusants, by
which, to escape from the grasp of the penal laws,
they conveyed their property to trustworthy persons
by colourable mortgages and sales, while retaining
themselves the income. The latter supposition
seems to us far the more probable. First, because
of the small sums received for the large amount of
property parted with ; again, because he was em-
ployed as trustee for valuable property during the
time of his alleged poverty ; and lastly and prin-
cipally because a few years later he was presented,
as we shall see, for the second time as a recusant.
His civic life during the last-named period shows
similar symptoms of decline. From 1570 to 1586
he continued to hold his post as alderman. But
after 1577 there were long periods of absence till
September 1586, when we read that two others
were chosen "in the places of John Wheeler and
John Shakespeare; for that Mr. Wheeler doth desire
to be put out of the Company, and Mr. Shakespeare
doth not come to the halls when they be warned,
nor hath done of any long time." Thus closed his
connection with the Corporation, and the reason of
his continued absence and final retirement is fur-
nished for us by the next document we have to
examine — the Recusancy-returns for Warwickshire
THE RECUSANCY RETURNS 73
of September 25, 1592. The certificate still exists
at the Record Office, and we shall discuss it at some
length, both because it has now become contentious
matter and also because it manifests the state of
religion in Warwickshire.
The list of recusants in which John Shakespeare's
name appears Mr. Carter classes with remarkable
audacity, as we think will be shown, among " Puri-
tan Recusancy-returns," ^ and he founds on it what
he considers another convincing argument of John
Shakespeare's Puritanism. Mr. Carter argues that
this return included Puritan as well as Catholic
recusants, because the Commissioners, Sir Thomas
Lucy and others, who furnished it were appointed
under the Recuscancy Act of 1592 ;^ and this Act
was aimed specially against Puritan Nonconfor-
mists.^ Let us examine both these statements and
see against whom the Act was directed, and also
its date and that of the Warwickshire Recusancy-
return.
First, then, against whom was this Act (3 5 Eliz.c. i )
directed ? The fanatical outbreak of Hackett and his
associates, following on the Marprelate tracts, called
for this measure. " The law was chiefly aimed,"
writes Marsden, " against Brownists and Barrowists.
Cartwright and such as he, who still conformed, were
not affected by it." * Now, Mr. Carter assumes John
Shakespeare to have been a devout follower of Cart-
^ p. 179. ^ pp. 160, 161. ^ p. 152.
* "History of the Early Puritans," 204 (1850).
74 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
wriglit, and imagines him walking over Sunday after
Sunday from Stratford to hear him preach in the
Leycester Hospital at Warwick.^ If this were so,
the presumption is that in 1592 John Shakespeare
would have followed his master's example, and by his
conformity have escaped persecution as a recusant.
" The moderate Puritans," says Neale, " made a
shift, to avoid the force of this law, by coming to
church when common prayer was almost over, and
by receiving the Sacrament in some church where
it was administered with some latitude, but the
weight of it fell upon the Separatists. These were
called Brownists and Barrowists." ^
Secondly, although the Act 35 Eliz. c. i, as first
^ p. 170. It is difficult indeed to follow Mr. Carter in his his-
torical researches. He explains that Cartwright was thus able to
preach at Warwick on his return from exile in Antwerp (1585),
because "The Leycester Hospital was exempt from episcopal
jurisdiction, and Cartwright could preach there without a bishop's
licence and in defiance of all ecclesiastical deprivation."^ As a
fact, so far from this hospital being exempt from episcopal juris-
diction, the Bishop of Worcester was appointed its visitor,^ and
used his power. He summoned him (Cartwright) in the Consistory
Court, and charged him with instilling the peculiarities of Genevan
churchmanship.* Cartwright was, however, allowed to return to
Warwick, where he wrote a treatise against the Brownists. In
1590, Leicester his patron died, and Cartwright was shortly after
summoned before the Court of High Commission, and eventually
committed to the Fleet, where he remained till Burghley obtained
him his release about May 1592.
^ " History of Puritans," i. 362.
^ Ibid., p. 169.
^ Art. Cartwright, Diet. Nat. Biography.
^ Marsden, "Early Puritans," 173.
DATE OF THE COMMISSION 75
introduced was, according to its preamble, aimed
against "such as are enemies to our State and
adherents of the Pope,^ yet as finally passed it
expressly excluded Papists from its operation. The
twelfth article of 35 Eliz. c. i runs — "Provided
also that no Papist recusant or Femme coverte shall
be compelled to abjure by reason of this act."^ It
is clear then, from the very wording of the Act, not
only that it does not intend to include Papists in its
operation, but that it expressly and distinctly ex-
cludes them. How then can Mr, Carter ascribe to
the operation of this Act " the Warwickshire Kecu-
sancy-returns, in which no denomination but those
of Papi&ts is named."
Thirdly, as regards its date, the Act in question,
entitled, " An Act to retain the Queen's (Majesty)
subjects to their due obedience," was the first act
of the thirty-fifth year of Elizabeth. The Parliament
which passed it only sat three months, from February
19, 159*' till April 10, 1593.^ On the other hand,
the return of the Commissioners for Warwickshire is
dated in the heading "25 September, in the thirty-
fourth year of her Majesty's most happy reign," or
1592. We must therefore leave Mr. Carter to explain
how the Warwickshire Commissioners were appointed
by an Act of Parliament passed five months after they
^ D. Ewes, "Journal of Parliament," 500 (1682).
^ The statutes at large from Edward IV. to end of Elizabeth, ii.
671, ed. 1770.
' Ibid., p. 671.
y6 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
had sent in their return. He has failed to realise
that as, according to the old style, the year 1592
began on 25th March, September 1592 was four
months earlier than February of the same year,
which ended March 24.^
What then was in reality the origin and purpose
of the Warwickshire Commission ?
In October i 5 9 1 Elizabeth, in reality alarmed at
the conversions effected by the missionaries from
abroad, but avowedly to frustrate another appre-
hended attack by Spain, issued a proclamation stat-
ing the traitorous intrigues on hand, and directing
the appointment of Commissioners for each shire.
These Commissioners were charged to inquire of
all persons as to their attendance at church, their
receiving of seminarists, priests, and Jesuits, their
devotion to the Pope or King of Spain, and to give
information as to suspicious change of residence.^
In accordance with this proclamation Commis-
sioners were appointed, and we find notices of their
appointment and documents relating to the Com-
mission for the following counties : Durham,^
Oxford,* Hampshire,^ Surrey and Dorsetshire,'' Kent,
Middlesex, Surrey, Bucks, and Durham, " for adding
to Commission," ^ Notts, Salop, Norfolk, Cambridge,
^ The old style prevailed in English history up to September 2,
1752 (De Morgan, "Book of Almanacks," Introd,, ix.).
2 Dom. Eliz., ccxl. 42, October 18, 1591.
^ Ibid., 66, November 1591. * Ibid., 70, November 1591.
" Ibid., 82, December 1591. ^ Ibid., 84, December 1591.
■^ Dom. Eliz., ccxli. 17, January 1592.
SEARCH FOR PAPISTS 77
Herts, and the Isle of Ely,-^ East, West, and North
Ridings of Yorkshire, Northumberland — renewed,^
Cheshire, Lancashire.^
The State Papers, Dom. Eliz, ccxl., ccxli., ccxliii.,
and the Hist. MS. Com. Salisbury, P. IV., show clearly
that during the year November i 5 9 1 -November
1592, the country was sifted and searched for the
discovery of Papists. One list of names in nineteen
counties^ contains 570 names, entirely of laymen,
and includes nearly aU the old Catholic families of
those counties. In some counties more than one
Commission was held. This was the case in War-
wickshire. The return before us is entitled " The
second certificate of the Commissioners, &c." Of the
first certificate no trace is as yet apparent. At the
head of the second Commission are Sir Thomas
Lucy and Sir Fulke Greville, both active persecutors
of the Papists, and the lineal descendants of those
very men whom we have seen in 1557 imprisoning
Robert Cotton for defending the ancient faith.
The document, in modernised spelling, runs as
follows : — " The second certificate of the Commis-
sioners for the county of Warwickshire touching
all persons ... as either have been presented to
them, or have been otherwise found out by the
endeavour of the said Commissioners to be Jesuits,
^ Dom. Eliz., ccxli. 40, February 1592.
2 Ibid., 89, March 1592.
3 Hist. MSS. Com. Salisbury, Part IV. p. 240, October 1592 ; Dom.
Eliz., ccxliii. 52, November 1592.
•* Hist. MSS. Com. Salisbury, Part IV. p. 263-275, October 1592.
78 EXTEENAL EVIDENCE
seminary priests, fugitives, or recusants, within tlie
said County of Warwick, or vehemently suspected
to be such, together with a true note of so many
of them as are already indicted for their obstinate
and wilful persisting in their recusancy. Set down
at Warwick the 25 th day of September in the 34th
year of her Majesty's most happy reign, and sent
up to the lordships of her Majesty's most honour-
able Privy Council,"
It is divided into five lists. The first list contains
the names of those who have been indicted for
persisting in their recusancy. Among these ob-
stinate recusants are Dinmock, a relation of the
Catesbys, and champion of England, the whole
family of Middlemore of Edgbaston (here we have
the father, mother, two sons, and two daughters all
indicted) ; Mountfort of Coleshall, the place fre-
quented by the Martyr Monford Scott ; Bolt
and Gower of Tamworth; Thomas Bates, steward
to Sir William Catesby of Bushwood Park in
Stratford parish, who with his son John was
afterwards compromised with Robert Catesby in
the Gunpowder Plot ; Richard Dibdale of Stratford,
who had been formerly presented for a wilful
recusant, and " continues still obstinate in his
recusancy " — probably a relation of Richard Dibdale,
the martyr, hanged for his priesthood in 1586.
Other obstinate Papists of Stratford were Mrs.
Jeffreys and Richard Jones. There is a long cata-
logue from Rowington. At Coughton, Mrs. Mary
LISTS OF RECUSANTS 79
Arden, the widow of the martyred squire of
Parkhall, with her servants "continues obstinate."
At Exhall we meet with one William Page, who
had not been to church for three months past at
least. A whole batch of Huddesfords and others
from Solyhill are dismissed on submitting to the
articles of the Commission and their declaration
that they neither had been moved to give aid to
the King of Spain or the Pope. In this list several
persons are noted as having become recusants since
the last presentment, a fact which shows the revival
of the Faith in Warwickshire during the months
immediately preceding this second Commission.
The second list contains the names " of such
dangerous and seditious Papists and recusants as
have been presented to us, or found out by our
endeavour to have been at any time of, or in the
county of Warwickshire, and are now either beyond
the seas or vagrants within the realm." This list
contains chiefly the names of priests : " William
Brooks, thought to be a seditious seminary priest,
sometime servant to Campion in the Tower. His
friends give him out to be dead, but it is thought
that he is lurking in England." "Barlow, an old
priest and great persuader, who uses to travel in a
blue coat with the eagle and child on his sleeve,"
as retainer to the Stanleys ; another, " suspected to
be a lewd seditious Papist, wanders about under
colour of tricking out arms in churches." At
Stratford there was George Cook, suspected to be
8o EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
a seminary priest, who could not be found. At
Henley-in-Arden, Sir Robert Whateley, and at
Rowington, Sir John Appletree, both old " massing
priests." The same list contains the names of Dr.
William Bishop, afterwards Bishop of Chalcedon,
and his father and brother, and of Dr. Barrett,
who were also Warwickshire men.
The third list contains "the names of recusants
heretofore presented in the county, but now dwell-
ing elsewhere, or gone away on just occasion, or
lurking unknown in other counties." Here we have
a short history of long hardships. " Mrs. Francis
Willoughby, presented first at Kingsbury, afterwards
at Stratford -on- Avon, then, indicted at Warwick,
now fled to Leicestershire; the Middlemores, fled
from Packwood to Worcestershire ; John Buswell,
fled from Stratford; the wife of Philip Moore,
physician of Stratford, gone away to Evesham ; "
and " one Bates, a virginal player, a most wilful
recusant, now, as is said, in Staffordshire."
The fourth list contains " the names of recusants
heretofore presented," who are thought to forbear
the Church for "debt and fear of process or for
some worse faults, or for age, sickness, or impotency
of body." In this list we have nine persons
bracketed together as not coming to Church for
fear of debt, " Mr. John Wheeler, John Wheeler his
son, Mr. John Shakespeare, Mr. Nicholas Barnes-
hurst, Thomas James, alias Giles, William Bainton,
Richard Harrington, William Fluellen, and George
THE PLEA OF DEBT Ol
Bardolph — all supposed to abstain from Church for
fear of process for debt ; Mrs. Jeffreys, widow, Mrs.
Barber, Julian Court, Griffin ap Roberts, Joan Welch,
and Mrs. Wheeler, who all continue recusants except
the last, but who are too infirm to come to Church."
This list Mr. Carter seriously asserts to be composed
of Puritan not Papist recusants ; for " Papists," he
says, " were persecuted for being Papists, not for
forbearing attendance at the Parish Church." ^
Now we have seen that the first act of parlia-
ment above recited, which Lucy's Commission was
charged to carry out, was framed solely to enforce
the attendance of Papists at church, under the fine
of ;^20 a month for nonconformity, and the plea
of sickness or poverty was the stereotyped excuse
with nonconforming Papists to escape the fine. Thus
Bishop Cheney (or Cheyney) of Gloucester, in a
return of recusants furnished by him to the Council,
October 24, 1577, divides the recusants of his
diocese into three classes. First, those who refused
to come to church, or open, obstinate recusants ;
secondly, some supposed to savour of Papistry alleged
sickness, some others debt, and therefore refused,
fearing process ; the third sort, commonly called
Puritans, refuse, as not liking the surplice.^ Here
then it is Papists, not Puritans, who allege the ex-
cuse of debt, for the latter were only too willing to
express their repugnance to anything in their eyes
1 Hist. MSS. Com. Salisbury, Part IV. p. 164.
* Dom. Eliz., vol. cxvii., October 24, 1577, No. 12.
F
82 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
savouring of Papistry. Now in this fourth list we
know, that of the nine persons bracketed together,
John Shakespeare and John Wheeler were Catholics,
for they held office under Mary ; and the very first
entry in this fourth list shows that it is still Papists,
not Puritans, who are aimed at. It runs thus —
" Thomas Bartlett of Middleton, presented here for
a recusant, is thought to forbear coming to church
for debt or for some other causes, rather than of any
popish devotion."
The fifth list gives the names of those who have
already conformed or promised conformity. At
Solyhull, forty-eight persons had either conformed
or had faithfully promised to do so ; at Edgbaston,
one of the Middlemores and John Burbage were
among those who had made the same promise ; at
Packwood, Christopher Shakespeare and his wife are
in the same category ; at Warwick there is William
Cook, alias Cawdry, probably a Stratford man ; at
Stratford there are seventeen names of similar
persons — the first is " Mrs. Clapton, wife of William
Clapton, Esq., now dead, was mistaken, and goes
now to church " ; another of the number was Joan
Cook, alias Cawdry, a member of a family which
figures in Halliwell's biography of Shakespeare;
another was Edward Green, perhaps a relation of
Shakespeare's friend the actor ;^ and another of
^ Green calls Shakespeare his cousin. One Thomas Green, alias
Shakespeare, was buried at Stratford, March 6, isSg-go—ffalliwell,
269.
RECUSANTS IN SHAKESPEARE's PLAYS 83
these conformists is Thomas Reynolds, gentleman,
whom we find elsewhere selling property in Strat-
ford to Sir William Catesby.
Such then is the Recusancy-return, and its im-
partial perusal can leave no doubt, we think, that
it includes none but Catholics, and that John
Shakespeare was at that time a Popish recusant,
sheltering himself under the excuse of debt. From
1592 there is no evidence of his having conformed
nor again of his being presented for nonconformity,
so that it may fairly be inferred that the same pro-
test was allowed to hold till his death in 1601, and
there is further reason for believing that he per-
severed in his faith to the end.
Before leaving the Recusancy-return we would,
however, make two remarks it suggests. First,
according to Aubrey, the names of the poet's
dramatic personages were often taken from the
circle of his acquaintance, for he and Jonson
gathered humours of men wherever they came.
Thus the original of Dogberry was a constable he
met one midsummer night at Crendon in Bucks;
and part of FalstafF's character, as Bowman the
player relates, was drawn from a townsman at
Stratford, who either faithlessly broke a contract or
spitefully refused to part with some land adjoining
Shakespeare's house. Now in this one return we
find seven of his characters among the Warwick-
shire recusants — Page, Fluellen, Gower, Bates, Court,
Bardolph, and Bolt — a fair indication at least that
84 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
he was tolerably familiar with the adherents of the
proscribed creed in his own county.
Secondly, it must not be supposed that the large
list of conformists really represented the march of
Protestant conviction. It was always the interest
of the Commissioners to make their task appear a
success, and so to be easily satisfied with the pro-
mises of conformity. Their certificates are not much
more credible than the reports of an Indian mis-
sionary to his paymasters at Exeter Hall. As a
matter of fact the certificate shows on its face the
futile character of these sham conversions, extorted
by fear and violence. Thus we have one Michael
Commander, at Tachbrook Episcopi, who " made
show of conformity, and went to church, but hath
since used so bad speeches as have made the Com-
missioners to fear that he will start back like a
broken bow." Of John Arrowsmith, of the same
place, they say, " He makes some show of con-
formity and goes to church ; but when the preacher
goeth up to the pulpit to preach he goeth presently
out of the church, and saith he must needs go out
of the church when a knave beginneth to preach."
Again, Joan Jennings " promised conformity, but
did not perform it." So John Wise, Esq., of Coles-
hall, did " humbly and faithfully promise conformity,
and not long after came once to his parish church ;
but never came since." The fact is that in 1592
the persecution had reached such a pitch in Eng-
land that the Catholics were reduced to the last
JOHN SHAKESPEARE S TESTAMENT 85
extremity, and many a man, to rescue the poor
remnants of his patrimony for his starving wife and
family, was persuaded to do violence to his con-
science once or twice, and to appear at the hated
services which his tyrants prescribed for him.
The next point we have to consider regarding
John Shakespeare is that of his spiritual will.
The document opens thus : " ( i ). In the name of
God, the Blessed Virgin, the Archangels, Angels,
Patriarchs, Prophets, Evangelists, Apostles, Saints,
Martyrs, and all the Celestial Court and Company
of Heaven, I, John Shakespeare, an unworthy
member of the Holy Catholic religion, do, of my
own accord, freely make this spiritual testament."
(2 and 3). He then confesses that he has been an
abominable sinner, begs pardon for all his offences,
and begs his guardian angel to be with him at
his last passage. He declares that he hopes to die
fortified with the sacrament of Extreme Unction :
if he be hindered, then, he does now, for that time,
demand and crave the same. (5 and 6). He affirms
his hope of salvation solely in the merits of Christ,
and renounces beforehand any temptation to de-
spair. (7). He protests that he will bear his sick-
ness and death patiently, and if any temptation
leads him to impatience, blasphemy, or murmuring
against God or the Catholic faith, he does hence-
forth and for the present repent, and renounces
all the evil he might have then done or said.
(8). He pardons all the injuries done to him. (9).
86 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
He thanks God for his creation, preservation, and
vocation to the true Cathohc faith (speaking as if
he had never left it), and, above all, for His for-
bearance in not cutting him off in the midst of
his sins. (lo). He makes the Blessed Virgin and
St. Winefride executrixes of his will, and invokes
them to be present at his death, as also and
again, his guardian angel. (12). He beseeches his
" dear friends, parents, and kinsfolk," whom he
assumes to be all Catholics, to assist him in Purga-
tory with their holy prayers and satisfactory works,
especially with the holy sacrifice of the Mass, as
being the most effectual means to deliver souls
from their torments and pains. (13)- He prays
that his soul at death may find its repose in the
sweet coffin of the side of Jesus Christ. (14). He
concludes by confirming his testament anew, in pre-
sence of the Blessed Virgin and his angel guardian,
and begs that it may be buried with him.
Such then are the contents of the will, and it
must be remembered that the practice of mak-
ing these spiritual testaments was common with
Catholics. Forms for the Testamentum animm are
to be found in English Primers of the sixteenth
century, and the document in question corresponds
in matter and style with this form.^ Yet the will
is generally rejected as spurious ; and why ?
On internal grounds the Edinburgh Reviewer
^ F. Loarte's "Exercise of the Christian Life," 155 and 218,
translated and printed m English in 1579, is quoted by F. Thurston
INTERNAL OBJECTIONS 87
thinks it evidently supposititious. Knight^ will not
believe it to be the work of a Roman Catholic at
all, both because of its uncontroversial character, and
because its doctrinal expressions are both raving and
oifensive. As examples, he quotes in proof " direful
iron of the lance," which is, in truth, derived from
the line " quae vulnerata lancese mucrone diro " of
the ancient hymn, " Vexilla Regis," and " Life giving
Sepulchre of the Lord's Side," an expression not
only common in Catholic devotions, but imitated
by Shakespeare in his thirty-first sonnet, where he
says to his friend —
" Thou art the grave where buried love does live."
The objections to the genuineness of the will
on doctrinal grounds arise only from ignorance of
Catholic practices and devotion. The phrases and
manner pronounced absurd and offensive are pre-
cisely those usually employed in testaments of this
kind.
But the will is rejected on external grounds as
a forgery. It was " composed," Halliwell Phillipps
says, as is most likely, by Jordan,^ while Mr. Sidney
Lee calls " the forgery of the will of Shakespeare's
father, Jordan's most important achievement." ^ Let
(cf. Month, May 1882) as containing a similar protestation abridged.
Maskell, Monument. Ritual. Eccles. Anglic, 262, 263, 1846, contains
two other brief forms of spiritual wills englished from the Saruni
Horse of 1508.
^ "Biography of Shakespeare," 30.
2 " Outlines," ii. 403. 1890.
' " Iiife of Shakespeare," 366. 1898.
88 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
US see how far the history of the document, as far as
it can be gathered from Halhwell's extracts from the
evidence of M alone, Jordan, and Davenport,^ warrants
the statement.
( I ). In 1757^ a small paper book consisting of six
leaves, purporting to be the spiritual testament of
John Shakespeare, was found by Thomas Moseley
between the rafters and the roof when retiling the
house of Mr. Thomas Hart, a lineal descendant of the
poet's sister. Moseley was a master bricklayer who
sometimes worked with his men. He was sufficiently
educated to transcribe a portion of the document.
(2). Moseley lent the discovered will to Mr.
Alderman Pay ton sometime prior to 1785, who
read and returned it, saying that he wished the
name had been William instead of John. In 1785
Jordan made a copy of the manuscript which he
sent to the Gentleman's 3Iagazine, but that journal
rejected it as spurious, as did also the Rev. T.
Green, the rector of Wilford, near Stratford, an
antiquary of some repute. In 1788 Moseley died,
leaving the original manuscript in the hands again
of Pay ton, who sent it in 1789, through the Rev.
T. Davenport, the vicar of Stratford, to Malone.
(3). Malone took pains to investigate the matter
thoroughly. He ascertained through Davenport
that Moseley was a thoroughly honest, sober, indus-
^ "Outlines," ii. 400-404.
2 Jordan says 1757, Malone 1770, but the difference is immaterial,
as the supposed forgery was in 1785,
Jordan's alleged forgery 89
trious man, and had neither asked for nor received
any payment for the document in his possession,
and that his daughter, who was still living, and
Mr. Thomas Hart, in whose house it was found,
both perfectly remembered the fact of its discovery
by Moseley. Malone also obtained from Jordan
his account of his connection with the document,
and with this evidence before him, and with the
knowledge that Jordan's copy had been rejected
by the Gentleman's Magazine and by Green, he
published in 1790 the history of the manuscript
in his possession, declared himself perfectly satisfied
as to its genuineness, adding " that its contents
are such as no one could have thought of inventing
with a view to literary imposition."
Such is the history of the will to 1790. On what
grounds rests the supposed forgery ? Malone, it is
said, in 1796 recanted his verdict. He declares
indeed that he was mistaken as to the writer of the
document, for from documents since obtained " he
is convinced that the will could never have been
written by any of the poet's family." These words
of Malone need mean nothing more than that he
had satisfied himself that the will was neither in
the autograph of John Shakespeare nor in the
writing of a member of his family. But a will may
be authentic without being an autograph, and the
authenticity of the will Malone never calls in question.
To suppose, as some have done, that Jordan, instead
of making an exact copy of the will, when the
go EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
document was lent to him by Moseley, fabricated a
will and returned his fabrication to Moseley instead
of the original document, is to suppose what is
absurd. The original document was already known
to Moseley and Payton, and was subsequently again
in their possession, and transmitted by them as genuine
through Davenport to Malone. They must there-
fore have perceived at once any discrepancy between
Jordan's copy and the original, and it is simply
incredible that had such existed, neither Moseley,
Payton, Davenport, nor Malone should ever have ex-
posed Jordan's forgery, nor entered a word of protest
against its circulation.
Further, we may ask, what motive was there for
such a forgery ? There was no controversy then as
to John Shakespeare's religion, nor did the Ireland
forgeries, prompted according to Malone by this very
will, appear till eleven years later. The history of
the forged will of William Shakespeare offers an
instructive contrast indeed to that of the will of
John Shakespeare. Ireland produced a will profes-
sedly made by William Shakespeare, having found it,
he said, in the house of a gentleman Avhose name
he could not give. The contents of this document
are of a colourless, stilted character, and Ireland's
son Samuel Henry admitted, within twelve months
of the publication, that he had himself fabricated the
document, though without his father's knowledge.
The will of John Shakespeare was found in Mr.
Hart's house by Moseley, a man of unimpeachable
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE S BAPTISM 9 1
integrity, and his statement as to its discovery is
confirmed by independent testimony. The genuine-
ness of the will is guaranteed by a chain of witnesses
during some thirty or forty years, and its contents
are in complete agreement, as has been shown, Avith
the spiritual testaments drawn up by Catholics at
that period. Against the evidence, internal and
external, in favour of the will, the unsupported
assumption of its forgery is not, we think, tenable.
The will has therefore a right in our judgment to
be regarded as genuine till further evidence to the
contrary be adduced, and thus we leave it as
forming the last witness to John Shakespeare's
religious belief.
There is good reason, then, for believing that the
poet's parents were Catholics. But it is objected the
fact remains that the poet himself, whatever was the
religion of his parents, was baptized, married, and
buried in the Protestant Church.
Fu'st, then, as regards the baptism. Catholic
parents knew that if the matter and form were duly
applied, that sacrament was valid, by whomsoever
administered, lay or cleric, heretic or Catholic. The
law enforced the baptism of all children by the
minister in the Parish Church, and we shall see in the
Recusancy-return how carefully evidence was taken
on this head. There was a great dijEficulty in find-
ing a priest, and Catholics, even the parents of the
child, were subjected to severe penalties for con-
ferring that sacrament. Lord Montague, for baptizing
92 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
his own son, was visited by a pursuivant, forced to
dismiss all his servants, and incurred much perse-
cution. So, too, as regards marriage ; the non-per-
formance of the ceremony at the Parish Church
always aroused suspicions that the services of a
priest had been secretly employed. Thus Arden,
we find, was examined concerning his daughter's
marriage to Somerville. " Where was he married ?
in what church ? and by what minister ? Did not
Hall the priest marry Somerville and your daughter
at a Mass, at which you were present ? " ^ Shake-
speare, then, like his connection Somerville, may have
been secretly married by some priest, and when the
persecution waxed hot in 1581-82, obtained a
licence from the Bishop of Worcester, both to screen
his secret espousals and to obtain a legal certificate
of his union. His burial in the Protestant Church
proves nothing as to his religion, for it was the only
official place of interment, for priests as well as laity,
when there were no Catholic cemeteries. F. Thur-
ston mentions three priests, besides Dr. Petre, Vicar
of the Western District in the last century, all of
whom were buried in Protestant Churches.^
The performance of these three rites according to
the new creed prove, then, nothing conclusively as
to the poet's religion. We believe, however, that
surer evidence as to his religion is to be found by
considering the creed and politics of his friends,
^ Dom. Eliz., vol. clxvii. No. 59.
' Month,, May 1882, 12.
LEICESTER AND ARDEN 93
associates, and patrons. The Protestant and Catholic
parties in Warwickshire, as well as in every part of
the kingdom, were in a position of bitter antagonism,
and in this strife the poet soon became involved.
The leader of the Protestant party in Shakespeare's
county was the new upstart favourite Dudley, Earl of
Leicester. Absolutely devoid of principle, religious
or other, and at times indeed favourable to Catholics,
as for instance in his relations with Campion, he found
it to his interests in Warwickshire to play the part of
a zealous Puritan ; and he thus secured the support
of the Grenvilles, Lucys, the Combes, the Porters
and others, all zealous adherents of the new religion.
Leicester's iniquities, his criminal relations with the
Lady Sheffield and Lady Essex, his murder of both
their husbands and of his own wife at Cumnor,
were condoned or ignored by his partisans, in return
for his Puritan zeal.^ Not so, however, with the
Catholics, and conspicuous among them in his
sturdy independence was Edward Arden, the Squire
of Parkhall, and the cousin of Shakespeare's mother.
He refused to wear the Earl's livery, and openly
expressed his disgust at his infamies. Arden was
supported in his contest by the prayers and good
wishes of all that was respectable in the county,
but the Earl had the machinery of Cecil's state-
craft at his command, and knew how to use it.
In 1583, Somerville, Arden's son-in-law, a youth of
naturally weak mind, which had become still further
^ Parsons, " Leicester's Commonwealth."
94 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
unbalanced by his brooding over the wrongs of
Catholics, went up to London with the avowed
purpose of shooting the Queen. This was Leices-
ter's opportunity. Somerville was arrested, as were
also the Ardens and Hall, their chaplain. They
were indicted for treason at Warwick, but fearing
Arden's popularity there, Leicester got the venue
changed to London. They were all condemned.
Somerville was found strangled in Newgate, Arden
suffered a traitor's death at Smithfield, his wife, his
daughter, Mrs. Somerville, and Hall the chaplain
endured a long imprisonment at the Tower. One
of Leicester's henchmen, meanwhile, was in posses-
sion of Arden's and Somerville's estates, till he was
finally ejected by Arden's son.
But what has this to do with Shakespeare ? Mr.
Simpson hazarded the supposition that he had served
Arden in the capacity first of a page, and then in
that of a legal secretary or agent, under the assumed
name of William Thacker. The Edinburgh Reviewer
has, however, since shown that William Thacker was
a real personage. But, even though Shakespeare had
not been a member of the Arden household, the
poet's blood connection with the Ardens could have
scarcely suffered him to remain indifferent to the
bitter persecutions they endured. He was, at this
time, an ardent youth of nineteen ; was there any one
on whom he could in any way avenge the wrong done
to his own kith and kin ? Within a few miles of
Stratford lay the property of Sir Thomas Lucy, the
THE DEER-KILLING INCIDENT 95
Puritan tool of Leicester, and the persecutor of the
Warwickshire Papists. He had twice summoned
Shakespeare's father for recusancy, and was a lead-
ing member of the commission on Somerville and
Arden. In those days deer-killing was not a mere
poaching venture for gain's sake, but was employed
by both sides as an act of retributive justice or
revenge. Thus in 1556 divers "ill-disposed" showed
their hostility to Heath, the Archbishop of York and
Queen Mary's Chancellor, by destroying his deer,
and in 1600 the "evil affected" slew the cattle of
William Brettergle, High Constable of the county,
doubtless in revenge for his persecuting tactics.-^
And it is just about the date of the Arden and
Somerville trials, i.e. 1583, that, as all the poet's
biographers agree, Shakespeare was forced to leave
Stratford, because of the unduly severe punishment
that he received from Sir T. Lucy, for killing his
deer. Halliwell, indeed, thinks that nothing short
of persecution could have provoked an attack from
one usually so moderate and gentle as the poet.
That the persecution in question arose from the
poet's indignation at Lucy's treatment of his rela-
tions, there is, we think, good reason, from what
has been said, for believing. Later on he revenged
himself again on his persecutor by holding him up
to ridicule in the person of Mr. Justice Shallow,
whose identity is determined by the " luces " in the
Shallow Coat-of-Arms, explained by Parson Evans
^ Dom. Eliz., vol. cclxxv. No. 115.
96 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
in his equivocal speech ; " the dozen white louses
do become an old coat well."
In 1584-85, Shakespeare, then "having" — ac-
cording to the Kev. T. Davis, a Protestant clergy-
man, writing eighty years after the poet's death —
" been oft whipt and sometimes imprisoned " by
Lucy, found himself obliged to fly to London. For
a young man in trouble the stage presented perhaps
the only opportunity of a livelihood, and to Catho-
lics it offered special attractions. They were trained
by their religion to delight in the dramatic repre-
sentations employed by the Church in her services.
The Corpus Christi and other processions were duly
held during Mary's reign, and had been only of late
prohibited. The stage again offered peculiar pro-
tection for suspected persons against domiciliary
visits, tests, and oaths — for actors were classed as
vagabonds, or persons having no fixed address.
The theatre thus became held in favour by Papists,
as the following petition from a Puritan soldier will
show : —
" The dailie abuse of Stage Playes is such an
offence to the godly, and so great a hindrance to
the gospell, as the papists do exceedingly rejoice at
the bleamysh thereof, and not without cause ; for
every day in the weeke the players' bills are sett
up in sundry places of the cittie, some in the name
of her Majestie's menne, some the Earl of Leicester,
some the Earl of Oxford, the Lord Admyralles, and
divers others; so that when the belles tole to the
THE EAEL OF SOUTHAMPTON 97
Lectorer, the trumpetts sound to the Stages, whereat
the wicked faction of Kome laugheth for joy, while
ihe godly weepe for sorrowe. Woe is me ! The
play houses are pestered, when churches are naked :
at the one it is not possible to gett a place, at the
other voyde seats are plentie." ^
Of Shakespeare's early years in London little is
known ; but as Lord Southampton, his supporter and
friend, was the patron of the Blackfriars Theatre, it is
naturally supposed that he there began his career as
an actor. Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton,
was cradled in Catholic surroundings. His father
also, Henry, second Earl, was a well-known papist,
and a devoted adherent of Mary, Queen of Scots,
and for his action in her behalf was sent to the
Tower in 1572. He died in 1581, aged thirty-five,
leaving ^200 to be distributed amongst the poor of
his estates to pray for his soul and the souls of his
ancestors. His wife, Mary Brown, Southampton's
mother, was the daughter of Lord Montague, who
suffered much for the Faith. The poet's patron
himself was trained, indeed, in the opposite camp.
He was brought up under the guardianship of
Burleigh, and took his degree at St. John's College,
Cambridge. Nevertheless his friendship with Essex,
together with the traditional associations connected
with his name, led to his being regarded, as we shall
see, as champion of the Catholic party. Through
1 "Dramatic Poetry," by J. Payne Collier, F.S.A., i. 263-264;
Harleian MSS., 286.
6
98 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
Southampton, therefore, the poet would have found
himself among many papist associates.
The first certain allusion to him as an author is in
1592, in Greene's "Groatsworth of Wit," when the
dying dramatist, jealous of Shakespeare's success,
writes to warn his fellow-playwrights against putting
any trust in actors, "for there is an upstart crow
beautified with our feathers, that with his tygers heart
wrajpt in a player s hide, supposes he is well able to
bombast out a blanke verse with the best of you ; and
being an absolute Johannes fadotemi, is in his owne
conceit the onely Shake-scene in a country." ^ The
words " tiger's heart, etc.," are a parody on the line
in the third part of " Henry VI." : —
" Oh tyger's heart, wrapt in a woman's hide."
In I 5 94 he appears in the accounts of the Trea-
surer of the Chamber as having twice played before
Elizabeth with Richard Burbage,^ at Christmas time
at Greenwich Palace. In 1596 he had attained
such success, both as an author and actor, that he
was able to become proprietor of the Blackfriars
Theatre, and in 1597 to buy "New Place," his
subsequent place of residence at Stratford. But
during these years — 1593-97 — fresh political
1 For this envious attack Chettle, Greene's editor, made Shake-
speare a handsome apology. — Outlines, i. lOO.
'^ Mr. Halliwell Phillipps considers there is no evidence for the
opinion held by Simpson and others that Richard and James
Burbage were of the Warwickshire Catholic family of that name
(i. 344)-!
THE ESSEX CONSPIEACY 99
troubles were gathering, and Shakespeare's part in
them shows us where his sympathies lay. The
English people had become disgusted with Eliza-
beth and Cecil's tyranny, and the Queen was
detested by Papists and Puritans alike. Of both
these parties the Earl of Essex was the hope and
the champion, for he was known, on the one
hand, to be in correspondence with the Pope,^
and on the other he openly advocated religious
toleration. The supporters of Essex, to avoid sus-
picion, held their deliberations at Drury House,
the residence of Lord Southampton, Shakespeare's
patron. Some means were, however, needed to stir
the popular discontent and to familiarise the public
mind with the idea, if not of deposing Elizabeth, at
least of making Essex practically supreme. At that
time political movements Avere not begotten by
theories, arguments on the rights of the people,
or abstract principles, but by precedents, privileges,
and charters. An example was then required of
how a tyrannical, usurping sovereign might be
coerced, and this was furnished by Shakespeare's
play of " Richard II."
Dr. Hayward had already composed, with the
same end, a history of the deposition of that
monarch, and had dedicated it to Essex, but it
was altogether too dry and prosaic for the stage.
Shakespeare's play presents the same theme
^ His chaplain, Alabaster, had already become a Catholic in Spain
(Dom. Eliz., vol. cclxxv. nn. 32, 33, 35, July 1600).
lOO EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
and moral, cast in dramatic form. The play of
" Richard II." was pronounced treasonable on the
following heads : the selection of a story 200 years
old, in order to demonstrate the misgovernment of
the Crown, the corruption and covetousness of the
Council, the promotion of unworthy favourites, op-
pression of the nobles, and the excessive taxation
of the people, enacted professedly to prosecute the
suppression of the Irish rebellion, but in fact to line
the pockets of the king.^ The following extracts
will show how exactly these objections apply to
Shakespeare's play : —
" Now for the rebels which stand out in Ireland,
Expedient manage must be made. . . .
We will ourselves in person to this war ;
And, for our coffers — with too great a court
And liberal largess — are grown somewhat light,
We are enforced to farm our royal realm.
... If that come short,
Our substitutes at home shall have blank charters.
Whereto, when they shall know what men are rich.
They shall subscribe them with large sums of gold,
And send them after to supply our wants."
Richard wishes his uncle, John of Gaunt, a speedy
death, when
" The lining of his coffers shall make coats
To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars."
And he carried out his threat, too, by seizing all his
1 Dom. Eliz., vol. ccIzxt. No. 25, i.
FAILURE OF THE CONSPIRACY lOI
" plate, coin, revenue, and moveables." The old duke
had told him that
"A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,
Whose compass is no bigger than thy head ;
And yet encaged in so small a verge
The waste is no whit lesser than thy land."
We may easily fancy with what excitement the
conversation of Northumberland, Ross, and Wil-
loughby would be listened to by the favourers of
Essex :
'^ North. Now, afore heaven, 'tis shame such wrongs are
borne.
The king is not himself, but basely led
By flatterers ; and what they will inform,
Merely in hate, 'gainst any of us all.
That will the king severely prosecute
'Gainst us, our lives, our children, and our heirs.
Ross. The commons hath he filled with grievous taxes,
And lost their hearts ; the nobles hath he fined
For ancient quarrels, and quite lost their hearts.
Willo. And daily new exactions are devised ;
As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what.
But what, o' God's name, doth become of this ? "
Cecil felt the lines applied to his own policy, and
the Queen exclaimed to Lambarde, " Know ye not
I am Richard II. ? " The conspiracy, however, failed.
Essex himself was beheaded in the year 1600.
Southampton was sent to the Tower. The Earls of
Rutland, Monteagle; Sirs John Davies, C. Danvers,
C. Blount ; Robert Catesby and William Green, both
Warwickshire men ; John Arden, the poet's con-
nection; John Wheeler, John Shakespeare's friend
I02 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
and fellow-recusant, all Catholics, were among those
involved in the consequences of the conspiracy.^
The poet, although his play was condemned, himself
escaped. Hayward instead was chosen as the victim
of the royal vengeance, and was imprisoned and
racked. But here again, as in the Lucy whippings
and imprisonment, so now in the Essex conspiracy
we find the poet connected apparently with the
Catholic party.
In 1603 Elizabeth died, and Shakespeare alone
of his contemporary poets and dramatists refused
to compose one line in honour of her memory.
Chettle, indeed, thus complains, that though she
favoured him in life, he neglected her when dead.
" Nor dotli the silver-tongued melicent
Drop from liis honeyed muse one subtle tear
To mourn her death, that granted his desert ;
And to his lays opened her royal ear.
Shepherd, remember our Elizabeth
And sing her rape, done by that Tarquin, Death."
— England's Mourning Garment, 1603.
That he knew and appreciated her falseness and
infamy, we shall see later.
With the accession of James, the hopes of
Catholics rose ; he promised toleration, and was
hailed as a deliverer. But though he spared the
lives of Catholics, he adopted a mode of persecu-
tion, by fines and penalties, which reduced them
^ Dom. EHz., vol. cclxxvii., February 1601, MSS. 38, 39, 40, 41 ;
Rutland MSS., vol. i. 367 ; Townsend MSS., p. 10, •where the name
of Thomas Wheeler is given as well as that of John.
GUNPOWDER PLOT IO3
to beggary, and filled his treasury by some
;!^3 60,000 a year. Their rage in consequence was
intense ; they had already grievously suffered for
their allegiance to his mother, and their hearts were
hardened by the ingratitude and baseness of her
son. The prospect of any constitutional redress
seemed hopeless ; their policy was one of despair.
Instigated by the tools of Cecil, a number of Catho-
lics, many of whom had been in the Essex plot,
combined in the hope of destroying, at one blow,
King, Lords, and Commons. When the conspira-
tors were sufficiently implicated, their apprehension
followed, according to the correct State method.
Among the chief actors in the so-called Gunpowder
Plot were Catesby, the two Bates', John Grant of
Norbrook near Stratford, Thomas Winter, Grant's
brother-in-law, all Shakespeare's friends and bene-
factors. Now it is remarkable that in the two
plays of this period, " Julius Csesar " and " Hamlet,"
which alike turn on tyrannicide, all the sympathy
is evoked in favour of the conspirators.
The concluding eight or ten years of his life, till
his death in 1616, Shakespeare spent in comparative
obscurity at his native place. His retirement is
commonly attributed to the desire to live as a
country gentleman at Stratford. Why he was thus
relegated to the background may be gathered from
the history of his contemporaries, Ben Jonson and
Donne, both at one time Catholics, who procured
for themselves places at court, the laureateship, and
104 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
other preferments. The history of Jonson's con-
version shows how easily a man, in those troubled
times, might become a Catholic without the world
at large having any suspicion of the change.
Jonson, having slain Gabriel Spencer, the actor,
in a duel in 1593, found himself in the Marshalsea
under sentence of death. Among the prisoners were
many priests, also awaiting trial ; and these were,
in fact, far more at liberty to pursue the functions
of the ministry in their confinement, than when at
large. They said Mass, as a rule, daily, though they
were forced to substitute tin for silver chalices, as
the latter were so constantly appropriated by Sir
George Carey, the Governor, They preached at
times, and instructed their fellow-prisoners, when-
ever opportunity offered. Jonson, then, having
eternity before him and a priest at his side, thought
of setting his soul in order, and embraced the faith.
Having found means to obtain his release, he mar-
ried a wife, a Catholic like himself By her he had
two children, a girl who died, aged six months, and
a boy to whom Shakespeare was godfather. The
epitaph written by Jonson on the former shows that
both parents were at that time Catholics, and would,
therefore, probably have chosen a Catholic god-
father for their son. The verses run as follows : —
" At six months' end she parted hence
With safety of her innocence ;
Whose soul Heaven's Queen, whose name she bears,
In comfort of her mother's tears
Hath placed among her virgin train." — Epigram 22.
JONSON AND DONNE 105
At Cliristmas 1598, Shakespeare brought out
Jonson's play " Every Man in his Humour " at the
Blackfriars Theatre, an act of special kindness, seeing
that Jonson up to August of that year had been in
the pay of a rival company. They seem to have
drawn apart after the exposure of the Gunpowder Plot
in 1605. The country was now in a state of violent
agitation, and a sifting-time for Catholics followed.
Shakespeare retired, as we have seen, from the
company of king's actors, immured himself at Strat-
ford, and his plays seem to have been no longer
performed at Court. But timid and time-serving
Catholics like Ben Jonson took another line. Jonson
hastened to conform, and offered his services to the
Government. He took the oath of supremacy, went
to church, received the Sacrament, drank the whole
cup at a draught, and secured his place at Court.
He further proved his loyalty by commemorating
the plot in his tragedy of " Catiline," in which he
talks of the bloody and black Sacrament taken by
the conspirators, the " fire and balls, swords, torches,
sulphur, and brands " prepared by their hands, while
the conspirators themselves were described as the
foulest murderers and villains.
Or consider, again, the case of the metaphysical
poet Donne. Handsome and accomplished, of a
singular personal attractiveness, he found prefer-
ment by abusing the faith he had professed, and
vilifying the noble stock from which he sprang.
"The Pseudo- Martyr," published in 16 10, was
Io6 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
written to prove that his own ancestral relative,
the Blessed Thomas More, had suffered, not for the
Faith but for his own obstinacy ; and that the
thousands of Catholics persecuted ajid beggared by
James were no deserving objects of sympathy. He
could speak with experience ; his two maternal uncles,
Jasper and Elias Heywood, of the Society of Jesus,
died abroad after much suffering. Confessors for the
Faith. His own younger brother, Henry Donne, died
of gaol fever in the CHnk, where he was incarcerated
for harbouring in his barrister's chambers Father
Harrington, the martyr. But Donne's servile slander
and flattery served his turn ; he became Royal Chap-
lain, and finally Dean of St. Paul's. With the con-
duct of these contemporaries of his, Jonson and
Donne, Shakespeare's voluntary retirement, when he
was in his prime and at the height of his success
and power, is in marked contrast; and his self-
imposed seclusion seems only explicable by the fact
that the new order of things was thoroughly dis-
tasteful to him.
An argument in favour of his Protestantism
has been drawn from an entry in the Chamber-
lain's accounts at Stratford, showing that one quart
of sack was given to a preacher at " New Place " in
1614. But, as a fact, ministers were often quar-
tered on Catholics, who were not sorry to secure
their goodwill in return for the hospitality offered
them. Thus we read of one " Henry Stamford, a
minister, tutor to Lord Paget's son, who sups at Lord
PEOTESTANT MINISTEKS IO7
Montague's (a notorious recusant) at Courdray." ^
Again, in 1608, we hear of Lord William Howard,
a known recusant, who, being elected a Christmas
Lord, with his tenants and servants at Bampton,
Westmoreland, " most grossly disturbed the minister
in time of Divine Service ; the minister himself grant'
ing toleration, because he ordinarily dines and sups
at Lord William's table, but never prays with him.
These Christmas misrule men, some of them drank
to the minister when he was at prayers ; others
stepped into the pulpit and invited the parishioners
to offer for the maintenance of their sport ; others
came into the church disguised ; others fired guns
and brought in flags and banners ; others sported
themselves with pies and puddings in the church,
using them as bowls in the church aisles ; others
played with dogs, using them as they used to
frighten sheep ; and all this was done in church and
in time of Divine Service, and the said Lord doth
bring the ministers about him into contempt, scorn,
and derision." ^
Whether Shakespeare also contributed to bring
the ministers into scorn, contempt, and derision, Mr.
Thornbury, a very strong Protestant, shall tell us.
In his work, " Shakespeare's England," he says :
" The Elizabethan chaplain held an anomalous posi-
tion ; he was respected in the parlour for his mission
^ Dom. Eliz,, vol. cxciii. No. 6.
"^ Dom, James I., vol. xl. No. 11.
I08 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
and despised in the servants' hall for his slovenli-
ness ; he was often drunken and frequently quarrel-
some ; now the butler broke his head in a drinking
bout, and now the abigail pinned cards and coney-
tails to his cassock. To judge from Sir Oliver
Martext and Sir Hugh Evans, the parish priests of
Shakespeare's day were no very shiuing lights, and
the poet seems to fall back, as in ' Romeo and
Juliet ' and ' The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' on the
ideal priest of an earlier age. It is indeed true
that he always mentions the Old Faith with a certain
yearning fondness." ^
Though the poet expresses thus plainly in his
writings his predilection for the ancient faith, and
though his parents with many of his closest friends
and associates were Catholics, and his political sym-
pathies are on the Catholic side, the fact that he
allowed both his daughters to be brought up Pro-
testants is a strong argument for his practical in-
difference in the matter of religion. If he retained
the faith of his birth, and there is no proof that
he ever abjured it,^ he must have lived, like so
many Catholics of his age, cqnceaIingJbLia_j:filigiaus
convictions. And his external biography, as far
1 Vol. i., 211.
* '• Though the names of his fellow-actors are found in the token-
books, proving that they received Communion according to law
in the parish of St. Saviour's, Southwark, to which the Blackfriars
company belonged, Shakespeare's name is not among them." —
Collier's "Memoirs of the Principal Actors in Shakespeare^ s Plays"
Introd., 12.
DEATH AS A PAPIST IO9
as its meagre outlines extend, would have left us
in doubt as to the nature of his creed. We have,
however, one further fact positively attested, the
only direct evidence, indeed, given us as to his
religion, but which shows that, however time-serving
and unworthy he may have been as regards his
faith in life, it was not so in death. A Gloucester-
shire clergyman. Rev. Richard Davies {ob. 1708),
in his additions to the biographical collection of the
Rev. William Fulman, a learned writer and pro-
nounced Protestant {oh. 1688), expressly states that
Shakespeare has a monument at Stratford, " in
which he lays a heavy curse on any one who shall
remove his bones. He died a Papist." This entry
of Davies is often rejected as too remote and un-
supported to offer any valid testimony. But we
must remember that in the very year of his death,
1 6 16, four priests and one layman suffered for
the Faith; so that the ministrations of a priest in
Shakespeare's case would have been carefully con-
cealed at the time, and even later would have been
divulged only with caution, for similar executions
continued to take place till i68^i. In any case
Davies' statement represents, as Mr. Halliwell
Phillipps points out, the local tradition of the later
half of the seventeenth century ; nor does it emanate,
as he says, from a man like Prynne, anxious to en-
kindle hatred against a stage player by proving
him a Romanist ; but it is " the testimony of a
sober clergyman, who could have had no conceiv-
I I O EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
able motive for deception in what is evidently the
casual note of a provincial hearsay/
Lastly, it is objected that if Shakespeare died a
Catholic, how could he have been buried in the
chancel, the place of honour in the Parish Church ?
Shakespeare, in virtue of his tenure of half the
tithes, was, so to say, lay Rector of Stratford. The
chancel belonged to the Corporation, not to the
Vicar, and to them, not to him, the fees for burial
there were paid. Moreover, just about this time
the Corporation was at war with the Vicar. On
December 4, 161 5, we find the entry: "At this
Hall.it is agreed that the Chamberlains shall dis-
charge Mr. Rodgers, the Vicar, from receiving any
more benefit by burials in the chancel, and that
the Chamberlains shall receive it from henceforth
towards the repairs of the chancel of the Parish
Church, and also to demand of Mr. Rodgers so
much as he hath received within the last year." ^
This strife seems to have lasted till May 1 617, when
Wilson was appointed Vicar. In such a state of
things there would have been nothing unlikely in
the master of the great house of the town being
buried in the place of honour, notwithstanding sus-
picions of Popery attached to his name. The tombs
of Catholic equally with those of Protestant squires
are to be found in the chancels of their Parish
1 "Outlines," i. 265.
' Halli well's " Stratford Kecords, " 107.
BURIAL IN THE CHANCEL III
Churclies. Tlae objection to Shakespeare's Catholi-
cism founded on the site of his grave, sometimes
emphasised as most important, is absolutely incon-
clusive, and leaves untouched the wholly independ-
ent evidence in its favour already given.
CHAPTER III.
CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS.
While Shakespeare's predilection for the old order
of things is generally admitted, yet this is said to
prove little or nothing as to his religious belief.
The traditional mode of thought and speech current
in his time forbade, we are told, any scurrilous
treatment of the ancient faith, and Catholic modes
of expression are to be found in the other drama-
tists of the period. "The whole English stage
at that period," says Gervinus, " never ventured
to my knowledge to portray a character even
slightly tinged with religious bigotry " ; and again,
Macaulay writes, " The greatest and most popular
dramatists of the Elizabethan age treat religious
subjects in a very remarkable manner . . . We
remember nothing in their plays resembling the
coarse ridicule with which the Catholic religion and
its monastics were assailed two generations later by
dramatists who wished to please the multitude." ^
Now if the Elizabethan drama was thus conspicuous
for its tolerance, the absence of bigotry in Shake-
^ " Burleigh and his Times," Essays, 232, ed.'j8jj.
CONTROVERSIAL DRAMAS II3
speare would of course prove nothing. But the
reverse is the case. The stage as a fact was not
only a forum for the political strife of the period,
as we have seen in the case of the play of " Richard
II. ; " it was also the arena for theatrical quarrels, and
above all for religious controversy.
In 1588, soon after Shakespeare's arrival in
London, Job Throckmorton on behalf of the Puritans
attacked the Protestant Episcopacy in a series of
pamphlets entitled " Master Marprelate," in which
the Bishops were termed " petty Antichrists and
swinish rabble." In return, Archbishop Whitgift
through Bancroft engaged Nash, Lily, Marlowe, and
Greene to satirise the Puritans. A series of
scurrilous comedies followed, of so pungent a char-
acter ^ that the plays were inhibited and the
theatres in the city were closed by order of the
Lord Mayor (Harte), 1589. One form of reli-
gion, however, might be safely vilified and ridi-
culed with no danger of any official interference,
and that was Catholicism, as we shall proceed to
show.
" A Looking Glass for London," written by Thomas
Lodge and Robert Greene, and produced in i 5 9 1 ,
is an instance of how the stage was used as a
Protestant pulpit. The play is an exhortation to
London, under the image of Nineveh, to repent of
^ " A Whip for an Ape," Nash's " Countercuffe to Martin Junior,"
"Pasquil's Return," Lily's " Pap with a Hatchet."
H
114 CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS
its sins. The last act closes with these words,
spoken in the character of the prophet Jonas : —
" Repent, 0 London, lest for thine offence
Thy Shepherd fail, whom mighty God preserve
That she may bide the pillar of His Church
Against the stones of Romish anti-Christ,
The hand of mercy overshade her head,
And let all the faithful subjects say. Amen ! "
Robert Greene again (1593), in his ideal religion
which he attributes to Sir Christopher Hatton,
writes thus : —
" Ne was his faith in man's traditions,
He hated anti-Christ and all his trash ;
He was not led away by superstitions." ^
George Peele (1589) invites Norris and Drake to
lead their armies
" To lofty Rome,
There to deface the pride of anti-Christ,
And pull his paper walls and popery down,
A famous enterprise for England's strength
To steel your swords in Avarice's triple crown,
And cleanse Augean stables in Italy." ^
John Marston (1598) in his "Scourge of Villany"
talks of peevish Papists crouching and kneeling
to dumb idols (Pygmalion), and of the monstrous
filth of Douay Seminary. Christopher Marlowe
(1593) in his "Faustus" exhibits at length the
^ "A Maiden's Dream," dedicated to Lady Elizabeth Hatton.
1591-
2 A farewell entitled, " To the Famous and Fortunate Generals
of our English Forces." 1589.
MARLOWE 1 1 5
superstition, luxury, and mummery of the Pope
and " bald-pate Friars whose summum honum is in
' belly cheer.' " Faustus, invisible, snatches away
at a banquet the Pope's favourite dish and gives
him a box on the ear ; and the Friars set to work
cursing the ghostly thief " with good devotion."
" Bell, book, and candle — candle, book, and bell
Forward and backward to curse Faustus to Hell."
And the whole crazed, cursing pantomime is intro-
duced in what the poet calls a " Dirge for the
Dead."
Now Marlowe, though his maxims on religion
and morals are wholly unfit for publication, was by
no means an ultra-bigot in theory. On the con-
trary he thought, according to Barne's information
to the king/ that if there was any God or good
religion it was among the Papists [on account of
their ceremonies], and that all " Protestants were
hypocritical asses." Yet he felt that he was much
more likely to insure the success of even such a
solemn and powerful play as " Faust," by introducing
this piece of anti-papal burlesque.
So again in his " Massacre of Paris," published in
January 1593, only six months before his death,
the poet's object evidently was, says Ulrici, to
expose the ambition and the blind, bloodthirsty
fanaticism of the Roman Catholic party of the day,
^ A note containing the opinion of one Christofer Marlye con-
cerning his damnable opinions and judgements on Relygion and
scorne of God's word. (In 5 Harl, 6858, fol. 320.)
I 1 6 CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS
and to exhibit in contrast Protestantism in its
glory and future prowess,^ In this play the Pope
promises to ratify aught done in murder, mischief,
and tyranny, and the Duke of Guise declares that
he has a " Papal dispensation " and pension for the
murder of all the Protestants, which is to be effected
by 30,000 Friars and Monks from the Monasteries,
Priories, Abbeys, and Halls.
. Thomas Dekker (1600), who wrote in Shake-
speare's later years, presents the same characteristics.
The very name of one of his plays, " The Whore of
Babylon," sufficiently tells its tale, without need of
the introduction to inform us that the general scope
of the dramatical poem is " to set forth in tropical
and shadowed colours the greatness of our late
Queen . . . and on the contrary part, the inveterate
malice, treasons, machinations, underminings, and
continual bloody stratagems of the purple whore of
Rhome."
The above list of quotations might be much aug-
mented, by extracts, for instance, from Webster's
"White Devil" and Brookes' "Romeo and Juliet,"
but enough has, we think, been said to prove that
in the works of Shakespeare's contemporaries the
bitterness of Protestant bigotry is apparent. In
the writings of Shakespeare, on the other hand, as
will appear, there is not a disrespectful word of the
ancient Church.
We can, however, carry the comparison much
^ " Shakespeare's Dramatic Art," i. 161. 1876.
KING JOHN I I 7
further. It was Shakespeare's well-known custom
to alter and adapt existing plays ; and by comparing
his alterations with the original matter, we discover
the strength and direction of his own opinions.
One play thus altered and adapted by Shakespeare
is that of " King John," a piece commonly instanced
as proving beyond question Shakespeare's Protes-
tantism, especially in the two speeches of King
John and Pandulph. The latter, the Legate of
Innocent III., was sent to call the king to account
for refusing Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, admission to his See, and for appropriating its
revenues. King John replies thus : —
"iT. John. What earthly name to interrogatories
Can task the free breath of a sacred King 1
Thou canst not, Cardinal, devise a name
So slight, unworthy, and ridiculous.
To charge me to an answer, as the Pope.
Tell him this tale ; and from the mouth of England
Add thus much more, — that no Italian priest
Shall tithe or toll in our dominions :
But as we under Heaven are supreme head
So, under Him, that Great Supremacy,
Where we do reign, we will alone uphold.
Without the assistance of a mortal hand :
So tell the Pope, all reverence set apart
To him and his usurp'd authority" (iii, i).
We fully admit the bitterness of this speech. " No
good Protestant," as Gervinus says, " denouncing
the Papal aggression could have represented more
agreeably to his audience the English hatred of
Papal intrigue, of Italian indulgences and extortion."
I I 8 CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS
These lines have indeed furnished quotation for
anti- Catholic declamations of Prime Ministers, Lord
Chancellors, and Archbishops in our own time.
Their value as representing Shakespeare's opinions,
however, assume a different complexion if we apply
one of Aristotle's canons of criticism, and inquire
not what the speech is in itself, but who spoke it,
and with what end it was spoken. The language
and action of a hero may be supposed to represent
the poet's type of what is good and noble, and
therefore of what he would wish his own language
and action to be. The sentiments of a scoundrel,
on the other hand, are intentionally drawn as false,
base, and treacherous, and therefore presumably not
those of the poet's ideal self. Now we are quite
content that Shakespeare should be judged by this
rule throughout his plays, but this rule must be
uniformly applied. According to some critics, if
Henry V. speaks as a Catholic, this is only from
dramatic necessity, or because the poet is following
" Hollinshed's Chronicles," and such speeches there-
fore give us no clue as to his own judgment. Does
John, however, rant in true Exeter Hall fashion, or
Duke Humphrey malign Cardinal Beaufort, or an
added scene by Fletcher in " Henry VIH," extol
Elizabeth, there we have the poet himself. With
such a method of argument Shakespeare can be
proved as rabid a bigot as these writers desire.
But if the canon be impartially applied, an opposite
result is, we believe, attained.
bale's " KING JOHN " I 1 9
In this particular instance is John a hero or a
villain ? " He begins," says Kreysig, " as an ordi-
nary and respectable man of the world, and he ends
as an ordinary criminal ; he is not only a villain,
but a mean villain. The satanic grandeur of an
Edmund or Macbeth is wholly beyond him. His
criminal designs are pursued with the instinct
common to selfish natures, but without any clear,
far-reaching intelligence." ^ His bold defiance proves
mere bombast ; he ends by eating his words. He
humbles himself to the dust before the Legate, and
as a penitent receives the crown again at his hands,
and his kingdom in fief from the Pope. John's
anti-Catholic speeches, then, no more prove Shake-
speare a Protestant than the fool's saying in his
heart " There is no God," makes David a sceptic.
We now come to the composition of the original
play and its alterations by Shakespeare. We must
premise that the " Troublesome Reign of King
John " which Shakespeare adapted must not be con-
founded with the earlier " King John " of " Bilious "
Bale (1495-1563), a quondam friar who took a
wife, became Protestant Bishop of Ossory, and wrote,
besides various acrid controversial works, several
plays ^ alike doggerel and indecent.
1 "Vorlesungen," i. 462, 559.
^ One of these is entitled "New Comedy, or Interlude concern-
ing the Three Laws of Nature. Moses and Christ corrupted by
the Sodomites, Pharysees, and Papists (1538). London, 1562";
and offers further evidence of the bigotry exhibited by dramatists
in Shakespeare's time,
120 CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS
" The Troublesome Reign of King John," the
original of Shakespeare's play, was composed, like
that of Bale, to glorify Protestantism and vilify the
ancient faith. Shakespeare, in adapting it, had only
to leave untouched its virulent bigotry and its ribald
stories of friars and nuns to secure its popularity,
yet as a fact he carefully excludes the anti-Catholic
passages and allusions, and acts throughout as a
rigid censor on behalf of the Church. This we
proceed to show.
First, then, in the defiant speeches above quoted
he omits the Tudor claim of spiritual and temporal
supremacy, and the gruesome threat of chopping
heads off after the manner of Henry VIII. " As I
am king so will I reign next under God. Supreme
head both over Spiritual and Temporal, and he that
contradicts me in them I will make him hop head-
less." Again, he suppresses John's contemptuous
reply to the excommunication. " So, Sir, the more
the fox is curst the better it fares; if God bless
me and my land, let the Pope and his shavelings
curse and spare not ; " and also his declared pur-
pose of despoiling the Monasteries, " rousing the
lazy lubbers [the monks] from their cells," and
sending them as prisoners to the Pope. In Shake-
speare's play King John makes no reply to the
prelate after the excommunication is pronounced,
and is singularly silent till he threatens Philip at
the close of the scene. The excommunication itself,
however, is taken by Hunter and others as con-
THE ANTI-PAPAL SPEECH 121
elusive proof of Shakespeare's Protestantism. It
runs thus : —
" And blessed shall he be that doth revolt
From his allegiance to an heretic ;
And meritorious shall that hand be called,
Canonised and worshipped as a saint,
That takes away by any secret course
Thy hateful life" (iii. i).
These words, we admit, at first sight seem difficult
to reconcile with the theory of Shakespeare's reli-
gious opinions which we are defending. For here
it is Pandulph, the Legate himself, who is giving
utterance to the very doctrines attributed to the
Church by its enemies. Nor is it any answer to
say that the speech was in substance in the old
play, for our point has been that Shakespeare, in so
far as he follows the original piece, uniformly expur-
gates it of any anti- Catholic virus. Why then,
while rejecting so much which, as Gervinus says,
was particularly agreeable to the Protestant audiences
of the time, did he allow this one passage to
remain ?
First, then, it might, we think, be urged that a
regard to his personal safety prompted the inclusion
of the speech in question. His play of " Kichard II."
had already, as we have seen, been condemned as
treasonable, and though Hayward was in that
instance the victim, might not Shakespeare himself
be the next victim, if he left no Protestant senti-
ment to satisfy the royal sensitiveness ? Such a
122 CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS
motive is indeed unwortliy of a bold and fearless
champion of the Faith ; but we have neither regarded
nor represented Shakespeare in such a light, but
rather as one who, whatever his convictions, was
desirous, as far as possible, of avoiding any suspicion
of recusancy. That he did flatter Elizabeth at
times there seems no doubt. The imperial votaress
who eludes Cupid's arrow and
" Passes on
In maiden meditation, fancy free,"
is universally understood of her, though, if the
comma be omitted, the line might bear, as Simpson
suggests, the very different sense of a mind free
alike from maiden meditation or thoughts of hon-
ourable marriage. In any case, that Shakespeare's
conscience reproached him at times with being
guilty of flattery and falsehood appears from his
confession —
" I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as Hell, as dark as night."
— Sonnet cxlvii.
But yet another motive for the insertion of Pan-
dulph's speech suggests itself. Might not his words
represent Shakespeare's own feeling with regard to
Elizabeth ? The lawfulness of tyrannicide was advo-
cated in the sixteenth century by individuals of every
creed, and, though on entirely different grounds, by
Protestants of every shade, as well as by some Catho-
lics. Melanchthon, the German Reformer, advocated
ELIZABETH AND CATHOLICS 123
it in the case of Henry VIII. ; Goodman, the Puritan
Divine, in the case of Mary Tudor ; and John Kanus,
the Calvinist apostle, in that of that "Jezebel"
Mary Stuart.^ Some Catholics, as Catesby, Gresham,
Digby, Fawkes, the perpetrator of the Gunpowder
Plot, were of a similar opinion in the case of James.
What then was Elizabeth in Shakespeare's judg-
ment ? In the eyes of his kinsfolk, friends, and
associates she was illegitimate, excommunicate, an
usurping, cruel tyrant. Nor would his reiterated
condemnation of rebellion in theory, as fatal to its
perpetrators and disastrous in its results, hinder his
having the warmest sympathy with those who pur-
sued such a line of action. Before the poet's mind, at
the thought of Elizabeth, would have arisen a vision
of victims more numerous than the spectres which
haunted the last moments of Richard III. Arden
and Somerville, his connections ; Francis Throck-
morton, so cruelly tortured; Babington andTichborne,
his friends and associates ; Mary Stuart, whose shame-
^ Hergenrother, " Church and State," ii. 255-259. The following
extract gives Mr. Andrew Lang's opinion on this subject: "We
cannot be sure that our George Wishart was the man who carried
Brunston's offer (to assassinate Cardinal Beaton for a sum of
money) to Henry ; but, if he disapproved of such offers, he was
probably the only public man of the day on either side who looked
on assassination as anything worse than a legitimate political
expedient. Knox regarded it as a thing highly laudable when
performed, of course, by his own party ; and it was Knox who
carried the two-handled sword before Wishart in his preaching
progresses. . . . We can only conclude that if Wishart was really
the agent of the conspirators, he was only acting in accordance
with the murderous tenets then held and put in practice by all
parties." — St, Andrews, 140-141.
124 CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS
ful death is, according to Simpson, represented in
that of Arthur in this very play ; Essex, his leader ;
all these and many others would arise and cry for
vengeance. Did he hear their voice ? We Imow
not. But it is significant that it is a " blessed spirit "
from the other world who lays upon Hamlet the
command to put to death the incestuous, usurping
king, as a solemn judicial act of retributive justice;
and Brutus, the slayer of Csesar, is admittedly the
noblest character in that play. May not Richmond's
description of Richard III. be really Shakespeare's
judgment on the " virgin queen " ?
" A bloody tyrant and a homicide ;
One rais'd in blood, and one in blood establish'd ;
One that made means to come by what he hath,
And slaughter'd those that were the means to lieli? him ;
A base foul stone, made precious by the foil
Of England's chair, Mhere he is falsely set ;
One that hath ever been God's enemy :
Then if you fight against God's enemy,
God will, in justice, ward you as His soldiers ;
If you do sweat to put a tyrant down,
You sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain."
— Richard III,, v. 3.
If these were the poet's own feelings with respect to
Elizabeth, they would gain weight by being spoken
by a prelate whom Shakespeare portrays as a man
of dignity and worth. In any case, the two inter-
pretations suggested do not exclude each other, and
Pandulph's speech may have had the double purpose
of securing the poet's personal safety, and of ex-
PANDULPH I 2 5
pressing to those who knew him his own personal
condemnation of the Tudor queen.
In the same scene Pandulph calls on King Philip
to break with John, and declares the alliance sworn
with him void, but not, as in the old play, because
" the oath was made with a heretic." This popu-
lar calumny against Catholic doctrine Shakespeare
utterly repudiates, and instead he substitutes a careful,
accurate, and detailed disquisition on the obligations
of an oath, drawn out according to the Church's
teaching. An oath is invalid, Pandulph says, when
it is contrary to a former oath, or to a prior moral
obligation. On both heads Philip's oath to John
was invalid. It forswore his previous oath of
allegiance to the Church —
" Therefore thy latter vow, against thy first,
Is in thyself rebellion to thyself."
And again the calling God to witness that he would
attack the Church was by its nature null and void
as an oath.
" It is religion that doth make vows kept,
But thou hast sworn against religion."
This is not sophistry, as Elze says, but sound morality.
So too is the Cardinal's teaching that an oath, though
unlawful when sworn to, may by a notable change
of circumstance become lawful, and be rightly carried
out, not vi juramenti, but because of the altered
nature of the act; while when the matter of the
126 CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS
oath remains unlawful, it is best kept by non-per-
formance.^
" For that, which thou hast sworn to do amiss,
Is not amiss when it is truly done ;
And being not done, where doing tends to ill,
The truth is then most done not doing it" (ii. i).
Shakespeare depicts Arthur, not as in the old play,
a determined claimant to the throne, resisting John
to the face with set formal arguments, but as an
innocent, timid child devoted to his mother. " Oh,
this will make my mother die with grief," is his first
thought on being made captive. He yearns for a
quiet, sheltered life —
" So were I out of prison, and kept sheep,
I should be merry as the day is long ;
Is it my fault that I was Geffrey's son 1 "
He pines for some measure of human affection. " I
would to Heaven I were your son, so you would love
me, Hubert." This conception of Arthur increases
the horror of John's crime, and paints his villany in
yet blacker colours.
After his victory over the French, John in the
old play pours a flood of jeers and invectives over
the " mischievous Priest in Italy who calls himself
Christ's Vicar," and is now hard at work with Dirges,
Masses, Octaves, and Requiems, to assuage the flames
^ On the contrary doctrine that an oath always binds, whatever
its nature may be, Herod would have been bound, in deference to
his oath, to slay St. John Baptist.
SHAKESPEARE S ALTERATIONS 12/
of Purgatory for those who have fallen in battle.
To this succeeds a round of abuse of those princes
who "formerly bore the yoke of the servile priest,"
and in foolish piety submitted to the See of Rome.
Shakespeare simply cuts out all this. Again he
turns with disgust from the filthy cloister scenes,
and the finding of the nun Alice in the Abbot's
treasure-chest, though all this was, as Gervinus says,
" certainly very amusing to the fresh Protestant feel-
ings of the time." ^ The old play makes Pandulph
a hypocrite and a Machiavellian simply because he
is a Catholic prelate. In Shakespeare he appears as
an experienced, far-sighted statesman, but also as a
ghostly Father, full of sympathy for the afflicted.
He grieves for Arthur's capture and pities Constance,
whose maternal beautiful and pathetic appeal proves
that she saw in him a spiritual consoler, and not a
mere cold-hearted, calculating politician —
" And, Father Cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see and know our friends in Heaven :
If that be true, I shall see my boy again ;
For, since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday suspire,
There was not such a gracious creature born.
But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud,
And chase the native beauty from his cheek,
And he will look as hollow as a ghost ;
As dim and meagre as an ague's fit ;
And so he'll die ; and, rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of Heaven,
I shall not know him : therefore, never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more ! " (ill. 4).
^ i. 494 (Burnett's trans,).
128 CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS
Again, Louis, though he changes his tone afterwards,
fully recognises the Legate's spiritual character —
" And even there, methinks, an angel spake :
Look, where the holy Legate comes apace,
To give us warrant from the hand of Heaven ;
And on our actions set the name of right,
With holy breath "(v. 2).
In his speech to the Dauphin the Cardinal shows
his political foresight, and his knowledge of the ways
of Providence in the conduct of human affairs. The
lost battle and Arthur's imprisonment do not de-
ceive him,^ He knows " that whiles warm life plays
in that infant's veins" John cannot enjoy a peaceful
moment —
*' That John may stand, then, Arthur needs must fall ;
So be it, for it cannot but be so."
He foresees that the King's treatment of Arthur
will estrange all hearts from him, and beget a re-
bellion against the usurper; and the event fully
justifies his prophecy. Arthur is scarcely in the
King's power before the latter has engaged his execu-
tioner, and from that moment John himself becomes
the victim of a vengeful nemesis. According to Krey-
sig and other critics, John's fall was in no way due
" to the excommunication, or the word of the priest,
but merely to the natural revulsion of popular feeling
consequent on the murder of Arthur. The Pope's
^ We have borrowed largely from Raich, Konig Johann, Sliake-
speare't SteUung zur Katholisehen Religion, 1884, in our interpretation
of "King John."
DIVINE JUSTICE 1 29
failure is in fact a point in the play." Yet the
Church's curse was believed in the Middle Ages to
be no idle threat. The Divine vengeance might be
delayed, and when it came it might be accomplished,
not by any direct supernatural intervention, but by
what seemed merely natural means ; still its fulfil-
ment was none the less certain. Shakespeare knew
this —
" It is not so with Him that all things knows,
As 'tis with us that square our guess by shows :
But most it is presumption in us, when
The help of Heaven we count the act of men."
—All's Well that Ends Well, ii. i.
He develops his plot on these lines ; John wins the
first battle. In the eyes of the Cardinal this victory
presaged future defeat.
" No, no ; when Fortune means to men most good,
She looks upon them with a threatening eye."
No sooner has the seat of war been shifted to
England than Fortune changes. The king is for-
saken by the nobles, on account both of the ex-
communication and of Arthur's murder, and finds
himself vanquished. Shakespeare again cuts out
the following significant compliment to Henry VIII.'s
piety and performing zeal, addressed by John to
himself : —
" Thy sinnes are farre too great to be the man
T' abolish Pope and Poperie from thy Kealme,
But in thy seate, if I may guess at all,
A King shall reigne that shall supptesse them all."
I
I30 CONTEMPORAEY DRAMATISTS
The prophecy of the Five Moons is stripped of its
anti-Papal interpretation, and again, when John seeks
reconcihation with the Pope, he addresses the Legate
in variance with the old play, without prejudice to
his kingly dignity.
" Thus have I yielded up into your hand
The circle of my glory."
Whereupon Pandulph gives him back the crown with
these words : —
" From this my hand, as holding of the Pope,
Your sovereign greatness and authority."
It is no less instructive to remark the poet's
representation of Faulconbridge. In the older play
he rails at the Pope and the Legate, he discovers
the scandals and ludicrous scenes in the monasteries,
and is never wearied of declaiming against the
arrogance and greed of Kome. In Shakespeare he
is represented indeed as ready to levy contributions
on the monasteries.
" P)ell, book, and candle shall not drive me back
When gold and silver beck me to come on."
He is a reckless, careless soldier, but he is not a
Protestant bigot. On the contrary, instead of express-
ing indignant contempt — as he does in the old play —
at John's submission to the Legate, by which " friars
are made kings, and kings friars," Faulconbridge
looks upon Pandulph as the friend of England and
THE DEATH OF JOHN I3I
an honourable peace-maker. The anger of the
Bastard is reserved exclusively for France and the
Dauphin —
" 0 inglorious league !
Shall we, upon the footing of our land,
Send fair-play orders, and make compromise.
Insinuation, parley, and base truce,
To arms invasive ? Shall a beardless boy,
A cockered silken wanton, brave our fields 1 " (v. i).
And the action of the Cardinal with the Dauphin
justifies the Bastard's view of him. Instead of
mutually cursing each other to their " bellyful " as
in the old plays, in Shakespeare the Cardinal tells
the Dauphin that he looks at but " the outside of
the work," and persuades him though victorious to
offer England terms of honourable peace. The
death of John marks the final contrast between the
two plays. In the older piece the Monk obtains
the Abbot's blessing and the promise of heaven as
the reward for murdering the King. John dies
ascribing all his miseries to his submission to the
Pope, and the Bastard stabs the Abbot. In Shake-
speare's play the murderer, " the resolved villain," is
alluded to in one line ; and the Bastard, instead of
expressing indignation at the crime, seems rather to
see in it the punishment of a just God, and prays —
""Withhold thine indignation, mighty Heaven,
And tempt us not to bear above our power ! "
Finally, John dies, not a defiant prophet cursing
132 CONTEMPOEARY DRAMATISTS
Kome, but desolate and despairing, his torments
intensified by the impotent sympathy of his friends.
" There is so hot a summer in my bosom
That all my bowels crumble up to dust :
And none of you will bid the winter come,
To thrust his icy fingers in my maw ;
Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course
Through my burned bosom ; nor entreat the north
To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips
Within me is a hell ; and there the poison
Is as a friend confined to tyrannise
On unreprievable-condemnfed blood."
In the Epilogue Shakespeare suppresses a final
hit at the Pope, which concludes the old play, and
terminates with the stirring words of the true
patriot Faulconbridge — •
" Naught shall make us rue
If England to itself do rest but true ! "
Having now compared the two plays, we can judge
of their respective application. The moral of the
old play was, that as David was the forerunner of
Solomon, so John began the noble work which was
to be fully accomplished by the more worthy hands
of his descendant Henry VIII.,
" Whose arms shall reach unto the Gates of Rome
And with his feet tread down the strumpet's pride,
That sits upon the Chair of Babylon."
And the play was intended to keep alive the
burning hatred of Popery, as was the account of
HISTORICAL PARALLELS I 33
the same transactions in the " Homilies." ^ With
Shakespeare all this disappears ; in his hands the
play becomes a moral and political essay on the
events and questions of his time. The slaying of
Arthur is closely parallel to that of Mary, Queen
of Scots ; John, like Elizabeth, first suggests, then
commands the deed, afterwards feigns horror at
its accomplishment and repudiates the perpetrators.
John disowned Hubert, as Elizabeth did Davison,^
though in both cases the order for the murder was
given under the royal hand and seal. In fact Sir
Amyas Paulett, the governor of Fotheringay, know-
ing his mistress's way, refused to carry out Mary's
execution till he had Elizabeth's warrant for the
same, which angered her much and she complained
of him as a " dainty precise fellow " for his insist-
ence. Again, Philip's disinclination after the loss
of Angers, to prosecute the war till the prospect of
Arthur's death opens his son's claim to the English
crown, resembles the delay of Philip 11. of Spain to
make any serious attack on England till Mary
Stuart's death made the Infanta or Duke of Parma
possible claimants for the English throne. Louis'
intended slaughter of his allies, the English rebel
nobles, finds a parallel in the reported intention of
the Duke of Medina Sidonia, Commander of the
Armada, who declared that, once landed in England,
all Catholics and heretics should be one to him, his
^ Sixth part of the Sermon against Wilful Rebellion.
2 And as Bolingbroke disowned Exton, the murderer of Richard II.
134 CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS
sword would not discern them ! so that he might
make way for his master.^
But Shakespeare's "King John" extends beyond
historical parallels and discusses principles. In the
case of an unsurping ruler, who is to decide between
him and the nation what power has commission,
" From that supernal Judge, that stirs good thoughts
In any breast of strong authority
To look into the blots and stains of right " '( (ii. i).
And the ansAver is found not in the alliance of
princes which dissolve when
" That smooth-faced gentleman, tickling Commodity,
Commodity, the bias of the world,"
insinuates the prospect of gain to any of the con-
tracting parties — but as we think with Raich,^ in the
action of the Legate. Here we disagree with Mr.
Simpson, who thinks the play teaches, among other
lessons, the futility of Papal interference in national
disputes. We know that Pandulph is regarded
generally as being also a slave to commodity, and of
changing sides merely as suited the interests of the
Church. No doubt those interests were first with
him, but with them were bound up the claims of
justice and right and the liberties of the people.
He is allied with France to enforce John to submit,
but on John's submission he orders, as he was
^ Watson's " Important Considerations," 73.
' Shakespeare's SteUung zur KathoUschen Jieliyion, 167. Maintz,
1884.
FALSTAF.F I 3 5
bound, the Dauphin to withdraw his invading force.
His mission is completely successful. England is
reconciled to the Church, France and England are
friends again, the rebel nobles are pardoned, the
rightful heir ascends the English throne, and all
this is effected by the offices of the Legate and the
action of Faulconbridge, the typical Englishman, of
whom the poet is so fond. Shakespeare, then, on our
view, appears to have thought that the appeal to an
international tribunal in the person of the Pope was
not without its advantages ; that the disputes be-
tween people and rulers, or between rival sovereigns,
found safer, speedier, and more equitable adjustment
when settled by a recognised arbitrator, himself the
common-head of Christendom, than when decided
between the contending parties themselves by re-
bellion or war.
Shakespeare's Falstaff affords another striking
proof of the difference between the attitude of
Shakespeare and that of his Protestant contem-
poraries towards religious questions.
Moreover the stage history of Falstaff furnishes
evidence as to the judgment passed by the con-
temporary public on Shakespeare's religious sym-
pathies.
The identity of Falstaff is disputed, but un-
doubtedly in " I Henry IV." he was originally named
Sir John Oldcastle, for Henry calls him " My old
lad of the Castle," and the play at first bore that
title. Now Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, who
136 CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS
assumed that title through marrying an heiress of
the Cobham family, was a notorious Lollard leader,
and in the reign of Henry V. twice raised an insur-
rection of that party. The risings failed, Oldcastle
was apprehended, while Henry was in France, found
guilty by Parliament of heresy and treason, and
put to death at the stake. The character of his
religion was sufficiently shown by the blasphemous
and indecent writings found in his hiding-place after
his capture, yet he was canonised by Bale and Fox
as a Puritan or Protestant martyr. Did Shake-
speare then intend to reproduce the Lollard champion
in Falstaff? The Epilogue of "2 Henry IV." is
quoted as proving the contrary, where it says, " Fal-
staff may appear again and die of a sweat, unless
he be already killed by your hard opinions, for
Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man ! "
But these words are not conclusive. It is quite
possible that Shakespeare's caricature of a Protes-
tant hero gave offence, and that he felt constrained
to expressly deny the identity of Falstaff and Old-
castle, while the proof which he advanced in sup-
port of his denial — viz. that Oldcastle died a martyr,
was nothing more than irony. In any case, the
popular mind was so strongly convinced, in spite
of the changed title of the play, that Falstaff was
Oldcastle, that in November i 599, Anthony Munday,
Michael Drayton, R. Wilson, and R. Hathwaye
brought out their play of " The History of Su- John
Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham," to rehabilitate
THE "LOLLARD MARTYR 137
Sir John in public estimation, and in 1600 they
published it with Shakespeare's name on the title-
page, a forgery which they were obliged almost
immediately to suppress. Their Prologue expressly
warns the audience of what they were not to
expect —
" The doubtful title, gentlemen, prefixed
Upon the argument we have in hand,
May breed surprise, and wrongfully disturb
The peaceful quiet of your settled thoughts.
To stop which scruple let this brief suffice ;
It is no pampered glutton we present,
Nor aged counsellor to youthful sin !
But one whose virtue shone above the rest,
A valiant martyr. . . .
. . . Let fair truth be graced
Since forged invention former time defaced." ^
The fair fame of the martyr had been disgraced
by a calumnious description of him as a pampered
glutton, and an aged counsellor to youthful sin !
This is an evident allusion to the words, " That
villanous, abominable misleader of youth, Fal-
staif, that old white-bearded Satan." In the play,
mention is made of Falstaff, but only with the view
to separating his personality more completely from
the hero Oldcastle, who is made a model of a fine
old English gentleman — charitable, chivalrous, and
slightly given to preaching. The ruffian of the play
is a priest. Sir John of Wrotham, who combines
with his sacerdotal character the part of a highway-
^ In the original quartos Falstaff is more profane than in. the
modern editions copied from the folio of 1623.
138 CONTEMPOEARY DRAMATISTS
man on Blackheath, in company witli a disreputable
woman.-^ The priest is in fact a grosser compound
of iniquity than FalstafF, but without the latter's wit.
The villain is the Bishop of Rochester, an impersona-
tion of the stage Jesuit of the day. The drama
is quite vixenish in its Protestantism. It would be
difficult to say why the rehabilitation of Oldcastle
should have been made in this spirit of tit-for-tat, if,
as is asserted, there had been no intention manifested
in Shakespeare's play of slandering his memory.
Whether the FalstafF of " Henry IV." had ever been
called Oldcastle or not, it is perfectly certain that as
late as 1599 theatrical audiences still understood
that FalstafF stood for Oldcastle.
Shakespeare's portrait of FalstafF as a Puritan
and sanctimonious hypocrite is in keeping with his
ordinary treatment of that sect, and explains why
the public so readily identified FalstafF in that
character. The pharisaical Lord Angelo is out-
wardly a "sainted deputy, within foul as hell."
Justice Shallow, the Puritan — a portrait drawn from
Justice Lucy — is austere-looking, mere flesh and
bone, " a forked radish " — yet FalstafF says of him,
" This same starved justice hath done nothing but
prate to me of the wildness of his youth and the
feats he hath done, yet every third word a lie."
So in " Twelfth Night," Malvolio is outwardly morose,
secretly amatory. Now FalstafF is drawn on these
lines and is essentially Shakespeare's own creation.
1 The Doll Tearsheet of Shakespeare's play.
USE OF SCRIPTURE 139
In the " Famous Victories," from which Shakespeare
borrowed incidents for his two parts of " Henry IV.,"
Oldcastle appears as one of the boon companions of
the wild Prince, but his part is quite insignificant.
He opens his mouth on two occasions only. He
goes to visit the Prince, who is, as he supposes, in
prison, for boxing the Chief-Justice's ears ; he meets
Hal by the way and says, " I am glad to see your
Grace at liberty ; I was come, I, to visit you in
prison." Hal makes an answer which concludes
with the statement " that if the old king were dead,
all should be kings," To which Oldcastle, " He
is a good old man : God take him to His mercy
sooner." From these bare hints Shakespeare seems
to have derived the idea of painting a hoary
hypocrite, leading his companions to sin, yet des-
canting the while on virtue ; and such at least is
Falstaff in the first part of "Henry IV." His
speeches and repartees teem with scriptural allu-
sions— the special characteristic of the Lollards,
who made the Bible the weapon of their attack
against Church, Priests, and property — and his
arguments abound with that peculiar amplification
and affectation of Hebrew parallelism distinctive
of Puritan pulpit oratory. We will quote some of
them.
He poses as the defender of Hal's character, and
the victim of his evil ways.
Ad i. sc. 2. — " An old Lord of the Council rated me the
other day in the street about you, Sir ; but I regarded him
140 CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS
not : and yet he talked very wisely ; but I regarded him
not; and yet he talked wisely, and in the street too
(Prov. i. 20). . . . Thou art able to corrupt a saint. Thou
hast done much harm upon me, Hal — God forgive thee for
it ! Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing ; and now
am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one
of the wicked. , . . I'll be damned for never a king's son
in Christendom."
Then comes a gibe at free-will and good works in
the person of Poins —
"If men were to be saved by merit, what hole in hell
were hot enough for Poins? (who calls himself Monsieur
Remorse)."
Again to Poins, on his undertaking to enlist the
Prince in the Gad's Hill robbery, is addressed a
travesty of St. Paul's words to the Romans —
"May'st thou have the spirit of persuasion, and he the
ears of profiting, that what thou speakest may move, and
what he hears may be believed," &c. (Rom. x. 14, 17).
His marvellous expostulation with Hal teems
with texts.
Act ii. sc. 4. — "I would I were a weaver! I could
sing psalms (James v. 13) or anything. . . . Clap to the
doors : watch to-night, pray to-morrow (Mark xiv. 38), a
plague of sighing and grief ! it blows a man up like a
bladder. . . . There is a thing, Harry, which thou liast
often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the
name of pitch : this pitch, as ancient Avriters do report, doth
defile (Eccles. xiii. i, 7), so doth the company thou keepest
— for Harry, now I do not speak unto thee in drink, but
FALSTAFFS ATTRACTIVENESS 14I
in tears; not in pleasure, but in passion; not in words
only, but in woes also (Rom. xiii. 13). I see virtue in
his looks. If then the tree may be known by the fruit,
as the fruit by the tree (Matt. xii. 33), then, peremptorily
I speak it, there is virtue in that FalstafF. ... If to be
old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I
know is damned : but if to be fat is to be hated, then
Pharaoh's lean kine are to be loved" (Gen. xli. 19).
Of Bardolph's red nose and face he says —
Act iii, sc. 3. — " I never see thy face but I think upon hell-
fire, and Dives that lived in purple (Luke xvi. 19). Thou
knowest in the state of innocency, Adam fell; and what would
poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villany ? Thou seest
I have more flesh than another man; and therefore more
frailty."
Act iv. sc. 2. — "Slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the
painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his sores
. . . tattered prodigals, lately come from swine-keeping,
from eating draff and husks " (Luke xv. 19).
What then, it may be asked, was the secret
of his influence and the fascination he exer-
cised over Prince Hal. Falstaff was not merely
a sanctimonious hypocrite like Angelo or Malvolio,
nor a common sensualist or coward or braggart
Uke Pistol, Nym, or Bardolph ; but he was an
extraordinary compound of opposites, ^ and he
could exhibit either side at once in perfection and
with the most complete propriety, much as we may
suppose Leicester did. An arrant coward, yet he
^ Cf. Maurice Morgann, "Essay on the Character of Sir John
Falstaff." 1787.
142 CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS
could draw his rapier and clear Dame Quickly's
parlour ; a consummate liar, yet a great stickler
for truth. A wild braggart, he could draw dis-
tinctions and deny the major of a syllogism with
the accuracy of a logician. Old in years, and fat,
yet he could always pose as a leader of youth.
Constantly duped, he was ever outwitting others.
His versatility and powers of subterfuge and
excuse were simply inexhaustible. To the Chief-
Justice's reproach for his scandalous life, seeing his
grey hairs and that every part of him was blasted
with antiquity, he replied that he was born at
three o'clock in the afternoon, with white hair and
a round belly, and had cracked his voice with
singing anthems; that he was old only in judg-
ment and understanding (i Cor. xiv. 20), and
could caper any man for a thousand marks. He
excused his flight at Gad's Hill by saying that
he was as valiant as a lion, a Hercules by nature,
but a coward by instinct, and that it was instinct
which forbade him touching a true Prince. Though
he had led Henry into every kind of dissipation,
he could personate Henry IV. at a moment's notice
and draw tears from his hearers by the pathetic,
dignified reproof he administered to the young
scapegrace, while he admonishes him to keep one
companion if he would persevere in virtue — " a good
portly man. I remember his name is FalstafF." And
he could act the part of a virtuous man perfectly.
Mrs. Ford says of him, " He would not swear ;
DISMISSED THE COURT 143
praised women's modesty, and gave such orderly
and well-behaved reproof to all unseemliness, that
I would have sworn his disposition would have
gone to the truth of his words, but they do no
more adhere and keep place together than the
looth Psalm to the tune of 'Green Sleeves.'"
Falstaff is impudently shameless only with those
who know him well, and whom he knows have
seen through him. With strangers he is modest,
cajoling, adroit, even edifying and devout. " He
is," as he says, " Jack with his familiars, John with
his brothers, and Sir John with all the world."
Such was the man who exercised such a baneful
spell over Prince Henry in his youth, but the hour
of^^rgLCB- -Struck- .and Henry- obeyed. It was a call
to his duty as a king, and his manhood awoke to
its true dignity. The change in him was to be
no half measure but complete, and when FalstafF
approached, befooling, he was met with that word
from Henry.
" I know tliee not, old man : fall to tliy prayers ;
How ill white liairs become a fool, and jester !
I liave long dreamed of such a kind of man,
So surfeit, swell'd, so old, and so profane ;
But being awake, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body, hence, and more thy grace ;
Leave gormandising ; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest ;
Presume not that I am the thing I was :
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turned away my former self ;
So will I those that kept me company."
144 CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS
And he forbids him to approach within ten miles
of his person, but makes him a suitable allow-
ance, and promises him advancement if he tries
to reform.
Falstaff never reappears, but we read of his death.^
The classic scene in Dame Quickly's house — his
nose sharp as a pen, and a babbling of green fields,
fumbling with the sheets and smiling at his fingers'
ends ; and he cried out, " God ! God ! God ! " three
or four times, and " I to comfort him bade him not
think of God." . . . " So a bade me lay more clothes
on his feet. And I put my hand into his bed and
felt them, and they were cold as any stone." And
he said, " the devil would have him about women."
And he talked about the " Whore of Babylon," the
common Puritan term for Rome. The old vice, the
old cant, and the grip of death silencing both. The
Lollard martyr preaches indeed to the very end.
With Falstaff we will conclude our comparison
of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. We have
as we think sufficiently shown that the poet defends
the doctrines and ministers of the Church, while
his fellow - dramatists reviled them, and that his
satire of one at least of the Protestant heroes of
^ Falstaff 's death is related in •' Henry V., " scene 3. The Falstaff
resuscitated in the subsequent play of the "Merry Wives of Wind-
sor " is merely an amorous old fool, the butt and dupe of his in-
tended victims. The character was created at Elizabeth's bidding,
to show the fat knight in love, the one part she would have known,
had she understood him, he could not possibly perform. Cf. Braun's
" Shakespeare," i., 244.
POINT or THE SATIRE 1 45
the day, in the person of the fat knight, was so
keen and well directed that the supporters of the
new creed felt themselves bound to undertake their
champion's defence. Thus in attack as in defence
Shakespeare stands alone to manifest his sympathies
with the ancient faith.
K
CHAPTER IV.
ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS.
The English historical plays extend with broken
intervals from the reign of King John to that of
Henry VIII. They may be regarded, therefore, as
embracing a period marked by the rise, establish-
ment, and fall of the feudal system in England.
Shakespeare's chief, if not sole, authority is " Hol-
linshed's Chronicles " ; but the pre-existing matter is
fused in the crucible of the poet's genius, and recast
according to the requirements of the historic drama.
In a composition of this kind the events themselves,
their chronological sequence, their mutual relation
and development, the historical reality of the char-
acters as adapted to the personages named, are of
comparative unimportance. The aim of the dra-
matist is not to narrate in order transient and con-
tingent facts, but to portray what is permanent and
necessary, the true principles of life and conduct,
the spirit working within, which is manifested only
partially in outward effects.
The historic plays are not then intended to repre-
sent an accurate chronicle of the past. Indeed, in
some instances, the poet notably departs from the
146
IDEA OF ROYALTY 1 47
region of fact. As elsewhere he imparts Christian
thought to Pagan times, so here, as in King John,
Protestant ideas are found in a Catholic age. He
misrepresents individual characters and commits
many anachronisms, but all the while he perfectly
delineates the constituent elements of the ideas or
institutions his personages are intended to portray.
Thus the prerogatives of royalty, their source, nature,
and extent, the conditions of its lawful tenure ; the
position and duties of the nobles; the relations of
the Church to the State ; the reasons which justify
rebellion ; the shibboleths of the popular dema-
gogue, the causes of a nation's decay, these and
other important elements of statecraft appear in the
historic plays.
The poet's teaching on the source, prerogative,
and restrictions of royalty is very explicit. The
king is the deputy, anointed by Heaven, and rules
only in God's name. He is the steward or minister
of the divine law, and cannot be deposed by his
subjects as if he were merely their delegate or
executor. Thus the Bishop of Carlisle asks, regard-
ing the proposed deposition of Richard II. : —
" And shall the figure of God's Majesty,
His Captain, Steward, Deputy, elect,
Anointed, crowned, planted many years,
Be judg'd by subject and inferior breath ? "
— Richard II., iv. i.
The anointing of the sovereign, in the ceremony
of consecration, was not in the poet's mind a mere
148 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
form, but a sacred function, conferring real power
from God, and ensuring the divine protection.
Thus Kichard exclaims : —
" Not all the water in the rough, rude sea
Can wash the balm from an anointed king :
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord :
For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd
To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown,
God for His Kichard hath in heavenly pay
A glorious angel : then, if angels fight,
Weak men must fall : for heaven still guards the right."
—Ibid.y iii. 2.
It was indeed the common Catholic doctrine that
while the King obtained the jus ad rem,, the right to
reign or his title to the crown, by inheritance or
election, his possession of the crown or his actual
reign, jus in re, began with the sacred unction,
which was administered only after the coronation
oath had been taken.^ Elizabeth and her advisers
recognised the necessity of conforming, at least out-
wardly, to this function, as establishing beyond
question her right to the crown. She took the
usual oath of Christian sovereigns to defend the
Catholic faith and to guard the rights and immu-
nities of the Church, and was duly anointed. But
when she withdrew to be vested in the royal robes,
she is reported to have said to her ladies-in-waiting,
" Away with you, this oil is stinking." ^
1 Hergenrother, " Church and State," Engl, trans., i. 261.
*■' Sanders, "Anglican Schism," 243. 1877.
THE "king's evil 149
In keeping with the sanctity which the poet
attaches to the consecration of a king, is the testi-
mony he gives to the miraculous power attributed
to sovereigns of heaUng by their touch the disease
known as " king's evil." In " Macbeth " he intro-
duces the following scene, in no way required by
the dramatic development of the play, to relate the
miraculous and prophetic gifts of St. Edward, and
he brings in a physician to testify to the super-
natural character of the cures effected : —
" Malcolm. Comes the king forth, I pray you ?
Doctor. Ay, Sir : there are a crew of wretched souls,
That stay his cure : their malady convinces
The great assay of art ; but at his touch,
Such sanctity hath Heaven given in his hand,
They presently amend.
Malcolm. I thank you, Doctor.
Macduff. What's the disease he means ?
Malcolm. 'Tis called the ' evil ' :
A most miraculous work in this good king :
Which often, since my here-remain in England,
I have seen him do. How he solicits Heaven,
Himself best knows : but strangely-visited people,
All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
The mere despair of surgery, he cures ;
Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
Put on with holy prayers : and 'tis spoken,
To the succeeding royalty he leaves
The healing benediction. With this strange virtue,
He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy ;
And sundry blessings hang about his throne.
That speak him full of grace." — Macbeth, iv. 3.
James I. is said by Davenant to have written
Shakespeare an autograph letter of thanks for this
ISO ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
passage. It is no argument, however, against the
reahty of the gift that non- Catholic kings should
have claimed to possess it. Healing, as well as
prophecy, belongs to that class of gifts termed
gratia^ gratis datie, or gifts given for the benefit of
others, which are conferred independently of the
sanctity of their recipient,'^ Balaam prophesied, so
did Caiaphas, as the Gospel expressly tells us.^ The
" golden stamp " of the passage just quoted refers to
the gold medals which, according to the records of the
Tower, Edward I. in 1272 gave to the sick persons
he had touched. Dr. Johnson, when an infant three
years old, was himself touched for "the evil" by
Queen Anne, of whom he had a solemn recollection
" as of a lady in diamonds and a long black hood."
The experiment was made on the advice of Sir John
Floyer, a celebrated physician of Lichfield.^ Dean
Swift is also said to have believed in the virtue of
the regal touch.* The Protestant sovereigns from
Queen Elizabeth omitted the sign of the Cross in
the ceremony.
Although the sovereign's right to rule is from
God, that right is conditioned, like that of any
other human authority, by his exercising his power
according to the divine law, whose administrator
he is. Even Richard II. recognises this clearly.
^ Matt. vii. 22, 23,
- John xi. 51.
' Boswell's " Life of Johnson," i. 13.
* Wilkes' " Shakespeare," 329.
FORFEITURE OF THE CROWN 151
" Show us the hand of God,
That hath dif?miss'd us from our stewardship ;
For well we know, no hand of blood and bone
Can gripe the sacred handle of our sceptre,
Unless he do profane, steal, or usurp."
— Richard II., iii. 3.
How far, in the eyes of the poet's friends and
associates, Henry VIII. or Elizabeth had been
guilty of these three offences — profaning, stealing,
usurping — has been already shoAvn. As a rule, the
poet seems to regard the deposition of a tyrannical
or corrupt ruler, not as a right for courts to enforce,
but as a fatal and natural consequence of his mis-
deeds. This is so in the case of King John ; and
the same apparently natural nemesis is seen in
the close of the reigns of Richard II., Henry VI.,
and Richard III. The nobles and people are
alienated by misgovernment and crime : the crown-
ing delinquency is often the murder of the heir
to the throne, as in the case of both King John
and Richard III. Henry VI., by disinheriting his
son, really decrees his own downfall. The murder
of Richard II. brands the conscience not only of
Henry IV. but also of Henry V. What Shake-
speare's judgment was, as we suppose, of Elizabeth's
judicial murder of Mary, Queen of Scots, has been
already stated.
After the murder or disinheriting of the rightful
heir, the prince's abuses of his power are ordinarily
the causes of his fall. Disregard of the rights of
land tenure, "farming his realm," as if he wer^
152 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
" landlord, not King of England," and " binding the
whole land with rotten parchment bonds " ; in-
justice to the nobles, fining them for old quarrels ;
the encouragment of flatterers and favourites,
" caterpillars who waste the State " ; employment
of suborned informers ; unjust and oppressive
taxation of the Commons, with new exactions such
as " blanks and benevolences " ; inaccurate budgets
with prospective bankruptcy; the favouritism of
evil-doers, only because of their growing power ; the
waste of time and opportunities, to the grievous
injury of the realm — these, and such like causes,
produce the downfall of the king. The royal
power, even when undefined by strict constitutional
limits, carries with it obligations, for which the
ruler is responsible to the nation and to God.
As Richard II., though rightful king, loses his
throne by his spendthrift, reckless course ; so Henry
IV., though an usurper, retains the crown he has
seized through skilful statecraft. The "vile poli-
tician, Bolingbroke," is incomparably a better ruler
than Eichard was, or Hotspur would have been,
with his proposed division of England into three
kingdoms, a retrograde step towards another hep-
tarchy. In Bolingbroke's instructions to his son
on the surest way of establishing his throne, little
weight is attached to questions of policy, but the
personal deportment of the prince is the all-im-
portant matter. Prince Henry is emulating Richard
in his downward course by frequenting vulgar
BOLINGBEOKE I 5 3
company, " mingling his royalty with capering fools,"
" making himself as common as a cuckoo in June,
heard but not regarded." AVhereas Bolingbroke
showed himself but seldom, provoked interest by
his retirement, and when he did appear, his presence
was "like a robe pontifical, ne'er seen but won-
dered at." The crown is thus considered, not as
a birthright or heirloom, but as the prize of the
ablest and most popular competitor. Bolingbroke's
intended crusade, announced at the end of " Richard
II." " to wash the blood from off his guilty head,"
is continued in " i Henry IV.," with the utilitarian
purpose of knitting together the unravelled threads
of faction and making them "in mutual ranks,
march all one way."
In " 2 Henry IV. " the king's conscience is yet
more uneasy, but though repentant, he still looks
to securing to himself and his family the crown
he had usurped. He comforts his son with the
assurance that as he will inherit the crown by
peaceable succession, he will not be obliged, like
his father, to cut off the friends who had helped
him to gain it ; and he again urges the policy of
keeping the nobles engaged in foreign wars till the
memory of his defective title is obliterated.
Shakespeare's teaching on the conditioned rights
of the crown, its responsibilities towards its subjects,
and the punishment which overtakes an unjust or
incompetent ruler, are, it will be observed, wholly
opposed to the absolutism claimed by Henry VIII. or
154 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
Elizabeth, as also to the Stuarts' pretension to divine,
inalienable right. At the same time his treatment
of Cade's rising shows him to have been no believer
in the sovereignty of the people, a doctrine fully-
developed in the trial and execution of Charles I. only
thirty-three years after the poet's death. As Cole-
ridge says, "he gives utterance neither to the servile
flatteries of Beaumont and Fletcher, nor to the
Republican sneers of Massinger." ^ To the sovereign
he attributes sanctity, majesty, glory, as the source,
under God, of the life and power of the State. But
he is to use his power not for his personal gain,
but for his subjects' good, and when he abuses
his trust his power is forfeited.
The religious loyalty which, while indignant at
a sovereign's crimes and follies, still remains faith-
ful to its pledged word, is beautifully drawn out
in the character of York in " Richard II." So
is the deep personal devotion felt by the poor
for their sovereign in misfortune and for all
belonging to him, a truly Catholic instinct, as we
can learn from the pages of history. Coleridge
says that it is by the introduction of such incidents
as the following scene of Richard II. and his groom,
that Shakespeare's plays are dramas, not histories.
" Groom. I was a poor groom of thy stable, king,
When thou wert king ; who, travelling towards York,
With much ado, at length have gotten leave
To look upon my sometime master's face.
^ " Literary Remains," ii. 178.
MISERIES OF ROYALTY 155
0, how it yearned my heart when I beheld
In London streets that coronation-day,
When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary !
That horse, that thou so often hast bestrid ;
That horse, that I so carefully have dressed !
King Richard. Rode he on Barbary ? "
— Richard II., v. 5.
Again, with all his reverence for royalty, no
preacher has proclaimed the emptiness of earthly
greatness more strongly than Shakespeare, or the
miseries weighing upon kings by reason of their
greatness. Henry IV. complains how the mere
cares of royalty drive sleep away. " Perfumed
chambers," " canopies of state," " sweetest melodies "
cannot obtain for the monarch the rest found by
the meanest of his subjects on "uneasy pallets,"
" loathsome beds," " amidst buzzing night-flies."
Henry VI., ever fearful of some traitorous attack,
envies the shepherd.
" Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep,
Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy
To kings, that fear their subjects' treachery ? "
— 3 Henry VI., ii. 5.
And Richard II. lives expecting the death which
mocks his greatness.
" Within the hollow crown,
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Death keeps his court ; and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp ;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchise, be fear'd, and kill with looks ;
156 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
Infusing him with self and vain conceit, —
(As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impi-egnable) ; and humoured thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and — farewell, king ! "
— Richard II., iii. 2,
Naturally, then, the same Richard longs to ex-
change his royal pomp for religious retirement and
peace, but in what a Catholic tone he speaks !
" I'll give my jewels, for a set of beads :
My gorgeous palace, for a hermitage ;
My gay apparel, for an alms-man's gown ;
My figured goblets, for a dish of wood ;
My sceptre, for a palmer's walking-staff ;
My subjects, for a pair of carved saints ;
And my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little Little grave, an obscure grave," — Ibid., iii. 3.
We will now consider Shakespeare's view of the
nobility. A single thread of history, such as the
subject before us, " manifests conspicuously," says
Simpson, " the philosophic unity running through
the chronicle plays. With the exception of 'Ed-
ward III.' and Marlowe's 'Edward II.,' both often
attributed in part to Shakespeare, the numerous
historical plays by other authors, for instance Hey-
wood's ' Edward IV.' or ' Elizabeth,' would add
nothing to the completeness of the picture of the
nobility presented in the Shakespearian series." The
constitutional origin and status of the nobles, their
power and greatness, and the causes of their decay
are alike clearly set forth.
In " King John," the nobles appear as deriving
EVILS OF REBELLION 157
their rights, not from the great Charter, which the
poet ignores, but from common law and immemorial
custom. The Barons are the King's Peers; his
judges when he breaks the laws of Church or State,
and the executors of their judgments, as far as they
have the power. Thus they are represented in
" King John " as resisting the encroachments of
the crown, and their rebellion, in alliance with the
French king, is dictated by motives of religion,
duty, and patriotism. But the poet is careful to
point out in the speech of Salisbury the evils en-
tailed by even justifiable rebellion. The uncer-
tainty of conscience as to what is lawful or not in
rebellion, the " healing one wound only by making
many," the necessity of fighting with one's own
countrymen and forming alliances with their ene-
mies, these are some of the evils of insurrection.
" But such is the infection of the time,
That, for the health and physic of our right,
We cannot deal but with the very hand
Of stern injustice and confused wrong."
— Kijig John, v. 2.
Hence Salisbury readily profits by the opportunity
afforded by the French king's intended treachery
to rejoin John.
(We will) " like a bated and retired flood,
Leaving our rankness and irregular course,
Stoop low within those bounds we have o'erlooked
And calmly run on in obedience,
Even to our ocean, to our great King John."
— Ibid., V. 4.
158 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
The "ocean," though a strong expression, is the
natural term of the metaphor of an overflowing
river, and John was now reconciled to the Church,
and had given the pledges demanded.
Again, the poet represents the suspicion which
always attaches to the rebel, or even to those who
were regarded as disaffected, however just their
cause of complaint may have been. This is why
the Dauphin in " King John " had determined to
murder all his English allies.
" Paying the fine of rated treachery
Even with the treacherous fine of all your lives."
— Ihid., V. 3.
For the same reason the deposed Richard warns
Northumberland that Henry IV.
** Shall think that thou, which know'st the way
To plant unrightful kings, wilt know again.
Being ne'er a little urg'd, another way
To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne.
The love of wicked men converts to fear ;
That fear to hate." — Richard II., v. i.
Worcester speaks in the same strain : —
" Bear ourselves as even as we can.
The king will always think him in our debt ;
And think we think ourselves unsatisfied.
Till he hath found a time to pay us home."
— I Henry IV., i. 3.
And afterwards : —
" Look how we can, or sad, or merrily,
Interpretation will misquote our looks,
And we shall feed like oxen at a stall.
The better cherish'd, still the nearer death."
— Ibid., V. 2.
WARNINGS REPEATED 159
This makes Mowbray and the Archbishop of York
say: —
" Were our royal faiths martyrs in love,
We shall be winnow'd with so rough a wind^
That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff."
— 2 Henry 7F., iv. i.
Henry IV. warns his son to the same effect —
" I had many living, to upbraid
My gain of it (the crown) by their assistances ;
Which daily grew to quarrel. . . . " — Ibid., iv. 5.
Their merits were too great to be rewarded as they
deserved. Unrewarded, they would be as faithless to
their new master as to their old. Nothing was left
than that they should experience the truth of
Commines' saying, " II perd souvent d'avoir trop
servi."
The circumstances of Shakespeare's time explain
why these warnings should be so often repeated.
The English Catholics in exile found that foreign
countries offered them no secure asylum against the
suspicion which had dogged them at home. Accord-
ing to Camden, the Earl of Westmoreland and the
other English resident in the Netherlands were com-
pelled, in 1575, by the Governor Requesens, at the
request of Wilson, the British ambassador, to quit
the country. Three years later, on March 22, 1578,
the seminary of Douay was dissolved, all English
capable of bearing arms being forced, by order of
the magistrate, to leave the town within two days.
The Rector of the University and the Governor alike
l60 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
spoke in favour of the College, alleging the insignifi-
cant number of the residents and their peaceful be-
haviour ; but all to no purpose. Elizabeth, through
her agents, had inspired the townspeople with the con-
viction that the English exiles, lay or clerical, were
really agents or spies in the French interest, and must
be expelled. Such then was the position of English
CathoUcs in exile. When at home they had been
represented as traitors corresponding with Spain ;
abroad, in Spanish territory, they were suspected as
agents of the " French." ^
In England their position was indeed desperate.
However loyal they might declare themselves to be,
or have proved themselves, as in the case of the
Armada, their lives were in constant jeopardy, their
property was being ever impoverished by monthly
fines, and their homes and family life were rendered
almost insupportable, owing to the domiciliary visits
to which they were frequently subjected. "The
arrival of a stranger, the groundless information of
an enemy, a discharged servant, a discontented
tenant, the hope of plunder or of reward, the for-
feiture of the estate following the apprehension of
a priest, were sufficient to procure the intrusion of
the pursuivants."^ Under these intolerable sufferings,
where could they look for relief? Constitutional
redress was hopeless, the law was their chief torturer.
Their only hope seemed to lie in active resistance,
1 " Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers," third series, p. io8.
^ Lingard, viii. 360. 1823.
FOREIGN INTRIGUES l6l
Strengthened by foreign support. The example of
" intriguing in foreign poHtics," as it was called, was
set them by the Government. To support her own
throne, Elizabeth helped the French rebels after the
death of Henri II. ; she assisted the Netherlanders
against Philip ; she interfered in Scotland from the
very beginning of her reign, imprisoned the Queen,
Mary Stuart, and finally beheaded her. She set up
James VI. against his mother, Francis of Valois in
Brabant against Philip, Antonio in Portugal also
against Philip, and from the first recognised and
supported Henry of Navarre as heir and King of
France.i
It need cause no surprise, then, that Catholic nobles
should be disposed to join in alhance with foreign
princes to further their cause by procuring a suc-
cessor to the throne favourable to, or at least tolerant
of their own religion. Elizabeth herself had received
the addresses of Philip II. of Spain, the Duke of
Anjou, and Don John of Austria. There was no
reason therefore to suppose that the fact of a prince
being a foreigner and a Catholic would be an in-
superable objection to his acceptance by the country
at large. In fact the English-Spanish party hoped
that the Infanta might marry Essex, the most popular
Protestant leader of the time. The following lists of
the parties to which the nobility belonged in Shake-
speare's time is given by Simpson, from documents
now preserved in the State Paper office, which had
^ Philopater, 141-143.
L
1 62 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
been supplied to the Government by their agent
abroad, and they show the extent to which the
disaffection was spread.
In these hsts the nobihty and gentry are carefully
distinguished as Catholic, Indifferent, or Protestant,
not so much for their religious opinions as for the
side they took in politics. Among the Catholics we
find the Earls of Northumberland, Shrewsbury,
Derby (with his son Lord Strange), Arundel (with
his brothers Audley and Lord William Howard),
and Westmoreland ; the Lords Vaux, Mountjoy,
Paget, Windsor, Mordant, Henry Howard, Dacres of
the North, Stourton, Lumley, Wharton, Berkeley,
Sheffield, Morley, Kildare (with his son Garrett),
and Compton ; the Knights Bapthorpe, Malery,
Stapleton, Gerard, Catesby, Tresham, Fitzherbert,
Peckham, Godwin, Herbert, Bretherton, Hastings,
Browne, Poyntz, Bottley, Arundel, Conway, Petre,
Baker, Inglefield, and Winter.
The list of " Indifferents " comprises Lords Rut-
land, Oxford, Bath, Lincoln, Cumberland, Cobham,
Chandos, Delaware, Charles Howard, Cheney, Dacres
of the South, Northampton, and Bromley the Chan-
cellor.
That of " Protestants " contains only the names of
Leicester, Huntingdon, Warwick, Bedford, Kent,
Hunsdon, Burghley, Buckhurst-Grey of Wilton, and
Russell, with Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir
Francis Kjiowles.
This list belongs to some year between 1580 and
INSURRECTION AND RELIGION 1 63
1588. In 1602 Watson {Quodlibets, p. 211) adds
up the list of English houses who were all more or
less pledged supporters of the Infanta of Spain or of
Arabella Stuart, lineal descendant of Henry VII,, and
looked to the settlement of the succession by foreign
arbitration. It includes those of Winchester, Oxford,
Arundel, Westmoreland, Northumberland, Lincoln,
Cumberland, Shrewsbury, Pembroke, Derby, Hert-
ford, Huntingdon, Leicester, Worcester, Bath, Kent,
Sussex, Nottingham, and Montague. Watson's state-
ment must, however, be taken with reserve. He
was a violent anti-Spanish partisan, and was anxious
to portray in the strongest colours the influence of
the Jesuits on behalf of the Spanish party. Watson
was put to death for an alleged co-operation in
Raleigh's plot against James I. (1603), ^^^ is said
to have retracted his accusation against the Jesuits
and others before he died.^
If the country were thus divided and disaffected,
and an adherent to the Catholic party might be
involved at any moment in an active outbreak,
Shakespeare, representing as he did the very " form
and pressure of the age," must have had a decided
opinion upon the expediency or impolicy of a rising.
Now we have seen how strongly he urges the dis-
astrous consequences of such an attempt, yet he
makes one exception in its favour, that is when the
movement is authorised by religion. Then, and
then alone, insurgents act with a good conscience,
^ Dodd's "Church History," ii. 379, ed. 1739.
1 64 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
for they are obeying authority and the movement
succeeds. Thus the poet makes Morton declare
(" 2 Henry IV.," i. i ), that the first rebellion of the
Percies had failed, because not blessed by religion ;
but that the second, under the auspices of the Arch-
bishop, would fare otherwise.
" For that same word, rebellion, did divide
The action of their bodies from their souls ;
And they did fight with queasiness, constrain'd,
As men drink potions. . . .
. . . But now the Bishop
Turns insurrection to religion . . .
He's followed both with body and with mind . . .
Derives from heaven his quarrel and his cause."
In Act iv. I the Archbishop speaks of the rising as
a judgment of Heaven on England's sins, a purga-
tion for both parties ; his end he declares is peace ;
if he makes show of war it is —
" To diet rank minds, sick of happiness ;
And purge the obstructions, which begin to stop
Our very veins of life. . . ."
And he fights —
" Not to break peace, or any branch of it ;
But to establish here a peace indeed."
Westmoreland replies —
" It is the time
And not the king that does you injuries."
Shakespeare's teaching on this point recalls what
Sanders said of the failure of the rebellion of 1569.
The movement turned out otherwise than as they
expected " because all the Catholics had not yet been
HENRY V. 165
authentically informed that Elizabeth was declared
a heretic " ; which want of information, adds Burgh-
ley, was diligently supplied by sending a multitude
of Seminarists and Jesuits into the kingdom.^ It
is noteworthy that Shakespeare condemns rebellion
rather from its political inexpediency than from its
intrinsic immorality under the special conditions of
the age in which he writes.
Henry V. is a very different monarch from his
predecessors. With the call of duty his wild days
ended, and he appears, as king, the impersonation
of England's greatness. He is Shakespeare's ideal
Prince, perhaps his ideal self, what in his better
moments he would wish himself to have been ; and
no national hero has such a portrait, says Kreysig,
except perhaps Pelides. Under Henry the country
is transformed. Profligates and adventurers like
FalstafF, Bardolph, Pym, Pistol, " the cankers of a
calm world and a long peace," meet with their fitting
deserts. The conspiracy of Cambridge, Scroop, and
Grey is destroyed in the bud, and the whole nation.
Church and State, King and nobles, with the four
nationalities of Britain — the English, Welsh, Scotch,
Irish — are united in one great patriotic movement,
pointing the moral —
" 0 England ! — model to thy inward greatness,
Like little body with a mighty heart,
What might'st thou do, that honour would thee do,
Were all thy children kind and natural ! "
— Henry V., ii. Chorus.
' " Execution for Treason," 18. Reprint of 1675.
1 66 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
" The mighty heart " was the king's. His firm sense
of justice redressed wrongs and suppressed disorders
within. His personal grace and bearing ; the " cheer-
ful countenance," "sweet majesty," and personal
interest in every individual soldier, the sound of
his voice, the ring of his words secured victory
abroad. Thus on the eve of Agincourt the confident,
well-fed, and feasting French are boasting of their
horses and their armour, and the morrow's victory
as secure ; while the chorus tells us —
"... The poor condemned English,
Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires
Sit patiently, and inly ruminate
The morning's danger ; and their gesture sad,
Investing lank-lean cheeks, and war-worn coats,
Presenteth them unto the gazing moon,
So many horrid ghosts. 0, now, who will behold
The royal captain of this ruin'd band,
Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent,
Let him cry ' Praise and glory on his head ! '
For forth he goes, . . .
With cheerful semblance, and sweet majesty ;
That every wretch, pining and pale before.
Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks."
— Ibid., iv. Chorus.
It was in making his rounds, disguised, that a
soldier whom he meets questions him on the blood-
guiltiness of war, and the responsibility of the king
in bringing men to be killed unprepared. Henry
replies that the soldier, in going to war, should
" wash every mote from his conscience." If he then
dies, his death is to him a gain ; if he escapes, he
henry's piety 167
is blessed in having prepared his soul, and may
believe that his life has been spared, that he may
see God's goodness, and teach others how to prepare.
In conformity with this deep, earnest faith and
piety, is Henry's prayer before the action commences.
His army is spent and worn, and five times out-
numbered.
" 0 God of battles ! steel my soldiers' hearts !
Possess tliem not with fear ; take from them now
The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers
Pluck their hearts from them ! . . . ," — Ibid., iv. i.
One thought, however, disturbs his confidence. His
father's non-performance of his vow of a pilgrimage
to Jerusalem in expiation of his supposed compli-
city in the murder of Richard II. may bring the
divine vengeance on his son and procure his defeat.
In this fear he prays : —
"... Not to-day, 0 Lord,
0 not to-day, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown !
1 Richard's body have interred new,
And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears,
Than from it issued forced drops of blood.
Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay.
Who twice a day their withered hands hold up
Toward heaven, to pardon blood ; and I have built
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard's soul. . . ."
These two foundations were situated on the opposite
banks of the Thames. That on the Surrey shore
at Sheene was given to the Carthusians. The other,
1 68 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
Sion House, facing it on the Middlesex shore, was
bestowed on the Bridgettine nuns.
The first cry that burst from Henry's heart on
seeing the victory assured, is one of devout thanks-
giving :—
"... 0 God, Thy arm was here,
And not to us, but to Thy arm alone.
Ascribe we all ! When, without stratagem,
But in plain shock, and even play of battle,
Was ever known so great and little loss.
On one part and on the other ? Take it, God,
For it is only Thine ! . . ."
Only with the acknowledgment that God fought
for us, does he allow the list of the killed to be pro-
claimed, and then gives the order of the day,
"... Do we all holy rites.
Let there be sung ' Non nobis ' and ' Te Deum.' "
In the same spirit of humility Henry refused the
request of the Lords that he should
" Have borne (before him)
His bruisfed helmet and his bended sword."
on his triumphant entry through the streets of
London. As he began his campaign, so he cele-
brated its victorious issue,
" Free from vainness and self -glorious pride,
Giving full glory, signal and ostent
Quite from himself to God. . . ."
Such, then, is Shakespeare's chosen national hero,
AN IDEAL PRINCE 1 69
the paragon of kings, " the mirror of Christian
knights." In what lines has he drawn him ? He
is no mere human champion, victor by his own
strength, but solely through trust in God. " God
before" was his cry, and trust in God means with
him trust in his Church. The character of his
faith is clearly expressed. He believes in Purgatory,
in alms-deeds, prayer, fasting, pious foundations, as
satisfactory works for the relief of the souls detained
there. All his public acts bear a religious impress,
and his portrait as a Catholic hero is complete.
It has been objected that the religious details
found in " Henry V." are no argument as to Shake-
speare's own opinions, because these details are
only copied from HoUinshed. But the poet not
only follows the chronicler in attributing acts of
Catholic faith and worship to the king, he further
gives his hero a character of such practical wis-
dom, graceful piety, and enlightened religion, that
his Popish proceedings appear like the flowers of
true devotion, not the weeds of superstition, as they
might have been represented under the hands of
another dramatist.
In " Henry V." the factions of the nobles dis-
appear, as we have seen, in the complete triumph of
the Crown, the new bond of union of all parties and
nationalities. Very different, however, is the follow-
ing reign of Henry VI,, of " whose state so many
had the managing that they lost France and made
his England bleed." These lines in the final chorus
170 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
of " Henry V." give the keynote of tlie trilogy which
is to follow: —
"... No simple man that sees
This jarring discord of nobility,
This should'ring of each other in the court,
This fractious bandying of their favourites.
But that it doth presage some ill event."
— I Henry VI., iv. i.
"... While the vulture of sedition
Feeds in the bosom of such great commanders,
Sleeping neglection doth betray to loss
The conquest of our scarce-cold conqueror."
— Ibid., iv. 3.
The subject of the three parts of " Henry VI."
is the factions of the nobles. In the first two
parts the great rivals are Duke Humphrey and the
Bishop of Winchester, representing the two estates
— the Church and the laity; while the Dukes of
Somerset and York represent the dynastic factions
among the nobles. The servants of Duke Hum-
phrey despise the Bishop as an ink-horn mate, just
as Jack Cade and his crew despise all clerks, nobles,
and gentlemen. Duke Humphrey himself detests
the Bishop with all the bitterness which an ambi-
tious political leader entertains for the one rival
who successfully opposes his designs. How the
Beauforts, in fact, supported the throne and the
Lancastrian dynasty, while Gloucester's selfishness
destroyed both, is not shown in Shakespeare or in
the play he adapted.
If the hierarchy appears discredited in Beaufort,
THE TRILOGY I/I
and the clergy in the two conjuring priests, Hume
and Southwell, the Catholic religion is respected
in Henry, that saintly innocent, of whom his own
wife says —
"... All his mind is bent to holiness,
To number Ave Maries on his beads :
His champions are — the prophets and apostles ;
His weapons, holy saws of sacred writ ;
His study is his tilt-yard, and his loves
Are brazen images of canonised saints.
I would the college of cardinals
Would choose him Pope, and carry him to Rome,
And set the triple crown upon his head ;
That were a fit state for his holiness."
— 2 Henry VL, i. 3.
Henry, in fact, is the key of the whole trilogy,
the design of which is to show that innocence, up-
rightness, and self-sacrifice are not by themselves
sufficient to constitute a powerful ruler. As Richard
II. exhibited the divergence between the higher gifts
of mind and political sagacity, so Henry VI. exhibits
the still greater divergence between statesmanship
and personal piety. Henry has the harmlessness
of the dove and the wisdom of the recluse, but not
the cunning of the king. He would make an excel-
lent Infirmarian brother, to pray by the bedside of
the dying, and
"... Beat away the busy, meddling fiend
That lays strong siege unto the wretch's soul,"
but his scrupulosity is too acute, his simple soul is
too much at the mercy of the last plausible speaker
172 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
to allow of consistent firmness of action. Scrupulous
about his title to the throne, yet fearing the suicide
of abdication, he compromises the difficulty by keep-
ing the crown during his own life, and only dis-
inheriting his son. Having done so, he is distracted
with the injury he has done his own family, and the
power he has given to his enemy, now his acknow-
ledged heir. Such is the king who has to grapple
with a nobility that cannot understand what con-
science is.
In " King John " the nobles revolt for the sake
of religion and natural justice. The murder of
Arthur and the excommunication are the motives of
their conspiracy. In " Richard II." they revolt to
preserve their order, and to save the country from
ruin; patriotism is their end. In "Henry IV."
their mainspring of action has become their per-
sonal safety. They have found that to dethrone
one king is to set up another, and however con-
ducive to the progress of the country, is a step
downwards for themselves. For a subject unfaith-
ful to one master is suspected by another, and
the benefactor of a monarch never thinks himself
sufficiently rewarded. In " Henry V." this down-
ward progress makes halt for a few years in a
national triumph, the result of the king's personal
superiority, but in "Henry VI." we find that the
bad leaven has been working even while it seemed
to sleep. The nobles are already combined in
factions. Neither patriotism nor religion nor honour
HOUSE OF YORK 173
are now their motives, but only an equal share in
power. Pre-eminence or distinction of any kind
insures the possessor the enmity of his fellows.
In " Henry VI." the factions of the nobles are
swaying backwards and forwards, one ever strength-
ening itself by the destruction of another, according
to the old saying, " Snake must devour snake if it
would become a dragon," or, according to the Maori
doctrine, that the warrior that eats another inherits
all his prowess, a doctrine which Prince Hal seems
to hold —
" Percy is but my factor, good my lord,
To engross up glorious deeds on my behalf ;
That he shall render every glory up,
Or I will tear the reckoning from his heart."
— I Henry IV., iii. 3.
And all this time one family is gradually rising.
York bases his fortunes upon the mutinous people,
and receives fresh strength by every blow that
weakens any other faction. His three sons grow
up in this dice-play of fortune, which eradicates
from their minds every guiding principle but the
balance of power. Life has become to them a rule-
of-three sum, a calculation, and nothing else. For
two of them, however, nature is too strong. Edward
IV. and Clarence are under the sway of their passions
and affections. The youngest, Richard of Glou-
cester, alone knows how to stifle every feeling, to
ridicule every principle, and to guide himself simply
by the arithmetical calculation of his own interest.
174 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
What germs of feeling and conscience remain in him
are employed only to gain the mastery over others.
Richard III. is the opposite pole to Henry VI.
Unscrupulous, unhesitating, applying his great
capacity not to unravelling casuistical questions of
right and wrong, but to discovering the readiest
means to his determined ends, he is the natural,
the fatal result of the degradation of the nobles,
which is traced all through these plays. Under
him the nobles change their nature. They are no
longer a collection of petty princes fighting amongst
themselves for supremacy. They have at length
found their master, and his tyranny does not drive
them to insurrection but to look out for a deliverer.
Richard III. bases his power on the Commons,
and snaps his fingers at the nobles; his defeat
and death are the consequence of his personal
crimes, not of his political tendency, for his suc-
cessor continues in the same line. He is the victim of
his own victims, whose curses consume his marrow.
Henry VI. falls through weakness. Richard III.
circumvents himself in his own policy.
The dramatist omits one reign, and in his last
chronicle play exhibits to us the state of England
such as it was in his own day. In " Henry VIII."
we have a king inheriting the position which Richard
had created and Henry VII. had developed ; an
autocrat among his peers, but feeling in some blind
way his dependence on the Commons. The king
no longer strengthens himself with the alliance of
HENRY VIII. 175
dukes and earls, as powerful in their counties as he
is in his Idngdom, but he surrounds himself with
able ministers whom he raises from low estate, and
uses as his instruments for the still further weaken-
ing and degrading of the nobles. Nash in 1589
reproaches Shakespeare with stealing conceits like
" Blood is a beggar " out of Seneca. Nash was
wrong in supposing that the dramatist required
Seneca to tell him this secret. It was the first
fact patent to the eye that looked into the Tudor
rule ; and the first three scenes of " Henry VIII."
are taken up in illustrating it.
Buckingham, the son of the duke that had been
Richard's tool for hoisting him into the throne,
courted while needed, broken when done with, is
now no longer necessary for anything but the
amusement of the sovereign, Henry is pleased
with his talk, admires his talents, but when he
becomes a nuisance to his minister he sends him,
in spite of the Queen's intercession, to the block.
King-makers have dwindled down to courtiers.
Their lives, which under the former dynasties could
only be taken by violence or lawless treachery, are
now game for the labyrinthian subtlety of intriguing
lawyers. The great families are ruined by being
brought to court, not to honour them, but to weigh
them down with expenditure. Young nobles are
encouraged to "break their backs with laying
manors on 'em." Cardinal Wolsey, the " butcher's
cur," the beggar whose "book outworths a noble's
1/6 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
blood," omnipotent under the king, makes and mars,
sets up and pulls down nobles as he lists, and pulls
down, though he fails to set up, a queen. After
Wolsey has fallen, another like him takes his place
— Cranmer, like Wolsey raised from low estate to
the highest ecclesiastical dignities ; and Cranmer is
simply a ministerial tool for carrying out the king's
designs about the divorce.
Now it is noticeable that in assigning this cha-
racteristic to the Tudor times, and in the lament
implied in the terms " Blood is a beggar " which he
expresses, Shakespeare is taking the Catholic view
of the Elizabethan era. It was one of the charges
made against the Queen in the Bull of Pius V. that
"she had dismissed the royal council of English
nobles, and filled their places with obscure men
and heretics." Father Parsons, according to whom
the only purpose of the rebellion of 1569 was
to restore their due influence to the old nobles,
traces the plebeian origin of the Queen's five
councillors, Bacon, Cecil, Dudley, Hatton, and Wal-
singham, and declares that in the whole bench of
Anglican bishops there was scarce a drop of noble
blood, while the ministry was filled up with beggars'
brats.^ It is to be remarked that this feeling in
o
Shakespeare marks his party clearly. Raleigh's
friends complained indeed that except a man were
of noble blood he had no chance of promotion in
^ Philopater, Reap. ad. ii. Edict. Elizabethm, 2 et seq. Lugduni,
»S93-
THE NEW NOBILITY 177
Elizabeth's court. But it was not mere court
favour that Shakespeare desired for the nobility;
he wanted power, such power as would make them
balance the crown and obstruct its despotism. It
was easy for Elizabeth to combine a narrow and
senseless love of caste with a determination to
destroy aristocratic privileges and to break the
nobles as an independent power in the State.
Though Shakespeare evidently felt the regrets
which Allen as well as Parsons express, he was not
theorist enough to think that the old state of things
could be restored by edict. He had traced the
progress of decay through centuries, and knew that
neither Pope's Bull, nor Act of Parliament, nor Koyal
Proclamation, could recall the dead to life. Never-
theless, he looked back to the past wistfully, and felt
that he and his dearest friends were misplaced in
the times when they were living : —
" Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is,
Beggared of blood ?
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
With needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And strength by limping sway disabled."
Shakespeare's conception of Henry VHI. shows
how he judged him. Henry would fain have been
absolute monarch, to whom the least presumption of
independence was present death, as the prejudged
and murdered Buckingham felt to his sorrow ; but
knowing that he could not discontent the Commons
M
178 ENGLISH HISTOEICAL PLAYS
with impunity, Henry rebuked his favourite minister
for oppressing them. Queen Catherine patronised
the Commons out of charity, the king out of poHcy.
Wolsey, whose consummate art is only administra-
tive, who has none other but personal ends, revenge
and ambition, will oppress them when he may, and
pretend to be their friend when oppression is for-
bidden. Thus the king, sitting in the seat of
Richard III., but raised to it by peaceable suc-
cession, not by war and murder, has to maintain
himself there by other weapons.
Remorseless as Richard and libertine as Edward
IV., he is yet a peaceful monarch, and must, appar-
ently at least, confine himself within the limits of
law and conscience. The weapons of the barefaced
usurper are denied him, but those of the hypocrite
are in constant use. Richard III. is an actor, a
consummate hypocrite. Henry is a more melo-
dramatic, pretentious, arrogant, oily hypocrite, and
his perpetual cry almost serves to characterise
him —
"... Conscience, conscience,
0 ! 'tis a tender place, and 1 must leave her."
Shakespeare is not content with once saying this,
the audience must not be allowed to forget it. The
marriage with the brother's widow had crept too
near Henry's conscience — " No ! his conscience has
crept too near another lady," whose beauty was such
and so tempting that, as one of the courtiers says,
" I cannot blame his conscience."
THE PEOPLE 179
It is for this hypocrisy that Cranmer is made
necessary for Henry, — " with thy approach I know
my comfort comes " ; and till this comfort is admini-
stered no accusation shall stand between Cranmer
and the king's favour. It is here that Shakespeare,
supposing this scene to be his, for once condescends
to borrow from " Foxe's Acts and Monuments " the
first scene of the fifth act, where the king is con-
vinced of Cranmer's honesty by his tears, and deli-
vers him the ring which is to protect him against
Gardiner and the rest of the Council. In the whole
play the poet takes care to secure our interest suc-
cessively for Henry's victims ; for the noble but
wilful Buckingham ; for the repudiated Queen, one
of the grandest, most touching, most constant, and
purest figures that Shakespeare has drawn, and after
his fall, for Wolsey himself.
In "Henry VI." the people first appear as a political
force, in the rebellion of Jack Cade (1450). Shake-
speare's treatment of that rising has been condemned
by Mr. Wilkes, the American critic, as a deliberate
perversion of every fact in the interest of falsehood,
selfishness, and tjn^anny.-^ His account is indeed
not historical, yet it accurately represents many
features in the Lollard revolt under Wat Tyler in
1380, and is instructive as showing the bent of the
poet's sympathies in religion no less than in politics.
Those sympathies were certainly not with any Lollard
movement. But Shakespeare is not to be considered
^ "Shakespeare from an American Point of View," 239. 1877.
l8o ENGLISH HISTOEICAL PLAYS
in consequence a blind worslaipper of kings or nobles.
On the contrary, he fully recognised the bitter suf-
ferings inflicted at times on the lower classes by the
injustice and tyranny of their rulers. Hence the
indictment of Richard II. for the exorbitant taxation
of the Commons, and Catherine's speech on their
behalf in " Henry VIII.," where she declares that the
exactions, extending even to the sixth part of their
substance, were sapping the foundation of loyalty
and order in the kingdom.
" Cold hearts freeze
Allegiance in them ; their curses now
Live where did their prayers."
— Henry VIII., i. 2.
So too in this very scene (in " Henry VI.") the
poet gives in Lord Say the portrait of a true noble-
man, just, generous, merciful, tender-hearted, wan
and worn in his judicial labours on behalf of the
poor and the afflicted, simple in his attire and tastes,
incapable of taking a bribe, a patron of learning,
the friend of poor scholars. In this character he
pleads for his life —
" Justice with favour have I always done ;
Prayers and tears have mov'd uie, gifts could never.
When have I aught exacted at your hands,
Kent to maintain, the king, the realm, and you?
Large gifts have I bestowed on learned clerks.
Long sitting to determine poor men's causes
Hath made me full of sickness and diseases.
TYPES OF NOBLENESS l8l
Have I affected wealth or honour ; speak ?
Are my chests fill'd up with extorted gold ?
Is my apparel sumptuous to behold ?
Whom have I injur'd that ye seek my death ? "
— 2 Henry VI,, iv. 7.
Shakespeare thus plainly regards the nobles as
the appointed guardians and defenders of the poor,
and he knows of no absolute title to rank or wealth
which is free from these obligations. For the poor
again, the lower classes, as such, he has none of the
old heathen contempt, the odo profanum vulgus et
arceo, the scorn which, as Mr. Devas has so well
pointed out,^ Milton expresses in the " Samson
Agonistes."
" Nor do I name the men of common birth,
That wandering loose about,
Grow up and perish, like the summer flies,
Heads without name, no more remembered."
For Shakespeare saw all men, and reverenced all,
whatever their exterior, as possessed of rational
souls, and made in the image of God. Thus some
of his highest examples of loyalty, fidelity, courage,
generosity, and affection are found in the lowest
grade of the social scale. Such are Corin the shep-
herd in " Winter's Tale," and Adam, Orlando's ser-
vant, in " As You Like It," and the servants of the
Duke of Gloucester, and the fool in " Lear," and the
groom of Richard II., already noticed. In these
cases sympathy with their superiors in aflfliction
1 "Shakespeare as an Economist" {Dublin Review, vol. xiii.).
1 82 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
evokes, from the most uneducated, sentiments as
graceful, appropriate, and attractive as any expressed
by the most highly cultivated mind. So, too,
Juliet's nurse, old Gobbo, and the gravedigger, each
can speak to us of the dead in a way to move our
hearts, because they speak the common tongue
of faith.
But while Shakespeare held the equality of all
men, both as regards their first beginning and their
supernatural destiny, he scouted the idea of an
absolute equality in natural gifts, attainments, or
position. He would have found a fundamental
political truth in the words of Burke, " Those who
attempt to level never equalise. In all societies
consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some
description must be uppermost. The levellers only
pervert the natural order of things, and the per-
fect equality they produce is of equal want, equal
wretchedness, and equal beggary." ^ " They pull
down what is above, they never raise what is below,
and they depress high and low together below
the level of what was originally the lowest." ^ So
again, on the same principle, that society is built
on a graduated scale, and that power is naturally
vested in men of rank, wealth, and education, the
poet did not believe in the infallibility of the
multitude, or in the principle that " the majority
of men, told by the head, constitute the people,
^ " Revolution in France."
^ " Thoughts on Scarcity."
THE LOLLARD REVOLT 1 83
and that their will is law." He thought, as he tells
us by Archbishop Scroop,
" A habitation giddy and unsure
Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar herd."
— 2 Henry IV., i. 3.
Disbelief in what is now called Socialism is mani-
fested in the fickleness of the mob in " Julius
Caesar " ; it is seen again in Coriolanus' disdain for
" the mutable, rank-scented many," and in the
repugnance he feels to appear as a candidate for
their votes. So too it is the conviction of the false-
ness of the cry of " The People," as popularly used,
and of the baseness of the demagogues who flatter
the multitude for their own ends, which explains
Shakespeare's treatment of Jack Cade's rebellion.
The main features of that rebellion, as drawn by
Shakespeare, are to be found, as we have said, in
the Lollard revolt, seventy years earlier than Cade's,
under Wat Tyler. That revolt originated with the
teaching of WyclifFe, and was in fact the popular
interpretation and expression of his doctrines. His
fundamental tenet in religion was the substitution
of the Bible, privately interpreted, for the authority
of the Church. The Church, in his creed, was the
synagogue of Satan, the Pope was Antichrist, or
the great Beast, and the Friars were his tail.
According to his theory of dominion, all authority
is founded on grace, and each individual in grace
possesses a dominion immediately from God, and
184 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
is himself to judge whether others are in grace
or sin. The loss of grace entailed the forfeiture
of all right to rule or possess. Hence, as the
Church was, according to Wycliffe, essentially evil,
her authority was to be rejected, and her goods
confiscated.
From the spoliation of the Church to that of
private individuals, the transition has always been
easy and logical. Hence Socialism, or the denial
of any difference of rank, and communism in pro-
perty were openly advocated by John Ball, the
quondam priest and half - crazed Lollard leader.
" Good people," he said, " things will never go
well in England as long as goods are not in
common, and as long as there be villeins and
gentlemen. By what right are they, whom we call
lords, greater folk than we ? On what grounds
have they deserved it ? Why do they hold us in
serfage ? If we all come of the same father and
mother, of Adam and Eve, how can they say or
prove that they are better than we, if it be not
that they make us gain for them by our toil what
they spend in their pride ? " ^ And he inculcated
his teaching by the popular rhyme —
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Wliere was then the gentleman ? "
Thus envy, discontent, class hatred, bitter and deep,
were enkindled by specious but false shibboleths,
^ Green's " History of the English People," 293.
cade's communism 185
all which are set forth almost verbally by Shake-
speare. " It was never a merry world in England,"
says John, "since gentlemen came up." ''Virtue,"
replies George, " is not regarded in handicraftsmen."
Cade declares, "Then shall be in England seven
halfpenny loaves sold for a penny ; the three-hooped
pot shall have ten hoops ; and I will make it felony
to drink small beer; all the realm shall be in
common. . . . There shall be no money, all shall
eat and drink on my score : and I will apparel
them all in one livery, that they may agree like
brothers, and worship me, their lord." Thus in
the very moment that Cade proclaims universal
socialism and communism, his own selfish greed
and ambition are made apparent, no less than the
gullibility of his dupes. To Cade's declaration,
" And when I am king — as king I will be," all
say " God save your Majesty." They were evidently
but escaping from one tyranny to another more
degrading and self-imposed.
Again, the poet reveals to us the morbid, un-
real sentimentalism so often the accompaniment of
democratic cries. Not only are lawyers to be
killed and all " ink-horn mates," because they are
the supporters of the existing order of things, and
by their learning make themselves better than
honest labourers, but also because they use the
" skins of innocent lambs " for parchment — a cry
we have heard echoed, though to other tunes, by
anti-vivisectionists and other humanitarian reformers
1 86 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
in our own days. It is to be observed that the
senseless hostility to education manifested in the
slaughter of the ink-horn men had a kindred origin
to the opposite cry for universal education in our
own day, as announced by some Socialist leaders.
In both cases the j&rst principle is absolute equality.
There is to be no pre-eminence due to natural
talent, industry, or position, but the whole world
is to be one vast trades union, where all are kept
by law at the same dead level of ignorance or
knowledge.
The Lollard use of the Scriptures also finds its
place in Shakespeare, Cade meets Stafford's re-
proach of his lowly parentage with the retort from
Ball's preaching "Adam was a gardener"; and
John's argument that the magistrates ought not to
be gentlemen, but taken solely from working men,
is proved from St. Paul's words, "Labour in thy
vocation." So again George's speech, " Then sin is
struck down like an ox, and iniquity's throat cut
like a calf," in its rhythm and repetition manifestly
affects biblical phraseology.
The democratic morality, as exhibited in Cade's
proclamation of his future policy as king, is not of
a high order. After declaring that a poll tax, like
that which had raised the rebellion, should now be
confined to the nobility alone, instead of coming
down to the daughters of blacksmiths who had
reached the age of fifteen, he proceeds, " Then shall
not a maid be married but she shall pay to me. . . .
NORWICH REGISTERS I 87
Men shall hold of me in capite, and we charge and
command that their wives should be as free as
heart can wish or tongue can tell." Thus neither
the maiden state nor the marriage tie are to be
henceforth a protection against the legalised licen-
tiousness of the new order. Is this return to
universal corruption a libel on the Lollard morals
or not ?
Now we are possessed, fortunately, of very pre-
cise information on the subject. The Norfolk
register, now in the archives of the diocese of
Westminster, contains an account of the official
examination of suspected Lollards by the Bishop of
Norwich in his episcopal visitations of his diocese
for the years 1428-30.1 Besides the WycliJBfian
heresies already enumerated, the general character
of the doctrines deposed to in the register ex-
hibits a curious compound of Pietistic or Quaker
tenets and undisguised licentiousness. On the one
hand, the appeal to arms in behalf of the State or for
any hereditary right, the recourse to legal redress,
the taking of oaths or swearing in any form are
alike declared unlawful ; and on the other hand the
doctrine of free love, as it is now termed, was openly
advocated. Foxe says that the denial of matrimony
only referred " as it is likely " to its being a sacra-
ment, and that the papists " are but quarrel-pickers
in the matter." The Wycliffian doctrine which
t,^ By the kindness of Father Gasquet we have been enabled to
examine his copies of these documents.
I 88 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
nearly all the Lollard prisoners held — that consent
of the heart alone, or mutual love, sufficed for
matrimony — might indeed mean no more than that
the essence of the contract consisted in that mutual
surrender. But it is self-evident that a purely
interior consent could never constitute any external
bond, while it could be repudiated at any time, and
did not necessarily imply more than a temporary
union. However, the evidence of William Colyn
Skinner of Treyk, near Burnham Westgate, shows
unmistakeably what the Lollard doctrine meant to
his mind. He advocated openly the community of
women and the annulment of the marriage tie for
the space of seven years, or at least some notable
time. Some of his statements connected with the
subject are at once too blasphemous and coarse for
quotation.
Of the fifty-three men and five women proceeded
against as Lollards in these visitations, the greater
number appear to have belonged to the artisan or
small tradesmen class. The list contains Tailors,
Millers, Parchyn makers, Carpenters, Tylers, Sowters,
Skynners, Glovers, Shipmen, Watermen, Cordwainers,
all belonging therefore to the same social grade as
Dick the Butcher, Smith the Weaver, and Cade the
Clothier in Shakespeare's play.
The Norwich Lollards all accepted the public
penances imposed and recanted their errors. Their
heresy and licentiousness they appear to have learnt
in the first instance from the leaders of the move-
PRECURSORS OF THE REFORMATION 1 89
ment, apostate priests, like William White, who,
according to Foxe, "was as a morning star in the
midst of a cloud," and " took unto him a goodly-
young woman to wife, named Joan." ^
How far LoUardy was the lineal progenitor of the
Reformation is a disputed point. The comparative
apathy with which the movement was regarded by
the country at large, the ease with which it was
suppressed, and its almost complete disappearance
towards the end of the fifteenth and beginning of
the sixteenth centuries, have led many writers to
regard the two movements as completely distinct.
Yet the Lollard repudiation of authority both in
Church and State may surely be regarded as pre-
paring the way for the final revolt of the sixteenth
century,' and Shakespeare's sketch of Cade's rebellion
leaves little doubt of how he regarded the Reforma-
tion itself, or its precursors. It should also be noted
that he must have been in all probability well
acquainted with Foxe's book, for by a decree of
Elizabeth, the first English edition of the work, in
1563, was placed in every chancel and vestry for
the public to read ; while Foxe himself was tutor to
Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, the father probably
of Shakespeare's persecutor, not that persecutor
himself, as Milner supposes.^ Foxe took the
^ " Acts and Monuments," iii. 591. 1837.
2 "With the appearance of the Lollards," Mr. Freeman says,
" the Church and the Nation ceased to be fully one, and the puzzles
and controversies of modern times had their beginning." — " His-
torical Essays," 123. 1871. ^ " Lite oi Foxe," vi. 1837.
190 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
tutor's place in 1540, or twenty-four years before
Shakespeare's birth, and forty-one before the deer-
stealing incident.
Shakespeare's sentiments as to the Church and its
relations with the State, and the effect of its influ-
ence have been already in part set forth, in our study
of the character of Pandulph in " King John." We
will now endeavour to trace them further, as they
appear in his views of " the Politicians," of liberty of
conscience, and lastly, in his portraits of individual
churchmen.
The Politicians were in Shakespeare's days re-
garded as a sect. The name was first given to the
" liberal " Catholics or third party, which was formed
in France under Henry III., during the wars between
the Huguenots and Catholics. The term is applied by
Davila ^ to those who hold that the State ought not
to recognise any essential difference between one reh-
gion and another. According to Stapleton, "the Poli-
ticians hated zeal, winked at religious discords, and
declared that governments, not being charged with
the management of religion, had no right to endanger
the national welfare by attempts to suppress heresies."^
The odium in which they were held by Cathohcs is
seen by Fitzherbert's definition of them as " statists,
who prefer things less worthy before the more worthy,
inferior things before superior, corporal before
spiritual, temporal before eternal." " Politikes," he
^ Storia ddle Ouerre civili in Francia, lib. v., ad. an. 1573.
- Sermo contra Politicos.
THE "politicians IQI
says, " admitting in show all religions, have in truth
no religion, denying God's providence in the affairs
of men, which is the ground of all religion ... ac-
knowledge the necessity of religion for the State, but
prefer in all things reason of State before reason of
religion, as though religion were ordained only for
service of commonwealth . . . use religion as a bugbear
to frighten men into obedience to the law . . . care
not greatly what religion is professed, so that people
believe in a God who rewards and punishes." ^
The Politiques then, properly defined, were those
who, utterly indifferent to religion themselves, used
it or discarded it, according to the exigencies of
statecraft. They thus represented the modern school
of Liberalism, as understood in its foreign sense,
and as such were denounced by the earnest men
of every creed. Their leading doctrines were con-
demned, three centuries later, by the Encyclical of
Pius XI.
How, then, does Shakespeare regard them ? If
he were a broad-minded, vague rationalist, superior
to theological dogmas of all kinds, a teacher of
nature and nothing more, as he is so often re-
presented, he would surely have gladly identified
himself with their teaching. But, as a fact, his
attitude towards them is exactly the reverse. He
denounces them in no sparing terms. He makes
Hotspur exclaim against the " vile politician Boling-
broke" (" i Henry IV.," i. 3), and Hamlet talk
"Policy and Religion," vol. i. (1605), Pref. Nos. i and 2.
192 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
of the politician who "would circumvent God"
(" Hamlet," v. i ). Policy is a " heretic," because it
" works on leases of short-numbered hours," instead
of working for eternity. Policy, in its general sense,
is the degradation of a moral act from its moral
purpose to some utilitarian end, and is used very
much as " Commodity " in " King John." With
Polonius it catches truth with false baits, and hence
the " scurvy politician " is said to " seem to see the
things he does not " (" Lear," iv. 6) ; " base and
rotten policy " will adopt any disguise that is not too
painful ("I Henry IV.," i. 3); it will "beat his
ofFenceless dog to affright an imperious lion "
("Othello," ii. 3); and hence, when it "sits above
conscience," pity is dispensed with (" Timon," iii. 2).
Shakespeare, then, could not endure the principles of
the " Politiques," and denounced them as a party.
But if such were Shakespeare's opinion of the
Politicians, how, it may fairly be asked, did he
advocate, as he does, liberty of conscience, or uni-
versal toleration, which would seem to be one of
their leading principles ? Liberty of conscience, then,
may be taken in two senses. It may mean that
there is no fixed truth or absolute right or wrong,
and that every man is free to teach or do as he
pleases, and that the State itself should be Godless.
In this sense the Politicians seem to have used it,
and in this sense it was condemned by Shakespeare,
who makes Sir Andrew Aguecheek say he had as
lief be a Brownist, or the wildest heretic, " as a
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE 1 93
Politician." But liberty of conscience may also
mean that every man has a right by nature to serve
God, and obey His commands without let or hind-
rance, and so to attain his end. This is the liberty
which the Apostles claimed, for which the first
Christian Apologists ever contended, and the Martyrs
shed their blood. Now it was this true liberty
which the Tudor tyranny destroyed. Their axiom
was cujus regio, ejus et ixligio. A man must be
of the religion of his country, and as the Crown
fixed that religion, the subject's conscience was not
his own but the king's. And the king was himself,
according to the post-Reformation theory, of divine
right, absolute and infallible. " He made," as James I.
said, " Law and Gospel," and he made both as his
whim pleased him.
Against this degrading tyranny Shakespeare pro-
tested in Henry V.'s axiom that " every man's
duty is the king's, but every man's conscience is
his own." Not his own, that is, against the law
of God, nor his own as against duly consti-
tuted civil authority within its own domain ; but
his own in matters spiritual, against the purely
civil authority of a State, which had arrogated to
itself the right to force its subjects to embrace the
State creed. Now this is the very plea which
Parsons puts forth contemporaneously with Shake-
speare. " Neither breathing, nor the use of common
air is more due unto good subjects, or common to
all, than ought to be liberty of conscience to Christian
N
194 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
men, whereby each one liveth to God and to himself,
and without which he struggleth with the torment of
a continual, lingering death. . . . Let them show but
one only authority, example, or testimony out of
Scriptures, Fathers, or Councils, that we must obey
princes against our conscience and religion, and I
will grant he saith something to the purpose." ^
This indeed was the common plea of all the
Elizabethan martyrs. While they obeyed the State
in civil matters, they had a right to be free in
following a religion which did not interfere with
that civil obedience. They did not say that the
State ought to be godless, or that a State without
religion was in the abstract the most perfect order
of government, which was then the theory of the
Politicians, as now of the Liberals. But they main-
tained that when a new religion was being intro-
duced, they had a right in nature to follow the
Christian faith of their fathers, if their conscience
bid them do so.
We come now to the third point — Shakespeare's
portraiture of the churchmen in the historical
plays. The characters, as he has drawn them, of
Cardinal Beaufort and of Wolsey are often quoted
as decisive proof of Shakespeare's anti-Catholic
sentiments.
According to the great majority of critics, the
first part of " Henry VI." is an old play and not
1 "The Judgment of a Catholic Englishman," 38, § 20, and 51,
§31-
CARDINAL BEAUFORT 1 95
Shakespeare's work, who, if he adopted it, at most
retouched it here and there, and cannot, therefore,
be held responsible for every line it contains. It
is a relief that this is so, and that we are therefore
not obliged to regard the repulsive caricature of
the Maid of Orleans as by Shakespeare's hand.
The character of Beaufort is equally unhistorical,
especially the well-known death-scene. The Car-
dinal, in fact, retired from political life some years
before his death, and lived in his See of Win-
chester, where he spent his money in works of
charity, and founded and endowed the Hospital
of St. Cross. By his own desire he was laid out
before his death in the great Hall of his Palace, and
had the Absolutions pronounced over him, which
function, however eccentric, manifests a very oppo-
site spirit to the reprobate, despairing end of the
prelate in the play. The anachronisms in regard
to him are also somewhat startling. In the first
act, Beaufort is called a Cardinal, in order to intro-
duce Gloucester's famous lines about trampling on
the Cardinal's hat ; yet he is not raised till the
fifth act to the dignity of the Sacred College. But,
granted for the sake of argument that Shakespeare
must be held responsible for the play, since he
allowed it to bear his name, the condemnatory
terms applied to the Cardinal are only those which
a Catholic might use of an unworthy, wicked prelate.
The charges are all personal, not doctrinal.
There is only one line which seems to give coun-
196 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
tenance to the doctrine that the Church grants
indulgences to commit sin. This line, which need
not be quoted, refers absolutely to some disreput-
able houses, from the licensing of which the Bishops
of Winchester drew some small portion of their in-
come, and thus gave public scandal. The reproach,
therefore, uttered by Gloucester, whether written by
Shakespeare or allowed by him to remain, was both
intrinsically probable and morally correct. Doubt-
less such licences were granted by the Bishops'
agents, and secular governments do, in certain
countries, grant such licences in our own day.
Nevertheless, it was an undoubted abuse that a
Bishop should derive any profit from such places,
and the trafficking in them is wholly opposed to
the legislative principles on this matter laid down
in " Measure for Measure."
With regard to Wolsey, his faults and sins are
precisely those which Catholics had to deplore in
the worldly, ambitious, Erastian prelates of the time,
because of the incalculable injury they inflicted on
the Church. Wolsey 's covetousness had led to the
suppression of the smaller monasteries, and to the
unjust taxation and misery of the people. His in-
satiable ambition had induced him to suggest the
divorce of Henry from Catherine, in order to re-
venge himself on her nephew, the Emperor Charles
v., for not supporting his pretensions to the Papacy.
Finally, his greed of power and place made him
descend to the " utter meanness " of advocating the
THE CHURCH AND SCANDALS 1 9/
substitution of Anne Bolejn, whose licentiousness
he Avell knew, in the place of the noble and pure
Catherine of Arragon as Henry's wife. The denun-
ciation of the Cardinal by Catherine is not then more
severe than might have been fitly employed by any
Catholic historian.
Again, the reflection on the Cardinal's morality
(iii. 2) has been specified as an undoubted proof of
Shakespeare's Protestantism. But have Catholic
writers never censured the evil lives of churchmen
in high places ? Have not Dante and Petrarch, for
instance, pronounced similar strictures ? Of what
religion was St. Catherine of Siena, when she wrote
to Gregory XI. : " Our Lord holds in aversion these
detestable vices, impurity, avarice, and pride, and
they all reign in the Spouse of Christ, especially, at
least, among her prelates, who seek after nothing
but pleasures, honours, and riches. They see the
demons of hell carrying off the souls confided to
them, and they care nothing at all about it, because
they are wolves and traffic with divine grace." ^
Blessed John Fisher admits, in answer to the
Lutheran objection, that the lives of the prelates
(jiroceres) at Rome were most diametrically opposed
to the life of Christ, and that their greed, vainglory,
luxury, and lust caused the name of Christ to be
everywhere blasphemed.- But this, he says, only
confirms his argument for the indefectibility of
^ Letter 41, Drane's "Life of S. Catherine of Siena," 246, 247.
1S80. ^ 0pp. p. 1370. Wiceburg, 1597.
1 98 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
the faith of Peter and his successors, seeing that
the preservation of Peter's See and of the Church
founded thereon, notwithstanding all these scandals,
proves the triumphant fulfilment of Christ's promises.
Shakespeare's adverse comment on Wolsey's
moral character is not, then, inconsistent with his
Catholicism ; but further, his portrait of the Cardinal
is actually copied from the description given of him
by the B. Edmund Campion, the first Jesuit martyr.^
" This Cardinal," says Hollinshed, " (as Edmund
Campion in History of Ireland describeth him)
was a man undoubtedly born to honour. ' I think,'
said he, ' some prince's bastard, no butcher's son,
exceeding wise, fair-spoken, high-minded, full of
revenge, vicious of his body,^ lofty to his enemies,
were they never so big, to those that accepted and
sought his friendship wonderful courteous; a ripe
schoolman, thrall to affections, brought abed with
flattery, insatiable to get and more princely in
bestowing, as appeareth by his two Colleges at
Ipswich and Oxenford, the one overthrown with his
fall, the other unfinished, and as yet as it lieth, for
an House of Students, considering all the appur-
tenances, incomparable through Christendom; a
great preferrer of his servants and advancer of
learning; stout in every quarrel; never happy till
* Hollinshed, " Chronicles of England," iii. 756. 1808. (Reprint
of 1586.)
^ " Vir magnificentissimus, cruciendus, confidens, scortator, simu-
lator."— Campioni opusc.
wolsey's portrait 199
his overthrow, wherein he showed such moderation
and ended so perfectly, that the hour of his death
did him more honour than all the pomp of his
life passed.' Thus far Campion."
With this material before him, Shakespeare
makes Catherine with Griffith speak of Wolsey as
follows : —
" Catherine. . . . He was a man
Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking
Himself with princes ; one that by suggestion
Tied all the kingdom : simony was fair play ;
His own opinion was his law. I' the presence
He would say untruths ; and be ever double
Both in his words and meaning. He was never
But where he meant to ruin, pitiful :
His promises were, as he then was, mighty ;
But his performance, as he is now, nothing.
Of his own body he was ill, and gave
The clergy ill example.
Griffith. Noble Madam,
Men's evil manners live in brass ; their virtues
We write in water. May it please your Highness
To hear me speak his good now 1
Catherine. Yes, good Griffith
I were malicious else.
Griffith. This Cardinal,
Though from an humble stock, undoubtedly
"Was fashioned to much honour from his cradle.
He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one :
Exceeding wise, fair spoken, and persuading :
Lofty and sour to them that loved him not.
But to those men that sought him sweet as sumnxer.
And though he were unsatisfied in getting
(Which was a sin), yet in bestowing, Madam,
He was most princely : ever witness for him
Those twins of learning that he raised in you,
Ipswich and Oxford ! one of which fell with him,
200 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
Unwilling to outlive the good that did it ;
The other, though unfinished, yet so famous,
So excellent in art, and still so rising.
That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue.
His overthrow heaped happiness upon him ;
For then, and not till then, he felt himself,
And found the blessedness of being little :
And to add greater honours to his age
Than man could give him, he died fearing God " (iv. 2).
But there is another churchman in " Henry VIIL,"
whose language is often quoted as decisive against
Shakespeare's Cathohcism, This is Cranmer and his
prophecy at the baptism of EHzabeth.
" Good grows with her,
In her days, every man shall eat in safety
Under his own vine what he plants, and sing
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours :
God shall be truly known " (v. 4).
Now this quotation, again, is really beside the
mark, for the best critics agree that the fifth act, in
which it occurs, with the exception of scene i, is
certainly not Shakespeare's, but an addition of
Fletcher's. Its genuineness is rejected on the
grounds of its metre, style, and evident disconnec-
tion with the four previous acts. The arguments
on style would take us beyond our scope, but those
regarding a metrical test are worth considering.
The blank verse, as introduced by Surrey from Italy
in the reign of Henry VIII., consisted of ten syllables
of iambic measure, and to this metre Shakespeare
more generally adhered. Even in his later plays
THE FIFTH ACT 20I
of " Cymbeline " and the " Winter's Tale," the pro-
portion of Hnes, in which the eleventh or redundant
syllable is employed, is on an average, according to
Mr. Spedding, about one in three, while in the fifth
act the average of the redundant lines is one in two.
But by the same test no less than eight scenes of
the four previous acts are declared ungenuine, and
there only remain to Shakespeare, Act i, 1,2; Act ii.
3, 4; Act iii. 2, to exit of the king. Act v. i,
altered by Shakespeare, the rest being all by
Fletcher. This result is confirmed, in Mr. Sped-
ding's judgment, by the peculiarities of style in the
parts thus assigned to the respective poets. Now,
while recognising Mr. Spedding's pre-eminent autho-
rity on this subject, it may be stated that there is
an opinion on the other side advanced by H. Morley
(Introduction to " Henry VIII.," p. xx.), that the
redundant eleventh syllable was used intentionally
to express by its cadence the idea of failure intended
to be conveyed. Thus in Wolsey's speech —
" So farewell to the little good you bear me."
the redundant syllable breaks the pomp of each
verse at the close, and gives to it a dying fall that
suits the theme, the broken pomps of life, the wave
that rolls to its full height, then bows its head and
falls. If this be tenable, we are not obliged to
surrender our traditional belief as to the Shake-
spearian origin of many of the finest passages from
the plays.
202 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
More cogent, however, to us than the objection
from metre is that of the absolute estrangement of
the fifth act from the remainder of the play, and
from its expressed intention, as announced in both
prologue and epilogue. These two pieces, whoever
was their author, may be assumed to represent
correctly the contents of the drama to which they
are affixed.
The purpose of the play, then, according to the
prologue, is to tell the truth and to show the stern
but sad realities of life, " mightiness meeting misery."
The scenes depicted may cause pity and tears, but
not laughter. There may be a show or two but no
burlesque, no noise of targets, nor fellow in long
motley coat, guarded with yellow; for truth is not
to be " mated with fool or fight." This is all lite-
rally adhered to in the first four acts, which contain
one pageant, the Field of the Cloth of Gold and
Anne Boleyn's marriage procession, but no burlesque ;
while in the fifth act there is a very coarse farce
between the porter and his men and the crowd for
the christening.
The epilogue, again, apologises for the mournful
tone of the concluded play, which contains neither
witticisms nor satire, and can hope for support only
" in the merciful construction of good women " —
" For such a one we showed them."
Now, Anne Boleyn could never have been called a
good woman, whatever other qualities may have
AN ANTI-CLIMAX 203
made her so attractive to Henry, and in the first
four acts she is kept well in the background. On
the other hand, " the afflictions, the virtues, and the
patience of Catherine are," in Mr. Spedding's words,
" elaborately exhibited." Our whole sympathy is
evoked exclusively in behalf of the deposed queen,
and our indignation is roused at the shameless
wrong done her. Yet Henry, the perpetrator of the
iniquity, the ruthless sacrificer of a pure and noble
wife for a licentious caprice, euphemistically termed
his conscience ; Anne, his accomplice in the evil
deed, " a spleeny Lutheran " ; and Cranmer, the servile
minister of their passions under the cloak of religion,
the arch-heretic " who has crawled into favour," are
all three, without explanation, repentance, or any
justifying cause, crowned in the fifth act with the
full blaze of earthly glory and the promise of happi-
ness to come. " It is," says Mr. Spedding, " as if
Nathan's rebuke to David had ended, not with the
doom of death to the child just born, but with a
prophetic promise of the felicities of Solomon."
The fifth act, then, forms no part of the original
play, while the first four acts exhibit by themselves
a strict dramatic unity. And the moral they teach
is exactly opposite to what would have been drawn
by any Protestant dramatist of the time. Had
Fletcher, or Munday, or Marlowe written on such a
theme as Henry VIII., we should have beheld the
Reformation as the heroic act of his reign, and
Catherine and her daughter Mary would pale before
204 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
Anne Boleyn and her daughter EUzabeth. Shake-
speare, as we have seen, places exactly the reverse
before us. He exposes the Tudor tyranny in its
worst features, and its victims are in turn the
objects of our admiration. Catherine is the heroine
of the piece ; the despised Buckingham, and Wolsey,
after his fall, command our respect ; while the mar-
tyred Sir Thomas More, Avhom Hall ridicules as " a
wise foolish man," ^ and the courtier Hollinshed
describes as having forfeited God's grace, through
the misuse of the gifts he had received, and Donne
derided as an obstinate fanatic, is prayed for, as
follows, by AVolsoy : —
" May he do justice,
For truth's sake, and his innocence, that his bones,
When he has run his course and sleeps in blessings,
May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on them " (iii. 2).
The prayer is in truth a panegyric. We need not
wonder that Dr. Dollinger should have said, as has
already been stated, that the play of " Henry VIII."
was a striking evidence of the Catholic opinions of
the poet.
How, then, it may bo asked, was the fifth act
added ? The original play was probably first acted
in 1603, the year of James' succession, when Catho-
lics hoped for comparative toleration from him,
after the persecution of Elizabeth, and a piece con-
ceived in an anti-Tudor spirit might hope for some
^ Chronicles of England, 817. 1548.
THE MINOR PRELATES 205
chance of success. Too soon, however, it was found
that James could oppress his Catholic subjects even
more cruelly than his predecessors, and the play
was dropped. In 161 2 Shakespeare retired wholly
from the stage, sold his plays and theatrical pro-
perty to AUeyne, and the new piece, as adapted and
altered, with the fifth act added to suit a Jacobean
audience, was the work of Fletcher.
The portraiture of the remaining prelates in the
historical plays, the scenes of which are laid in
Catholic times, betrays nothing inconsistent with
Shakespeare's Catholicism. " This group," remarks
Thummel,^ " is recruited from the highest houses in
England, and represents a stately array of political
lords in priestly robes, of noble descent, true priests,
and Englishmen to the backbone," They were
statesmen, no doubt, for as spiritual peers they
were legislators in the Upper House of the king-
dom. Doubtless, also, their policy was not always
disinterested and free from utilitarian motives. But
these ecclesiastics bear no resemblance to the popular
Protestant idea of a Catholic prelate, as the Bishop
of Rochester in Drayton's play, or Munday's Sir
John Oldcastle, or as Marlowe or Fletcher would
have portrayed him, a serpentine, foreign intriguer,
always bent on betraying the interests of his own
country, to the supposed aggrandisement of Rome.
At their head stands the loyal Bishop of Carlisle,
who alone of the great nobles dared to resist the
^ Shakespeare, Jahrbuch, 16, 361.
206 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
usurping Bolingbroke, and maintained the rights of
Richard —
" I speak to subjects, and a subject speaks,
Stirred up by Heaven, thus boldly for his king.
My lord of Hereford here, whom you call king.
Is a foul traitor to proud Hereford's king."
— Richard II., iv. i.
And Bolingbroke, now Henry IV., in sentencing the
Bishop to a mild imprisonment, pays tribute to
one who, though ever his foe, had displayed "high
sparks of honour."
Again, with what dignity the learned and vene-
rable Archbishop Scroop defends himself against
Lord Westmoreland, for joining in the insurrection
against the same Henry IV. : —
" I have in equal balance justly weighed
What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,
And find our griefs heavier than our offences.
We see which way the stream of time doth run.
And are enforced from our most quiet sphere
By the rough torrent of occasion ;
And have the summary of all our griefs.
When time shall serve, to show in articles ;
Which, long ere this, we offered to the king.
And might by no suit gain our audience :
When we are wronged, and would unfold our griefs,
We are denied access unto his person,
Even by those men that most have done us wrong.
The dangers of the days but nearly gone
(Whose memory is written on the earth
With yet appearing blood), and the examples
Of every minute's instance (present now),
THE NORTHERN RISING 207
Have put us to these ill-beseeming arms :
Not to break peace or any branch of it,
But to establish here a peace indeed,
Concurring both in name and quality."
— 2 Henry IV., iv. i.
He was no partisan or turbulent agitator. The
injuries inflicted by the king's misrule were intoler-
able. Each household of the Commonwealth was
in suffering, and the Archbishop made each house-
hold's wrong his own. All constitutional means of
redress had proved useless, therefore he gave " the
seal divine " to the insurrection, not to break but to
establish peace. The whole tenor of the insurgent
manifesto is that of a solemn religious protest in
defence of the Church of Rome and England. The
document charges Henry with usurpation, treason,
perjury, unjust exactions, violation of the 2ynmlegmm
cleri, trying clerics before the secular court. The
eighth article deposes that the King had ratified
" that most wicked statute (of praemunire) directed
against the power and principality of the Holy
Roman See as delivered by our Lord Jesus Christ
to the Blessed Peter and his successors." Then,
after proceeding to specify the abuses springing from
the royal patronage of benefices, such as the general,
simoniacal promotion of rude and unworthy persons
for the half or the third part of the benefices so
bestowed, it concludes by saying " that the same
most wicked statute is not only opposed to the
rights of St. Peter, but that it is destruction to the
208 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
clergy, to the knighthood and republic of the realm,
because from one thing another always follows." ^
The framers of the complaint seem to have been
convinced that the liberty of the Church guaranteed
that of the State ; and it was in defence of both
realms, civil as well as spiritual, that the Archbishop
gave his life. Shakespeare's treatment of the Arch-
bishop is wholly in keeping with the facts of history
and the popular cultus he afterwards received as a
saint and martyr.
The two prelates in " Henry V.," Henry Chicheley,
Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishop of Ely, are
often instanced as examples of time-serving Church-
men who preferred a policy of utilitarian bloodshed
to the interests of justice and peace. Their argu-
ments on behalf of Henry's claims to the French
crown are taken literally from Hollinshed, and their
pleadings, however worldly, were first advocated by
Edward III., and were held, in their own time, by
the king and country at large. There is no reason,
then, as Bishop Stubbs points out, why they, more
than the lay Barons, who equally advocated an appeal
to arms, should be made responsible for the war
which followed. As a matter of fact, as the same
author shows. Archbishop Chicheley was not present
at the Parliament of Leicester ; ^ but it is by no
means improbable that the Bishops espoused the
popular feeling in favour of the invasion of France,
both as a means of uniting the country within and
* Foxe, iii. 233-255. ^ Constitut. Hist., iii. 81.
CESSATION OF MIRACLES 20g
of saving the Churcli from the threatened SpoHation
Bill. Shakespeare, however, has profited by the
prelates' speeches, as recorded in the Chronicles, not
to expose their unworthy motives but to bring out
the reverence felt by Henry V. for the Church. In
the introductory discussion between the Archbishop
of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely, the king is
described as full of grace and " fair regard," a true
lover of Holy Church, suddenly changed from a wild
prince, leagued with low associates, to a king as wise
in counsel as if the crown had been his lifelong
study, reasoning in divinity like a bishop, solving
at once the most complicated cases in policy, so
eloquent that his discourse on war seemed Uke
" A fearful battle, rendered you in music."
The strawberry thriving beneath the nettle, the
summer grass growing fastest by night, are but
images of this wonderful conversion ; and Arch-
bishop Chicheley concludes that some natural means
must be admitted, " since miracles have ceased."
These last words, from the mouth of the first
prelate of the kingdom, are taken both by Gervinus ^
and Kreysig ^ as evidence of the poet's rationalistic
spirit, and of his freedom from the superstitions of
his time. If so, most of the Fathers were equally
enlightened, for the cessation of miracles is a common
topic with them ; and they explain the fact by show-
1 iv. 420, cf. ii, 249. ^ i. 281, quoted by Raich, 175.
O
2IO ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
ing that the utility of miracles would disappear were
they of common occurrence, and that their purpose
was attained when once the Church was established,
itself a standing miracle. But St. Augustine de-
clares that his words as to the discontinuance of
miracles are not to be taken as if they were no
longer worked ; for he had himself testified to the
blind man who had recovered sight in the presence
of the bodies of the Milanese martyrs, and he knew
of many other miracles too numerous to be related.^
The Archbishop's words, interpreted by Lafeu's
speech on the wonderful cure of the king in " All's
Well that Ends Well," and the detailed account of
the miracles worked by St. Edward in " Macbeth," are
evidently to be taken comparatively, not absohitely,
and bear no sceptical sense. That the poet wished
to represent the Archbishop as a conscientious priest,
not an intriguing politician, is seen also from Henry's
speech to him. The king's words manifest both
reverence for the prelate's office and an affectionate
trust in a loved and faithful religious counsellor.
He concludes : —
" And we will hear, note, and believe in heart,
That what you speak is in your conscience washed
As pure as sin with baptism." — Henry V., i. 2.
The Catholic doctrine of the justifying effects of
the sacrament, ex opere operato, is here, we may note,
clearly stated.
1 Retract., i. 13.
THE BLACK ART 211
The three Bishops in " Richard III." occupy sub-
ordinate parts. The Archbishop of York behaves
with becoming dignity, but Cardinal Bourchier
shows himself weak and pliable in yielding at once
the rights of sanctuary, by delivering the little
Duke of York at Buckingham's demand ; and the
Bishop of Ely appears an obsequious courtier.
Both these prelates are of a very inferior stamp
to Carlisle and Archbishop Scroop and to the priest,
Rutland's tutor in " Hemy VI.," who is ready to
imperil his life on his ward's behalf.
In the treason and necromancy of the Duchess
of Gloucester three priests are concerned. Sir John
Hume, her chaplain ; Thomas Southwell, a canon of
St. Stephen's, Westminster ; and Roger Bolingbroke,
chaplain to the Duke of Gloucester. The Duke
of Gloucester, according to JEneas Sylvius, after-
wards Pius II., had a European reputation for
magic, and had probably attached Bolingbroke to
himself on account of his astrological fame. The
object of Dame Eleanor's conspiracy was doubtless
to place her husband on the throne ; and this her
accomplices engaged to effect by procuring Henry's
death. Their mode of action reveals an extraordi-
nary combination of faith and superstition. South-
well said Mass, while a wax image of the king
was exposed to a slow fire. As the wax melted,
the health of the king, through the joint influence
of Southwell's Masses and Bolingbroke's magic, was
supposed to give way. The ceremony was appar-
212 ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS
ently adapted from the Luciferarian Masses of the
previous century, which are said to have been
renewed in our own days. A graver ecclesiastical
scandal could not well be imagined, but was the
superstition favoured or countenanced by Church
authorities ? On the contrary, the prisoners were
first tried before the Bishops' Court, composed of
the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Beaufort,
and the Bishop of London, and were handed over
to the secular power. Southwell died in the Tower
before his trial, but Bolingbroke publicly abjured
his heresy, and was afterwards executed. Shake-
speare only gives the carrying out of the sentence
on Dame Eleanor, after she had been found guilty
by the Bishops on the several indictments of necro-
mancy, witchcraft, sorcery, heresy, and treason.
The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed
an extraordinary outburst of the Black Art in
Europe. The Order of the Templars was sup-
pressed by the Council of Vienne, in 1 3 1 1 , on
charges similar to those advanced against Dame
Eleanor. The practice of sorcery was condemned
by John XXII. in two Bulls, in 1 3 1 7 and 1327,
again, in 1398, by Gerson and the Sorbonne. In
the fifteenth century and later, those charged with
sorcery were, as a rule, women. They were be-
lieved to have the power of producing storms and
pestilences, changing the form of the human body,
calling up spirits, and foretelling future events.
The shameful condemnation of Joan of Arc, 143 i.
THE DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER 213
as a sorceress and impostor, was in part due to
the readiness to believe in witchcraft ; and Shake-
speare, in introducing her trial and Dame Eleanor's
in " Henry VI.," produces a special feature of the
time. It is noteworthy that the English case of
witchcraft should have taken place in the house-
hold of the freethinking Duke of Gloucester, a fact
showing that superstition is begotten no less readily
from scepticism than from faith. Foxe, in his
desire to swell the list of his pseudo-martyrs, de-
scribes Dame Eleanor branded by the papists as
a heretic for her love and desire of truth.^ In
defending himself against the criticisms of Alan
Cope (Harpsfield), while declining to discuss the
facts of her trial, he conjectures that she suffered,
among other reasons, for being an adherent of
Wycliff. In any case, Foxe's advocacy of the
Duchess shows that he considered her no blind
and superstitious papist, nor can Shakespeare's in-
sertion of her trial be interpreted as implying any
censure on the Catholic faith.
^ "Acts and Monuments," iii. 709. 1837.
CHAPTER V.
THE SONNETS.
In considering the question of Shakespeare's reHgion
the sonnets are of special importance. Their sub-
ject-matter is love. His views on this point present,
in our opinion, the key to his philosophy of life.
The sonnets are also singular in this, that they
contain a purely personal element. His " Venus
and Adonis," as well as his " Lucrece," though often
classed with the sonnets, are not in fact lyrical
compositions, but dramatic stories. They exhibit
words and feelings wholly external to the poet,
except so far as they were necessarily realised at
first in his phantasy. The poet speaks throughout
as a spectator, not as an actor. In his dramas he
is personal only in the sense that the thoughts and
feelings exhibited by his characters are all drawn
ultimately from his own consciousness. They por-
tray what the poet would be were he some one else,
not what he is himself. Had Shakespeare been
Othello or Hamlet or FalstafF he might have acted
as they did in his drama. But Shakespeare was
himself and not another. " I am that I am," he
says. In the sonnets, however, he speaks not in
NOT AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 21 5
character, but in his own person, and thus they
furnish the most direct ckie to his inner Ufe.
The sonnets contain then, as we think, a revela-
tion of the poet's self, though it must be admitted
that the revelation is partial, fragmentary, discon-
nected, and obscure, and furnishes no data for a
personal narrative. Every attempt at a literal
interpretation of the sonnets meets with insurmount-
able difficulties. The poet speaks of himself as
made lame by fortune's " dearest spite " (Sonnet
37), and of his "dead body," "the coward conquest
of a butcher's knife " (Sonnet 74) ; yet there are no
historical grounds for believing that he was either
really lame or had actually been stabbed. Again,
he speaks of journeys and pilgrimages " to limits
far remote," " to the shores, furthest shores " ; yet
there is no sure evidence that he was ever out
of England.
The indications of time are equally insoluble.
In Sonnet 2 he fixes the age of forty as the time
when the stage of decay has been reached. In
Sonnet 62 he states of himself that hiB' is "heated
and chopped with tanned antiquity " ; while in
Sonnet 73 he declares that he has reached "the
autumn and twilight of life." He must then, if
these statements about himself are to be taken
literally, have been at the time of writing his
sonnets at least forty years old. That he was not
forty years old at the time of writing his sonnets is
made clear by his statement in Sonnet 104, that
2l6 THE SONNETS
three years had passed since he first became
acquainted with the friend to whom they are
addressed. Now the friend to whom they are
addressed, in the opinion of Drake, Gervinus,
Kreysig, Mr. G. Massey, and others, is Henry
Wriothesley,^ Earl of Southampton. But Shake-
speare had already made the acquaintance of the
Earl of Southampton at least as early as 1593, for
in that year he dedicated to him his " Venus and
Adonis." Shakespeare then, if we take his state-
ments literally, must have been forty years old in
1596. But as a matter of fact he was not forty
years old till 1604, since he was born in the year
1564.
Even if it could be proved that W. H. was really
not Lord Southampton, it could still be shown that
Shakespeare was not forty years of age when he
composed the sonnets, seeing that Meres, writing
in 1598, speaks of Shakespeare's "sug'red sonnets"
" among his private friends." Again, the last line of
Sonnet 94, " Lilies that fester smell far worse than
weeds," is quoted ^ in the play of " Edward IIL,"
^ W. H. are supposed to be the initials reversed.
^ The speech in which the line occurs is one in which the Earl
of Warwick extols his daughter, the Countess of Salisbury, for
rejecting the shameful proposal of the King, Edward III. The
speech consists of " a spacious field "of " eleven reasons " proving
that the malice of sin is in proportion to the rank or power or
knowledge of the sinner. Each reason is condensed into an
aphorism, and the form of the whole speech is like one of Sancho
Panza's strings of Proverbs. It is therefore a place where we
should least look for originality, and where an author would think
NUMEROUS SONNETEERS 217
which was published in 1596, and was probably-
written in 1595 or 1594. The sonnets, then,
were composed before 1596. Clearly, therefore,
Shakespeare, was not forty years of age at the time
of writing the sonnets, and his statements are
not to be taken with literal exactness. Another
proof that the sonnets are not to be taken in their
literal exactness is found in the fact that Sonnets
72-86 declare that his praises of his friend and
patron had become so notorious that others had
emulated him, and one of them so successfully as
to supplant him in his patron's favour— a statement
whose inaccuracy appears from this, that critics
have utterly failed to discover any such rival. The
sonnets, then, though a lyrical composition, cannot
be accepted as an autobiography.
But while we are forced to admit that we can-
not expect to find in the sonnets accurate auto-
biographical data, we altogether dissent from the
contention of those critics who maintain that the
sonnets were written by Shakespeare solely to
exhibit his versifying skill. Between the years
I 591 and I 599 a vast number of sonnets appeared.
Undoubtedly many of these sonnets were written
for no better purpose than that of displaying their
least scorn of open plagiarism. For these reasons it seems more
probable that the line in question was quoted from Shakespeare's
Sonnets, already known in 1594 or 1595 among his private friends,
than that it was afterwards adopted by Shakespeare from the play.
Of. Simpson, " Philosophy of Shakespeare's Sonnets," 76.
2l8 THE SONNETS
author's power in verbal fence, or were composed in
a spirit of mere rivalry. This we freely grant.
But at the same time we insist that many of the
sonnets were inspired by a much higher motive.
They treated of serious subjects in a manner suited
to the dignity of their theme. No less than 500
sonnets were composed at this period on such grave
topics as philosophy and religion.^ The sonnets of
Shakespeare, it is true, treat professedly neither of
religion nor of philosophy, but of love. Yet this
theme, however much it may have been degraded
by the treatment of other sonneteers, was discussed
from a pure and spiritual standpoint by such
sonneteers as Surrey, Sidney, and Spenser. The
presumption surely ought to be that Shakespeare
would take his stand with such writers as these
rather than with Marlowe, Greene, and Donne. But
we have something more than presumption. A
comparison of Shakespeare's theory on love with
that which has found favour with the great
Christian writers of every age will show the iden-
tity of his views on this subject with those of the
leaders of religious thought.
The philosophy of love as taught first by Plato,
and purified and completed by St. Augustine,
Boetius, and St. Thomas, is a definite, compre-
hensive, and coherent system. In that philo-
sophy the object of love is the good, the act of
love is the tendency or the movement towards its
* S. Lee, *' Life of Shakespeare," 441.
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LOVE 219
attainment, and in its secure possession love is
perfected, quies in bono, " rest in good," being the
essence of beatitude. In intellectual natures the
good is apprehended by the intellect as true, and
loved by the will as good. God, being infinitely
intelligent, necessarily knows His Infinite Perfec-
tions in the Word, and from the mutual con-
templation of the Father and the Word proceeds
the Holy Spirit, their mutual love, the term of
union in the Triune God. Thus Dante describes
the Divine essence. Luce intellettual pien d'amor.
From God's Infinite love of Himself proceeds freely
His love of creatures, each of which is called into
being to portray some special likeness of the
Creator's Beauty, their graduated perfection being
determined by their degree of resemblance to the
Divine exemplar. Every kind of being by love,
natural or supernatural, acquires its perfection.
Thus the connatural attractiveness, which by the
law of gravity binds the atoms in the stone and
the stone in its place, may be called love. The
vital principle of growth and increase in the plants,
the action of the sensitive faculties in the animal
world are respectively the law of self-preservation
for each, or the love of their good. Man, as a
reasonable being, finds his good in the love and
acquisition of truth, and in the possession of abso-
lute truth alone is his perfection attained.
Love, then, is the first beginning, the sustaining
principle, and the final end of all things. All this
220 THE SONNETS
is summed up in Dante's vision, in the depth of
which he
" Saw in one volume, clasped of love, whate'er
The universe unfolds ; all properties
Of substance and of accident, beheld
Compounded, yet one individual light
The whole. And of such l:)ond methinks I saw
The universal form ; for that whene'er
I do but speak of it my soul dilates
Beyond her proper self." — Par. xxiii. yj.
So also Boetius had long since said —
" Hanc rerum seriem ligat
Terras et pelagas regens
Et ccelo imperitans amor."
— De Consol. Phil., xi. 8.
Now this love philosophy descended through
Petrarch and others to the Italian Revivalists of the
sixteenth century, and became a prominent subject
in their literature. From Italy it passed into Eng-
land, and was taken up by Surrey and Spenser, and
in the Hymns of the latter poet on love and beauty
we find the theme treated on the lines of Catholic
theology already given. Love, then, according to
Spenser, first produced order out of chaos, fixed all
things in their different kingdoms, tempered, subor-
dinated, and harmonised their constituent opposing
forces, and quickened living things with the desire
and power of increase. Man, having an immortal
mind, should love immortal beauty, and seek " to
SPENSER S HYMNS 221
enlarge his progeny not for lust's sake but for
eternity." Here comes the strife. False love or
lust persuades the " earthly-minded with dunghill
thoughts" to seek only the gratification of their
senses in the enjoyment of corporeal beauty. But the
pure, refined mind, by help of Heaven's grace, expels
all sordid baseness, and newly fashions the sense
image into a higher form, modelled on its divine
exemplar, " its God and King, its victor and its
guide." The love for this ideal must be sole and
sovereign. The fear of its loss is terrible suffering,
only to be surpassed by the joy experienced when
the loved one is possessed.
Such are the leading ideas of the hymns of earthly
love and beauty. The hymn of heavenly love tells
of the Procession of the Divine Persons and of crea-
tures from the same source, " the blessed well of
love." The three great acts of divine love for
man are Creation, Redemption, and the Blessed
Sacrament.
" Him first to love great right and reason ia
Who first to us our life and being gave.
And after, when we fared had amiss,
Us wretches from the second death did save,
And last, the food of life which now we have,
Even He Himself, in his dear sacrament,
To feed our hungry souls unto us lent."
Such love calls for the sacrifice of all else in return.
" With all thy heart, with all thy soul and mind
Thou must Him love, and His behests embrace.
22 2 THE SONNETS
All other loves, with which the world doth blind
Weak fancies, and stir up affections base,
Thou must renounce, and utterly displace,
And give thyself unto Him full and free
That full and freely gave Himself to thee."
In the Hymn of Heavenly Beauty we are taught by
ascending scale of beauty in creation, by the blind-
ing brightness of the sun, to
" Look at last up to that Sovereign light
From whose pure beams all perfect beauty springs ;
That kindleth love in every godly spright.
Even the love of (lod ; which loathing things
Of this vile world, and these gay seeming things
With whose sweet pleasures being so possest.
Thy straying thoughts henceforth for ever rest."
There are then, according to Spenser, two kinds of
beauty, the corporeal and the spiritual. The first is
the object of earthly, the second of spiritual love,
and the work of the pure soul of true love is to
fashion for itself and in itself from the earthly image
that spiritual ideal which is the reflection of God
Himself. In the process of transformation the better
self, God's grace and God Himself, are constantly
addressed in the same terms. This identity of love
with the object is found in St. Paul's "Vivo ego
jam non ego, sed Christus vivit in me," and is a
leading thought with St. Augustine, " Anima plus
ubi amat quam ubi vivit."
And now let us turn to the sonnets and see how
they can be interpreted on the lines of the philo-
sophy already sketched. The first series, 1-126,
THEME OP THE SONNETS 223
is addressed to a youth idealised, described now
as a fair boy, now as an angel, the type of pure
love, leading the poet to higher things. The
second series, 127-156, is addressed to a woman,
the type of evil passion, whose only purpose is to
degrade and destroy the soul. The pure love and
the false the poet experiences in his own heart.
" Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
Which, like two spirits, do suggest me still ;
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit, a woman coloured ill."
As love follows knowledge, the loveable object,
whether good or evil, is presented to the soul
through one of the three channels of human infor-
mation. These are the outward senses, the inward
senses of the imagination and memory, and the
mind itself. Each of these, when actuated by the
object, proposes to the will a corresponding good.
The object of the outward senses is corporeal beauty.
The object of the inward senses is the imaginative
beauty created by the phantasies and memory.
The object of the intellect is the ideal beauty, the
perfect expression of truth, and too spiritual and
intellectual to be set forth in any phantasm or out-
ward form. As St. Augustine says, " Vera pulchritude
fustitia est." This triple division is, then, found in
the sonnets.
Sonnets 1-45 treat of the imaginative love, which
is again subdivided by its object as represented
2 24 THE SONNETS
corporeally, by the memory or phantasy, or as an
intellectual idea. In the first stage, goodness or
beauty as seen through the outward senses forms
the theme of twenty sonnets, which we proceed to
summarise, the bracketed numbers indicating the
sonnets referred to.
The opening lines declare that beauty or good-
ness should be perpetual, for the thought of coming
decay and separation prevents any true enjoyment
of the beloved object (i). Therefore he desires off-
spring for his friend (2). The child is the parent's
reflection, and represents him in his prime. His
beloved should not then be barren, but inspire the
poet's soul with fitting conceptions of his worth, that
he may live on in his rhyme (3, 4). As the rose,
though dead, lives on in the fragrant water distilled
from its leaves, so will his beloved in the verses of
the poet. This simile is borrowed from Sidney's image
of the rosewater in crystal-glass ( 5 ). The necessity
of the spiritual marriage is reiterated and illustrated
through the next four sonnets. "Summer defaced
by winter's ragged hand," the sun's meridian glory
adored with bowed head, but forgotten when it sets,
typify the oblivion, the necessary heritage of a child-
less life (6, 7). Then follows an exquisite image
from an acoustic phenomenon in music, recalling
again the harmony found in every creature true to
itself. As the two notes of a perfect triad, struck in
complete accord, produce spontaneously a third, so
should the poet's fruitful union with his beloved.
LOVE OF THE SENSES 225
" Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each on each by mutual ordering,
Eesembling sire, and child, and happy mother,
"Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing ;
Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,
Say this to thee, ' Thou single wilt prove none ' " (8).
From this point the arguments become less
rhetorical, and appeal more directly to the feelings.
Do you keep single for fear of wetting a widow's
eye ? (9). You cannot love others if you thus slay
yourself by singleness ; and here the poet urges his
suit by a personal appeal.
" Make thee another self for love of me,
That beauty still may live in thine or thee " (10).
In conceptive power live wisdom, beauty, increase ;
without it, time would cease, and the world perish
in an age (11). The visible decay of all things
warns us to prepare for death (12), and the only
preparation is to leave issue to posterity (13). The
poet speaks, not as an augur or soothsayer from
weather signs, but from the principles of truth and
beauty seen in the " constant stars," the unchanging
light of his beloved's eyes ( 1 4). The poet's verses,
inspired by this light, will immortalise his love,
though all other things, " cheered and checked by
the self-same sky," from memory pass (15). If,
however, his friend would draw himself by his own
sweet skill, such a work would be more blessed than
the poet's barren rhyme (16). Without such an
authentic declaration of the truth none would
p
226 THE SONNETS
believe in that beauty which is beyond compare
(17). But with this guarantee his love would live
through all time in his friend's verse and in his
own. Yet his unaided song shall sing his love's
praises, for Truth's eternal summer never fades (18).
" Do thy worst, old Time, despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse be ever young" (19).
He then commences his praises of his love. His
beloved's beauty is the Creator's painting, not false
adornment of art. Yet its outward semblance
others may extol with what similes they will. Its
interior loveliness is the object of the poet's desire
(20, 21), and reclothed therein his youth is ever
renewed.
" For all the beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart.
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me,
How can I then be elder than thou art ?" (22).
Notwithstanding his previous declaration to sing
his friend's praises at any cost, his love renders
him tongue-tied, like an actor who, through fear,
forgets his part. His beloved then must read in
his heart " what love hath writ." He holds there a
treasure. Earth's heroes and royal favourites live
in to-day's smile and expire in the morrow's frown.
His love and joy are eternal.
** Then happy I that love and am beloved,
Where I may not remove, nor be removed " (25).
With Sonnet 26 we enter the second degree in
THE THREE STAGES 2 27
the scale of imaginative love, the phantastic re-
presentation of the beloved object. Again he asks
his friend to inspire his muse, confessing, as in
Sonnet 33, his own inability to do so. As the
internal senses are now alone operative he deplores
the bodily absence of his beloved, though the
memory of the ideal is with him day and night
{27)y is brighter than the sun, and enlightens the
night.
" How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye,
As interest of the dead, which now appear
But things removed that hidden lie in thee " (31).
As he loves his friend truly, he can count on his
love in return, even though his " rude lines " be
outstripped by every pen (32). Again, though he
has to bear what seems inconstancy, if not disgrace,
even then the sorrow of pure love, the tears of true
contrition, procure their own pardon (34). To his
own faults must be attributed the loss of his love ;
of himself he can do nothing, but if he can identify
himself with his ideal, his will be ideal beauty,
wealth, and wit (37).
The third stage of imaginative love begins at
Sonnet 38 with another prayer for inspiration. He
has again to deplore the trials of separation, for
he is now deprived even of the portrait drawn by
memory and imagination of his love (39). Yet
whatever his friend does, whatever injury he may
2 28 THE SONNETS
inflict, the poet's heart will be faithful. He wor-
ships his beloved's will alone, and is one with it ;
and as that will is perfect, so will he gain by his
very love (41, 42). His beloved is indeed seen best
in the dark, when all other objects and earthly aims
are excluded (43), and but for the dull substance of
his flesh he would mount in thought and desire
to the presence of his beloved (44). Were it not
for some tender embassies assuring him from time
to time of his ideal's reality and life he would sink
down and die (45).
The change to the ideal love is indicated in
Sonnet 46. The object of this love being neither
outward beauty nor its pictured resemblance, but
an ideal purely interior and intellectual, self-know-
ledge is necessary. Magister intus docet. The Master
teaches within, and we must know ourselves and
what speaks there, and distinguish our true motives
and aims, if we are to detect His voice. The eye
and heart, the flesh and the spirit, the higher and
lower impulses are alike active and opposed in
mortal war. Each claims possession of the soul.
The poet must then look into the inner depths of
his heart, " a closet never pierced save by crystal
eyes," and there decide by the higher principles of
reason, a jury impanelled by nature for that purpose,
the true province and function of sense and reason
in the representation of his beloved (46).
He finds then that sense and reason mutually co-
operate to teach us the truth. The outward object
SPIRIT AND FLESH 229
through the sense supplies the image whence the
heart obtains its ideal; and the phantasm of the
ideal again lives in the memory to refresh the soul
in the absence of its beloved (47). This he strove
to effect. But in spite of all his care to keep his
ideal uncorrupted " in sure wards of trust," locked
in his inner soul, it escaped and became " a prey
of every vulgar thief " ; the distractions of outward
things (48). His own unworthiness then alone
accounts for his beloved's absence (49). His efforts
to rise to higher things are impeded by the flesh,
" the beast that bears me," " which plods dully on,"
and only answers with a groan to the bloody spur
(50). No carnal strength or power can help him
in his fiery race : and he dismisses his body with
contempt, and gives " his jade " leave to go, for he
would mount with a winged speed, to which the
mind itself is slow (51). In his heart's probation
only at times can he realise the presence of his
beloved. The visits of his beloved are rare and
solemn as annual feasts or " costly jewels," " captains
in the carcanet," or "state robes seldom worn" (52).
The best of earthly things, the most perfect type of
man or woman, Adonis or Helen, are in their beauty
but counterfeit imitations of the "One Fair." Spring-
tide in its promise, harvest in its abundance, are but
types of the beauty and bounty of his ideal, whose
unchanging truth or " constant heart " no earthly
image bears (53). This invisible truth is the essence
of all real perfection, and this shall live on in his
230 THE SONNETS
verse, though outward forms vanish from sight
(54, 55).
Sonnet 56 gives expression to another state of
soul ; the lover pines for sensible consolation. The
spirit is chilled by the " perpetual dulness " of his
beloved's absence, whose coming would be welcome
as summer after winter. But he has no right to
be jealous or impatient ; he is his beloved's slave,
and can think no ill whate'er his master does (57).
He must then wait, though waiting be hell (58).
He will renew his courage by recalling how antique
books and past sages have described his ideal
( 5 9). Its image, then, founded on truth, not feeling,
will have a new and lasting birth (60). But may
not the images thus awakened in his soul be
merely his own creation ? Have they an objective
reality ? His beloved cannot care to inspire them
(61); yet he must have done so, for the poet sees
himself to be so blackened and corrupt, " heated
and chopped," by his own evil past, he could never
form of himself any worthy conception of truth
or beauty (62). His very deformity shall then
be a foil and frame for his ideal's praise, as its
beauty is seen in the poet's black lines, and shall
live for all time ; an image recalling the nigra sed
formosa of the Canticles.
The poet, having now learnt to know himself,
is enabled to pierce the mask of other things and
to see them as they really are, and he expresses
in Sonnet 66 his soul's disgust at the corruption
EVILS OF HIS TIMES 23 I
of his age. Faith is forsworn, Virtue strumpeted,
Honour misplaced, the highest perfection disgraced.
Art tongue-tied by authority, evil everywhere trium-
phant, " captive good attending captain ill."
" Tired with all these, from these I would be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone."
If he dies of his own will, he neglects his duty and
abandons the cause of truth (66).
But Avhy should his love live on in an age of
impiety and falsehood ? The world, indeed, admits
its outward beauty, but slanders its thoughts and
motives; yet, since the world has ever slandered
truth, its enmity proves his love immaculate, as in
fact it is (68, 69, 70).
The poet now turns his thoughts to his own
death and its effects on the fame of his beloved.
His life has given much scandal. His soul is like
a ruined choir or " twilight," showing traces of light
and beauty now gone. Let not his friend attempt
to defend the poet's good name. " His evil is his
own, his better part his love's " ; therein was its
consecration (73, 74). The thought of union with
his love is his only joy on earth, its praise his sole
theme (75, ^6). Again he asks that his muse be
fresh inspired, his brain is as a note-book of blank
leaves (77).
The next nine sonnets express the poet's jealous
indignation at the false praise and " strained touches
of rhetoric " and " gross painting " bestowed on his
232 THE SONNETS
subject by rival poets. His object is truth. Faith
in his ideal will compensate for lack of education
or skill. He has not to ransack the universe for
comparisons, but only to say simply what he sees —
none can say more,
" Than this rich praise, that you alone are you."
Such creation is the highest art ; its subject thereby
lives individualised and unique (78-86).
In the next nine sonnets the rivals seem to
prevail, which the poet explains by the same reason
as before — his own unworthiness. But while in
Sonnet 49 he had admitted his own inferiority in
comparison with his ideal, he does so now in com-
parison with his rivals. For the sake of his beloved
he will consent to be effaced, and confess whatever
faults may be laid to his charge. Like Ophelia
in " Hamlet," he owns beforehand —
" Thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill,
As I'll myself disgrace " (89).
But he begs that his dismissal, if determined on,
may be at once, when all the world is against
him, and not come as an after-blow to destroy his
only hope. Whatever his fate, his love is always
" the only fair." For a moment he seems to doubt
— what if his love were really false ! Corruptio
optimi pessima — the best, corrupted, is the worst.
" For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds,
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds " (94).
HIS RIVALS 233
The second stage of ideal love has the same con-
clusion as that which terminates (36) the second
stage of imaginative love. For the same situations
recur, but ever in a higher significance.
In the third stage of ideal love, introduced in
Sonnet 97, all previous errors or adverse judgments
are rectified and the poet's scattered premises draw
to one conclusion. Before the beauty of his spiritual
ideal, fair nature pales. " Proud -pied April, dressed
in all his trim," renewing youth in all things ;
summer's story told by lays of birds and flowers
varying in scent and hue, all seemed winter com-
pared to his beloved (98, 99). Then, after rebuking
his muse for her silence (100, 10 1), he excuses
it, because his theme is above its power. His
verse would only mar what it cannot mend, and his
love would be degraded by public praise (102, 103).
In Sonnet 104 commences his solemn and final
act of homage. He declares his love endowed
with perpetual youth. His ideal has passed through
three seasons — three being the image of complete-
ness or eternity — and unites in itself the three
great elements of love, beauty, goodness, truth.
All the praise of beauty, chronicled in the past,
but prophesy his " only fair." Yet neither prophecy
of the past nor even his own reverential fear can
set bounds to his love (105, 106). Day by day,
then, he will repeat the " paternoster " of his love,
which loses not, but grows in time (107, 108).
After this act of homage begins his own Confiteor.
2 34 THE SONNETS
In words borrowed almost literally from the Churcli's
commendation of the soul, he declares that though
through nature's frailty he has erred, he was never
really false at heart. If he wandered, he returned
again to the breast, his home of love, and was
there cleansed anew. All his past wildness, his
actor's life, his wounded conscience " goring his own
thoughts," his apparent estrangement from truth,
have all proved to him more fully what was the
heaven he had lost.
For the scandal he has caused, due much to his
needy state and deteriorating surroundings, he begs
pardon and will deem no penance harsh. With his
love's approval he cares not who condemns. With
sense and mind now purified, he can see all things
in the light of the ideal and find goodness every-
where, save in his own deformity (i 09-1 14). He
retracts all previous expressions of uncertainty, " the
marriage of true minds admits of no impediments,"
His soul now steers straight for the star. " Strange
love of other days but makes the true love stronger."
He has drunk of siren tears, of alembics foul as
hell, but omnia cooperantur in honum — " better is
by evil still made better." He sees the justice of
past chastisements inflicted by his beloved, though
he still repudiates the slanders of evil tongues.
His mind is no longer a blank leaf (77), but a
lasting record of gifts received. Subject no more
to things of time, nor dependent like a heretic on
the favour or frown of the passing hour, he stands
FINAL OBLATION 235
alone, unchanging himself, having fixed his heart on
what is unchangeable and eternal (124). One act
alone can adequately express his love and worship
— the sacrifice of all ho is and all he has to its
true object; a poor offering, indeed, but voluntary
and complete.
" No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,
And take thou my oblation, poor biit free,
Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art
But mutual render, only me for thee" (125).
As the Paternoster was chosen to express his
former petition (108), so here the language of a yet
more solemn office is used. The outward sign of
the Eucharistic oblation is but wastel bread, the
inward effect the union of the creature with his
God — of the human love with the one ideal and
perfect exemplar. Then, as if remembering that he
had employed the words of a proscribed ritual, he
concludes —
" Hence, thou suborned informer ! a true soul,
When most impeached, stands least in thy control."
Sonnet 126 is merely an epilogue or appendix to
the series we have considered. That series is com-
plete in its unity, and exhibits the ascent of the
soul by purifying love through the phases recog-
nised both by mystical writers and sonneteers con-
temporary with Shakespeare. The leading idea is
often hard to trace, hidden as it is under a wealth
of imagery; but, when discovered, is ever found
236 THE SONNETS
advancing in its appointed grades, with precision
and certainty, to its only legitimate conclusion.
In his second series of sonnets, the poet traces
the descent of the soul in the "love of despair."
Its object, instead of an angelic youth, aliquid jam
non carnis in came, is a gipsy-like woman, with
black eyes and hair and complexion " coloured ill."
He sees in her " beauty profaned," and, like Dante
and the siren, is at first disgusted with the sight.
But like Dante again, he lingers in the presence
of the temptress. Sense attractions and his lower
impulses stifle reason and conscience. No angel
appears to save him as with his Tuscan prototype,
and he surrenders himself to the painted charms.
The delusion and disorder of the soul, a prey to
temptation, the madness consequent on " the swal-
lowed bait," and the repugnance and loathing re-
sulting therefrom, when the heat of passion is
passed, the close connection of sin with sin, the
parentage of crime from crime — all these are then
described in language alike psychologically and theo-
logically accurate. No less profoundly true are the
concluding lines, expressing the extraordinary power
of temptation, even where experience has taught the
misery of a fall.
" All this the world well knows ; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell" (129).
These last lines explain how it is, that though he
knows the real deformity of the temptress, he is
THE TYRANNY OF SIN 237
still held captive by her. He groans under her
tyranny, as St. Augustine under the iron chain that
held him bound {Conf. viii. 10), but strives in vain for
freedom. Absent from the accursed object, he has
a lucid interval, and realises the extent of his
delusion ; but accounts for it by supposing that she
is really fair without and only foul within (131), or
that her pretended sympathy has won his heart
(132). Nor has he only to deplore a moral fall;
the image of purity, the type of his true love, is
now effaced from his soul. This concludes the
imaginative stage of sensual love, the inability to
recall or picture the remembrance of what is
good.
The ideal stage opens with the soul wholly
materialised ; and thus enslaved, the poet abandons
himself and his friend to his mistress's yoke, under
the symbol of the three Wills. Himself, W. S., his
friend, W. H., are handed over to the Will and
dominion of evil. The very fact of his previous
high ideal and former purity makes him a valuable
conquest in her eyes (136); while on his side he is
so completely blinded by her "over-partial looks,"
that he regards as exclusively his own what is in
truth "the wide world's common place" (137).
Having thus attempted to justify false love by
idealising it, he still further seeks excuses for his
passion by painting its vices as virtues. In this
his mistress joins, and thus the partners in evil
flatter each other with falsehoods, and increase
238 THE SONNETS
their mutual blindness. She calls his old age
youth, he, her falsehood truth.
" Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be" (138).
Nothing breaks the chain of his captivity. She
is false and cruel to him to his face, and he knows
it ; yet she is able by her sensual dominion to
keep him in slavery (139). She had better feign
a little kindness, and make at least some profession
of the love which she is incapable of feeling, or he
may grow reckless, and speak out (140). He does
so. Her face is hideous, her voice discordant, her
touch freezes, her presence repels. She is no longer
attractive but loathsome ; yet having dethroned
reason, and yielded to passion, he must be still
" her venal wretch." His iniquity is indeed his
torment; perhaps his bitter experience may be of
future profit.
" Only my plague thus far I count my gain
That she that makes me sin awards me pain" (141).
In their mutual and utter degradation they cannot
reproach each other. Virtue and vice have changed
places ; love and hate have lost their true meaning.
All things are perverted and confused. Their so-
called honour is rooted in shame and treachery.
Yet again he accuses her ; false, pitiless, and heart-
less to him, if she ever want pity, may she be paid
in her own coin, and seek it in vain.
SPARKS OF GOODNESS 239
" If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,
By self example may'st thou be denied" (142).
In her insatiable selfishness, fickleness, and vanity,
she forgets the slave at her side, to pursue any one
she thinks indifferent to her charms ; just as a
housewife drops her crying child to capture a stray
chick. The conquest made, she returns to her help-
less victim, plays the mother's part again, kisses him
and is kind (143). All this he sees, for the good
angel still wrestles with the devil in his soul, yet its
accents are scarcely distinguishable to his seared
conscience. He will not know what he truly is, till
he finds himself a reprobate (144). She alternately
tortures and coaxes, drives him away and calls him
back; and he comes, for, fallen as he is, he lives
only in her (145). In Sonnet 146 he apostrophises
his soul, much after the language of St. Paul :
" Infelix homo, quis me liberabit a corpore mortis."
All the bodily indulgence, luxury, and sensual de-
light, with which his mistress pampers him, is, after
all, only feeding on death (146), for "in a sort
lechery eats itself " (" Troilus and Cressida," v. 4), yet
his passion is as fever, longing for that which nurses
the disease. He is past cure and past care, he is
mad, frantic mad, and he knows it.
" For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night" (147).
Still he remains wilfully and voluntarily blind to
his own foulness and to hers (148), and yields a
240 THE SONNETS
complete and fawning submission to her every
caprice. His self-respect is dead. The more he
ought to hate, the more he loves her, yet wins her
not. He has sold his conscience and abjured truth
and reason for her sake. They are both perjured,
but he the most, for he has sinned against light.
He has worshipped an idol, and forsaken the only
good.
" For I have sworn thee fair, more perjured I
To swear against the truth so foul a lie" (152),
Thus his downward steps had led him to the
Inferno, and leave him there. Sonnets 153, 154,
being probably only an appendix, as was 126 at the
conclusion of the first series. A careful inspection
shows that both series proceed upward and downward
by analogous steps to their respective term; and
that the whole collection exhibits the three great
divisions of love as stimulated by the presentation of
good through the senses, imagination and reason.
Such then, summarised, is Mr. Simpson's inter-
pretation of the sonnets. We fully admit that only
after repeated readings can the allegory be discovered,
and that they must be studied in the light of that
philosophy which gave them birth. That philosophy
forms the basis alike of the dramas as of the
sonnets, and read in conjunction they will be found
to repeat the same teaching and to illustrate the
same common principles. The ideal of true love is
presented in Isabella in " Measure for Measure " on
the same lines as in the portraiture of the better
AGREEMENT OF SONNETS AND PLAYS 24 1
angel of the sonnets. Cleopatra or Cressida are
counterparts of " tlie woman coloured ill." The
alliance of sin with sin, of impurity and murder
(129), is repeated in Pericles.
" One sin I know another doth provoke,
Murder's as near to lust, as flame to smoke ;
Poison and treason are the hands of sin."
The sacrificial requirement of the higher love, the
law that the flesh must die that the soul may live,
as expressed in Sonnet 146,
" Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
Why feed'st the rebel powers that thee array ? "
this same truth forms the moral of " Love's
Labour's Lost," and is enforced in the penitential
exercises imposed on the three lovers. The inferiority
of imaginative love to that of reason, shown in the
ascending scale of the first series, is the lesson
taught in the playful satire of " Midsummer-Night's
Dream." And so we might go on, finding every maxim
of the sonnets confirmed in the poet's other works.
This identity of teaching we think shows that the
philosophical interpretation we have followed is
neither fanciful nor arbitrary, but has a solid foun-
dation.
We prefaced this chapter with the statement that
the sonnets alone of Shakespeare's works furnish a
clue to his own feeling, and we would here observe
that in them we learn, as nowhere else in his writings,
his intense antagonism to his times. Sonnet 66,
242 THE SONNETS
already quoted, is a solemn impeachment of the
government of his day, of its oppression, falsehood,
and treachery. All this invective finds additional
force and significance when we remember in whose
house and among what private friends " the sug'red
sonnets " were read, circulated, and discussed. Henry
Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, whether or no he
was " W. H.," was undoubtedly Shakespeare's one
literary patron, for there is not the slightest evi-
dence of his having been in similar relations to
any other distinguished personage. To South-
ampton he dedicated his "Venus and Adonis" in
1593, and his "Lucrece" in 1594, at the very
time the sonnets were, according to our com-
putation, in course of composition. Both dedi-
cations are in terms of exclusive devotion. That to
"Lucrece" is indeed recast in verse in Sonnet 26}
There is then every reason for believing that it was
under Southampton's roof and among the earl's
friends that the sonnets first appeared. Now
Southampton's town house, " Drury House," ^ was as
^ Lee, " Life of Shakespeare," 127.
^ Southampton House was never apparently the residence of the
poet's patron. This mansion, situated in Holborn, was one of the
chief resorts of Catholics and priests in London, and was repeatedly
searched for recusants. It was leased to Mr. Swithun Wells in
1 59 1. Here F. Edmund Jennings was apprehended in his vestments
by Topcliffe after saying Mass, and with him were taken Polydore
Plasden and Eustachius White, also priests ; Brian Lacy, John Mason
and Sydney Hodgson, laymen ; and Mrs. Wells. Mrs. Wells died in
prison. The rest were martyred at Tyburn. Mr. Swithun Wells
was hanged in Gray's Inn, opposite Southampton House, for having
allowed Mass to be said there.
LAMENTATIONS 243
we have seen the meeting-place of the Essex con-
spirators, amongst whom were so many of the poet's
country-folk and friends. Shakespeare's friendship
with Southampton may then, we think, throw some
light on the political allusions in the sonnets, though
we look upon the whole collection, as has been said,
as intended primarily to illustrate the course and
circumstances of love.
The laments over his time speak of " Bare ruined
choirs, where once the sweet birds sang," of
" Unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry."
of —Sonnet Iv. ;
" Lofty towers down-razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage."
— Sonnet Ixiv. ;
an imagery singularly applicable to the sanctuaries
violated, and the brasses and images destroyed by
the Tudor rule. Such metaphors, as well as that
of the vestments and feasts already quoted, form a
fitting framework to the Catholic line of thought
traceable throughout the series.
Lastly, to return to Southampton. To what
library could a playwright have had access, sugges-
tive of the following lines : —
and
" Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was framed,"
" When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
244 THE SONNETS
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights ;
Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have expressed
Even such a beauty as you master now " ?
— Sonnet cvi.
Mr. S. Lee tells us that the collection of books
presented by the Earl of Southampton to St. John's
College, Cambridge, " largely consisted of illuminated
manuscripts, books of hours, legends of the saints,
and mediaeval chronicles." ^
^ " Life of Shakespeare," 382.
CHAPTER VI.
THE LOVE PLAYS,
Among the various dissertations contained in
" Troilus and Cressida," that on the origin and
nature of intellectual knowledge forms a fitting
preface to an examination of the love plays. The
passage we are about to quote gives the philoso-
phical principles of Shakespeare's teaching on love,
and this philosophy explains an imagery other-
wise unintelligible.
To Ulysses' question why it is that no man,
however gifted, knows either himself, or what he
has, or whence it comes, save by reflection, Achilles
answers —
" The beauty that is borne here in the face
The bearer knows not, but commends itself
To others' eyes. Nor doth the eye itself,
That most pure spirit of sense, behold itself,
Not going from itself ; but eye to eye opposed
Salutes each other with each other's form.
For speculation turns not to itself
Till it hath travelled, and is married there
Where it may see itself."
— Troilus and Cressida^ iii 3.
The soul is thus an eye which sees not itself, " a
mirror," a "glassy essence," a retina void of forms,
246 THE LOVE PLAYS
till it is actuated by the objects it reflects. Thus
all objective speculation becomes in Shakespeare's
terminology a "reverberation,"^ "reflection,"^ issuing
from the union of the knowing mind with the
known object. Without this union sense and mind
are in darkness and ignorance.
The term " marriage," as thus employed, is not
merely a poetical figure, but the correct, scholastic
expression for the mode in which knowledge is
obtained. For it is from the union of the object
to be known and the knowing mind that a
" concept " is begotten. The knowing mind is
united, not indeed with the substance of the thing
known or with its proper nature, but with its
likeness or species, which the poet correctly terms
its " form " {forma ititentionalis), and which actuates
the intellectual faculty in the process of knowledge.
The intellect, thus actuated or informed, conceives
or begets the object in the ideal order. The object
thus conceived or known is termed, in the language
both of Shakespeare and of scholastic theology,
concept or "child" (Sonnet 59). Thus even mate-
rial things are " married " to the soul, and become
assimilated to and one with it. " The soul sees
itself" in them, the intellectus in actu and the in-
telligibile in actu being, as S. Thomas, following
Aristotle, says in his " Summa," I. q. xiv. a, 2, one
and the same. Thus if Shakespeare follows Plato
^ "Troilus and Cressida," iii. 3.
"^ "Julius Caesar," i. 2.
LOVE AND PHILOSOPHY 247
in his doctrine of love, he is equally a disciple of
Aristotle in his theory of knowledge.
Now we have seen in the interpretation given of
the sonnets, that the true and adequate object of
the soul, where " it knows even as it is known," is
the ideal truth, goodness, and beauty, " marriage
with which admits of no impediments" (Sonnet
1 1 6). In this ideal alone, mind and heart, thought
and feeling, find at last their true term, and love
and philosophy become identified in the knowledge
of, and union with, the " only fair." Till that
object is found and the soul is drawn out of itself
in pursuit of its ideal, there can be no development
of character, or art, learning, or love worthy of the
name.
As love and philosophy are identical in the lower
spheres of truth and love, so in the highest sphere of
all, absolute truth and love are one. From this unity
of principle, ordering all things in harmony, from
the " smallest orb to the young-eyed cherubim," and
guiding all to their one end, arises again the affinity
between love and religion found in Shakespeare's
plays. Beauty of face or form is but a reflection of
the one exemplar, and the love inspired by created
fairness should end in worship which, in itself and
its object, is wholly spiritual.
It follows from what has been said that the reli-
gious allusions that abound in Shakespeare's love
poetry are neither profane mockeries, nor meta-
physical figures, but the expression of the poet's
248 THE LOVE PLAYS
sense of the simple tendency of unimpeded love, of
the real community between true love and true
religion. Hence comes the importance of con-
sidering, as has been already pointed out, what form
of religion Shakespeare adopts in his love plays.
Does he make true love, when it uses religious lan-
guage, speak the language of Protestantism, of the
English Prayer-book and Homilies, or that of the
old religion ? Dramatic exigencies in no way
hampered his choice. He need not have selected
Catholic countries, or if he did, his reverence for
the conventionalities of times or places was not
sufficiently powerful to make him its slave. Thus,
the " Merry Wives of Windsor " belongs to the days
of Henry V. ; yet Evans is a Protestant parson.
Illyria, the scene of " Twelfth Night," could hardly
be a Protestant country ; yet the religious allusions
in it are to a Protestant society. If Shakespeare
had felt that it had been proper to make true love
speak as a Protestant, he either would not have
chosen the stories of " Romeo and Juliet " or the
" Two Gentlemen of Verona," or if he had, he would
boldly have made Romeo speak with the tongue of
the Reformers.
With this much of preface, we will proceed with
the examination of Shakespeare's love plays, be-
ginning with " Love's Labour's Lost." According to
the laws of chivalry, which were essentially religious,
a knight had to prove his manhood by deeds of
courage and endurance, his fidelity by prolonged
''loves labours lost 249
absence and many tests of his constancy, before he
could lay claim to the hand of his only fair. The
practice of penance or of ascetic exercises in some
form was thus regarded, according to the mediaeval
code of love, as a necessary condition for winning
the affection of the beloved object. The same
law is expressed in Shakespeare. The princess in
"Love's Labour's Lost" sentences the king, if he
would gain her, to spend a year in a hermitage,
remote from all worldly pleasures, living austerely,
" Nipped by frosts and fasts, hard lodging and thin
weeds." Biron, too, is condemned by Rosaline to
spend a year in a hospital as a penance for the
presumption of his love, and as a test of his con-
stancy.^ The same practice appears in the " Two
Gentlemen of Verona."
" I have done penance for contemning love
With bitter fasts, with penitential groans,
With mighty tears and daily heartsore sighs " (ii. 4).
Among the trials proposed by Hamlet to Laertes as
a test of their love was fasting. " Wilt fast ? " The
practice is abused if exaggerated or undertaken
without a worthy object and a reasonable hope of
success. Cervantes satirised this abuse in his por-
trait of Don Quixote alone in the desert, stripped
to the nude and meditating on Dulcinea, who was
wholly ignorant of his affection. The purpose of
" Love's Labour's Lost," then, is not to satirise the
2 50 THE LOVE PLAYS
religious state, as some German critics have taught,
but is to show the futiUty of undertaking penance,
study, or sohtude without an adequate motive, viz.
the UkeHhood of attaining the beloved object.
These things are not good in themselves but in
their end. Without this end penance and solitude
are but " pain purchasing pain," and study, without
a higher light guiding it, is but to lose one's sight.
The comedy in " Love's Labour's Lost," like that
in the " Merry Wives of Windsor," is meant to be
Protestant. The pedant and the curate, Nathaniel
and Holofernes, dread of speaking concerning the
Fathers. " Tell me not of the Fathers ; I do fear
colourable colours " (iv. 2). Under their training.
Costard catches the knack of pulpit oratory, already
observed in FalstafF, and repeated, as we shall see,
in Bottom. His formal discourse on the law-text,
" in matter and form following " (i. i ), would be
pointless were it not evidently a parody of the ser-
monizing of the day. The ministers themselves are
exhibited, not indeed as vicious or corrupt, but as
weak-minded pedants, timid and time-serving, and
totally void both of that sturdy fidelity incapable of
betraying " the devil to his fellow " — the attribute
of the poet's true heroes — and of that versatility,
fertile of expedients in difl&culties, peculiar to his
Friars.
In the " Two Gentlemen of Verona " the moral
seems to be fidelity in love, based, as we have seen
in the sonnets, on the conviction of the sovereign
"two gentlemen of VERONA 25 I
truth, goodness, and beauty of the beloved mistress.
Thus Silvia says to Proteus ; —
" Thou hast no faitli left now, unless thou hadst two,
And that's far worse than none ; better have none
Than plural faith, which is too much by one " (v. 3).
Constancy in love is the corner-stone of virtue in
Shakespeare's eyes.
" 0 Heaven,
Were man but constant, he were perfect ; that one error
Fills him with faults, makes him run through all sins ;
Inconstancy falls off e'er it begins " (v. 4).
That Shakespeare carried this feeling into religion
also is seen from the contempt with which he speaks
of those who go where grace is said " in any religion "
(" Measure for Measure," i. 2), and of that " past-
saving slave " Parolles, who offers to take the sacra-
ment " how or which way you Avill " (" All's Well
that Ends Well," iv. 3), very much as we have seen
Ben Jonson did. Hence the sting of Beatrice's
taunt of Benedick ("Much Ado about Nothing," i. i),
" He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat.
It ever changes with the next block," On the
other hand, infidelity in love, the religion of the eye,
is heresy,^ and the woman who causes it is said to
" found a sect." Even the true professions of a lover
who is rejected are called heresy,^ for truth is not
1 "Romeo and Juliet," 1. 2, 93; "Cymbeline," ill. 4; "Merry
Wives of Windsor," iv. 4 ; " Midsummer-Night's Dream," ii, 3.
2 " Twelfth Night," i. 5.
2 52 THE LOVE PLAYS
merely a subjective creation, but consists in the
conformity of the thought and its object.
But there was a worship severely condemned in
Shakespeare's day as idolatry. In the " Two Gentle-
men of Verona " (iv. 2) he employs the word in its
Protestant sense for all worship of images or relics.
He qualifies it, however, by leaving us to infer that
there is a good idolatry, as well as the bad one
that worships false deities. So he makes Sylvia
say, when she gives her picture to Proteus : —
" I am very loth to be your idol, sir ;
But since your falsehood shall become you well
To worship shadows, and adore false shapes.
Send to me in the morning, and I'll send it."
— Two Gentlemen of Verona, iv. 2.
A few scenes afterwards, Julia addresses this
picture : —
" 0 thou senseless form,
Thou shalt be worshipped, kissed, loved, and adored ;
And were there sense in his idolatry,
My substance should be statue in thy stead " (iv. 4).
Compare what Helena says of Bertram in " All's
Well that Ends Well."
" He's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his relics " (i. i).
This employment, in a good sense, of a term
generally used in mockery is the boldest form of
approval of the principle attacked.
The moral of the "Two Gentlemen of Verona"
is brought out in the contrast of the two characters
LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP 253
of Valentine and Proteus. Valentine is the pro-
totype of fidelity, his fancy being subjected to his
reason — a type repeated in Bassanio and Henry
V. Proteus represents inconstancy, for with him
fancy commands reason, as in Romeo, Orsino in
" Twelfth Night," and the two lovers in the " Mid-
summer-Night's Dream." The superior claims of
pure friendship to love which terminates in mar-
riage, a principle already enunciated in the sonnets,
is enforced again in the readiness of Valentine to
surrender Sylvia to Proteus (v. 4); and of Bas-
sanio to sacrifice himself and his wife for Antonio
("Merchant of Venice," iv. i ). Proteus on the other
hand, with a passion merely selfish, like that of
Arcita in Chaucer, could not understand how friend-
ship should be respected in love (v. 4).
The supernatural development of the love of
friendship appears in the " Midsummer - Night's
Dream " (i. i ), where human and divine love are
compared, with the conclusion that, however happy
the lot of the maiden loving and beloved, her happi-
ness is more earthly than that of the thrice blessed
nun, whose love is " dedicate to nothing temporal,"
but to God Himself. Charity thus eclipses all human
loves, or rather embodies them in itself, transfigures
and transubstantiates them into its own form and
substance. We find something like this in " Hamlet "
(i. 5). When he dedicates his life to performing the
commands of his father's ghost, he casts out every-
thing from his mind, except the one remembrance,
2 54 THE LOVE PLAYS
the one commandment, and at once, in obedience
to this resolution, sacrifices the love of Ophelia.
The sacrifice of a lower to a higher love is then
no breach of constancy, but rather a severe and
inexorable duty, imposed by the nature of the obli-
gation already contracted. Shakespeare's teaching
on this subject is thus, we see, in exact accordance
with the Church's doctrine of the imperative and
supreme claims of a religious vocation, in comparison
with those of the closest human ties. The truth that
the stronger absorbs the weaker flame is embodied
in a proverbial expression often used by the poet,
" Fire drives out fire." ^ The principle, when per-
verted, applies of course also to an evil passion, if
dominant ; thus Lady Macbeth declared that her
ambition overrode any maternal instinct.
The manners in the " Two Gentlemen of Verona "
are Catholic, and some Catholic expressions are
used. The metaphor of having " a month's mind "
is an old Catholic expression still in use and is
intended to designate the mass of requiem cele-
brated a month after a person's decease. Sylvia
goes to Friar Patrick's cell for " holy confession " ;
Julia compares her affection to the unwearied steps
of the time-devoted pilgrim. Thurio and Proteus
are to meet at St. Gregory's Well, as in " Measure
for Measure " (iv. 3 ) the Duke desires Angelo to
meet him " at the consecrated fount a league below
' " Coriolanus," iv. 7; "Julius Caesar," iii. i; "King John,"
iii I ; " Romeo and Juliet," i. 2.
"comedy of errors 255
the city." Launce appropriately invokes St. Nicholas
to aid Speed to read, for this Saint was the patron
of scholars. Sir Eglamour had made a solemn vow
of chastity (iv. 3).
The " Comedy of Errors " is an early play of
Shakespeare's, and is remarkable as his adaptation
of Plautus to the English stage, representing the
Latin comedy as " Kichard III." does the Greek tra-
gedy. Both are adaptations rather than imitations
and as such, reveal to the inquirer many secrets
concerning Shakespeare's art. With regard to his
religious opinions the " Comedy of Errors " has not
much to tell us. We find it an amusing specimen
of Shakespeare's indifference to the conventionalities
of time and place already referred to, when he
endows the inhabitants of ancient Syracuse with
the habits and customs of Catholic countries, and
makes one of the Dromios call out for his beads
and cross himself (ii. 2) ; while Adriana offers to
shrive her husband (ii. 2). The theological jokes
about bailiffs (iv. 2, 3), and the jest of mistak-
ing the courtesan for the devil (iv. 3), all belong
to Shakespeare's day; so do the conjurations ot
the cheating juggler Pinch, which belong to the
same class of magical cheats as the pretensions of
Glendower. But in this play Shakespeare is care-
ful to distinguish between the illicit impostures of
Pinch " conjuring by all the saints in heaven "
(iv. 4) and the lawful and remedial exorcisms of
the Abbess — for Shakespeare will not deprive even
256 THE LOVE PLAYS
the Pagan Greeks of the benefits of the rehgious
orders and of Christian charity.
" I will not let him stir
Till I have used the approved means I have
With wholesome syrups, drugs and holy prayers,
To make of him a formal man again :
It is a branch and parcel of mine oath,
A charitable duty of mine order" (v. i).
But a duty of the effects of which poor Adriana
complains.
" 111 doth it beseem your holiness
To separate the husband and the wife " (v. i) ;
though her respect for the cloister will not allow her
to force an entrance.
In this play, as in "Much Ado about Nothing,"
" Romeo and Juliet," and " Measure for Measure,"
the " religious," the Friar, and the Nun are not only
patterns of personal purity, but centres of a soothing
higher influence, in which the contradictions of the
characters and the intricacies of the plot find their
solution. But we shall have to return to this
subject.
As Shakespeare in the " Comedy of Errors " has
made Pagan Syracuse a Catholic city, so in the
" Merry Wives of Windsor " he has made the
England of Henry V. Protestant : at least, he has
peopled it with Protestant ministers and laymen.
The religious element here, however, begets not
peace, but discord, and awakes the pungent har-
"merry wives of WINDSOR 257
monies of this stimulating scherzo. Parson Evans
prays his Bible well, commends the virtue which
resolves only to be " drunk in company with men
who fear God " (i. i ) ; and through ignorance of
Latin, condemns, as affected, quotations he should
have recognised as biblical. Though he exerts a
certain ministerial power, as when he bids Ford pray
and not follow the imaginations of his own heart
(iv. 2) ; yet in his peppery Welsh temper, his lax
standard of morality, and his very unclerical duel-
ling, feasting, and mumming, he still presents but a
scurvy model of the Parson, very different from the
Friars and Nuns of the plays above mentioned. In
the " Merry Wives," the religion of the characters is
all a chaos. It is "the Hundredth Psalm to the
tune of ' Green Sleeves ' " (ii. i ). Mistress Quickly
does not much exaggerate the prevailing confusion
when she calls it " peevishness to be given to prayer "
(i. 4), and encourages Falstaff to hope in Mrs.
Page's compliance, because she is a " virtuous, civil,
modest wife, and one that will not miss you morning
nor evening prayer." And again, " Good hearts !
what ado there is to bring you together ; sure one of
you does not serve Heaven well, that you are so
crossed " (ii. 5). Most of these extremely satirical
hits at the religion of the characters appear first in
the remodelled play. They are fit only for persons
who belong to a system where the principles of
morals are obscured, and such a system can only
be found in Calvinism or Lutheranism, or their
B
258 THE LOVE PLAYS
progeny. Even those who most condemn the
dogmatic system of the mediaeval Church, confess
that she never obscured or perverted the principles
of morals.
Mrs. Page has the cudgel wherewith Ford had
beaten Falstafif " hallowed and hung o'er the altar "
for its meritorious service (iv. 2). In the conver-
sation between the two ladies about this beating —
one affirming that it was pitifully done, and the other
" most unpitifully " — there is a notable resemblance
to Sir John Harrington's fine epigram on the execu-
tion of Essex, Blount, and Danvers —
*' Is't not great pity, think you. No ! said I,
There is no man of sense in all the city
Will say 'tis great, but rather little pity."
And the joke of FalstafF about Mr. Ford's " legions
of angels " (i. 3) is found admirably developed in
Harrington's character of Bishop Scory. The tale of
Heme the hunter related by " the superstitious,
idle-headed elf" is another instance of Shakespeare's
contempt for unfounded stories of devilry.
Shakespeare in Fenton's defence of Anne Page's
clandestine marriage lays down accurately the Catho-
lic doctrine on the subject. The contracting parties
have a right to perfect freedom of choice in the
engagement they form. The wishes of the parents
should indeed be consulted, and as far as possible
followed. The children, however, are not bound to
yield to parental injunctions which are unreason-
"midsummer-nights dream 259
able, or are inspired by motives of worldly policy
or sordid interest. This is the pith of Fenton's
speech : —
" Fetiton. Hear the truth of it.
You would have married her most shamefully
When there was no proportion held in love.
The truth is, she and I, long since contracted,
Are now so sure, that nothing can dissolve us.
The offence is holy that she hath committed ;
And this deceit loses the name of craft,
Of disobedience, or unduteous title,
Since therein she doth evil hate and shun
A thousand irreligious cursed hours
Which forcfed marriage would have brought upon her " (v. 5).
The " Midsummer-Night's Dream " exhibits love
in its second degree, when the object is created by
the fantasy, uncontrolled by reason. Love thus be-
gotten is essentially short-lived,, transitory, and fickle,
and becomes attached in turn to any object pre-
sented to the senses. This central idea is expressed
when Hippolyta, tired of Bottom's interlude, yawns
and says, " This is the silliest stuff." Theseus
answers, " The best in this kind are but shadows,
and the worst are no worse if imagination mend
them " ; and she again replies, " It must be your
imagination then, and not theirs" (v. i). Theseus,
in the opening speech of the fifth act, explains it
more fully. Plato (Phsedrus, c. 47, p. 244) enu-
merates four inspired frenzies which supersede
reason ; that of Apollo, or prophecy ; of Dionysus,
ritualistic religion ; of the Muses, poetry ; and of
26o THE LOVE PLAYS
Gods, love. Shakespeare, leaving out religion, enu-
merates only three, the frenzy of the lunatic, of
the poet, and of the lover, and in them all he finds
one predominant quality. They are "of imagination
all compact." Their seething brains and shaping
fantasies " apprehend more than cool reason ever
comprehends " ; for it is the nature of imagination
that if it would apprehend some joy, it must invent,
find, picture a cause or object, which is not neces-
sarily reasonable. Imagination gives in one pre-
sentation both the feeling and the cause of the
feeling — the one is the apprehension, the other the
comprehension or comes (companion). The rational
judgment, summoned to take note of the proceeding,
authenticates the apprehension, or condemns it as
false, because devoid of any real objective prototype.
Shakespeare does not confine this stricture to the
imagination of madmen, poets, and lovers. He
generalises the doctrine, and assigns to imagination
everywhere the invention, not the discovery, of
causes, which are practically only hypotheses for the
cool reason to test.
The play is a comment on this text. It exhibits
a variety of persons with a strong feeling in their
" shaping fantasies," all constant to their own feel-
ing, but most inconstant, since determined by the
merest accidents, as to their object. Thus Demetrius
nurses a passion, of which he first supposes Helena
to be the bringer. Then some accident makes him
substitute Hermia. At last Puck, by squeezing
IMAGINATIVE LOVE 26 1
lime-juice in his eye, makes his fancy revert to
the first object. So Lysander has a plentiful fire
of love. The fuel is first supposed to be Hermia,
then Helena, then Hermia again. Titania's " shap-
ing fantasy " is so strong that it can see an
Hyperion in the ass-headed Bottom. So Bottom's
play is wretched stuff, but the shaping imaginations
of the spectators can make it as good as the best.
In all these cases the apprehension, the internal
feeling, is constant; but the comprehension, the
judgment which affirms the cause or object of the
feeling, and picks out the bringer (upholder, sub-
stantiator) of the joy is fickle, uncertain, the sport
of chance and of the accidental perils which beset
the course of love.
And yet this fickle judgment, this ungrounded,
imaginative opinion which has no basis more rela-
tive than a little juice squeezed into the eye,
affects the pompous title of reason, and pretends
to have the right to sway the entire man. Thus
Lysander, bewitched by Puck, fancies that he has
just come to the use of reason.
" The will of man is by his reason swayed,
And reason says you are the worthier maid " (ii. 2).
And led by this false reason into a heresy in love,
he moralises on his conversion, and declares the
sudden and irrational hatred which he has conceived
for his former love.
262 THE LOVE PLAYS
"The heresies that men do leave
Are hated most of them they did deceive '' (ii. 3).
In the base meclianical drudges, Bottom and his
crew, Shakespeare glances at some of the charac-
teristics of the rabble of his day. They are no
longer the socialist mob of Jack Cade, but a puri-
tanical rabble whose itching ears have been caught
by the psalmody of Sternhold and Hopkins, and
by the profane scripturality of the pulpit. Thus
(iii. i) Quince wants the prologue written in eight
and six ; " make it eight and eight," says Bottom.
This worthy, abashed by his new glory, protests.
" I am a man as other men are " ; and after his
adventures with Titania, he can find no language
so appropriate to describe his dream as an absurd
travesty of St. Paul's words on heaven : " The eye
of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not
seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue
to conceive, nor his heart to report what my
dream was" (iv. i). There we have the same
sermonizing element already traced in Falstaff and
Costard.
Even amongst the fun of the fairies we find
traces of the poet's Catholic spirit. Oberon's bless-
ing of the bridal chamber reads almost like a para-
phrase of the Benedictio Thalami in the Church's
Ritual, which is as follows: "Bless, O Lord, this
bed. May all who dwell in it remain in Thy
peace, abide in Thy will, grow to old age, and
be multiplied to the length of days, and attain at
"ROMEO AND JULIET " 263
last to the kingdom of heaven. Through Christ
our Lord."
" Oberon. To the best bride-bed will we,
Which by us shall blessed be.
And the issue there create
Ever shall be fortunate.
So shall all the couples three
Ever true and loving be.
With this field-dew consecrate,
Every fairy take his gait ;
And each several chamber bless
Through this palace with sweet peace ;
Ever shall't in safety rest
And the owner of it blest" (v. 2).
According to the prologue, the moral of " Romeo
and Juliet " is the redeeming and atoning power of
dying for love. With their death their parents'
strife is ended, and an apparently implacable feud
is healed. But the poet sees deeper than this
external and adventitious action of love ; he ana-
tomises its core. Romeo's love for Rosaline was
but a passing fancy, and was therefore fickle and
accidental. It was merely a subjective feeling, and
belonged to that class of affections which thrives
best in solitude (i. i). Hence Rosaline is purposely
kept out of sight, and Benvolio says of Romeo,
"blind is his love that best befits the dark," and
the Friar reproaches him for doting, not for loving
Rosaline, and for shedding so many tears " to
season love, that of it doth not taste." Romeo's
attachment to Juliet, on the other hand, had the
264 THE LOVE PLAYS
character of a violent, headstrong passion, enkindled
and sustained by the object, and bent at all costs
on its immediate possession.
The development hinges much on the action
of Friar Laurence, one of Shakespeare's kindliest
creations, which strikingly contrasts with the portrait
drawn of the same character by A. Brook.
" One of Shakespeare's earliest plays," Knight says,
" is ' Romeo and Juliet.' . . . Friar Laurence going
forth from his cell in the morning twilight to
fill his osier basket with weeds and flowers, and
moralising on the properties of plants which at once
yield poison and medicine, has all the truth of indi-
vidual portraiture. But Friar Laurence is also the
representation of a class ; the Infirmarian of a monas-
tic house, who had charge of the sick brethren, was
often, in the early days of medical science, their
only physician. ... In ' Much Ado About Nothing,'
it is the Friar who, when Hero is unjustly accused
. . . vindicates her reputation with as much saga-
city as charitable zeal. ... In ' Measure for Measure '
the whole plot is carried on by the Duke assuming
the reverend manners, and professing the active
benevolence of a Friar ; and his agents and confi-
dants are Friar Thomas and Friar Peter. In an
age when the prejudices of the multitude were
flattered and stimulated by abuse and ridicule of
the ancient ecclesiastical character, Shakespeare
always exhibits it so as to command respect and
affection. The poisoning of King John by a monk,
I
THE FRIARS AND SCIENCE 265
' a resolved villain,' is despatched by him with little
more than an allusion." ^
The fact is that Shakespeare has caught all the
prominent features of the order in Friar Laurence ;
who is a much truer portrait of the historical
friar, as brought out by Mr. Brewer (Monumenta
Franciscana, Pref.), than Chaucer's caricatures. Dr.
Ingram argues that Shakespeare must have been a
Protestant, because he gives us " no worthy idealisa-
tion of the Catholic Priest," like Chaucer's Parson,
or Manzoni's Cardinal. The argument might as
well have been that Chaucer could not have been
a Catholic, because he gives us no worthy picture
of the Friar like Shakespeare's. The Franciscan .
was the natural philosopher of the middle ages ; r V*^*^
he was the Infirmarian or the hospitaller, not I ^^^.g^ji
of his own convent only, but of the whole town
population. The exigencies of the physician had
led him to the study of alchemy, and in him lay
all the knowledge of chemistry that the age pos-
sessed. Friar Bacon was in this respect only tlje^
flower of his order. He was an exceptional specimen,
not in the line, but in the extent of his knowledge.
The Franciscan was not a merely scholastic student
of nature, but to his reading he added observation,
"which with experimental seal did warrant the
tenor of his book," as the Friar says in " Much Ado,"
iv. I.
To appreciate rightly the action of Friar Laurence
^ Knight's "Biography of Shakespeare," 183.
266 THE LOVE PLAYS
and the standard of morality exhibited in the play,
it must be remembered that the plot is not of Shake-
speare's creation. Its scheme came into his hands
complete, even to its details. His power was shown
in quickening the dead bones, and in the life they
exhibit when they arise and speak under his magic
touch. Unless this be borne in mind it might seem
that the poet regarded suicide as a legitimate means
for the attainment of such an important end as the
extinction of a faction feud, and that in Juliet's case
the Friar offered little, if any, opposition. We believe,
however, that a careful consideration of the piece
will show that the poet has never departed from
the principle enunciated in " Hamlet," that " Heaven
has fixed its canon against self-slaughter," and that
the Friar's advice is always in accordance with the
purest morality. He agrees to Romeo's marriage
with Juliet, not as an intriguing match-maker, but
as one who knows what human nature is, and that
in the present case things had gone so far, no other
course was possible. He also hoped their alliance
might heal the deadly enmity existing between the
Montagues and Capulets (ii. 4). At the same time
he has his misgivings. He prays Heaven's blessing
on the rite he is about to perform, lest its sequel
bring misery to all concerned, himself included. In
the same strain he rebukes Romeo's rapturous assur-
ance that no subsequent misery could outweigh the
joy of even a momentary union to Juliet with the
grave warning —
CONSOLATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY 267
" Violent delights have violent ends,
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder.
Which, as they kiss, consume " (ii. 6).
Love that lasts is measured and reasonable, and not
a mere impulse of feeling.
Again, he shows the same varied knowledge of
human nature, and his care for the purity of the
souls entrusted to him, in insisting on the discipline
of the Church, that the betrothed should not remain
together alone in their clandestine relationship till
their marriage was performed. He has been ridi-
culed for sophistry and sententiousness for offering
to Romeo, when maddened with the news of his
banishment, the consolation of " adversity's sweet
milk, philosophy " ; and Romeo's reply, " Hang up
philosophy, unless philosophy can make a Juliet,"
is judged alike apposite and reasonable. But by
philosophy was meant, not a system of syllogisms
or metaphysics, but the heavenly wisdom, which is
the only true comfort left, when earth's hopes are
gone. The martyr S. Boetius' book De Conside-
ratione Philosophise — a standard authority with
Dante — composed in prison, like B. Thomas More's
" Dialoofue of Comfort under Tribulation," was a work
from which many of Shakespeare's thoughts and
expressions seem borrowed. In any case, the term
would have naturally been employed and understood
in the spiritual sense. The Friar's personality and
character seem indeed to give a religious colouring to
the persons or subjects he deals with. He is always
268 THE LOVE PLAYS
regarded as the mender of ills and the physician of
souls. Thus Romeo, even when exasperated at the
news of his exile, asks —
" How hast thou the heart,
Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,
A sin absolver, and a friend professed,
To mangle me with that word 'banished' ? " (iii. 3).
In the Friar's presence Romeo continues to speak in
the same religious strain. Outside Verona, Juliet's
home, is "purgatory, torture, hell itself" (iii. 3);
and when he learns that he is " banished," he ex-
claims with complete theological accuracy —
" Oh Friar, the damnfed use the word in hell ;
Howlings attend it."
So, too, Paris leaves Juliet alone with the Friar, with
the remark, " God shield I should disturb devotion "
(iv. I ). Similarly the remark of the nurse, " See
where she comes from shrift with merry look (iv. 2),
indicates the cheering results and the consolation
she attributes to the sacrament of penance. Nor is
all this confidence misplaced. The Friar is frank,
simple-minded, and high principled, as beseems his
oflSce. He speaks out openly to Romeo his fears as
to his past conduct with Rosaline (ii. 3), and will be
satisfied with no equivocal explanation.
" Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift,
Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift " (Ibid.),
CATHOLIC PHRASEOLOGY 269
He condemns with a holy indignation Romeo's
thought of suicide as brutish, cowardly, effeminate,
and unnatural. He devises the sleeping potion for
Juliet, as the only escape from a hated union with
Paris. He strives his utmost to shape for good the
burden laid on his shoulders — the three lovers' un-
reasonable, incompatible, and impossible demands,
the old Capulet's unwarrantable anger. At length,
when all fails, he offers simply and readily the sac-
rifice of his own life —
" If aught in this miscarried of my fault" (v. 3).
The Friar's action, however, produced in the end a
blessed result. The clandestine marriage terminates,
after its own tragic conclusion, in the reconciliation
of the warring factions.
With regard to other religious allusions in the
play, we postpone to Chapter IX. the discussion of
the Friar's speech on Nature, and the lesson it
teaches. The line "Too early seen, unknown, and
known too late " (i. 5 ) recalls the well-known prayer
of St. Augustine, " Sero te cognovi, sero te amavi."
This and other instances show that Shakespeare
caught not only the echoes of Catholic doctrine, but
the very phrases in which they were expressed. The
fine line which Pericles addresses to Mariana, " Thou
that beget'st him that did thee beget," recalls the
opening of the 33rd Canto of the "Paradise," "Vir-
gine e madre Figlia del tuo Figlio." It is an echo
2 70 THE LOVE PLAYS
also of the martyr Father Southwell's ^ contemporary
lines in his hymn on the Nativity of Christ —
" Behold the Father in his daughter's Son,
The bird that built the nest is hatched therein."
In like manner Mr. Douce finds the prototype of the
passage in " Hamlet," " The cock that is the trumpet
of the morn," &c., in a hymn from the " Salisbury
Breviary " ; and Cicero's observation in " JuUus
Csesar " (i. 4) —
" Men may construe things after their fashion
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves,"
seems a reminiscence of an old English rhyme —
" There the Bible is all niyswrent
To jangle of Job or Jeremye,
That construen hit after her intent
For lewde lust of Lollardie."
— Political Songs, ii. 243.
Other specimens of Shakespeare's reproducing old
English forms may be noted. Thus his line in Sonnet
104, " For as you were when first your eye I eyed," is
simply a variation of Robert of Gloucester's rhythm,
"Ar they iwar war" — ere they were aware; and
Ben Jonson's instance of Shakespeare's want of sense
removed by his editors, " Csesar doth never wrong
but with just cause," is only an echo of the Saxon
^ Mr. S. Lee has brought to notice the fact that Father Sonth-
well's "Fourfolde Meditation" was dedicated like Shakespeare's
Sonnets to W. H., whom he believes to have been merely a stationer's
assistant, — J/ife of Shakespeare, 92.
EVENING MASS 2/1
Chronicle whicli describes William the Conqueror
as taking " by right, and with great unright." ^
It is astonishing to note with what receptivity
Shakespeare's mind retained and recorded all such
undertones of traditional English thought and
expression.
The expression " Evening Mass " in " Romeo and
Juliet" iv. i) is commonly held to show Shake-
speare's rudimentary ignorance of the usages of
the Catholic Church, and is regarded as a strong
argument in favour of his Protestantism. Various
explanations have been offered of the passage.
The late Bishop Clifford showed ^ that the term
" Mass " was used indifferently of various Church
offices. Another correspondent of the TaUet ^ took
the word as a synonym for " mess," and gave
arguments in support of this reading. The words
may, however, be justified in their ordinary sense.
First, we must observe " that in this play ' even-
ing ' " means afternoon, and no more. " Is it good
den ? " asks the nurse ; " Yes," says Mercutio, " the
hand of the dial is on the prick of noon " (" Romeo
and Juliet," ii. 4). Here at least evening begins at
twelve o'clock. Evening mass, then, need signify
only mass said after noon.
Next, according to Liturgical writers, there was
great latitude in ancient times as to the hour of
1 Among Ray's proverbs we find a similar expression : '• He'll do
justice, right or wrong."
2 Tablet^ vol. lix. 28, ' Vol. Ix. 23.
272 THE LOVE PLAYS
mass. The time for celebration changed, Strabo ^
says, with the character of the feast. It might be
before noon, about None, sometimes at Vespers,
and sometimes at night. And Martene^ gives
notice of solemn masses said on fast-days at three
o'clock, in Lent in the evening, and at night at
Christmas, Easter Eve, St. John Baptist, and days
of Ordination. As for low masses, he says, " we
think they were said at any hour that did not inter-
fere with the high mass." Of this he gives several
examples, and then concludes: "This shows that
low mass might be said at any hour — dawn, 8 a.m. ;
noon, after None (3 p.m.), evening, and after Com-
pline (night). Even to this day (1699) in the
church of St. Denis, the Bishop says the solemn
mass for the Kings of France in the evening, and
in the Church of Rouen on Ascension Day mass
is often said in the evening."
S. Pius V. (1566-72) discountenanced and pro-
hibited afternoon and evening masses. But the
isolation of the English Clergy, owing to the then
difficulty of communication, might have withheld
from them the knowledge of this law for some con-
siderable time.^ It was so slow in penetrating Ger-
many, that it had to be enforced by various councils,
e.g. Prague in 1605, Constance in 1609, Salzburg in
^ De rebus ecclesiasticus, c. 23.
^ De antiquis Ecdesiw ritibus, I. c. iii. Art. iii.
2 Navarr. lib. de Orat., c. 21, n. 31, et Enchirid. Confess., c. 25,
n. 85.
LITURGICALLY CORRECT 273
16 1 6. Cardinal Bona (1672) seems to say that in
his time high mass was sung in Lent and on Vigils
at 3 P.M., instead of sunset, the ancient time.-^ And
the . remarkable thing is this, that according to
the testimony of the Liturgical writer, Friedrich
Brenner,^ Verona was one of the places in which
the forbidden custom lingered even to our own
century. After quoting the precepts against it,
he says, " Notwithstanding, evening masses are still
said in several Italian churches, as at Vercelli on
Christmas Eve by the Lateran Canons, at Venice
by the same ; moreover in the Cathedral of Verona,
and even in the Papal Chapel at Rome." Since,
then, notwithstanding the Papal prohibition, the
custom of having evening masses lingered in Verona
for nearly three centuries after Shakespeare's day,
it becomes most probable that in his time it was
an usual occurrence in England. But whether it
were a usual occurrence in England or not, it was
certainly so in Verona. To assert, then, as so many
have done, that Shakespeare's mention of an even-
ing mass argues in him an ignorance of Catholic
customs, is to convict one's self of the very ignorance
falsely ascribed to the poet. Afternoon and even-
ing masses were, as we have seen, frequently cele-
brated. It is, however, a remarkable coincidence
that in Verona, the scene of Shakespeare's evening
1 Eer. Liturg., lib. ii., 182-186 (Paris, 1672).
^ Oeschichtliche Darstellung der Verrichtung der Euchariitie
(Bamberg, 1824), vol. iii., 346.
8
274 THE LOVE PLAYS
mass, the custom of celebrating late masses lasted
longer than in any other city.
Another very special technical use of a word
occurs in the same play —
" I must up-fill this osier cage of ours
With baleful weeds, and precious-juiced flowers."
— Romeo and Juliet, ii. 3.
" Ours " is not for the rhyme. It is the rule of the
Franciscans, who have all property in common, to
call whatever article of this property they use
" ours," not " mine," e.g. " I must put on our shoes,"
" I must go to our cell."
"All's Well that Ends Well" is supposed not
improbably to be the comedy coupled by Meres
with "Love's Labour's Lost" under the title of
" Love's Labour's Won." The former play exhibits
the uselessness of a Quixotic asceticism and " taffeta
courtliness in love." The latter shows how merit
may win a husband, and self-sacrificing effort secure
its beloved object. To modern notions there is
something indelicate in Helen's forcing herself on
a man averse to her affections. In an age, how-
ever, when the suitor paid his addresses not to his
bride but to her father, a maiden might without
unfitness appeal to the lord paramount of her
beloved to secure the hand of his son. The Crown
in Shakespeare's days disposed of its wards as
absolutely as the king disposed of Bertram.
Bertram's opposition arises not only from his
"alls well that ends well 275
pride, but from the fact that his affections were
pre-engaged. He had, we learn afterwards, affixed
fancy for Lafeu's daughter that made all other
objects contemned, warped the lines of all other
favours, scorned fair colours, or only esteemed them
as stolen from the one beloved object (v. 3). But
this fixed fancy proves capable of gadding after
Diana, and of being fooled by Helen herself into
making sweet use of what it hated (iv. 4). In
Helen, on the other hand, we see a determination
to overcome, to which
" All impediments in fancy's course
Are motives of more fancy " (v. 3).
And as the deaths of Romeo and Juliet wash
away the old feud of their houses, so does Helen's
supposed death call into life the love of Bertram,
and win from him the fixed affection which he
had believed himself incapable of entertaining for
her.
The Clown in this play is highly individualised.
He is "a shrewd knave and unhappy" (iv. 5), one
who had been " a wicked creature " (i. 3), and had
become a cynic, doubting of all goodness, and accept-
ing evil as his destiny. Into his mouth Shakespeare
puts with perfect propriety such ideas as this — that
Popery and Puritanism, however different in faith,
are one in this, that in both marriages are equally
unhappy — " Young Charbon {Chair e honne) the Puri-
tan, and old Poysam {Poisson) the Papist, howsome'er
276 THE LOVE PLAYS
their hearts are severed in reHgion, their heads are
both one." Or this, that " the nun's Hp and friar's
mouth " are a pair of things that are ordinarily coupled
together, and fit each other naturally (ii. 2). It
is for talk like this that his mistress calls him " a
foul-mouthed and calumnious knave" (i. 3). Yet
some persons have argued that Shakespeare in
writing these passages meant to show that he was
no Papist. On the contrary, it is remarkable that
while he has put these scurrilities into the mouth
of the unhappy Clown, the words of the Countess
are decisive the other way. When she first learns
that her son has renounced his wife, she says —
" What angel shall
Bless this unworthy husband ? He cannot thrive
Unless her prayers, whom Heaven delights to hear
And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath
Of greatest justice" (iii. 4).
Whose prayers are these ? Not those of Helen, but
of one greater than any angel, whose prayers God
delights to hear, and loves to grant. This is exactly
the way in which Catholics speak of the Blessed
Virgin, and the lines will not apply to any one but
her. The testimony is brief but decisive ; Shake-
speare in these lines afiirms distinctly, but not con-
tentiously, one of the most characteristic doctrines
that distinguishes the Catholic Church from the
Protestant communion.
It is quite in accordance with this that the line
I
BELIEF IN THE SUPERNATURAL 277
of self-sacrifice adopted by Helen, on hearing of
her husband's devotion, is a " bare-foot pilgrimage "
(iii. 4), " which holy undertaking with most austere
sanctimony she accomplished " (iv. 3 ). Shakespeare's
additions to this play, says Professor Morley, are
all designed to bring out the elevation of Helen's
character and the dignity of her love. The Countess,
Bertram's mother, is introduced to testify with the
zeal of a noble woman to her praise, and the old
Lord Lafeu brings his experience of honourable
age in testimony of her worth. As regards her
religious opinions, the language the poet makes his
heroine hold regarding her professed remedy for
the king's evil, and its mode of operation, is some-
what difficult to reconcile with the assertion that
Shakespeare was an Agnostic or disbelieved in
the miraculous or supernatural. While expressly
condemning the practice of ascribing to Heaven
remedies which may follow from merely natural
causes (i. 2), Helen yet bids the king hope for his
cure in the following words : —
" He that of greatest works is finisher,
Oft does them by the weakest minister.
So'Holy Writ in babes hath judgment shown,
When judges have been babes : great floods have flown
From simple sources ; and great seas have dried,
When miracles have by the greatest been denied" (ii. i).
So Lafeu's words, on hearing that the cure has been
effected, seem again addressed to some professors
of modern science — "They say miracles are past;
2/8 THE LOVE PLAYS
and we have our philosophical persons to make
modern and familiar, things supernatural and
causeless (i.e. to be explained by no natural cause).
Hence it is that we make trifles of terrors (signs
of divine omnipotence) ensconcing ourselves into
seeming knowledge when we shall submit our-
selves to an unknown fear (i.e. bow our head and
adore, ii. 3)."
In the " Taming of the Shrew," Shakespeare
makes Petruchio among his other antics knock down
the priest who was marrying him, kiss the bride in
church, quaff to her health and throw the sops in
the sexton's face. It would be difficult, however, to
conclude from this that the poet himself approved
of such conduct, even when done in subservience to
so laudable an end as the frightening a shrew for
the purpose of taming her (iii. 2). There is more
meaning in the passage where Gremio, presenting
Lucentio to Baptista as a tutor for his daughters,
calls him " a young scholar that hath been long
studying at Rheims ; cunning in Greek, Latin, and
other languages" (ii. i). Rheims, it will be re-
membered, was then the seat of the English College
from which the greatest number of Seminary Priests
was sent over into England. Against this seminary
legions of proclamations and placards had been
issued, warning parents not to allow their sons to
proceed thither, and denouncing the doctrine taught
there. It was little short of impudence in Shake-
speare to choose Rheims for the pretended alma
"MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING 2/9
mater of Lucentio, the gentleman, though not the
hero of his drama.
In " Much Ado about Nothing '' we have another
of Shakespeare's Friars, whose character is not deve-
loped like that of Romeo's Friar Laurence, but who
is in all essential points from the same stock. The
merciful view he takes of Hero from the first ; his
silence during the altercations of her accusers and
relations ; his judgment so decisive in her favour
when at last he speaks, and his ready plans and
counsel when he proposes a politic trap similar, ex-
cept in its results, to that of Friar Laurence, are all
points of resemblance between the two Friars. It
is curious that the resources of the Friars in all the
three plays, where the plot turns upon their help,
should culminate in the very same contrivance — a
pretended death. Juliet's sleeping draught. Hero's
reported death, and the substitution of Ragozine's
head for Claudio's in " Measure for Measure," are
all variations of one theme. Perhaps Shakespeare
wished to defend Friar Laurence's policy, and was
determined to show that his stratagem, though in
Juliet's case a failure, was a good policy in itself and
deserved success. If some such simple explanation
of the curious reiteration of the Friars' plots be un-
acceptable, some more recondite reason might be
sought in the region of Spenserian allegory. Here
we must also note that in other plots which turn on
a temporary death or absence of the heroines, an
influence analogous to that of a Friar is supposed to
28o THE LOVE PLAYS
govern them. Thus Helena in " All's Well " gives
out that she is making a bare-foot pilgrimage to St.
James of Compostella ; and Portia in the " Merchant
of Venice" (v. i), during her husband's absence,
proclaims that she " doth stray about by holy crosses,
where she kneels and prays," accompanied by " a
holy hermit and her maid." It may be that Shake-
speare wishes to show the efficacy even of a temporary
death in reconciling and reuniting the unravelled
strands of life, the atoning power of the pity ex-
cited by the mere idea of death, in the case of Hero
and Helena, just as the deaths of Romeo and Juliet
were the reconciliation of their families. In all this
it is clear that Shakespeare is only following out the
Christian scale of love, and speaking of a lower kind
of love in terms that are only applicable in their full
meaning to the highest. Hence, perhaps, the reason
why he surrounds their exhibition with the sacred
functions of religion.
In " Twelfth Night " the comedy is in the spirit
of the " Merry Wives of Windsor," or the Falstaffian
scenes of the historical play. Indeed Sir Toby is
in some respects another edition of Falstaff, while
Sir Andrew and Malvolio remind one of Simple, or
Silence and Shallow. The drama is supposed to
take place in a Catholic country, yet, as in the
" Merry Wives," the religious allusions are all to the
manners and opinions of the day, which, as in the
other comedy, are all treated without the slightest
semblance of respect. The most important character
I
MALVOLIO THE PURITAN 28 1
of the play is Malvolio the Puritan.^ Humble and
cringing with his superiors, Malvolio is churlish and
tyrannical with his inferiors. He is further so in-
ordinately vain that he falls a ready victim to the
plot of Maria the serving-maid. The manner of
his nemesis, confinement as a possessed person in a
darkened room, is an evident satire on a case of
alleged possession in a Puritan family named Starchie.
The case is mentioned in Harsnett's " Puritan and
Popish Impostures," and was of considerable noto-
riety in Shakespeare's time.
If Malvolio is to be taken as a representative
Puritan, he is certainly made ridiculous as a gloomy,
pompous, sanctimonious pedant. It is thus he ap-
pears in the well-known dialogue of Toby and the
Clown with Malvolio : " Dost thou think, because
thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and
ale ? Yes, by St. Anne, and ginger shall be hot in
the mouth too" (ii. 3). So again when Sir Andrew
says that if he thought Malvolio was a Puritan he
would beat him like a dog, we have an expression
of the popular dislike of the sect.
The Clown's speech when he puts on the Curate's
gown (iv. 2) is not very complimentary to the
clergy, implying, as it does, their gradual change
from scholars into housekeepers and husbands.
" I'll put it on, I will dissemble in it ; and I would
1 We cannot agree with Mr. Simpson, who thinks that the poet
in his treatment of this character intended to deal tenderly with
that sect.
282 THE LOVE PLAYS
I were the first that ever dissembled in such a
gown. I am not fat enough to become the function
well; nor lean enough to be thought a good student:
but to be said, an honest man and a good house-
keeper, goes as fairly as to say a careful man and a
great scholar." There are, besides, passages which
seem to refer to the poet's private experiences.
For instance when the Clown says he lives by the
Church, but is no Churchman ; for his house stands
by the Church (iii. i ) ; or when Maria talks of
Malvolio being " cross-gartered most villainously," like
" a pedant that keeps school in the Church." Again,
we have phrases which doubtless spoke to con-
temporaries, as when she says that he behaves in
a way that " no good Christian that means to be
saved by believing rightly" could ever believe
(iii. 2), or when Sir Andrew would "as lief be a
Brownist as a politician."
The love argument of the play is the same
as that of so many others ; the sudden transfer
of the fancy from one object to another ; of Olivia
from Cesario to Sebastian, of Orsino from Olivia to
Viola.
Olivia in the following speech shows the rever-
ence with which she regarded the priest, and the
importance she attached to his presence at her
marriage : —
" Oliv. Now go with me, and with this holy man
Into the chantry by : there before him,
I
"as you like it" 283
And underneath that consecrated roof,
Plight me the full assurance of your faith ;
That my most jealous and too doubtful soul
May live at peace " (iv. 3).
The priest subsequently declares the indissoluble
nature of the bond then contracted, and expresses
accurately the Catholic doctrine that the contracting
parties are themselves the ministers of the sacra-
ment of marriage, and that the priest is only the
appointed witness.
" A contract of eternal bond of love,
Confirmed by mutual joinder of your hands,
Attested by the holy close of lips.
Strengthened by interchangement of your rings,
And all the ceremony of this compact
Sealed in my function, by my testimony" (v. i).
The two late plays, " As You Like It " and the
" Winter's Tale," though real comedies, have more
of the tragic element about them than any of those
as yet referred to. The pictures of the court of
the reigning Duke, and of the home of the un-
natural brother in " As You Like It," are drawn with
such passionate feeling, that they seem not only
to be wrung from the poet's own heart, but to be
intended to go straight to the hearts and minds of
the audience. The tyrant to whom mistrust is
sufficient cause for the condemnation of a man,
and mere circumstance of birth sufficient motive
of mistrust, was a picture of English rulers ap-
plicable only to one party in the State. Duke
Frederick says to Rosalind, whom he banishes, " Let
284 THE LOVE PLAYS
it suffice thee that I trust thee not," and she re-
phes, " Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor,"
and he again answers, " Thou art thy father's daugh-
ter; there's enough "(i. 3), Again, Adam says to
Orlando, who had been forced to fly from the Duke
for the same reasons, and from his own brother for
his unkindness : —
" To some kind of men
Their graces serve them but as enemies.
. . . your virtues . . .
Are sanctified and holy traitors unto you.
0, what a world is this when what is comely
Envenoms him that bears it !" (ii. 3).
Both these speeches must have reminded the audi-
ence of the class of Englishmen whom the law
made criminal by kind, and who were reckoned
the worse subjects, the more faithful they were to
their profession. In this sense must have been
understood Orlando's lament over the departure of
the antique world, when duty, not recompense, was
the motive of service (ii. 3). In the pastoral life
of the outlaws in the forest of Arden Shakespeare
finds the real remedy for the falsehoods of court ;
and this idea is repeated in " Cymbeline." It is as
if the poet was comforting a class cut off from ail
civil functions by showing them that their loss was
gain, and that their moral profit was more than
their material sacrifice. In the tyrannical court,
such as Shakespeare describes it here, even the
sacred privileges of the motley were suppressed —
I
WISDOM IN FOOLS 285
as tliey miglit have been in Macbeth's gloomy
castle. The fool was " whipped for taxation," and
might no longer speak wisely what wise men did
foolishly. But the poet found that nature provided
a compensation — " Since the little wit that fools
have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men
have makes a great show" (i. 2). When Claudius
had murdered sleep and mirth in the court of
Denmark, the best fun left was the wisdom of the
odious old fool Polonius.
In the forest. Touchstone has all the privileges
of his bauble ; while Jaques, who claims the same
licence, fails to obtain it. His " taxation " would not
be the froth of an infirm reason, but the gall of
old disappointments, stored up in the brain of a
philosopher, and vented under the false pretence
of extemporaneous sallies. The keen winds of the
outlaw's cave were not the proper atmosphere for
a croaker. The fun of the forest could, however,
make game of hedge-parsons like Sir Oliver Mar-
text, of lack-latin priests, and of the fashionable
travellers whose only point was to " disable all the
benefits of your own country, be out of love with
your nativity, and almost chide God for making
you that countenance you are " (iv. i ). Among the
bitters of the outlaw life the poet enumerates the
being forced to live where no "bells knolled to
church " — quite a characteristic of the state of the
recusants, who were forbidden every external sign
of their religion.
286 THE LOVE PLAYS
" As You Like It " is one of the dramas the un-
ravelling of which is again due to a Friar. The
usurping Duke hearing of the rustic court kept by
his banished brother in the forest, marches out to
entrap him, but is himself entrapped.
" Meeting with an old religious man,
After some question with him, was converted,
Both from his enterprise, and from the world " (v. 4).
The banished Duke returns to his own court.
Jaques alone changes masters, goes to Duke Fred-
erick, who " hath put on a religious life," to question
and to observe, because
" Out of the convertites
There is much matter to be heard and learned " (v. 4).
According to Hunter, " convertite " with Shake-
speare signifies a relapsed person reconciled, and is
therefore distinguished from " convert," who enters
the Church from without. Thus in Act v. i of
" King John " the Legate says to John repentant,
" Since you are a gentle convertite." ^
Rosalind's description of Orlando's kiss being as
full of sanctity as the touch of "holy bread," has
given rise to some controversy. Warburton reads
" beard," but the former expression, however forcible,
would in its sacramental sense be thoroughly in-
1 "Illustrations of Shakespeare," ii. 14.
I
ADAM AND CORIN 287
telligible to a Catholic. The sacred elements con-
secrate by their contact. The joy and gratitude of
Oliver, a true penitent comparing his present with
his past, is expressed almost in the same terms as
Henry V. after breaking with Falstaff —
" 'Twas I ; but 'tis not I : I do not shame
To tell you what I was, since my conversion
So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am."
And the concluding lines of the play express the
joy of the angels over a repentant sinner.
" Then is there mirth in heaven,
When earthly things made even
Atone together."
" As You Like It " presents us with a view of the
lower orders very different from that exhibited in
" Henry VI." The degenerate rabble of Jack Cade
were one and all ignorant, discontented, embittered,
fickle, and cruel. Here Adam the old servant and
Corin the shepherd are very models of dignity,
loyalty, religion, and self-sacrifice. Adam returns
Oliver's abuse with a blessing. He follows Orlando
into exile, and gives him his hard-earned savings,
trusting " Him who doth the ravens feed " for
his life needs. Famished and dying through his
loyalty, he has only a loving farewell for his kind
master, and when rescued by the Duke is most
thankful, not for his own but for Orlando's sake.
Well he merits his master's praise, which refers him
288 THE LOVE PLAYS
to an order of things now past, and the loss of
which Shakespeare never ceases to regret.
" O, good old man : how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world,
When service sweat for duty, not for need " (ii. 3),
And so with Corin. He has known what love
means, shepherd though he be, and he can open
his heart to give what he has, though he serves a
churlish master, who
" Little seeks to find the way to heaven
By doing deeds of hospitality " (ii. 4),
Here, by the way, we have the doctrine of merit
laid down in clear terms. Corin can meet Touch-
stone's quips and gibes with quiet dignity, and
shows his refinement in declaring that vulgarity only
begins in aping manners unbecoming a man's state.
" Good manners at the court are as ridiculous in
the country, as the behaviour of the country is
most mockable at the court." In his defence of
his own condition he manifests, what the Christian
alone realises, the true nobility of every honest
vocation. " Sir, I am a true labourer ; I earn what
I eat, get that I wear ; envy no man's happiness,
glad of other men's good, content with my harm "
(iii. 2).
In the "Winter's Tale" the treatment of royal
jealousy is almost as tragical as in " Othello." The
manners are supposed to be Pagan, but what
"winter's tale" 289
religious doctrines appear are Tridentine rather
than Olympian. Thus the King of Sicily describes
his own and his friend's boyish days :
*' We knew not
The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dreamed
That any did. Had we pursued that life,
... we should have answered Heaven
Boldly, ' Not guilty ' — the imposition cleared " (i. 2).
Original sin, he seems to tell us, is nothing intrinsic
to our nature, it is an " imposition " inherited by our
descent. The innocence of childhood is real sinless-
ness, and if original sin is once cleared, enables the
person conscious of it to plead boldly, " Not guilty,"
at God's judgment-seat. The same king tells his
counsellor that he has imparted to him the things
next his heart, and received cleansing from his
" priest-like " services, and departed from him his
" penitent reformed " (i. 2). And again, thinking
Hermione dead, " has said many a prayer upon her
grave " (v. 3). But the most remarkable instance of
Catholic imagery in the play is when the poet goes
out of his way to describe the Oracle of Delphi.
Now it must be remembered that Rome was the
Delphi of mediaeval Europe. " The mystical city,"
says Mr. Bryce, " which was to mediaeval Europe
more than Delphi had been to the Greek, or Mecca
to the Islamite, the Jerusalem of Christianity." ^
How then does he speak of the mystical city ? — all
^ " Holy Roman Empire," 2nd edition, 299.
T
290 THE LOVE PLAYS
things combine in one grand harmony — the dimate,
the air, the Temple much surpassing the common
praise it bears. But says Cleomenes : —
*' I shall report,
For most it caught me, the celestial habits
(Methinks I so should term them) and the reverence
Of the grave wearers. 0 the sacrifice
How ceremonious, solemn, and unearthly
It was in ' the offering ' " (iii. i ).
If the idea of the sacrifice of the mass be here
indirectly suggested, the language used is worth
contrasting with that of the Thirty-nine Articles,
where that sacrifice is termed " a blasphemous fable
and a dangerous deceit " (Art. xxxi.). Puritan
(iv. 2) is used for soprano, and a soprano Puritan
who sings psalms to hornpipes signifies a Puritan
in nothing but his treble pipes.
The " Tempest " we suppose to be the last of
Shakespeare's comedies. In it he seems to take
his leave of the stage and to renounce his potent
sway over nature, history, and men's hearts. He
bids farewell to the elves and demi-puppets.
" By whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimmed
The noon-tide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azure vault
Set mutinous war : to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt : the strong based promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up
The pine and cedar : graves at my command
"the tempest 291
Have waked their sleepers, oped and let them forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music . . .
. . . I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound,
I'll drown my book."
These exploits are too general to refer only to
Prospero's doings in the play. They seem to allude
to the whole cycle of his dramas, to the storm of
passions he has swayed, to our ancient sovereigns
whom he has raised from their graves, to make the
age "joy in their joy and tremble at their rage."
" While the plebeian imp from lofty throne
Creates and rules a world, and works upon
Mankind by secret engines." ^
He has, he tells us, worked miracles with weak
instruments, but he has done. He is retiring to
Milan, to his midland home in Warwickshire, where
" every third thought shall be my grave " (v. i ).
The epilogue spoken by Prospero continues in
the same solemn strain —
" Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless 1 be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees from faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free."
^ Verses ou Shakespeare, by I. M. S., in the second folio.
292 THE LOVE PLAYS
From the midst of this unearthly sunset his voice
comes for the last time to the rulers in recom-
mendation of mercy. Prospero, by a great effort,
throws off all desire of revenge against his usurping
brother and the traitors who have wronged him.
He is moved by Ariel's pity, and says —
*' Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling
Of their affliction, and shall not myself.
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply
Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art ?
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,
Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury
Do I take part : The rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance : they being penitent.
The sole drift of my purpose doth extend
Not a frown further" (v. i.).
The play presents two Dantesque images, Ariel con-
fined in a cloven pine, an idea repeated in Pros-
pero's threat —
" If thou more murmurest, I will rend an oak,
And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till
Thou hast howled away twelve winters" (i. 2).
Both passages recall the forest of suicides, where
souls are imprisoned in trees inhabited by harpies
{Inferno, xiii.). Again, in Stephano, Trinculo, and
Caliban immersed
" I' the filthy mantled pool beyond your cell,
There dancing up to the chins, that the foul lake
O'erstunk their feet" (iv. i),
we see a reproduction of the violent "naked and
PRAYER TO OUR LADY 293
wild mire o'erspread in the Stygian marsh" {Inferno,
vii. 1 1 5 ), or of " the sullen " " engulphed in boiling
slime, carrying a foul and lazy mist within " {Hid.,
vii. 124). And in the description of the power of
Miranda's prayer —
" You have not sought her help ; of whose soft grace
For the like loss I have her sovereign aid,
And rest content" (v. i),
we have an echo of St. Bernard's prayer to Our
Lady —
" So mighty art thou, Lady, and so great,
That he who grace desireth and comes not
To thee for aidence, fain would have desire
Fly without wings." — Paradiso, xxxii. 16.
In Ferdinand's love being tested by hard penance
and the power of a loved object to render sweet an
otherwise odious and bitter task, we find principles
already noted, repeated. Prospero's grave warning
of the reverence to be paid to Miranda till
"All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be ministered,"
and Ferdinand's promise to respect his trust, mani-
fest again the sanctity in the poet's eyes of the
marriage sacrament, and the somewhat baser teach-
ing in " Measure for Measure " must be corrected by
the lessons here inculcated. The whole play is in
tone very solemn. The last thoughts with which
Shakespeare steps from the stage are forgiveness,
294 THE LOVE PLAYS
meditation of death, and prayer — tlioughts quite
out of tune with the triumphant and persecuting
Protestantism of his age.
Our view of the " Tempest " as Shakespeare's last
production is not inconsistent with Hunter's highly
probable identification of the play with the " Love's
Labour's Won" mentioned by Meres in 1596. We
have only to suppose that Shakespeare revived it
in 161 1, and again perhaps in 161 3 for the
wedding of the Princess Elizabeth, each time with
corrections and augmentations, which have left it
as it was published in 1623. The epilogue and the
burial of the wand may still be the swan- song of the
great poet.
CHAPTER VII.
TRAGEDIES.
We come now to the last division of Shakespeare's
plays — his tragedies. These may be classed apart,
because their purpose is rather to develop the
central character than to illustrate moral and
political theories such as those discussed in the
preceding plays. We will begin with " Hamlet,"
apparently Shakespeare's most valued child, named
after his own son, whom he had lost in 1596, sub-
mitted to recensions, and always kept open for new
additions and alterations.^
^ The various theories in the interpretation of Hamlet's character
form a literature of themselves, the discussion of which w^ould be
beyond our present scope. It is sufficient here to note that Hamlet,
according to Dr. Plumptre, in his conviction of "the vanity of
life," suggests a parallelism with Ecclesiastes. ^ Mr. Jacob Feis'^
believes that "Hamlet" was composed to reproduce the position
assumed by Montaigne in his essays, that of a Catholic in religious
conviction and of a sceptic in philosophy, and to show that scepti-
cism is the result of Catholicism. Hamlet, like Montaigne, ac-
cording to this author, was trained in the Catholic faith, but being
sent to Wittenberg, the home of Lutheranism, he there learned
first to try to think for himself, and to grapple with the mysteries
of life. The soul-enslaving faith, however, to which he still clung,
^ Kolcheth, Appendix, 231 et seq.
2 "Shakespeare and Montaigne," 81, 82, 85. 1884.
295
296 TRAGEDIES
Hamlet presents a disposition naturally open,
developed into a character of impenetrable reserve.
The dread charge laid upon him necessitates the
habitual concealment of his thoughts and feelings ;
and this he endeavours to effect by exaggerating
them to the extent that his reason seems impaired.
In his advice to the players Hamlet condemns as a
fault, according to Shakespeare's usual irony, the
very practice he himself pursues. As the player, by
tearing a passion to tatters, and overstepping the
modesty of nature, offends his audience instead of
winning their sympathies, so did Hamlet aim at
deception by his very excess of truth. To make
men sceptical he gives them too much evidence.
He convinces all observers that he has lost his
reason, by exhibiting too much sense. His own
mental disturbance arose from an over subtle, per-
rendered him powerless to do so, and his tortured conscience was the
necessary result. Father Darlington, S.J.,^ on the other hand, con-
siders that Shakespeare intentionally sent Hamlet to Wittenberg
to portray in his perplexed soul the result of the false Platonism
and fatalism there inculcated. Mr. Simpson, it will be seen,
regards Hamlet as the presentation of a highly sensitive mind
distraught with the scruples which to such a disposition would
necessarily arise from the dread retributive task imposed upon him.
Mr. Simpson finds the indications of Catholicism in the religious
allusion occurring throughout the play rather than in any special
delineation of Hamlet's character. Wittenberg, he says, became
the cant name for any university, partly because of its signification,
" the place where wit grows," as Chettle has it in Hoffman, partly as
the school of Faustus, and perhaps of Luther. Nash was accused
of meaning Oxford by Wittenberg in the life of Jack Wilton.
New Ireland Review, January 1898.
THE GHOST 297
plexed conscience. The general principles of morals
and religion he never questions. His difficulty lay-
in their application in his strange circumstances.
After having seen and conversed with his father's
spirit, he still refuses to own that any traveller ever
returned from the other world. He thinks it may
be the devil. Even after the conduct of the king at
the play had proved the truth of the ghost's story,
he was still doubtful as to which world the spirit
belonged ; his father was cut off with all his crimes
broad blown.
"And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought
'Tis heavy with him " (iii. 3).
The ghost had indeed most distinctly said that he
was safely landed in Purgatory.
" I am thy father's spirit
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away" (i. 5).
But then, how could a blest spirit — " canonised
bones" implies this (i. 4) — as he had at first con-
sidered him, so fiercely inculcate revenge ?
" Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder " (i. 5).
Yet Hamlet at once embraces the commission,
though it is so contrary to his whole being that
he feels it must utterly change him, and wipe out
298 TRAGEDIES
from the table of his memory " all trivial fond
records, all saws of books, all forms, all impres-
sions of youth and observation" (i. 5); but this was
easier to promise than to perform. As soon as his
first passion cools he is overwhelmed with the
difficulty of the problem set him.
" The time is out of joint ! O ! cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right " (i. 5).
For he is a man who could act only in the mad
whirl of passion, or in the full conviction of reason ;
and both conditions were enormously difficult to one
of his character. His conduct from this moment is
devoted to the problem of executing his father's
commands either in a paroxysm of excitement or
with a conviction fully formed. To inflame his
passion and brace his nerves for action he sedu-
lously cultivates his inner germ of madness, and
strips himself unsparingly of every other affection.
To form his conscience he sifts to the uttermost the
veracity of the ghost, who, he says,
" May be the devil : and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shajje : yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy —
As he is very potent with such spirits —
Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds
More relative than this " (ii. 2).
His speech when he finds the king praying
iii. 3) shows that though now convinced of the
A PERPLEXED CONSCIENCE 299
ghost's veracity, lie yet doubted the rectitude of his
command. Kevenge is measure for measure ; eye
for eye, tooth for tooth. To send a murderer to
heaven was no revenge for the murdered man who
had been sent to hell. Hamlet had clearly thought
out the terms of the command ; and the very
frightfulness of the conclusion explains and justifies
his inability to fulfil it in practice. He fears the
canon which the Eternal has fixed against slaughter,
and the future consequences of its transgression.
The native hue of his resolution " is sicklied o'er "
with the pale cast of their reflected rays. The
currents of his enterprise are diverted, and his re-
solve, but now unalterably fixed, fades into a sterile
velleity.
After all the preparation he had made, it would
only be congruous to execute justice upon the king
in a public and judicial manner, as in fact it was,
though through an accident, finally accomplished.
To slay him as a mere assassin was repugnant to
his views, and to kill him at his private devotions,
besides being liable to the objections which he
states, might wear a sacrilegious aspect, like killing
a man in church, and was a deed possible for
Laertes, but not for Hamlet (iv. 7).
His great soliloquies point to these tAvo diffi-
culties. The wonderful " To be, or not to be "
exhibits the vain struggle between the desire to
escape from his sea of troubles by death and the
voice of conscience forbidding the act. The almost
300 TRAGEDIES
equally powerful " 0 ! what a rogue and peasant
slave am I," expresses Hamlet's sense of his own
apathy, the weakness of his passions, or the diffi-
culty of maintaining them in a state of excite-
ment necessary for action. And the speech (iv. 4),
" How all occasions do inform against me," is
another protest against the dulness of his passions,
and the slow, methodical march of his critical
intellect, and its therefore sluggish response to the
double " excitement of his reason and his blood."
This speech shows the character of his mind. He
is no Abraham, to accept without question the com-
mand to slay his son. Hamlet would have promised
to obey one moment, and the next would have said
that God could not contradict Himself, and denied
the authority of the bidder. His scruples spring, as
has been said, from a perplexed conscience.
If Shakespeare had been blamed for making a
blessed soul in Purgatory cry out for revenge, he
might have shown the objector the text in the
Apocalypse which tells of the souls under the altar
crying out, " How long, 0 Lord, dost Thou not
avenge our blood ! " or if he had been blamed for
exacting this vengeance, not by judicial authority
but by a private hand, he might have shown the
impossibility of a legal, public process, and have
pointed out that Hamlet, as the legitimate king,
was the proper person in whom both the right and
the duty of exacting the punishment due to the
murderer, tyrant, and usurper were vested.
THE FINAL RESOLVE 30I
Hamlet was aware that his hesitation might be
" Some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom
And even three parts coward " (iv. 4).
But wisdom or cowardice, it was ingrained, and he
felt that he could not tear the scruple from his
soul. It was not till his return from England
with the proofs that the king had tried to get him
murdered there, that he deliberately and finally
made up his mind to do the deed. He had,
indeed, once roused himself to a sudden paroxysm
of anger, and had killed Polonius, whom he had
taken for the king; and on his return from
England he had found that he was further steeped
in blood than he had intended to be. The altera-
tion of the despatch to the King of England, and
the substitution of the names of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern for his own, was not a final and un-
alterable act till he had boarded the pirate ship and
was carried away. While he was with them he
might always make another change, or interfere in
some other way with its execution. But once
separated from them the deed was irrevocable ; and
the considerations by which he justified it to his
conscience, helped him to make his final resolu-
tion to kill the king. Added to this, the time left
for deliberation was but short. It must be done
before the messengers could return from England.
302 TRAGEDIES
It was now, not then so much a question of revenge
or of public poHcy as of self-preservation, and the
last consideration mainly influences him. After
saying that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern stand
not near his conscience, because they " made love
to the employment, and their defeat is their own
fault," he speaks of the king.
'* Does it not, tliink'st thee, stand me now upon —
He that hath killed my king and whored my mother.
Popped in between the election and my hopes,
Thrown out the angle for my proper life,
And with such cozenage — is't not perfect conscience
To quit him with this arm 1 and is't not to be damned
To let this canker of our nature come
For further evil ?
Hor. It must be shortly known from England
What is the issue of the business there.
Harn. It will be short : the interview is mine,
And a man's life no more than to say ' One ' " (v. 2).
But we anticipate. If Hamlet is to undertake
the task, he must nerve himself for it. All other
passions, all other excitements must be subject to
this one end. This one end must be now his
primitive love, to the exclusion of all else. Such
is the doctrine of Shakespeare as we have seen
in his sonnets. There can be but one sovereign
love in man; all other loves are reduced to mere
adjuncts of this ; but in this all lesser loves re-
vive to a new life, all contribute their strength
to swell the fulness of the chief love, till it has
OPHELIA 303
devoured and assimilated all lesser passions, and
turned them into its own substance.
" Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give ;
That due of many now is thine alone :
Their images I loved I view in thee,
And thou, all they, hast all the all of me." ^
— Sonnet xxxi.
Hamlet has enough clear reason to see that he
must give up Ophelia, and his heart prompts him
to do so in the way least wounding to her feelings.
He might effect his purpose by convincing her of
the existence of some secret insuperable obstacle
on his side to their union. The sage advice of
Laertes to his sister, backed by the injunctions of
Polonius to return all Hamlet's letters, give him
an opportunity of separation which a less per-
fect gentleman would have snatched at. But he
cannot drop Ophelia in this way. She must be
made to realise that he is not the kind of man
for her, that her only course is to obliterate, if not
her love, at least her election of him, and that
her marriage with him is impossible. Hence his
behaviour to her. His great parting in dumb-
show, described by her (ii. i), in which he took a
passionate farewell, exhibiting traces of madness
which she, tutored by Polonius, misinterprets as the
^ "And thou, all they," signifies " Thou art to me now all they
once were."
304 TRAGEDIES
effects of his love, was in reality his act of renun-
ciation. After this, when she is used by Polonius
as a mere bait to get the truth out of Hamlet, he
treats her as one quite estranged ! His mother's
shame has changed his opinion about all women.
He did love Ophelia once, and traces of it remain,
as is seen in his desire for her prayers. But now
the only advice he has to give her is to go to a
nunnery. She is not to think of him. He is too
evil for her. He is " very proud, revengeful, ambi-
tious, with more offences at his beck than he has
thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them
shape, or time to act them in." And besides, he
has renounced womankind, for they only make
fools of men (iii. i). Later on, at the play before
the king, he speaks to her with a coarseness inten-
tionally revolting, and which would have revolted
her had she believed him sane. But this same
coarseness finally convinced her of his madness,
exhibiting, as it seemed to do, the ruin of his
sovereign reason and more sovereign heart, and
was essentially the cause of her own unfeigned
madness (iii. 2). This too explains the corre-
sponding coarseness in the scraps of old songs she
sings in her lunacy. In this most subtle manner,
the cause of her lunacy is shown. Her father's
death crushes her as a fact. But Hamlet's mad-
ness and the consequent degradation of his mind
has become to her a contagion, an atmosphere, a
new vitiated life. She is degraded in and with
HAMLET AND BRUTUS 305
him. Her reason is buried in the same grave
where she sees his entombed. After her death
Hamlet can exhibit all the reality of his affection,
and declare with truth " forty thousand brothers
could not, with all their quantity of love, make up
my sum" (v. i).
Hamlet's character is, in fact, the most exhaus-
tive study of Brutus' generalised observation in
"Julius Caesar" (ii. i).
" Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream ;
The Genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council ; and the state of man
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection,"
There is another speech of Brutus which will
throw further light on Hamlet's character. We
have already supposed that Hamlet wished to im-
part a kind of solemn judicial character to his
father's revenge. This appears rather from the
preparation he makes for it, and his exclusive de-
votion to this one object, than from anything that
he says. It is apparently the sense of the dispro-
portion between this all-embracing preparation, and
the cowardly secret performance of stabbing the
king at his prayers, that prompts Hamlet to make
that curdling " Now might I do it pat " (iii. 3). He
wishes to do the thing solemnly, judicially, sacrifi-
cially, with due intensity of thought and complication
(J
306 TRAGEDIES
of circumstance. The daggers that he uses he wants
to be balanced by the daggers that he utters. The
judicial sentence is with him as important as the
execution. His mother indeed is only to be sentenced,
not executed.
" Soft, now to my mother,
0 heart, lose not thy nature ; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom,
Let me be cruel, not unnatural :
1 will speak daggers to her, but use none ;
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites ;
Now in my words soever she be shent,
To give them seals never, my soul, consent !" (iii. 2).
Now it is exactly this solemn judicial feeling which
Brutus is careful to impress upon his fellow-con-
spirators.
" Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius . . .
Let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfully ;
Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods.
Not hew him as a carcase fit for hounds ;
And let our hearts, as subtle masters do,
Stir up their servants to an act of rage,
And after seem to chide them." — Julius Gcesar, ii. i.
Claudius was but carrion for hounds ; in other
respects the feeling of Brutus seems the counter-
part of Hamlet's, and the key for comprehending its
acts. Othello strives in like manner to maintain
the solemn judicial feeling; he says to Desdemona
just before killing her —
" 0 perjured woman, thou dost stone my heart,
And makest me call what I intend to do
A murder, which I thought a sacrifice."
— Othello, v. 2.
SHAKESPEARE S VIEW OF CONSPIRACY 307
Hamlet is a conspirator, urged to revenge by policy
and by the sense of personal injury, and only kept
back by what be impatiently calls the craven
scruples of religion and conscience. Othello is like-
wise a conspirator, though his act is not treason, but
more nearly allied to " petit treason." He has this in
common with the conspirator, that to right himself,
to do what seems justice and to revenge what seems
sin, he takes the law into his own hands, and
becomes legislator, juryman, and judge in one.
In examining Shakespeare's physiology of con-
spiracy we must again recall the circumstances of
his age and home. He lived among conspirators,
as they were then reckoned; among men whose
political and religious opinions prevented their feel-
ing that content with things as they were, which
was required, under the name of loyalty, by the
rulers. In 1584 he must have been in the midst
of the panic caused by the apprehension of Somer-
ville and Arden ; in 1 60 1 he was intimate with the
Essex conspirators, several of whom were his near
neighbours at Stratford, who were again implicated
in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The conspirators
in these cases considered that the measures which
they undertook, even though they were measures of
revenge, were of a judicial character.
A passage which at first sight seems irreconcilable
with any great moral depth in Hamlet, is the famous
one where he makes his mother compare her former
and her present husbands. The deed which had
308 TRAGEDIES
blasted all morality, made religion a rhapsody, and
darkened the face of nature, seems to be simply
marrying after she had lost a handsome husband.
Such is the plain sense of the speech, " Look here
upon this picture, and on this" — and it may be
asked why such a contrast should scarify a con-
science. It is a great social lapse, but not in itself
a moral fall if the widow of Hyperion marries a
negro. Yet the Queen, without waiting for Hamlet
to explain the real criminality of her action, as he
afterwards does, is moved to confess herself a sinner
for this very crime which is no crime at all.
" 0 ;Hamlet, speak no more :
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct " (iii. 4).
Lady Macbeth, steeped to the lips in blood, could
say no more. She could not wash the stain from
her hands. The explanation is, that in art, to
Shakespeare, as has been shown in the sonnets,
the outward beauty is but a sign of inward virtue.
" Ad ognuno k palese," says Crescimbeni, " che la
bellezza del corpo sia sicuro argomento, anche
naturalmente, della bellezza dell' anima." ^ The
front of Jove, the eye of Mars, the poise of Mercury,
" the combination and form " in Hamlet's father,
" Where every god did give assurance of a man,"
were but the exterior pledge of the spiritual gifts
* Delia Bellezza, 93.
TRUE BEAUTY INWARD
309
within, the passions subject to reason, and reason to
grace. His stepfather was, compared to this moun-
tain, a moor, not because his features were misshapen
and his stature dwarfed, but because his inward soul
was deformed. He was " a murderer, a villain, and
a slave, a vice of kings, a cutpurse of the empire
and the rule." The truth that corporeal beauty
should bespeak inner worth is axiomatic with the
poet.
Thus Miranda says of Ferdinand —
" There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple ;
If the ill spirit have so fair a house
Good things will strive to dwell with it."
— Tempest, i. 2 ;
and Pericles of Marina —
" Falseness cannot come from thee : for thou look'st
Modest as justice, and thou seem'st a palace
For the crowned truth to dwell in."
It is Desdemona's purity, apparent in her whole
presence, which makes his suspicion of her so terrible
to Othello.
" Look where she comes !
If she be false, 0 then Heaven mocks itself.
I'll not believe it " (iii. 3).
But this is a doctrine which love accepts spon-
taneously at first, but must often unlearn ; and then
it cries out, " Thy sweet virtue answers not thy
show" (Shakespeare, Sonnet 93). It is a doctrine
3 I O TRAGEDIES
too of which age and experience of the world become
sceptical ; thus Duncan can say —
" There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face."
— Macbeth, i. 4.
But this disenchantment is wholly due to man's
perversity, the disorder of sin, and is wholly contrary
to the Creator's design, which is the ideal of the
poet and of all true art.
A similar observation must be made with regard
to the suicidal tendency of the tragedy. This is
an artistic necessity, as has been said of the close
of " Romeo and Juliet " ; all tragedy is necessarily
sacrificial, in a sense suicidal ; for in tragedy, the actor
risks all upon one die. He devotes himself soul and
body to one enterprise, which exhausts him, consumes
all the wine of life, and leaves nothing but the lees
for the empty vault to brag of. When the hero sur-
vives the tragical catastrophe, he takes himself out
of tragedy and makes himself a comic personage.
When Claudio in " Much Ado about Nothing " walks
away safe and sound, leaving Hero for dead, nothing
can remove a certain impression of an anti-climax,
an impression which remains, notwithstanding the
vivacity of the latter part of the play, and which
helps to make Benedick the true hero of the drama.
A vengeance which does not involve self-destruction
is not properly tragic. A tragic purpose is one
which straitens the whole man till it be accom-
TBAGEDY AND SUICIDE 3 I I
plished, welds him together, hardens him, points
him to one great act, in doing which he dies.
Tragedy is devotion, sacrifice ; it moves as much
by what it does not say as by what it does openly.
It speaks only of the earthly, and to the sense,
its terra is the grave ; but it is without meaning
if the mind does not transcend this limit, and see
the act illumined by the reflection of a world
beyond the grave. No sorrow, however deep, is
really tragical which receives its consolation here
and now. Gibber turned " Lear " into a comedy by
saving Lear and Cordelia. " Hamlet " would be
Cibberised if a sixth act were added, in which he
was revived to be king, with Horatio for prime
minister, and Ophelia's cousin for his queen !
The moral difficulties of " Hamlet " then disappear
when it is viewed as a work of dramatic art. And
after clearing these difficulties, none need be felt
about its religious significance. In it the same spirit
is manifested which we shall find in " Cymbeline " ;
a spirit that clings to religious traditions, because
in religion it prefers the old to the new ; — the old
which may be an echo of a revelation, to the new
which certainly is a product of human reflection
and thought. Hence the relevancy of the conver-
sation between Horatio and Marcellus.
" Hor. I have heard,
The cock, that is the trumpet of the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day ; and at his warning,
3 I 2 TRAGEDIES
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
Th' extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine. , . .
Mar. Some say that ever, 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long,
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad :
The nights are wholesome ; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch has power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.
Hor. So have I heard, and do in part believe it" (i. i).
Douce finds the original of this passage in a
SaHsbury hymn, printed in Pynson's collection. In
the first quarto, instead of the ghost first " starting
like a guilty thing" (line 148), and then "fading"
(line 157), it "faded" in both cases. The ghost
fading away seems much more congruous for a being
" so majestical " than starting ; besides, the pallor
of guilt upon a fearful summons is more charac-
teristic than the spasmodic start which is common
to all surprise. The ghost's description of his state
points unmistakeably to the doctrine of Purgatory,
which Shakespeare, if he had been a Protestant,
ought to have regarded " as a fond thing vainly
invented, grounded on no warranty of Scripture,
but rather repugnant to the word of God."
" Mine hour is almost come
When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself. . . .
... I am thy father's spirit ;
Doomed for a certain time to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires.
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
THE LAST SACRAMENTS 313
Are burned and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part.
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine :
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.
. . . Thus Avas I . . .
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd.
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head " (i. 5).
" Unhousel'd," is without the Communion ; " dis-
appointed," is not in a fit state, not appointed or
prepared by absolution ; " unanel'd," is without the
unction ; " no reckoning made," is without confes-
sion. These ceremonies omitted, man goes to his
account with all his imperfections on his head.
Performed, they take him out of the world with
all possible helps. They give him a share in the
treasury of the Church, they bring him into com-
pany with those who relieve him of some of his
burden. Such is the doctrine implied in Shake-
speare's words, which were added to the play in
the edition of 1604, and are not found in that
of 1603.
In the same scene (line 136) Hamlet swears —
"Yes, by St. Patrick." Oaths of this kind are
scattered broadcast through the plays, and they
contribute their quota to the determination of
314 TRAGEDIES
the poet's opinions. " Were it not an idolatrous
oath I would swear by sweet St. George," says
Greene in that " Groat's Worth of Wit " in which
he makes his famous attack on Shakespeare as
the Johannes Factotum. Hamlet's injunctions to
Ophelia, " Get thee to a nunnery " (iii. i ), chime in
with Shakespeare's recognised approval of monasti-
cism — an approval which Dr. Flathe {Shakespeare in
seiner WirJdichkeit, i. 85) seeks to disprove by two
texts, in one of which Rosalind says of the man
she had cured of love by driving him mad, that
she had made him "forswear the full stream of
the world, and to live in a nook merely monastic "
(" As You Like It," iii. 2) ; while in the other,
Venus tries to seduce Adonis by talking to him of
" Love-lacking vestals and self -loving nuns
That on the earth would breed a scarcity
And barren dearth of daughters and of sons."
— Venus and Adonis, 752.
Venus' argument is indeed that of many non-
Catholics, but it was not Shakespeare's.
Hamlet says to his mother, " Confess yourself to
heaven ; repent what's past ; avoid what is to come "
(iii. 4), a mode of speech which might be indifferently
Protestant or Catholic ; but when a few lines farther
on she says, " 0 Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in
twain," and he answers, " O throw away the worser
part of it, and live the purer with the other half,"
there is a very sensible mark of the sacrificial form
PBAYERS FOR THE DEAD 315
of religion. The king's order to bring Polonius'
body into the chapel is more consonant to Catholic
than to Protestant practice. The feelings which
come out so naturally in Ophelia's madness are
Catholic — " They say he made a good end — God
ha' mercy on his soul, and of all Christian souls, I
pray God " (iv. 5 ).
We have already noticed how natural, grace-
ful, and noble Shakespeare makes Catholic feelings
appear in his great historical portraits, such as
" Richard II." A like remark may be added touch-
ing his portraits of the mad, the uneducated, the
common people, who have, in their own way, the
naturalness and simplicity of field-flowers, which a
master like Shakespeare can make as attractive as
the richer qualities of the more cultivated kinds.
Now it is worth while to notice the part which
Prayer for the Dead plays in creating this attrac-
tiveness. Read the mad scene of Ophelia — look
at Juliet's nurse —
"Susan and she — God rest all Cliristian souls ! —
Were of an age : well, Susan is with God ;
She was too good for me." — Romeo and Juliet, i. 3,
or at old Gobbo ("Merchant of Venice," ii. 2)
to his son who had reported his own death —
"Alack the day, I know you not, young gentle-
man; but I pray you tell me, is my boy, God
rest his soul, dead or alive ? " — or the grave-
maker who tells Hamlet that he is digging a
3l6 TRAGEDIES
grave for " One that was a woman, but, rest her
soul, she's dead " (" Hamlet," v. i ). Not that
Shakespeare at all conjfines this ejaculation to the
uneducated ; he makes Macduff cry out on hearing
of the murder of his wife and children, " Heaven
rest them now ! " (" Macbeth," iv. 3). Warwick,
when he finds his brother dead, cries out, " Sweet
rest his soul " (" 3 Henry VI.," v. 2), and Horatio
to Hamlet just dead, " Flights of angels sing thee
to thy rest " (" Hamlet," v. 2). On this subject we
may quote the passage when Laertes demands more
funeral honour for his sister, than can be allowed.
" What ceremony else ? " he asks, to which the
Priest answers —
" Her obsequies have been as far enlarged
As we have waiTanties ; her death was doubtful ;
And, but that great command o'ersways the order,
She should in ground unsanctified have lodged
Till the last trumpet ; for charitable prayers,
Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her,
Yet here she is allowed her virgin rites,
Her maiden strewmeats, and the bringing home
Of bell and burial.
Laer. Must there no more be done ?
Priest. No more be done :
We should profane the service of the dead
To sing a requiem and such rest to her
As to peace-parted souls."
And Laertes rejoins —
" I tell thee, churlish pi'iest,
A ministering angel shall my sister be
When thou liest howling " (v. i).
THE DIRGE FOR OPHELIA 317
In the quarto of 1603 tlie Priest, instead of
saying that she cannot have Requiem sung, says that
she has had Dirge sung for her ; the Dirge is the
simple prayer and psalmody, the Vespers and
Matins ; the Requiem is the solemn sacrifice.
" My Lord, we have done all that lies in us,
And more than well the Church can tolerate,
She hath had a Dirge sung for her maiden soul :
And but for favour of the King and you,
She had been buried in the open fields
Where now she is allowed Christian burial."
Shakespeare has a more personal approval of
prayer for the dead in his poem on the Phoenix
and Turtle —
" Let the priest in surplice white
That defunctive music can
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the Requiem lack his right
And again —
" To this urn let those repair
That are either true or fair :
For these dead birds breathe a prayer."
Another stage of this Threnos is remarkable in
connection with Shakespeare's opinions about monas-
ticism, celibacy, and kindred doctrines; he says of
the persons whom he celebrates under the names
of the two birds —
" Death is now the phcenix' nest ;
And the turtle's loyal breast
3 I 8 TRAGEDIES
To eternity doth rest,
Leaving no posterity.
'Twas not their infirmity,
It was married chastity."
As a comment on these two lines, we may quote
a passage from the Saturday Review of October i,
1864, upon a "Cornish Mystery" published in the
Transactions of the Philological Society of that year :
" Such a passage as this could hardly have been
written since the Reformation. After the murder
of Cain, Adam says —
* Therefore after this,
Chastely will we live together,
And carnal joy in this world
We will together deny us.'
It does not directly contradict any Protestant
dogma, but is much more in the natural vein of
an ante-Reformation poet."
In " Hamlet," as it had always been performed in
Elizabeth's reign, the foolish old statesman was
called Corambis; in the edition of 1604 the name
is changed to Polonius. The wisdom of Lord
Burghley is a dogma of such strong traditional
credit that it may look overbold to say that he
was glanced at in this character. The points,
however, which serve to identify him are, first,
the advice to Laertes (i. 3), which corresponds
to Burghley's advice to his son; next, Polonius'
care in his choice of words in " expostulating " {i.e.
POLONIUS AND BURGHLEY 319
expostulate) " matters of State," and his obtrusive
artificiality in covering nonsense with a robe of
seeming sense, as befits men " of wisdom and of
reach." The man who could write to Sir Geo. Gary :
" I thank you for your last letters, by which I was
glad to perceive your prestness to enter into
Scotland ... I think the dulceness used to the
Duke proceedeth of the apparence of the King's
own humour, which if it come of mildness of nature
I am glad, and if it come of the counterfeited
provisableness of the Duke with pleasing, I hope
time will spend those concepts," &c., would cer-
tainly, especially when he grew a little older, speak
in the vein of Polonius.
Those who have had occasion to look over many
of the documents in the State Paper office, which
passed through Burghley's hands, will remember
with what diligence he dashed and noted the
peregrinate and inflated words that his corres-
pondents wrote to him, such as the " prestness "
and " dulceness " of the above scrap. He would
certainly have made Polonius' criticism "mobbed
queen is good." We do not mean to confine
Polonius to Burghley. Burghley was an avatar
of Polonius' spirit, as Leicester was of Glaudius',
Elizabeth of Lettice's, the Gountess of Leicester of
Hamlet's mother's, and Essex of Hamlet's. The
possibilities of Shakespeare's types go far beyond
the realities of any given individuals.
Shakespeare also gives Polonius somewhat of the
320 TRAGEDIES
scriptural formalisni or preachiness of his Falstaff,
Bottom, Costard, &c. When Polonius describes the
stages of Hamlet's malady —
'* Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,
Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,
Thence to a lightness, and by this declension
Into the madness wherein now he raves " (ii. 2),
he surely has in his eyes St. Paul's scale of re-
pentance in the Corinthians. Then his politic
baiting of mouse-traps, as he describes them (ii. 5)
to Reynaldo, and his confession —
" We are oft to blame in this —
'Tis too much proved — that with devotion's visage
And pious action, we do sugar o'er
The devil himself" (iii. i),
which is singularly applicable to the story current
of Lord Burghley, that he owed his safety under
Queen Mary to the diligence with which he mani-
pulated a monstrous set of beads every morning
in Wimbledon Church.
Hunter finds a parallel to the Ghost in Hamlet
in a ghost story current in the families of Stourton
and Arundell (of Wardour) and consequently in the
kindred houses of Derby, Montague, and South-
ampton, in 1588. It is related in More's "History
of the English Province of the Society of Jesus"
(Lib. V. No. xi. p. 171): " The Lord Stourton, whose
widow married with Lord Arundell, was a Catholic
at heart, but externally conformed to the established
THE GHOST OF LORD STOURTON 32 1
religion, preferring the preservation of his property
to the use and fruit of the Sacraments ; but for
fear he might be taken off unprepared in this grave
neglect, he kept at his house two priests, and
ordered that one should always be at home by day
and by night; but by the secret judgment of God
his precautions proved vain in his last sickness, for
both were absent, and no other priest could be
found. He called, therefore, his wife (a daughter
of Edward, Earl of Derby, and sister to the Stanley
whose epitaph Shakespeare wrote), and with many
tears explained to them his exceeding grief, that
whereas he supremely desired to have the last rites
of the Church, he was balked of the gift ; at the
same time he acknowledged his grievous fault of
pretended conformity, and humbly begged pardon
for all that weighed on his dying soul, and died.
The affair was referred to Father Cornelius. He
was asked whether one might pray for the man who
had so died ? ' You both may, and you must,' he
replied. The next day as he was saying Mass, and
making commemoration of the dead, the man just
dead stood on the Gospel side of the altar, clothed
in his usual cloak, and asked the Father to have
pity on him, for he was burning in purgatorial
fires ; he then opened his garment, and showed his
burnt side ; he then asked to be recommended to
those present. Cornelius, turning his face towards
the ghost, remained so long praying, that he was
reminded by the server that he would never end.
X
322 TRAGEDIES
After Mass, he exhorted the congregation to per-
severe in prayer for the soul of Lord Stourton ;
for he was roasting in the fires of Purgatory, and
demanded the assistance of the living. Some say
that the vision occurred at the commemoration of
the living; others that it was seen by the server
as well as the priest ; but the affair was universally
talked about, and is to this day a fixed tradition in
the families of Stourton and Arundell." So wrote
More in 1660. Challoner in his " Memoirs of
Missionary Priests," vol. i. p. 310 (ed. Richardson,
Derby, 1843) gives a similar account on still earlier
authority : " When Mr. Cornelius was saying Mass
for the soul of John, Lord Stourton (who had died
unreconciled, but with great desire of the sacraments,
and more than ordinary marks of sorrow and
repentance), he had a vision, after the consecration
and elevation of the chalice (i.e. at the commemora-
tion of the dead), of the soul of the said Lord
Stourton, then in Purgatory, desiring him to pray
for him, and to request of the lady, his mother,
to cause masses to be said for his soul. This vision
was also seen at the same time by Patrick Salmon,
a good religious soul, who was then serving Mr.
Cornelius at Mass."
We subjoin the following parallel between Hamlet
and Essex, as showing how the poet is discovered to
reflect in detail the history of his time. " Has it ever
been hinted that the poet may have conceived his
characters of Hamlet from Essex, and Horatio
HAMLET AND ESSEX 323
from Southampton ? If not, it might be well to
consider the indications which would point to such
a conclusion. They are not few, perhaps, whether
regard be paid to the external or the personal facts.
It will suffice here to suggest a line of inquiry. To
the common people Essex was a prince. He was
descended through his father from Edward III., and
through his mother was the immediate kinsman of
Elizabeth. Many persons, most absurdly, imagined
his title to the throne a better one than the Queen's.
In person, for he had his father's beauty, he was all
that Shakespeare has described the Prince of Den-
mark to have been. Then, again, his mother had
been tempted from her duty while her gracious and
noble husband was alive. That handsome and gene-
rous husband was supposed to have been poisoned
by the guilty pair. After the father's murder the
seducer had married the mother. The father had
not perished in his prime without feeling and ex-
pressing some doubt that foul play had been used
against him, yet sending his forgiveness to the guilty
woman who had sacrificed his honour, perhaps taken
away his life. There is indeed an exceeding singu-
larity of agreement in the facts of the case and the
incidents of the play. The relation of Claudius to
Hamlet are the same as those of Leicester to Essex :
under pretence of fatherly friendship he was suspi-
cious of his motives, jealous of his actions ; kept
him much in the country and at college; let him
see little of his mother ; and clouded his prospects
324 TBAGEDIES
in the world by an appearance of benignant favour.
Gertrude's relations with her son were much like
those of Lettice to Robert Devereux. Then, again,
in his moodiness, in his college learning, in his love
for the theatre and the players, in his desu-e for the
fiery action for which his nature was most unfit,
there are many characteristics of Essex which recall
the image of the Danish prince." ^
As "Hamlet" is the physiology of justifiable
treason, so " Lear " is the development of the doc-
trine which was involved in Henry VIII.'s theory
of Empire, and was broadly stated in the days of
James I. — wm et %inivoce. The monarch has the
monopoly of loyalty and obedience, and whoever
gives only a divided allegiance is a traitor. Lear,
the king and father, demands complete submission
from his daughters. Goneril and Regan, while
professing to grant it, give the king less than his
due. Cordelia, while refusing to grant it, respects
in practice the sovereign and paternal rights.
Regan puts the problem to be solved in the play
thus —
" How in one house
Should many people, under two commands,
Hold amity? 'Tis liard, almost impossible" (ii. 4).
It is to be noted that this idea is Shakespeare's
own ; neither the play nor the old chronicle makes
Cordelia say that the reason why she cannot exclu-
1 " Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne," by the Duke of
Manchester, i. 297.
leak's absolutism 325
sively love her father, is because it may be her duty
to love another as much. Shakespeare alone points
out the distinction of duties —
" Haply when I shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him, half my care and duty —
Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters
To love my father all" (i. i).
Lear would have all, and those who promise all
end by giving none. Regan and Goneril find that
in promising all they have promised the im-
possible.
The religious allusions are few but suggestive.
Goneril, whose profession pleased her father, exhibits
a true Protestant dislike to the text which teaches
that branches lopped off from the vine will wither,
and must be burned. When Albany says to her —
*' She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her maternal sap, perforce must wither,
And come to deadly use."
She replies, " No more ; the text is foolish " ; and he
answers, " Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem
vile : filths savour but themselves " (iv. 2).
Cordelia, as Queen of France, is put in the posi-
tion of a Catholic, and the terms used of her in the
gentleman's description of her bearing,
" She shook
The holy water from her heavenly eyes " (iv. 3),
have a Catholic tone about them — and the motives
326 TRAGEDIES
which keep Lear from Cordelia are much the same
as those which were supposed to keep the EngHsh
government from reconciling itself with the English
Catholics.
" A sovereign sliame so elbows him ; his own unkindness
That stripped her from his benediction, turned her
To foreign casualties, gave her dear rights
To his dog-hearted daughters, these things sting
His mind so venomously, that burning shame
Detains him from Cordelia " (iv. 3).
Lear had already learned that the absolute submis-
sion professed by his daughters, and their readiness
" To say ' ay ' and ' no ' to everything I said ! ' Ay '
and ' no ' too, was no good divinity " (iv. 6). The
true theology is built on " distinctions " whose fan
winnows away the bad and leaves the good.
Lear, 'on first seeing Cordelia, cries out, as if from
Purgatory—
" You do me wrong to take me out 0' the grave :
Thou art a soul in bliss ; but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead " (iv, 7).
And when he had overcome his shanie, and had
fully reconciled himself to Cordelia, then his joy puts
on the solemn utterance of religion, and he gladly
makes the sacrifice of life.
" Come, let's away to prison,
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness : so we'll live,
SACRIFICIAL CONCLUSION 327
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news ; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins ; who's in, who's out ;
And take upon's the mystery of things
As if we were God's spies ; and we'll wear out,
In a walled prison, packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by the moon . . .
Upon such sacrifice, my Cordelia,
The gods themselves throw incense " (v. 3).
The times to which the drama refers are charac-
terised by Gloucester, " 'Tis the times' plague, when
madmen lead the blind " (iv. i ) ; and by Albany at
the end : —
" The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most : we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long " (v. 3).
And the conclusion is like that of Shakespeare's
sacrificial tragedies, such as " Romeo and Juliet,"
where the death of the chief actors has its effect
in the conversion of the survivors. Albany is
of the faction of Lear's two daughters, he fights
against him and Cordelia ; yet at the conclusion he
is left as the true representative of Lear, whose
cause is triumphant, though to secure its triumph
he and Cordelia perish.
But an objection to Shakespeare's Catholicism
requiring a somewhat detailed examination is com-
monly found in Edgar's feigned madness ; the names
he gives to his supposed devil being the same as
328 TRAGEDIES
those uttered by the possessed persons who were
exorcised by Father William Weston, S.J. The
exorcisms in question took place chiefly at Sir
George Peckham's at Denham, near Uxbridge, and
at Lord Vaux's at Hackney, and were made known
to the world in Harsnet's " Popish Impostures," in
the account there given of the trial of the parties
concerned in the Ecclesiastical Court. Harsnet
held successively the sees of Chichester, Norwich,
and York, and in his capacity first of secretary then
of judge in the Ecclesiastical Court, he seems to
have accepted any witness, however worthless and
false, who would help to obtain the verdict he
desired. His book is full of the vilest calumnies.
A true account of the possessions was given by
Father Weston himself in his autobiography, edited
by Father Morris, S.J.^ Our business, however, is
only to inquire into the nature of Shakespeare's
belief in good and evil spirits, as set forth in his
writings, and to see whether the nomenclature of
Edgar's devils is an argument in favour of his Pro-
testantism.
The belief in good and evil spirits forms an
essential part of the Christian revelation, and was
held by Puritans and Protestants as well as by
Catholics in Shakespeare's time. Harsnett in fact
prosecuted Darrell the preacher for exorcising seven
persons in the Puritan family of Starchie, and
Hartley was put to death for exorcising in the same
^ " Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers," chap, vii., 2nd series.
POSSESSED PERSONS 329
household. The 72 nd canon of the Enghsh Church
forbidding exorcisms was passed in consequence of
the Darrell case. Behef in evil spirits, like every
other doctrine of faith, is open to superstitious
corruption and to abuse for servile ends. From
the days of Simon Magus there have been conjur-
ing quacks, and true exorcists ; simulated cases of
possession, and real demoniacs. But superstition
points to a basis of fact, and it is proper to a sound
judgment to be able to distinguish truth from im-
posture by the character of the evidence adduced.
Thus, Blessed Thomas More, as shrewd, learned,
and experienced a lawyer as any in the England
of the sixteenth century, after recounting the pre-
tended cure of Simcox (" 2 Henry IV.," ii. i )
already related, proceeds to say that as false
jewels do not disprove the existence of precious
stones, but show the necessity of precaution in
judging them, and of applying proper tests, so it
is with miracles. " You do not," he says, " mistrust
St. Peter for Judas ; " and he proceeds to relate a
case of possession in the person of a daughter of
Sir Roger Wentworth, who was cured by Our Lady
of Ipswich under circumstances which, in his judg-
ment, attested its reality. "There was," he says,
" in this matter no pretext of begging ; no possi-
bility of counterfeiting ; no simpleness in the seers,
her father, and others right honourable and rich,
sore abashed at seeing such sad changes in their
children. The great number of witnesses, many of
330 TRAGEDIES
great worship, wisdom, and good experience, and the
maid herself, too young to feign, and the fashion
itself too strange for any man to feign. Finally,
the virgin herself was so moved in mind by the
miracle " that for aught her father could do, " she
forsook the world, and professed religion in a very
good and noble company of the Minoresses, where
she hath lived well and virtuously ever since." ^
Now we think Shakespeare's view of preternatural
manifestation was like that of More. He knows
how to condemn and expose the false conjuring of
Pinch, or the pretended sorceries of Southwell and
Bolingbroke. He may complain with Hotspur that
such " skimble skamble " credulity as Glendower's
" puts him from the faith," or is a scandal to religion,
or through the mouth of Mrs. Page he may expose
the old wives' tales how
" The superstitious idle-headed elf
Received, and did deliver to our age,
This tale of Heme the Hunter for a truth."
— Merry Wives of Windsor^ iv. 4.
He can embody, in the comic, good-natured satire of
" Midsummer-Night's Dream," the popular belief in
beneficent elves and fairies, or weave into the woof
of his tragedy the superstitions prevalent on witch-
craft. Yet he can speak with unfeigned respect of
the remedial exorcisms of the Abbess, and make
the whole action of his mightiest drama hinge on
1 Works, 137.
ANGELS 331
the apparition of a blessed spirit. He can recount
as an attested fact the numberless cures worked by
St. Edward and the cure of the king by Helena's aid.
Nor are these merely chance poetic expressions.
Shakespeare's belief in the spiritual world is attested
by the fact that the functions he assigns to the angels
are in strict accordance with Catholic theology.
Their songs are the harmony of Heaven, and " they
tune the music of the spheres" ("Merchant of Venice,"
V. I ). They are invoked as " blessed ministers from
above " (" Measure for Measure," v. i ), as " ministers
of grace " (" Hamlet," i. 4), as " heavenly guards "
(" Hamlet," iii. 4) ; though in constant conflict with
evil, they remain unstained. Their love for men, pure,
disinterested, divine, furnishes the type of Catherine's
conjugal fidelity.
" He counsels a divorce : a loss of her
That like a jewel has hung twenty years
About his neck yet never lost her lustre ;
Of her, that loves him with that excellence
That angels love good men with, even of her
That when the greatest stroke of fortune falls
Will bless the king." — Henry VIII., ii. 2.
They shed tears on the crimes and disorders of man,
" But man, proud man !
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured.
His glassy essence, like an angry ape.
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep."
— Measure for Measure, ii. 2 ;
and they rejoice over his repentance.
332 TRAGEDIES
" Then there is mirth in heaven,
When earthly things made even
Atone together," — As Fon Like It, v. 4.
They inspire the soul with the spirit of prayer, and
though the heart be hard as strings of steel, they
make it soft as new-born babe's ("Hamlet," iii. 3).
Lastly, they watch by man in his agony, and sing him
to rest ("Hamlet," v. 2).
Nor is Shakespeare less accurate with regard to
the nature and functions of the evil spirits. As
Henry V. has a good angel ever about him, so Fal-
stafF follows him like his evil angel " up and down "
(" 2 Henry IV.," i. 2). Similarly Antony, as a heathen,
has his demon, and the witches in Macbeth pander
to man's curiosity, and serve him solely with mali-
cious intent, that he may " dwindle, peak, and pine "
(" Macbeth," 1.3). The devils can assume all shapes
that man goes up and down in, from " fourscore to
thirteen " (" Timon of Athens," ii. 2). They can
present themselves in pleasing forms, and they sug-
gest the worst temptations under some appearance
of holiness.
" When devils will their blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows."
— Othello, ii. 3.
Thus, too, they put man off his guard and suggest
a motive for sin, by quoting Scripture, applying
some accepted truth in a false sense, or luring him
by honest trifles they " betray us in deepest conso-
BELIEFS IN PORTENTS 333
quence " (" Macbeth," i. 3). If Shakespeare thus seri-
ously attributes all the power to evil spirits accorded
to them by Catholic doctrine, we see no reason why
his allusion in Edgar's speech to the "possessed" at
Sir G. Peckham's should be regarded as a caricature
of the Church's belief. The evidence of such men
as Fathers Weston and Cornelius, the latter a
martyr for the Faith, was surely as unimpeachable
as that which satisfied Sir T. More.
Another phase of belief in the preternatural
current in Shakespeare's time, was the significance
attached to natural portents, as signs of the divine
displeasure at the changes being wrought in Church
and State. The sudden rise of the Thames and Trent,
and the consequent floods on the day of Blessed
Campion's death, were then regarded as nature's
protest against the murderous deed. Thus Poundes
wrote : —
" The scowling skies did stream and puff apace,
They could not bear the wrong that nnalice wrought,
The sun drew in his shining purple face.
The moistened clouds shed brinish tears for thought,
The river Thames awhile astonished stood
To count the drops of Campion's sacred blood.
Nature with tears bewailed her heavy loss,
Honesty feared herself should shortly die ;
Religion saw her champion on the cross,
Angels and Saints desirfed leave to cry ;
E'en Heresy, the eldest child of Hell,
Began to blush and thought she did not well."
" All which accidents," says Parsons, speaking of the
334 TRAGEDIES
same occurrence, " though some will compute to
other causes, yet happening when so open and un-
natural injustice was done, they cannot but be
interpreted as tokens of God's indignation." ^ Now
Shakespeare is continually calling attention to such
occurrences as omens of the king's death or of the
kinsrdom's overthrow : —
"»"
" The seasons change their manner as the year
Had found some months asleep, and leajjed them over,
The river hath thrice flow'd, no ebb between ;
And the old folk, time's doting chronicles,
Say it did so, a little time before
That our great grandsire, Edward, sick'd and died,"
— 2 Henry IV., iv. 4.
So Hubert tells John —
" They say five moons were seen to-night,
Old men, and beldams, in the streets
Do prophesy upon it dangerously."
— King John, iv. 2.
So before the fall of Richard II. —
" The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd,
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven :
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth.
And lean-looked prophets whisper fearful change."
— Richard II., ii. 4.
And in the same play, Act ii. 2, the presentiments
of the queen and the presages of Bagot show a
* " Epistles of Comfort to Priests," c. 15. 1882.
OTHELLO 335
preternatural cast of thought as the citizen says in
Richard III. :—
" Before the days of change, still is it so,
By a divine instinct men's minds mistrnst
Pursuing danger." — Riclmrd III., ii. 3.
Mr. Tyler discovers in these passages and " the
wide world's prophetic soul " of the sonnets, evidence
of Shakespeare's pantheism.^ But as we have seen,
this "finding of signs in the heavens" accurately
portrays Catholic feeling prevalent in the poet's
time, and is based on the Gospel teaching. Shake-
speare's own opinions of signs and wonders may
be gauged on the one hand by Lafeu's warning,
already quoted against making trifles of terrors,
" ensconcing ourselves in seeming knowledge when
we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear " ;
and on the other hand by Edmund's speech, " that it
is the foppery of the world to make the stars guilty
of disasters which we have brought on ourselves by
our own misconduct." The attitude of mind thus
indicated is the mean betwixt superstition and scepti-
cism or intelligent discriminating faith.
In " Othello " it is the deep moral lesson which
gives the play its absorbing interest, and that we shall
consider in Chapter IX. The religious allusions are
on the side of Catholicism. Shakespeare generally
makes the woman the embodiment of the religious
conscience. If so, lago's perpetual mistrust of
1 Shakespeare's Sonnets, c. 11. 1890.
336 TRAGEDIES
woman's honour, and confidence of his power of
leading her astray, is simply the representation of
the Machiavellian idea of religion ; and his assur-
ances of Desdemona's fickleness in her faith are no
more trustworthy than his confidence in the un-
reasoning blindness of Othello's love —
" For her
To win the Moor — were't to renounce his baptism,
All seals and symbols of redeeniM sin —
His sonl is so enfettered to her love
That she may make, unmake, do what she list " (ii. 3).
Thus Othello is represented by Shakespeare as a
Catholic. Witness again the regimen he prescribes
for Desdemona's imaginary wanderings —
" This hand of yours requires
A sequester from liberty, fasting, and prayer.
Much castigation, exercise devout ;
For here's a young and sweating devil here
That commonly rebels " (iii. 4).
If there is anything seeming to savour of Reformed
doctrine, he puts it into the mouth of lago, or the
drunken Cassio, who in his cups informs us in some-
what Calvinistic manner — " God's above all ; and
there be souls must be saved, and there be
souls must not be saved ; " and in reply to lago's
hope to be saved, says; "Ay, but by your leave,
not before me ; the lieutenant is to be saved before
the ancient" (ii. 3)— a strange dream, as if predes-
tination made salvation a matter of seniority, and
RELIGIOUS ALLUSIONS 337
a consequence of rank : and again Othello says
before he murders her —
" If you bethink yourself of any crime
Unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace,
Solicit for it straight. . . .
I would not kill thy unprepared spirit ;
No, heaven forfend, I would not kill thy soul '' (v. 2).
And Gratiano says of Brabantio —
" This right would make him do a desperate turn,
Yea, curse his better angel from his side
And fall to reprobation" (v. 2).
CHAPTER VIII.
DIDACTIC PLAYS.
Mr. Simpson believes that in the plays classed in
the following chapter as didactic there may be
traced, besides the primary moral lesson, certain
covert political allusions bearing on the religious
situation of the poet's time. Commentators of the
realistic school deny that Shakespeare ever em-
ployed allegory in his drama. The penetration and
soundness of his judgment was seen, they say, in
the avoidance of all theories, whether on politics or
religion, and in confining himself exclusively to the
psychological development of character. Now, the
faithful portraiture of character was doubtless the
poet's primary intention ; but the absolute denial of
the possibility of any secondary or figurative applica-
tion of his plays shows a complete misunderstanding
of both Shakespeare and his times.
Allegory was, indeed, universally employed in the
Elizabethan age. Spenser's " Faerie Queene " was
simply one long allegorical eulogy of Elizabeth,
whose praise was the common theme of writers of
the day. This kind of poetry was specially service-
able for purposes of attack. Under the veil of trope,
338
POLITICAL ALLUSIONS 339
the dramatist could satirise the object of his disHke,
whether social, political, religious, even the Govern-
ment itself, without fear of losing his ears. Thus
Bale and Fletcher, and the other dramatists men-
tioned in Chapter II., attacked the Papists. Lily,
Marlowe, Greene, and Nash were engaged by Arch-
bishop Whitgift, through Bancroft, to caricature
the Puritans in revenge for the Marprelate Tracts.
Further, a whole series of plays — " Gorbeduc " ( i 5 6 1 ),
by Norton; "Damon and Pythias" (before 1568),
by Walton; "The Woman in the Moon" (1597),
"Midas" (1592), both by Lily; Marlowe's "Tam-
burlaine" (1587), aimed at exposing the abuses of
the Government, the exactions and covetousness of
ministers, the manoeuvres of Elizabeth and her
favourites, or the despotism of Philip II. or of
James of Scotland. Shakespeare was no exception
to the general rule. If, as he tells us himself, his
purpose was to " hold the mirror up to Nature," it
must have been reflected first from existing indi-
viduals, men and women, who were reproduced as
universal types by his own genius. A thorough
grasp of the real involves no exclusion of the
universal and ideal. In truth, the more thoroughly
the real is apprehended, the more easy is it to
conceive the universal, which always has its basis
on the real.
That the contemporary public believed in his
allegory and unhesitatingly interpreted it, there is
no doubt. Elizabeth saw herself in Richard II.,
340 DIDACTIC PLAYS
Lucy was recognised in Shallow, Cobham in Falstaff.
" This author's comedies," says the preface to the
first edition of "Troilus and Cressida" in 1609,
" are so framed to the life, that they serve for the
most common commentaries of all the actions of our
lives." So again Sir C. Scroop wrote before 1686 : —
" When Shakespeare, Jonson, Fletcher, ruled the stage,
They took so bold a freedom with the age
That there was scarce a knave or fool in town
Of any note but had his fortune shown."
— Rochester's Works, 96. 17 14.
"They wrote," says Towers (1657), "in their neigh-
bours' dialect, and brought their birthplace on the
stage. They gathered humours from all kinds of
people. Dogberry was a constable at Hendon,
Shallow was Lucy with additions and variations.
They did not spare the highest game." The Lord
Chamberlain's players (Shakespeare's company) took
a memorable part in Essex's conspiracy. They were
called madmen, because under feigned persons they
censured their sovereign.^ The French ambassador
declared (April 5, 1606) that they treated James in
the most unseemly way, making him curse and swear
and beat a gentleman who had called the hounds
off the scent and made him lose a bird, and repre-
senting him as drunk at least once a day. And
Chamberlain writes to Winwood about the trouble
they got into for acting the Gowrie conspiracy and
" playing princes on the stage in their lifetime." ^
^ MS. Sloane, 3543, fol. 20. ^ Von Raumer, ii. 219.
MERCHANT OF VENICE 34 1
The possible application of some at least of Shake-
speare's plays in a figurative sense must, then, we
think, be admitted. But such an interpretation
offers no direct or cogent evidence as to his religious
opinions. Simpson's readings of the following alle-
gories are given because they are ingenious and
interesting in themselves, and may have been in
the author's mind as a possible application of his
plot, but they are not put forth as any proof or
support of his Catholicism. For that we need direct
evidence.
According to Simpson, then, some of Shake-
speare's plays may be termed didactic, because the
philosophical or metaphysical principle on which
they are founded outweighs the imaginative, pas-
sionate, and poetical elements conspicuous in most
of his dramas. In this class may be placed the
" Merchant of Venice," " Measure for Measure,"
" Cymbeline," and " Troilus and Cressida." These
all seem written for a political object and with
controversial purpose. The " Merchant of Venice "
appears to have been, in all probability, founded
on another play called " The Jew," which set forth
" the greediness of worldly choosers and the bloody
mind of usurers." ^ Shakespeare's adaptation of it,
while still enforcing its primary, obvious lesson, the
evils of extortion or of extortionate contracts, pre-
sents secondarily and indirectly a plea for toleration.
The argument is all the more forcible from being
^ H. Morley, Introduction " Merchant of Venice," 6.
342 DIDACTIC PLAYS
entirely indirect, like the Spartan argument against
drunkenness from the exhibition of the drunken
Helot. The persecuting spirit as exhibited in the
Jew is made odious and monstrous, and yet appears
the natural and inevitable consequence of the treat-
ment he himself has undergone. Shylock thus
becomes a kind of mirror, in Avhich Christians may
see reflected not only the consequences but the very
manner and tendency of their own conduct. He is
what he is, not only because their intolerance has
provoked him to be so, but because his revenge is a
direct imitation and reproduction of their intolerance.
Whatever may be thought of the allegorical
interpretation of the play, it is clear that Shake-
speare leaves his readers with mixed feelings about
Shylock. He is by no means an object of uni-
versal detestation. He has enlisted the sympathy
of many ; and in the opinion of Hazlitt, Campbell,
and others, he has distinctly the best of Antonio
in such arguments as the following: —
"He hath disgraced me,'' says Shylock, "and hindered
me half-a-million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my
gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled
my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason?
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew
hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed
with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed
and cooled by the same summer and winter, as a Christian
is ? If you prick us, do we not bleed ? If you tickle us,
do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? and
EFFECT OF PERSECUTION 343
if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like
you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew
wrong a Christian, what is his humility ? Revenge ! If
a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufFrance be
by Christian example ! Why, revenge ! The villany you
will teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but
I will better the instruction." — Merchant of Venice, iii. i.
But it may be argued that Shakespeare could
have had but a poor opinion of Catholics, if he
pleads for them in the person of the Jew, and
that Shylock's arguments for toleration are founded
on his own evil passions, which, he suggests, it
may be dangerous to inflame. The case, however,
is argued not on any high principles of truth or
justice, but simply on the mechanical principles
of action and reaction. If you strike, shall we
not return the blow, if we can ? If all your
Christian professions do not prevent you from in-
juring us, simply because we are what we are,
you cannot expect us to be otherwise than what
you take us to bo, or rather will make us to be,
unchristian in our revenges.
Whatever may be thought of this as a possible
application of Shylock's part, the general tone of
the play is decidedly Catholic. For instance, there
is something very unprotestant in Portia's pre-
tence—
" I have towards heaven breathed a secret vow
To live in prayer and contemplation. . . .
There is a monastery not two miles off,
And there will we abide" (iii. 4).
344 DIDACTIC PLAYS
And in the belief of her attendants that she was
"straying about by holy crosses, kneeling and
praying for happy wedlock hours," accompanied by
" a holy hermit and her maid " (v. i ),
But perhaps the most remarkable religious allu-
sion of the play is Bassanio's speech before the
Caskets. His theme is, " The world is still deceived
by ornament." This he illustrates by the practice
of the pleader who by his ornamental eloquence
hides the taint and corruption of evil from the
judge, and persuades him to acquit it. He then
turns to religion — and where should we expect
him to find his great example of religious decep-
tion by means of ornament ? A faithful follower
of the "Book of Common Prayer" would have
referred to those ceremonies which the wisdom
of our Reformers abolished, because though at first
they were " of godly intent and purpose devised,
yet at length turned to vanity and superstition."
He would have been eloquent upon the " mum-
meries and trumperies" of beads, vestments, in-
cense, lights, music, bells, processions, and imposing
functions ; but instead of this we have only —
" In religion
What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it and approve it with a text
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament ? "
This is indeed the very opposite teaching. It is
not, it appears, the Popish ceremonial but the
THE GUILED SHORE 345
Protestant text divinity which is the false orna-
ment in religion. To a dramatist Catholicism
would indeed naturally commend itself as a cere-
monial religion. Thus Marlowe is reported to have
said " That if there be any God or true religion,
then it is with the Papists, because the service
of God is performed with more ceremonies, as
elevation of the mass, organs, singing men, shaven
crowns, &c., and that if Christ had instituted the
sacrament with more ceremonial reverence it would
have been had in more admiration."^ We have
already seen how largely Shakespeare's imagery is
drawn from Catholic sources, especially the solemn
ceremonial of the sacrifice in the " Winter's Tale."
But while Marlowe and Shakespeare were thus
agreed on the preference for Catholicism from this
point of view there was a wide difference between
their opinions. Marlowe's was merely an aesthetic
preference unconnected with any moral or religious
principle. In Shakespeare it is an organic member
of the body of his opinions and ideas, and harmonises
exactly with all that has been deduced from other
passages in his writings.
This estimate of the deceptive character of the
scriptural argument of his day — which he calls
" the guiled shore to a most dangerous sea," the
" seeming truth which cunning times put on to
entrap the wisest" (iii. 2), gives point and applica-
tion to other passages in the same play which have
^ Barnes' note on Marlowe's opinion.
346 DIDACTIC PLAYS
generally been supposed to refer to the Puritans of
Shakespeare's day. For instance —
" There are a sort of men whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond
And do a wilful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,
As who should say, * I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my mouth let no dog bark ' " (i. i).
or the passage (ii. 2) where Gratiano describes
the puritanic behaviour of " one well studied in
a sad ostent to please his grandam " ; or Antonio's
reflection on Shylock —
" The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart :
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath ! " (i. 3).
It is instructive to see how in Shakespeare's mind
this devil quoting Scripture, this " sober - brow "
approving a damned error with a text (iii. 2),
was connected with his favourite image of a smiling
villain. It adds a new meaning to the hypocrisy
of Richard III. — " I can smile, and murder while
I smile" ("3 Hen. VI.," iii. 2); and to Hamlet's
great discovery of the possibilities of human nature
in Denmark at least — "A man may smile and
smile, and be a villain " (" Hamlet," i. 5 ). The play,
then, is not only a triumphant argument against
persecution, but a satire upon hypocrisy, convicting
THE RACK 347
the religious pretenders of the time of the very-
vices which they charged to the Papists. To him
who reads the play from the point of view of an
Elizabethan Catholic, many fragments start into
new life — as when Antonio says, in reference to
his floating ventures —
" Should I go to church
And see the holy edifice of stone,
And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks ? " (i. i ).
And, when Portia says to Bassanio (iii. 2), "I fear
you speak upon the rack, where men enforced do
speak anything," is not this an expression of con-
temptuous disbelief in all the evidence upon which
so many pretended Popish conspirators suffered the
death of traitors in the days of Shakespeare ? The
scandalous use of the rack to get evidence for any
mare's nest Avas complained of by Selden. " The
rack is used nowhere as in England : in other coun-
tries it is used in judicature when there is a semi-
plena probatio, a half -proof against a man ; then to
see if they can make it full, they rack him if he will
not confess ; but here in England they take a man
and rack him, I do not know why nor when — not
in time of judicature, but when somebody bids." ^
It is interesting to remark how throughout almost
the whole play Shakespeare gives way to the didactic
spirit. The characters are sententious, and deliver
wise saws beyond precedent, and in the present
1 Table Talk, auh voce "Trial."
348 DIDACTIC PLAYS
instance they seem to extend the action of the play,
after the dramatic interest has ceased. The conclu-
sion of the play is the discomfiture of Shylock in
Act iv. Act V. is a most charming and poetical
idyll, tempered with philosophy; but it hangs fire
after the dramatic passion of the trial scene, and is
therefore generally omitted in acting. It contains,
however, some gems of the kind proper to our
subject. Lorenzo's discourses on the harmony of
creation, audible to immortal souls, already quoted,
and on the power of music (v. i), are both in this
act. So also is Portia's philosophy of respect.
" Nothing is good without respect," or the true rela-
tion of a thing to its time, manner, circumstances,
for by this alone things obtain their fitness, and
fulfil their respective parts. The same axiom is
repeated a few lines later. " Things by reason
seasoned are to their right praise and true perfec-
tion." Both these speeches reiterate the doctrine of
the necessity of priority, order, and degree in the
political as in the natural order. In the scenes at
the Caskets (ii. 7 and ii. 9), Shakespeare makes
the proud Moorish prince and the " idiot " of Ara-
gon discourse as wisely as Polonius to Laertes. It
is to be noted that it is quite characteristic of
Shakespeare to distinguish his fools, not by their
foolish sayings, but by their foolish doings. This
ideal of folly is not so much the inanity of Slender,
Simple, or Sir Andrew Aguecheek, as a certain want
of connection between the understanding and the
"measure for measure 349
practical reason, a sharp sight with a want of judg-
ment to choose. Such as Portia describes —
" 0 these deliberate fools ! When they do choose
They have the wisdom by their wit to lose" (ii. 9).
" Measure for Measure " is another of the didactic
plays, with a purpose similar to that of the " Mer-
chant of Venice," for it is a kind of discussion on
the penal code. As in " King John " the several
theories of extraneous interference in the quarrels of
a kingdom successively appear, and solve themselves
by the mere progress of the history, so in " Measure
for Measure " do several theories of penal law crop
up to give rise to endless complications, and to
refute themselves by their impracticability. " Measure
for Measure " was acted twice before James I. and
his court in the first year of his reign, at the time
when the king was assailed on all sides, especially
by the Catholics, with requests to mitigate the
bloody laws of England. When James made his
triumphal entry into London, AUeyne the actor
recited to him the lines of Ben Jonson, where the
coming of the new king was said to have
" Made men see
Once more the face of welcome liberty ; "
to have restored the golden age, rescued innocence
from ravenous greatness, stayed the evictions of the
peasantry, alleviated the fears of the rich to be
made guilty for their wealth, and diminished the
3 so DIDACTIC PLAYS
murderous lust of vile spies. When three days
later (March 19, 1603) he rode to Parliament for
the first time, Ben Jonson made Themis rehearse to
him " All the cunning tracts and thriving statutes,"
while afterwards
" The bloody, base, and barbarous slie did quote ;
Where laws were made to serve the tyrant's will,
Where sleeping they could save, and waking kill."
About the same time the Catholics of England
were preparing an address to James, protesting their
loyalty, and begging for a mitigation of the " cruel
persecution which had made England odious, caused
the decay of trade, the shedding of blood, and an
unprecedented increase of subsidies and taxes, and
discontented minds innumerable." Let " the lenity
of a man," they said, " re-edify that which the unin-
formed anger of a woman destroyed." One of the
advisers of the Catholics, whose letter is preserved
in the State Paper office, declared that one of the
first things to be done was to petition for liberty of
religion, and abrogation of those bloody laws, and also
to impress strongly on the king that nothing could
tend more to the security of his person and assurance
of his estate, than to show favour and grace to the
Catholics, by which he would cut off all practices
against his estate and person, seeing the Catholics,
by the cruelty of the bloody laws and intolerable
burden of persecution, had either just cause, or show
of just cause, to pursue their liberties by all means,
JAMES I. AND CATHOLICS 351
and with all princes, to the utmost of their power.
Whereas favour shown to the Catholics would not
only assure the king from all attempts of foreigners
who cannot take hold of England but by a party at
home, but also fortify the throne against the inso-
lence of the Puritans.^ Sir Walter Raleigh was an
advocate on the same side, as we may see from his
letter to Nottingham in Cayley's " Life of Raleigh." ^
It will be seen that the reasoning just described is
exactly like that in the " Merchant of Venice — a
dissuasion from violence on the ground that it is
a game at which two can play. The same argu-
ment was employed in Father Parsons' " Memorial"
(p. 248), and it reappears some two centuries later
as the main foundation of the famous letters of
Peter Plymley,
It looks as if the play had been composed for
James. When the Duke says —
" I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes :
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and Aves vehement :
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
That does affect it " (i. i ),
It reminds one of the king's proclamation about the
throngs which pressed round him in his journey
from Scotland.
The Duke's treatment of Lucio seems inconsistent
^ Dom. James I., vol. vi. Nos. 56 and 63.
- Vol. ii. p. II.
352 DIDACTIC PLAYS
with the general scope of the argument, while the
most atrocious criminals are let off free, or even
rewarded. Lucio, the good-natured, hare-brained, is
punished with something worse than "pressing to
death, whipping and hanging," only because, as
the Duke says, " slandering a prince deserves it "
(v. i). Yet this severity fits in so well with the
notions of James about the sanctity of his royal
person, that it would appear that Shakespeare must
have introduced the glaring injustice for the pur-
pose of satire. It is as if he said: I argue for
relaxation of penalties for all crimes except slander-
ing your sacred person, which is of so deep die,
so murderous, so burglarious and wanton that the
traitorous traducer deserves all you can lay upon
him ; as you are crazy on that point, I waive it.
It is not to be denied, however, that Lucio's cha-
racter is of the kind on which Shakespeare was
always most severe. Licentious as Falstaff, of un-
governable tongue, and though willing enough to
do friendly ofiices, in the end, from mere levity, he
turns round on his friends, and bears false wit-
ness against the only witness who could entirely
acquit them (v. i).
The argument in " Measure for Measure " is
not for the repeal of the penal laws, but for
allowing them to lie dormant. The prerogative
of the governor is said to be " so to enforce and
qualify the laws as to his soul seems good" (i. i),
and James seems to be invited to commit his pre-
THE PENAL CODE 3 53
rogative for a season to some upright viceroy, and
himself to retire behind the scenes, and observe
not only how his substitute behaves, but how the
laws themselves suit the commonwealth. The
dramatic interest of the play henceforth divides
itself from its philosophic interest. Dramatically,
it is the trial and fall of Angelo and the trial and
triumph of Isabella. Philosophically, it is the trial
and condemnation of the penal code.
The title " Measure for Measure " is the accurate
summary of the theory of punishment which the
poet advocates. In this world neither reward nor
punishment should be given for what a man is, but
only for what he does. " If our virtues did not go
forth of us, 'twere all ahke as if we had them
not" (i. i); and on the other side, "What's open
made to justice, that justice seizes," " What we do
not see, we do not think of " (ii. i ). To Shake-
speare the great test of virtue is its inability to be
hid, like the candle on the candlestick, or the city
on the hill; hence his impatience under calumny,
and under the loss of that "just pleasure" which
follows the public recognition of worth.
" 'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed
Wben not be, receives reproach of being ;
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed
Not by our feeling, but by other's seeing."
— Sonnet cxxi.
There are three propositions about the penal law
which Shakespeare develops in this play. To be
354 DIDACTIC PLAYS
punishable, a man must do something; he cannot
be punished for what he is. This, however, is not
the theory of society.
" We're nettles, some of us,
And give offence by the act of springing up ;
And if we leave the damp side of the wall,
The hoes, of course, are on us."
— Mrs. Browning, Aurora Leigh, p. 119, ist ed.
Nor was it the theory of EHzabethan legislators.
For them, to be a Catholic was to be guilty of mis-
prision of treason ; to be a seminary priest was to be
a traitor. " Because he liketh mutton, therefore he
hath stolen a sheep," said Campion at his trial, and
for a priest to be caught in England was death.
In other words, there was a kind of original sin
in criminality. Men grew guilty without doing
anything. To be a player was to be a rogue and
a vagabond. To be a vagrant was to be a rogue.
As it was a crime against the Revolution of
1789 to be born noble, so it was treason against
Elizabeth to be born a CathoUc. Some people
were vermin by nature, and the sentence upon
such a man was —
" Let him die, in that he is a fox,
By nature proved an enemy to the flock."
— 2 Henry VI., iii. i.
The next point is, to be punishable a man must
not be merely a sinner, he must be a criminal.
The sin comes not under the rod of the law. " Tis
EXTERNAL ACTS ALONE CRIMES 355
set down so in heaven, but not in earth " (ii. 4).
And next, the crime must be overt, it must be
done, not merely thought or intended. " Thoughts
are no subjects ; intents but merely thoughts " (v. i).
These two propositions are in exact accordance
with the Church's teaching on ecclesiastical as well
as civil jurisdiction. In the external forum, that
is, in any extra-sacramental tribunal, the Church
takes cognisance only of external acts. What is
internal, thought, desire, and purpose, belongs to the
forum conscientice, and is dealt with in secret in the
sacrament of penance, where the penitent alone is
his own accuser. Statesmen in Shakespeare's day
held exactly the opposite teaching, and claimed to
punish thought as well as act. James himself con-
sidered that he bore the sword to smite sin as well
as crime, and it was quite an inveterate notion
of Elizabeth's days that all Catholics being guUty
of treason in the first degree, that is, being neces-
sarily discontented and hostile to the laws and the
regimen established, were punishable, though they
had never exhibited their disaffection in any overt
act.
It is with reference to the magistrate, punishing
sin as such, that Shakespeare in this play enunciates
the two extraordinary principles that no one who
has committed an offence has a right to punish
another for an offence of the same kind, and that
no criminal should be punished capitally till he was
religiously prepared and ready to die.
3 56 DIDACTIC PLAYS
(i) " He who the sword of heaven will bear
Should be as holy as severe ;
Pattern in himself to know ;
Grace to stand, and virtue go ;
More nor less to others paying
Than by self offences weighing.
Shame to him whose cruel striking
Kills for faults of his own liking " (ii. 2).
This doctrine runs through the play. Angelo says
to Escalus —
" You may not so extenuate his offence
For I have had such faults ; but rather tell me
When I that censure him do so offend,
Let mine own judgment pattern out my death,
And nothing come in partial " (ii. i).
Isabella pleads it to Angelo —
" How would you be
If He which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are ?" (ii. 2).
And in the last scene, the Duke pretends to dis-
believe Isabella's story —
" It imports no reason.
That with such vehemency he should pursue
Faults proper to himself ; if he had so offended,
He would have weighed thy brother by himself,
And not have cut him off" (v. i).
This doctrine becomes all the more pungent, sup-
posing that the argument is for the mitigation of
the penal laws, when we remember how James from
time to time, all through his life, coquetted with
the Pope. This was not unknown to the Catholics.
ABSOLUTION BEFORE EXECUTION 357
Almost as soon as James ascended the throne, one
Philip May, who, like Shakespeare himself, was one
of the servants of Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon, was
committed to the Tower for asserting that the King
was a favourer of Catholics, and for using threats
against him if he rejected the bills to be brought
into Parliament for their toleration/ Father Par-
sons also wrote about " the sums of money and
other presents " which he had " procured both
from the King of Spain and Pope Gregory XIII.
towards the maintenance of a guard for safety
of his Majesty's person in Scotland " in the days
of his trouble there.^
(2) The second corollary that Shakespeare de-
duces from the theory that penal law punishes
sin as sin, is that no criminal can be put to death
till he is spiritually prepared for it. The Duke
finds Bernardino
" A creature unprepared, unmeet for death,
And to transport him in the mind he is,
Were damnable " (iv. 3),
and in the end forgives his earthly faults, and
commits him to Friar Peter to mend him (v. i).
He refuses to play into the devil's hand by send-
ing the sinner, unrepenting, and unshriven, into the
next world.
The story of Bernardino seems to be taken from
the Life of St. Bernard,^ when the saint saves a thief
^ Dom. James I., vol. i. Nos. 31-35, 42, and 66, April 19, 1603.
2 Ibid., No. 84. 2 Vita. I. Lib. vii. c. xv. ed. Mabillon.
358 DIDACTIC PLAYS
whom Count Theobald had ordered to be hanged.
Bernard met the procession, and laid hold of the
thief. " What are you doing ? " said the Count ;
" why save from hell a criminal a thousand times
condemned ? You cannot save him, he is all devil.
There is no cure for him but death. Let the son of
perdition go to perdition, for his life is a peril to the
lives of many." Bernard replied, " I know he is a
villanous thief, and deserves every torture. I will
not let him off; I mean to deliver him to the tor-
mentors, and to punish him better, because longer.
You had sentenced him to a momentary penalty ; I
will give him a lifelong death. You would have
gibbeted him for a few days ; I will make him
live on the cross for many a year." Then he took
him to Clairvaux and made a monk of him, and
called him Brother Constantius ; and he lived a
holy life for thirty years in the Abbey, and died
a saint.
The play of " Measure for Measure " is again
Catholic in tone. Mr. Bohn, it is true, ventures
to call it " distinctly anti-Romish." ^ It is difficult
to see on what he founds his opinion, except
it may be the second scene, where Lucio talks
of the sanctimonius pirate, who went to sea with
the ten commandments, but scraped one out of
the table, " thou shalt not steal." Catholics had
been accused of erasing a commandment, because
they adopted a different division of them from that
^ " Biography and Bibliography of Shakespeare," 278.
VOTARESS OF ST. CLARE 3 59
used by the Protestants. Lucio's remark does not
apply to them ; it rather applies to the argument
of the play, which is in part that the guilty judge
destroys the law wherein he is guilty, because he
destroys his right to punish.
This is the only passage of the play which could
by any possibility bear an anti-Catholic interpreta-
tion. In all the rest the tone is distinctly Catholic.
Isabella's moral grandeur has been already dis-
cussed. The description of her as a fervent novice
shows complete familiarity with the details of life
in religion. She desires no more privileges, but
rather wishes a more strict restraint upon the
sisterhood, the votaries of St. Clare (i. 4), and she
is distinctly said to be yet unsworn, in order to
prepare for her wedding at the end.
" You are yet unsworn.
When you have vowed, you must not speak with men
But in the presence of the Prioress ;
Then if you speak, you must not show your face,
Or if you show your face, you must not speak " (i. 4).
Religious and Catholic is her offer to bribe Angelo,
not with gold,
" But with true prayers
That shall be up at heaven, and enter there
E'er sunrise, prayers from preserved souls,
From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal " (ii. 2).
Then the Duke, disguised as a Friar, only exhibits
360 DIDACTIC PLAYS
in his disguise to what honourable purposes the
Friars applied themselves —
" Bound by my charity and my blest order
I come to visit tbe afflicted spirits
Here in the prison " (ii. 3).
And he catechises Mariana on the subject of penance
like a Catholic divine, while she answers him as a
Catholic penitent would —
" I do repent me as it is an evil
And bear the shame with joy" (ii, 3).
The distinction of repenting for the sin and re-
joicing at the temporal evil incurred by it is a
feature that would hardly have suggested itself to
a Protestant, unless, like Jeremy Taylor, he was
compiling from Catholic sources.
A pungent satire on the union of licentiousness
and Puritan cant is found in the list of prisoners
under Pompey's care, who are " all great doers in our
trade (scortatores), and are now in for the Lord's
sake" (iv. 3).
Familiarity with Catholic forms of speech seems
also to manifest itself in the Duke's reply to Elbow's
" Bless you, good father friar," "And you, good brother
father " (iii. 2) ; and in Mrs. Overdone's declaration
that Lucio's child is a year old come Philip and
Jacob (iii. 2). It would be difficult to find a trace
of anti-Romish feeling in the Duke's description
of himself —
THE OBLIGATION OF TRUTH-TELLING 36 1
" I am a brother
Of gracious order, late come from the See
On special business from his Holiness " (iii. 2) ;
or in the sketcla of the times which he gives in that
character : " There is so great a fever of goodness,
that the dissohition of it must cure it ; novelty is
only in request : and it is as dangerous to be aged
in any kind of course, as it is virtuous to be constant
in any undertaking. There is scarce truth enough
alive to make societies secure ; but security enough
to make fellowships accursed : much upon this
riddle runs the wisdom of the world."
Isabella's doubt as to following the advice of
the disguised Duke, and swearing that Angelo had
achieved his purpose, is remarkable.
" To speak so indirectly I am loth.
I would say the truth . . .
. . . yet I am advised to do it " (iv. 6),
because it must have reminded Shakespeare's audi-
ence of an incident that had been much talked of
in 1595. In that year Blessed Robert Southwell,
the Jesuit martyr, a poet of whom Ben Jonson spoke
to Drummond with admiration, and to whose pieces
Shakespeare paid the compliment of imitation, was
tried for saying Mass at Mr. Bellamy's at Harrow-
on-the-Hill. A servant girl of the family swore
that he had not said Mass there. But her evidence
broke down, and she then confessed that in swearing
as she did she had acted on the advice of the
Jesuit. Hereupon grave scandal arose ; the popular
362 DIDACTIC PLAYS
belief was encouraged that Catholics cared nothing
for oaths or for the truth. What, then, were
Shakespeare's views on the point ?
If his argument in " Measure for Measure " is that
human law has nothing to do with sin, but only with
crime, or injustice, he must necessarily have con-
sidered truth in its double aspect ; as a debt owed
to God by man, and as a debt owed by man to his
neighbour. Prescinding for the moment from the
first aspect of truth, under the second it is possible
to inquire, whether truthfulness is a debt of justice
to men who seek it to treat you unjustly ? If you
are condemned for being what you are — Catholic
or Puritan — you are not bound to criminate yourself
by confessing what you are ; and if your sUence
under interrogatories would condemn you, you have
a right, so far as your oppressors are concerned, to
give an ambiguous answer. Between man and man,
unjust oppression is the natural parent of equivoca-
tion, and justifies it. Under all ordinary aspects of
life I am bound to tell you the truth ; but if
you wish to compel me to tell the truth, in order to
found on my confession your right to punish me
unjustly, I have a right to let you be deceived. Such
was Southwell's defence of what he had done. " I
ask you, Mr. Attorney," said he, " if the French King
were to invade the realm, and capture the city, and
search for the Queen hidden in some corner of the
palace, which you knew, and if you were taken, and
examined upon oath where she was, what would
FATHER Southwell's defence 363
you do ? To boggle is to tell ; to refuse to swear
is to betray. What would you say ? You would
go and show the place ! and would not everybody
call you a traitor ? You would then, if you were
wise, swear you knew not, or that you knew
she was not there. . . . This is our state : the
Catholics are in jeopardy of goods, liberty, and life,
if they harbour a priest. Who will prevent their
seeking safety in a doubtful answer ? For in mat-
ters of this kind there are three things to be
regarded. First, that injustice will be done if you
do not swear. Next, that you are not bound to
answer every question ; and lastly, that any oath is
lawful, if you can take it with truth, judgment, and
justice." ^ The controversy reached its head in 1 606,
after Father Garnet's trial, when he had said that
" equivocation " was not lying, but a peculiarity in
the use of certain propositions. " For a man may
be asked of one who hath no authority to inter-
rogate, or examined concerning something that
belongeth not to his cognisance who asketh. No
man may equivocate when he ought to tell the
truth : otherwise he may."
The Catholic doctrine, then, was that words are a
coin, which must in justice be sterling when we pay
our just debts with it, but which may be counterfeit
when we put it off on a thief. An oath only adds
an additional sanction to an existing duty, but does
not change its nature. What I may declare I may,
'■ More, Ifist. Prov. Anglic. Soc. Jes., Lib, v. No. 29.
364 DIDACTIC PLAYS
if need be, swear. Before an unjust judge, or in
presence of a tyrannical law, equivocation with oath
is exactly as lawful as equivocation without oath ;
and under such circumstances it may be your duty
to say what is only in one respect true, for perhaps
you can only be true to those to whom you owe
fidelity by thus veiling truth to others. This is the
doctrine of Shakespeare in " Measure for Measure " ;
the very title of the play, moralised as it is in
Act V. I, implies it, and the words of the Duke
(ii. 2), " pay with falsehood [equivocation], false ex-
acting," formulate it with philosophical precision.
To be true even by means of "falsehood" is a
problem which he often makes his characters work
out practically, and of which he makes Pandulph
give, as we have seen, the theoretical demonstration
(" King John," iii. i, and Salisbury in " 2 Henry VI.,"
V. I ). " Cymbeline," according to Gervinus," is a
parable on the doctrine of fidelity. Pisanio, the
faithful follower, there speaks, " True to thee
[Cloten] were to prove false, which I never will
be, to him that is most true" (iii. 5); and again,
" Wherein I am false I am honest : not true, to
be true " (iv. 3). All this is distinctly on South-
well's side. Helena in " All's Well " is made to act
much as Isabella in " Measure for Measure," and
Desdemona, who dies declaring that she killed her-
self, elicits from Othello and Emilia the contradic-
tory conclusions, " She's like a liar, gone to burning
hell," and " 0, the more angel she."
THE PORTER IN " MACBETH " 365
Shakespeare seems to contrast this deception for
the sake of guarding fidelity with the pohtical
deception of the period which was used as a means
of discovery.
" Pol. Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth,
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach
With windlasses and with assays of bias
By indirections find directions out." — Hamlet, ii. i.
The rack was one of these windlasses, or winding,
circumventing ways, where truth was drawn out of a
man by untruth. A forged confession of an accom-
plice was propounded to him, and then he was
racked till he confessed or explained. " Some men,"
says Selden, "before they come to their trial are
cozened to confess upon examination : upon this
trick they are made to believe somebody has con-
fessed before them, and then they think it a piece
of honour to be clear and ingenuous, and that
destroys them." This was the policy of the Cecils.
The Porter's speech in " Macbeth " has been
taken as a protest against this doctrine of equivoca-
tion. The man supposes himself to be porter at
hell's gate, and to be letting in the company;
among them is an " equivocator, that could swear in
both the scales against either scale, who committed
treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equi-
vocate to heaven " (" Macbeth," ii. 3). But this
swearing in both the scales against either scale
means the readiness under one and the same set
of circumstances to swear indifferently whatever
366 DIDACTTC PLAYS
suits best, however false the matter might be, and
does not therefore touch the case. Richard lays
down Father Garnett's doctrine in these terms —
" An oath is of no moment, being not took
Before a true and lawful magistrate
That hath authority over him that swears.
Henry had none, but did usurp the place.
Then, seeing 'twas he that made you to depose.
Your oath, my lord, is vain and frivolous."
— 3 Henry VI., i. 2.
The next, and perhaps the most important of
Shakespeare's didactic plays, is " Cymbeline." The
story is taken from the fabulous British annals
printed in Hollinshed, but with variations to adapt
it to the times. Thus the two shipwrecks that
befell Julius' fleet on the English coast are an alter-
ation of the account of Cassibelan's spiking the
Thames and of Caesar's ships being snagged upon
the spikes, adapted to the recent history of PhUip's
two Armadas ; and the end, the submission to the
emperor after the victory over him, is a mere addi-
tion of Shakespeare, unhistorical, quite legendary,
unnecessary for the drama, and simply didactic.
In its lessons " Cymbeline " has several points of
comparison with " Measure for Measure." Thus,
Belarius' whole theory of political justice, expressed
in the words "beaten for loyalty excited me to
treason" (v. 5), is merely a subtle variation of the
" Like doth quit like " of the former play, and the
theory of truth, falsehood, and fidelity is absolutely
THE ROMAN QUESTION 367
the same, as the quotations given sufficiently testify.
But the object of the play goes beyond, that of
" Measure for Measure." The latter play only ven-
tured to urge the suppression of the penal laws
by royal prerogative ; " Cymbeline " recommends
a reconciliation with Rome on certain concessions
affecting the tribute and the franchise or liberties
of the people, which Simpson takes to refer to the
vexed question of Peter's pence, the provisos and
the temporal suzerainty.
To the obvious objection that the grievances
enumerated would apply only to the early Roman
sway over Britain, and not at all to the Roman
question such as it existed in the days of James I.,
it is answered, first, that, according to Shakespeare's
doctrine, plays ought to take the stamp of the age,
and exhibit the pressure of the time. Next, that
the current Roman question in those days was of
such paramount importance that common audiences
could admit no other idea, and that all references
to Rome were considered to allude more or less
plainly to the circumstances of the day. This is
clear by the prologue spoken by Envy in Ben
Jonson's " Poetaster " : —
" The scene is ? ha !
Rome ? Rome ? and Rome ? . . .
. . . O my vext soul
How might I force this to the present state ?
Are there here no spies who could wrest
Pervert, and poison all they hear and see
With senseless glosses and allusions ? "
368 DIDACTIC PLAYS
Catholics as well as Protestants saw in Imperial
Rome an image of the Papacy, and the two failures
of Caesar were a commonplace of the day. After
the failure of the Armada, Father Parsons re-
minded the Catholics that Julius and Henry VII.
had both been unlucky in their first attempts,
though they afterwards became lords of the country.
" The children of Israel (too) were twice beaten
with great loss in the war they had undertaken
by God's express command against the Benjamites :
it was not till the third attempt that they were
successful." ^ And the attitude of James at that
time was such as to encourage the belief that
reconciliation with Rome was by no means im-
possible. Thus he told a prince of the House of
Lorraine who visited him, not without the know-
ledge of Paul v., that after all there was but little
difference between the two confessions. He thought
his own the better, and adopted it from conviction,
not from policy; still he liked to hear other opinions,
and as the calling of a council was impossible, he
would gladly see a convention of doctors to consult
on the means of reconciliation. If the Pope would
advance one step, he would advance four to meet
him. He also acknowledged the authority of the
holy Fathers ; Augustine was to him of more weight
than Luther, Bernard than Calvin; nay, he saw in
the Roman Church, even in that of the day, the
true Church, the mother of all others ; only she
^ Philopater ad Edict, repons., ss. 146, 147.
ADHERENCE TO CUSTOM 369
needed purification. He admitted, in confidence,
that the Pope was the head of the Church, the
supreme Bishop.^
Whether or no there be a political allegory in
" Cymbeline," the religious allusions are again on
the Catholic side. Imogen is the ideal of fidelity,
and of religious fideUty — to be deceived neither by
the foreign impostor who comes to her in her
husband's name, nor by the ennobled clown who
offers himself under the Queen's protection. " Stick
to your journal course," she says to her brothers;
" the breach of custom is the breach of all "
(iv. 2). And she adheres to the old customs ; the
new gods of the Cloten dynasty had forbidden
prayers for the dead, and the beads were baubles,
and the rosary, with its " centm-y of prayers," but a
vain repetition in their eyes. Yet she begs Lucius
to spare her till she has bedecked her husband's
supposed grave,
" And on it said a century of prayers
Sucli as I can, twice o'er " (iv. 2).
This tenderness for old customs, understood or not,
and for the religious traditions of past generations,
is found also in the two lost princes : " We must
lay his head to the east ; my father hath a reason
for it " (iv. 2). A few lines before Guiderius refused
to sing, because his voice was choked ; he would
1 Relazione del Sr. di Breval al Papa, Kanke, ii. 86, 1847.
2 A
370 DIDACTIC PLAYS
only say the dirge, it would be profanation to sing
it out of tune —
" For notes of sorrow out of tune are worse
Than priests and fanes that lie."
It is impossible to suppose that Shakespeare
really held that the singing of a Miserere a trifle
too sharp was worse than a hypocritical priesthood
and a false religion. Read ironically the text
means, " You talk of the lying priests and their
lying temples ; I hold your vile psalm-singing to be
ten times worse."
The religious opinions of Posthumus are char-
acterised in two places. In one he discourses of
Penance : —
" My conscience, thou art fettered
More than my shanks and wrists ; you good gods, give me
The penitent instrument to pick that bolt.
Then, free for ever ! Is't enough I am sorry ?
So children temporal fathers do appease ;
Gods are more full of mercy. Must I repent ?
I cannot do it better than in gyves.
Desired more than constrained : to satisfy.
If of my freedom 'tis the main part, take
No stricter render of me than ray all.
I know you are more clement than vile men.
Who of their broken debtors take a third,
A sixth, a tenth, letting them thrive again
On their abatement ; that's not my desire :
For Imogen's dear life take mine ; and though
'Tis not so dear, yet 'tis a life " (v. 4).
Penance, he says, is in two degrees. One gains
pardon, the other makes satisfaction — " cancels
bonds " (v. 4). For Shakespeare, as my readers
PREPARATION FOR DEATH 371
may have seen before, was a stickler for the old
doctrine of merit. In this very play he puts into
his dirge the line, " Home art gone to take thy
wages " ; and it is this kind of penance which can
alone give confidence in death. When Posthumus
declares that he knows where he is going after
death, the gaoler says to him : " You must either
be directed by some that take upon them to know,
or do take upon yourself that which I am sure you
do not know, or jump the after-inquiry at your own
peril." And Posthumus replies : " I tell thee, fellow,
there are none want eyes to direct them the way
I am going, but such as wink and will not use
them " (v. 4). This conversation recalls a con-
troversial saying of Sir Thomas More : " Howbeit,
if so be that their way be not wrong, but they have
found out so easy a way to heaven as to take no
thought but make merry, nor take no penance
at all, but sit them down and drink well for the
Saviour's sake, sit cock-a-hoop, and fill in all the
cups at once, and then let Christ's passion pay for
all the shot, I am not he that will envy their good
hap, but surely counsel dare I give to no man to
adventure that way with them." ^
Another characteristic of Posthumus is his par-
doning lachimo : —
" Kneel not to me :
The power that I have on you is to spare you ;
The malice towards you to forgive you ; live
And deal with others better" (v. 5).
^ Dialogue of Comfort, Works. 1177.
372 DIDACTIC PLAYS
Did space admit, the aptness of the allegory might
be traced into much minuter details. But we will
only note that, as in " Measure for Measure," the
character of the Duke is somewhat marred by his
inconsistent severity to Lucio ; so here, with the
same barefaced irony, he makes Cymbeline threaten
his preservers with death — one for having slain
Cloten, a prince, though in self-defence; and the
other for having said that Arviragus was in descent
as good as the king : " And thou shalt die for
it" (v. 5). Another sweetening sop which must
have hidden much of the bitterness of this play
from James, was the assumption of a natural and
inherent superiority in princely blood.
" 0 worthiness of nature ! breed of greatness !
Cowards father cowards, and base things sire base :
Nature hath meal and bran, contempt and grace " (iii. 2).
" Their blood thinks scorn
Till it fly out, and show them princes born " (iv. 4).
But Shakespeare has the same idea in other places.
Perdita is an example. It cannot, then, be called
mere flattery.
We will not spend much space on " Troilus and
Cressida," a play which is recognised by the preface
of the first edition to belong to the didactic series
of the poet's dramas. It contains no doubt deep
utterances upon questions of politics, and still deeper
lessons on philosophy. It seems, however, to have
been composed by occasion of some theatrical strife.
"troilus and cressida 373
Witness Ulysses' description of Patroclus' acting in
Achilles' tent —
"... Like a strutting player, — whose conceit
Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich
To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
'Twixt his stretched footing and the ecaflfoldage."
A satire on actors is seen again in Troilus' " copper-
nose " and in his speech —
" Whilst sonie with cunning gild their copper crowns,
With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare."
We have evidence of Shakespeare's intervention
in one encounter of dramatists. In the " Keturn
from Parnassus," 1602 (iv. 3), we read, " Ben Jonson
is a pestilent fellow ; he brought up Horace giving
the poets a pill ; but our fellow Shakespeare hath
given him a purge that made him bewray his credit."
This alludes to Jonson's " Poetaster," acted by chil-
dren, the choir boys of the Chapel Royal, at the
Blackfriars Theatre in 160 1. It was written chiefly
against Marston and Dekker, who replied to it in
the " Satiromastix." Shakespeare, however, con-
sidered himself touched by it. He Avas so well
known as the sweet, the honey-tongued, the English
Ovid, that, in spite of some palpable inconsistencies,
the public must have considered that he was
attacked under that name in Jonson's play. His
counter-hit is seen in " Hamlet," where Rosencrantz
relates how the children have superseded the actors
in public favour, " There is an aery of children, little
374 DIDACTIC PLAYS
eyases, that cry out on the top of the question, and
are most tyrannically clapped for't : these are now
the fashion, and so berattle the common stages —
so they call them — that many wearing rapiers are
afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither."
This seems an allusion to Captain Tucca in the
" Satiromastix," who says to Jonson, " We that are
heads of legions and bands, and fear none but
these same shoulder-clappers, shall fear you, you
serpentine rascal ? " Then Hamlet says that their
writers (Jonson to wit) do the children wrong, " to
make them exclaim against their own succession"
— against the craft that they are for the most part
destined to follow. Now this mild criticism can
hardly be called "a purge to make Jonson bewray
his credit " ; Shakespeare probably administered a
severer dose than this, and we think Thersites in
" Troilus and Cressida " may have been meant for
Ben. This view of the play as a concealed satire
removes much of the difficulty which it presents
as a drama in which the satirical purpose somewhat
mars its artistic effect.^ We will now consider those
1 This may account for the difficulties in the date of this play. It
was entered, as played by the Lord Chamberlain's men, in the
Stationers' books, February 7, 1602, but when published in 1609
"it had never been staled with the stage, clapperclawed with the
palms of the vulgar, or sullied with their smoky breath." It may
have been played once, before some powerful person (the editor
of 1609 had some ado to rescue it from the "grand possessor")
and then forbidden. This was exactly the measure meted to Jon-
son's "Apology" for his "Poetaster," which was only once spoken
on the stage, and then restrained from publication, by authority.
RELIGIOUS ALLUSIONS 375
expressions in the play which seem to throw any
light on the poet's religious opinions.
The reverence he had for the sacrificial ceremonies
of religion peeps out in the words of Patroclus,
where he says that the Greeks used to come to
Achilles —
" As humbly as they used to creep
To holy altars " (iii. 3) ;
and in those of Troilus, where he expresses the
deep feeling with which he delivers up Cressida to
Diomede's hand, which he tells Paris to consider
" An altar, and thy brother Troilus
A priest there, offering to it his own heart " (iv. 3).
The religious sentiment is more generalised in
Troilus' words to Cressida —
" The blessed gods, as angry with my fancy.
More bright in zeal than the devotion which
Cold lips blow to their deities, take thee from me " (iv. 4) ;
and in Cassandra's to Hector —
" The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows :
They are polluted offerings, more abliorred
Than spotted livers in the sacrifice,"
though such utterances are useful as showing the
sacrificial view which Shakespeare took of all re-
ligious devotion. True religion is a dedication of the
best part of man to God, who will accept only
supreme and absolute homage, and who is jealous
of any one to whom a more zealous devotion is felt.
376 DIDACTIC PLAYS
Hence the jealousy of a husband for his wife's purity
of soul is called " a godly jealousy " (iv. 4) ; but, on
the other hand, religion imposes no sacrifices which
hurt other persons' rights. It does not sacrifice the
less good to the greater, to the real loss of the
friend, but maintains both at once.
" Do not count it holy
To hurt by being just : it is as lawful,
For we would give much, to use violent thefts
And rob in the behaK of charity" (v. 3).
And again, "vows to every purpose must not hold"
(v. 3). As we have traced the preachy element in
Falstaff, Bottom, and Holofernes, so we may find
the same kind of genius in Thersites. He reckons
Ajax unable even " to learn a prayer without book "
(ii. I ), and says, " I will buy nine sparrows for a
penny, and his pia mater is not worth the ninth
part of a sparrow " (ii. i ). He opens the next scene
with a kind of litany, and then says, " I have said
my prayers, and devil Envy say Amen." On the
theory above suggested this would be an allusion to
the prayerful prologue of Envy in the " Poetaster,"
just as the armed prologue of Shakespeare's play
is an allusion to the prologue in armour of Ben
Jonson's. Thersites continues in the same strain,
" Discipline come not near thee — Amen." And
then Ajax breaks in, "What! art thou devout? wast
thou in prayer ? " He replies, " Ay, the Heavens
hear me."
THE SERVICE AND THE GOD 177
A proof of Shakespeare's anti-Romish ideas of
ritual is found in the passage —
" 'Tis mad idolatry
To make the service greater than the God " (ii. i)}
The words occur in a speech where, in reply to
Troilus's question, " What is aught, but as 'tis
valued ? " Hector answers —
" But value dwells not in particular will ;
It holds his estimate and dignity
As well wherein 'tis precious of itself
As in the prizer : 'tis mad idolatry
To make the service greater than the God,
And the will dotes that is inclinable
To what infectiously itself affects
Without some image of the affected merit."
In other words, the value of any object depends not
only on any individual's estimation of it, but on
its own intrinsic worth. It is idolatry to value the
service more highly than the God. And it is mad-
ness to love a thing for what our fancy attributes to
it when it really has no such quality. To use the
language of the modern schools, Shakespeare is dis-
tinguishing the subjective and the objective elements
in value. And he says that it is folly to estimate a
thing merely by our subjective feeling about it.
Hence, in the illustration, " service " means not
" ritual " but subjective feeling about God, as con-
trasted with the objective truth about Him. And
the lesson taught is that it is mad idolatry to set a
^ Edinhurgh. Review, vol. cxxiii. 182.
378 DIDACTIC PLAYS
higher value on our own devotional act or experiences
than on God Himself, His truth, and His will, which
are alone the end of all religion. The passage, in
fact, condemns emotional religion, or the assurance
of salvation through feeling, the doctrine not of
Rome but of Calvin and Luther/
The Reviewer asserts that the words " You are in
a state of grace " (" Troilus," iii. i ), are taken from
the Church of England Catechism, and present in
consequence another proof of Shakespeare's Protes-
tantism. The " Catechism," however, referred to
existed only in part in 1601, when this play was
published. Neither in the part then existing, nor
in that added in 1603, is the phrase '-'state of
grace " to be found. But though not found in
the Anglican catechism, it is to be found in the
Decrees of the Council of Trent (sess. vi. cap. iv.),
and in the catechetical instruction founded there-
upon, and thus the phrase has become proverbial
and common among Catholics. Moreover, " state
of grace" is a distinctively Catholic expression.
The Protestants of the Reformation period, who
denied grace to be a quality inherent in the Chris-
tian, and declared it to be only the external election
of God concerning him, could not properly use such
a phrase. Hence it was that the translators of
the Anglican version altered the words of the angelic
salutation in St. Luke, " Hail, full of grace," into
" Hail, thou that art highly favoured." And it is
^ Edinburgh Review, vol. cxxiii. 182.
GRACE AND PERSEVERANCE 379
because Shakespeare did not look upon grace as
mere outward favour, but as an inward quality,
that he uses the phrase " state of grace," and calls
Edward the Confessor and Henry II. " full of grace "
(" Macbeth," iv. 3 ; " Henry V.," i. i).
What Shakespeare's doctrine on grace really was
may be easily learned from a passage which occurs
in the verses spoken by the Duke at the end of
Act iii. of " Measure for Measure,"
" He who the sword of Heaven will bear
Should be as holy as severe,
Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go."
The last line is noted by the Cambridge editors
as corrupt. It is not so. The meaning is clear.
The man should have the pattern or idea of holi-
ness in himself to enable him to stand ; and virtue
to enable him to advance. In the speech of
Ulysses to Achilles in " Troilus and Cressida," we
have the palm of virtues given to perseverance, or
constancy.
" Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honour bright — to have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail
In monumental mockery."
And this perseverance, constancy, or force to stand,
he attributes to grace. The intellect may know
what is good, the natural forces may be adequate
to sallies of virtue, isolated acts of heroism, im-
pulsive acts of good, but standing consistency or
380 DIDACTIC PLAYS
perseverance requires constant grace. This is the
doctrine of the Council of Trent (sess. vi. cap. xiii.)
and of S. Alphonsus (" On Prayer," cap. iii. sec. 3).
It is the Catholic, as distinct from the Protestant
doctrine of grace.
The Reviewer next produces a phrase from the
litany ("Taming of the Shrew," i. i): "From all
such devils, good Lord deliver us" — an exclama-
tion often used by Catholics who have never heard
the Anglican litany in their lives. That the litany
form of prayer was in common use in Shakespeare's
days is evident from the fact that Ben Jonson ends
one of his plays (" Cynthia's Revels," 1 600) with a
formal litany in which the response runs, " Good
Mercury, deliver us."
The Reviewer finds the origin of the lines —
*' His plausive words
He scattered not in ears, but grafted them.
To grow there and to bear."
—All's Well that Ends Well, i. 2,
in a collect of the English Church. The collect
which the Reviewer has in his mind is evidently
that which runs, " that the words which we have
heard with our outward ears may through thy grace
be so grafted inwardly in our hearts, that," &c.
The ideas in the two texts are quite distinct, and
there is no proof that one is copied from the other.
The expression verhum insitum — " engrafted word "
— is scriptural (James i. 21), and is read in the
THE MARRIAGE SERVICE 38 I
epistle for Mass, fourth Sunday after Easter, and
would have been known without the prayer-book,
while the collect itself was probably taken from
other sources.
Finally, the Keviewer quotes a phrase which he
says is taken from the Anglican marriage service :
" If either of you know of any inward impediment
why you should not be conjoined, I charge you on
your souls to declare it (" Much Ado about Nothing,"
iv. i). But it is evident to any impartial student
that the phrase, which is spoken, by the way, by
Friar Francis, might just as easily have been taken
from the York Manual, which runs, " I charge you
on Goddes behalfe and holy Chirche, that if there
be any of you that can say anythynge why these
two may not be lawfully wedded togyder at this
tyme, say it nowe, outher pryuely or appertly, in
helpynge of your soules and theirs bothe;" or
again, from the Sarum Pontifical, " Admoneo vos
omnes, ut si quis ex vobis est qui aliquid sciat, quare
isti adolescentes legitime contrahere non possint ;
modo confiteatur." ^
The arguments of the Edinburgh Keviewer offer,
we may take for granted, the strongest evidence the
writer could discover for Shakespeare's Protestantism ;
yet on examination most of them are seen to be
proofs of his Catholicism, while the rest are merely
negative, and offer no sure ground for any conclusion
respectiQg the sources of the poet's knowledge,
^ Maskell, Monumenta Ritual. Eccles. Anglic, i. 52. 1882.
382 DIDACTIC PLAYS
In the first scene of Act iii. there is a short
conversation which has been quoted as a proof of
Shakespeare's famiharity with the formulas of the
AngHcan Church. The conversation in question
seems a dangerous foundation for an argument to
prove his Protestantism ; such as it is, however,
the advocates of that side are welcome to it.
" Servant. I do depend upon the Lord (Paris).
Pandarus. A noble gentleman — I must needs praise him.
Servant. The Lord be praised.
Pandarus. I am the Lord Pandarus.
Servant. You are in a state of grace.
Pandarus. Grace ? not so ; honour and lordship are my titles."
Luxury is used in the Catholic sense of impurity
(v. 2) ; and to complete the catalogue of religious
allusions in the play, pity is called a "hermit"
(v. 3), as if it was a specially monastic virtue, and
Hector quotes the Psalms of David —
" Pleasure and revenge
Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice
Of any true decision " (ii. 2).
CHAPTER IX.
shakespeake's ethics.
In our opening chapter we endeavoured to trace the
contrast between Shakespeare's philosophy and that
of the Reform. We shall conclude by showing some
of the salient points of difference between his teach-
ing and that of some of the modern theorists whose
doctrine is the logical offspring of Protestantism,
on the subject of morals. The Reformers claimed to
have emancipated human reason from all external
authority through their asserted supremacy of the
right of private judgment. Yet from theu' teaching
of the utter corruption of man through the fall, and
the hopeless wreck of his moral powers, it followed
that he was merely a passive instrument for good
or evil, as either principle predominated. Thus the
freedom conferred on him without was taken from
him within. A similar theory is advanced by
modern rationalists. Professor Caird tells us that
" as moderns we are all fighting under the banner
of a free spirit. That is, we are all engaged,
consciously or unconsciously, in the effort to free
man's life from the yoke of extraneous authority,
and we are learning that we can do this only as we
383
384 Shakespeare's ethics
discover in that life a principle in virtue of which, it
can be a law to itself," and for this view he claims
the support of Shakespeare. It is, according to this
critic, the moving principle in his dramatis personce^
"which inevitably in the long run comes to the
surface, when the passion and character of the indi-
vidual act on each other " ; ^ just as in the Darwinian
theory, genera and species are necessarily developed
through progressive steps by the combination at
certain junctures and under certain conditions of
environment and heredity.
The poet's genius, then, according to this esti-
mate, is seen not simply in his marvellous power
of sympathy with characters of the most diverse
kinds, but also in his intuitive grasp of how each
character must from certain beginnings arrive at
its final issue. Thus his tragedies present, not the
operation of a free will or a decision of human
choice, but the pure evolution of a catastrophe.
As we gaze with bated breath at a tempest-driven
ship grounding helplessly from rock to rock till it
finally strikes and sinks, so is it with the action
of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. Macbeth im-
pelled by his first crime, Lear by his wilfulness,
Hamlet fettered by his irresolution, each hopelessly
and helplessly makes for his doom, " till the final
blow of fate is felt as a kind of relief, and as the
necessary solution of a contradiction which has
become too great to subsist."
^ Contemporary Review, Ixx. 826. "^ Ibid., 826.
HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY 385
Now, is this really Shakespeare's teaching, or
merely that of Shakespeare's modern critic? We
think it is certainly not his, and that he calls this
evolutionary, or necessitarian, or fatalist doctrine,
" excellent foppery " (" Lear," i. 2). Thus, in reply to
Gloster's complaint that our misfortunes are but the
sorry effect of natural causes —
"This," says Edmund, "is the excellent foppery of the
world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit
of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the
sun, moon, and stars, as if we were villains by necessity ;
fools by heavenly compulsion ; knaves, thieves, and, by
spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by
an enforced obedience of planetary influence, and all that
we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on — an admirable
evasion." — Lear, i. 2.
Thus does the poet dismiss summarily the sophists
of the day, and he lays down as explicitly by the
mouth of lago, another knave — for with him knaves
at times speak the truth — the doctrine that free-will
and reason, and not passion or nameless impulse of
any kind, form each man's character. To Rodrigo's
complaint that virtue could not cure him of his
love, lago replies —
" Virtue ! a fig ! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.
Our bodies are gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners ;
so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce ; set hyssop
and weed up thyme ; supply it with one gender of herbs, or
distract it with many ; either to have it sterile with idleness,
2 B
386 shakespeahe's ethics
or manured with industry ; why the power and corrigible
authority of this lies in our wills. If the balance of our
lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sen-
suality, the blood and baseness of our nature would conduct
us to most preposterous conclusions ; but we have reason to
cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts,
whereof I take this that you call — love to be a sect or scion."
— Othello, i. 3.
And indeed if each character were necessarily deter-
mined by the moving principle within, or by circum-
stances, or by both, the whole interest, power, and
pathos of Shakespeare's plays would be gone. If
lago were a villain, Henry V. a hero, Isabel pure,
and Cressida stained, solely by necessity, how could
any measure of praise or blame be attributed to
them ? They would be no more responsible for
their moral conduct than for the height of their
stature or the colour of their hair. Virtue and vice
would be meaningless. But Shakespeare's aim was
to show "virtue her own feature, scorn her own
image," and virtue and vice with him have a real
meaning. Their very notion consists in the fact
that the agent in each case might have done the
opposite. Isabella's purity is admirable because she
voluntarily preferred her own honour to her brother's
life. Cressida lashes Troilus to desperation because
she was voluntarily forsworn. She "is and is not
Cressida."
Previous habits, as they are good or evil, do indeed
dispose the individual to either course of action ;
CHAEACTER RESULT OF ACT 387
the passions may warp the judgment, but the
will has always the power in Shakespeare's philo-
sophy of doing or not doing the act in question.
No habit, however strong, robs his characters of
this power ; if it did, their acts would cease to be
human. But Shakespeare's characters are essentially
human, and the secret of their power is that
his description of human life and character corre-
sponds to our own experience, and our experience
is that every human being is free. No man was
more hopelessly enchained by his passions than
Antony ; yet he knew he could have freed him-
self if he chose, and that his safety lay in his
doing so.
" These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,
Or lose myself in dotage."
— Antony and Cleopatra, i. 2.
He did not break them, but voluntarily wore them
until the end, and so lived and died " a strumpet's
fool" ("Antony and Cleopatra," i. i). Henry V.
wasted long years in dissipation, and his com-
panions believed his wild habits irretrievably fixed,
but he corresponded to his better impulses, and
" though the courses of his youth promised it not,"
("Henry v.," i. i)—
" Never came reformation in a flood,
With such a heady current, scouring faults ;
Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness
So soon did lose his seat, and all at once
As in this king." — Ibid.
388 Shakespeare's ethics
The doctrine of moral responsibility is again
enforced by Shakespeare's teaching on conscience.
Its voice, with him, convicts the sinner of his
personal guilt. Thus Richard III. exclaims —
*' My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain."
— Richard III., v. 3.
Thus, too, the murderer of the Duke of
Clarence —
" I'll not meddle with it ; it is a dangerous thing, it makes a
man a coward ; a man cannot steal but it accuseth him ; a man
cannot swear, but it checks him ; a man cannot lie with his
neighbour's wife, but it detects him." — Riclmrd III., i. 4.
So, too, in the " Tempest " —
" Gonzalo. All three of them are desperate ; their great guilt
Like poison given to work a great time after.
Now 'gins to bite the spirits," — Tempest, iii. 3.
The examples quoted by Professor Caird furnish
to our mind precisely contrary conclusions to
those which he has drawn. In Hollinshed, Mac-
beth was from the first a hypocritical, ambitious
villain. In Shakespeare, both Macbeth and his wife
have good in them, and each step in their descent
in crime is marked by the voluntary resistance
to the pleading and stings of conscience, and by
the bitter remorse consequent on each sinful act.
"MACBETH" 389
When the temptation to murder Duncan first
suggests itself after the witches' prophecy, his whole
being recoils at the suggestion —
" Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature." — Macbeth, i. 3.
He is, indeed, " too full of the milk of human
kindness to catch the nearest way " (" Macbeth,"
i. 5), as his wife says. And though she, like a
whispering fiend at his side, has overcome his
repugnance to the crime, again his fears break
out. They are, it is true, selfish human fears of
the retributive punishment of his sin here. " For
the life to come " " he is prepared to jump," but they
equally prove the freedom and deliberation of his
acts. After Duncan's murder, Macbeth manifests
not only natural remorse of conscience, but a
Christian sense of the guilt of mortal sin. He says
of the grooms —
" One cried, ' God bless us ! ' and ' Amen ! ' the other,
As they had seen me with these hangman's hands.
Listening their fear, I could not say ' Amen '
When they did say ' God bless us.'
Lady Macbeth. Consider it not so deeply.
Macbeth. But wherefore could I not pronounce ' Amen ' ?
I had most need of blessing and ' Amen '
Stuck in my throat.
Lady Macbeth. These deeds must not be thought
After these ways : so it will make us mad." — Macbeth, ii. 2.
390 Shakespeare's ethics
So, too, in Dante's " Inferno " the maddening
thought of hell is the incapacity to utter a prayer
because the reprobate have forfeited the grace
needed to pray.
Again, after the murder of the grooms, and before
that of Banquo, the same conviction that he had
voluntarily lost his soul is thus expressed : —
(Have I) " Mine eternal jewel
Given to the common enemy of mankind" (iii. i).
And this sense of guilt works here upon the guilty
pair apart from any apprehension of earthly retri-
bution. The murder was a success. Duncan's sons
were fugitive, and Macbeth was acclaimed king.
All seemed fair without, yet within the crimi-
nal souls reigned blank despair,-^ Lady Macbeth
soliloquises —
" Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content ;
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy " (iii. 2).
And though she upbraids her husband for his
melancholy, and tells him that " Things without
remedy should be without regard; what's done,
is done" (iii. 2), his agonised reply expresses the
state of her own mind.
^ Cf. BuckniU's "Psychology of Shakespeare," p. 17. 1859.
REMORSE 391
" Better be with the dead.
Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy" (iii. 2).
Crime indeed leads to crime, but never necessarily.
Throughout the downward course Macbeth recog-
nises his increasing guilt. Banquo's ghost is but
the reflex of his own inner agony, and after the
slaughter of Lady Macbeth and her children, when
in his disordered frenzy he is reputed mad, its cause
is explained by his conscience —
" Who then shall blame
His pestered senses to recoil and start,
When all that is within him does condemn
Itself for being there ? " (v. 2).
And as his reign began by attending to the sugges-
tion of the Evil Spirit, so it is consummated with
the discovery that all his crimes have been but in
vain, and that he has been duped throughout.
" And be these juggling fiends no more believed
That palter with us in a double sense ;
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope " (v. 7).
With this portraiture of the soul's voluntary descent
from crime to crime, its voluntary search for
criminal opportunities, and all the bitter remorse
proper only to the consciously responsible being, it
is hard to see how Shakespeare can be regarded as
392 SHAKESPEARE S ETHICS
denying freedom of will. He has, however, been
vindicated in an unexpected quarter.
Modern necessitarianism is the modern offspring
of Calvinism; and Milton, the Puritan poet, shows
us how far Shakespeare was from holding the views
now attributed to him. With every poet his work
is a reflection of himself, and Milton, regarding him-
self as one of the elect, had, we are told, " a kingly
intolerance for his fellows," and moved amongst
other men with a sense of conscious superiority.
The sinner with him must be essentially corrupt,
the elect as essentially good. He would recognise,
therefore, nothing of the strife between good and
evil, of St. Paul's cry, "The good I would, I do
not ; the evil I would not, that I do," the very theme
set forth with such pathos and power by Shake-
speare in his sonnets, and throughout his plays.
Milton therefore was dissatisfied with Shakespeare's
" Macbeth," because in the king, notwithstanding his
crimes, the conflict between good and evil was ap-
parent to the last, and Milton thought of rewriting
the play, as Professor Hales tells us, on Puritan
lines.-^ He however contented himself with repro-
ducing it in " Para^i^e Lost," where the same story
is told. Man there yields to evil through a woman's
agency, and loses all ; for the first fall is, in its main
feature, the type of man's most frequent transgres-
sions. Now in Milton's epics is seen as nowhere in
Shakespeare the necessary evolution of the sinner to
^ Nineteenth Century, vol, xxx. December 1891.
TENDERNESS OF SHAKESPEARE 393
his end, developed step by step through the inevit-
able force of the evil principle within him. Satan
from the first could never have been aught but the
leader of the rebel host. There was no weakness,
no hesitation before his sin, nor consequent remorse.
Even in his defeat he triumphs in his boasted inde-
pendence. " Better to reign in hell, than serve in
heaven." Adam, on the other hand, is all weakness.
He loses all without a moment's misgiving, never
thinks of resistance. He has not the will to say
" Nay ! " ; and the feeling evoked by his fall is not
one of pity, but of sheer contempt.
Shakespeare's view of human nature is the oppo-
site of this. He has the keenest sympathy with his
fellow-creatures, above all with the sinner, though
coupled with abhorrence for his sin, and this is so
because he knew what he was himself St. Philip
Neri would exclaim when he heard of a terrible
scandal, " God grant I may not do worse." So it
was with the poet. Only a few of Shakespeare's
characters, lago, Aaron, Goneril, and Kegan, are
irretrievably, formally bad. Even John and Richard
III. have a conscience. The rest, Macbeth and his
wife, Antony and Cleopatra, display those traces of
goodness which show what they might have been
had God's image not been wrecked, and they so far
command a lingering regard. Shakespeare's genius,
indeed, is seen in manifesting how the baser im-
pulses within the soul may, and under certain
circumstances do, effect his ruin. But these circum-
394 SHAKESPEARE S ETHICS
stances with him are the occasion, not the cause, as
agnostics assert, of the fall that follows. Speaking
of Eve's excuse after the fall, Cardinal (then Mr.)
Newman says : " And this has been the course
of lawless pride and lust ever since ; to lead
us, first, to exult in our uncontrollable liberty
of will and conduct, and then, when we have
ruined ourselves, to plead that we are slaves of
necessity." ^
Professor Caird, again, tells us that with Shake-
speare man is not to save himself from shipwreck
" by timely good resolutions and persistent faithful-
ness in them, but by passing through the depths
of self-despair and self- disgust." ^ To our mind,
Shakespeare insists explicitly on the very course of
action the Professor cannot find in his teaching.
For instance, Hamlet does not tell his mother to
continue living with the incestuous king till she
is weary of him. On the contrary, he urges her
at once to break with the occasion and she will
be saved from the sin, for by repeated abstinence
a good habit will succeed to the evil custom —
" Refrain to-night ;
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence ; the next more easy ;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And master the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency." — Hamlet, iii. 4.
1 ((
University Sermons," Human Responsibility, viii. 136. 1872.
2 Ibid., 825.
AVOIDANCE OF OCCASION 395
Similarly Laertes does not tell Ophelia that her
wish for Hamlet's company is irresistible, but on
the contrary, that she is to keep away from " his
unmastered importunity " (" Hamlet," i. 3).
" Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister ;
And keep you in the rear of your affection.
Out of the shot of danger and desire." — lUd.
Again, we are told how presumption prepares for
a fall —
" But something may be done that we will not ;
And sometimes we are devils to ourselves.
When we will tempt the frailty of our powers.
Presuming on their changeful potency."
— Troilus and Gressida, iv. 4.
Again, with theological accuracy Hamlet describes
the absolute dethronement of reason, judgment,
sense, which consent to a guilty passion incurs.
" What devil was't
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind ?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all.
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope.
0 shame where is thy blush ? " (iii. 4).
This expostulation would be meaningless were not
the shame and blush supposed to be the result
of a guilty conscience.
Gervinus quotes with approval Birch's saying
396 SHAKESPEARE'S ETHICS
that Shakespeare "builds a system of morahty
upon nature and reason, a system independent
of religious considerations, because he believed the
laws of morality to be written plainly enough
in the human heart." ^ But Shakespeare knew of
no divorce between religion and morality. With
him, on the contrary, the voice of conscience was
the voice of God, and an act against conscience
a sin against God, as has been abundantly demon-
strated in the case of Macbeth. Thus, too, the
Duke in " Measure for Measure " instructs Juliet
(as we have seen) on the difference between the
sorrow to death after a fall, or mere self-disgust,
and true contrition which has for its motive sorrow
for having offended God. So too Posthumus, in
the passage already quoted, speaks of his conscience
" being fettered by the gods " (" Cymbeline," v. 4),
and of the satisfaction which he must make to them,
before he can be fully acquitted. This speech of
his Bishop Wordsworth declares to be given as
uttered by a heathen — purposely unchristian. It
is in any case undoubtedly the Catholic doctrine
of repentance.
So again suicide is forbidden, not because it
is an offence against society, or any merely
human precept, but as a transgression of the
divine law.
" 0 ! that the everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self -slaughter." — Hamlet, i. 2.
1 Bunnett's trans., ii. 589. 1863.
ETERNAL PUNISHMENT 397
And in " Cymbeline " —
"Against self -slaughter
There is a prohibition so divine
That cravens my -weak hand." — Cymbeline, iii. 4.
And Gloster in " Lear " —
" You ever gentle gods, take my breath from me,
Let not my worser spirit tempt me again
To die before you please." — Lear, iv. 6.
Shakespeare's sense of the intrinsic mahce of
sin is seen again in his explicit recognition of the
penalties inflicted by God. He shows no trace
of the modern sentimentalists' abhorrence of the
doctrine of eternal punishment. On the contrary,
he states as explicitly as Dante himself the un-
ending, loss and pain consequent on one grave lapse.
Thus Isabella protests that a brother had better
die (a temporal death) once than a sister eternally.
So too Mrs. Ford comments on Falstaff s letter :
" If I would but go to hell for an eternal moment
or so, I could be knighted " (" Merry Wives,"
ii. 2). Claudio, again, speaks of the seven deadly
(sins), and pleads that Angelo's would be the
least : —
" Why should he for the momentary trick
Be perdurably fined 1 "
And Isabella replies —
" Is't not a kind of incest to take life
From thine own sister's shame ? "
— Measure for Measure, iii. i.
398 Shakespeare's ethics
And that shame would be, she said, an eternal
death.
Thus a true conscience manifests the law of God,
and any transgression of its precepts is sin. But
to obey the law grace is needed, for Shakespeare is
no more a Pelagian than a Calvinist. No man re-
cognised more fully the corruption of our nature by
the fall.
" Our natures do pursue,
Like rats that ravin down their proper bane
A thirsty evil, and when we drink, we die."
— Measure for Measure, i. 3.
And again —
" Virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock,
But we shall relish of it." — Hamlet, iii. i.
Or again, the fight needed to master our evil in-
clinations—
" Brave conquerors ! — for so you are,
That war against your own affections,
And the huge army of the world's desires."
— Love's Labour's Lost, i. i.
And the one means by which this internal conflict
is to be overcome is grace —
" For every man with his affects is born ;
Not by might master'd, but by special grace." — Ibid.
This grace gives always sufficient strength, but if
neglected our weakness becomes apparent —
" Alack ! when once our grace we have forgot,
Nothing goes right ; we would, and we would not."
— Measure for Measure, iv. 4.
PRAYER 399
Lafeu thus contrasts the office of God and that of
the devil : " The one brings thee in grace, the other
brings thee out " (" All's Well," v. 2), and yet how
often temporal human favours are preferred to this
divine gift,
" 0, momentary grace of mortal men !
Which we more hunt for than the grace of God."
— Richard III., iii. 3.
Grace or divine aid is only to be obtained by prayer.
In the scheme of Calvinistic predestination, of inde-
pendent morality, or of modern necessitarianism,
prayer has no logical place. Kant, in fact, said that
the sight of a man on his knees praying, to a being
who was neither seen nor heard, excited doubts
as to his sanity. With the Catholic Christian
prayer is the very element of his life, for his life
depends on its inner communion with God. So it
is with Shakespeare. He has fixed times for prayer.
" Morning and evening he kneels in prayer " (" Much
Ado About Nothing," ii. i ; " Merry Wives," ii. 2) ;
before meals by grace (" Measure for Measure,"
i. 2); at departure or return ("All's Well," i. i).
Thrice each day, Imogen desires her lover's prayer.
She would
" Have charged him
At the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight,
T' encounter me with orisons, for then
I am in heaven for him." — Cymbeline, i. 4.
And this desire for intercessory prayer, which we
have seen expressed in the invocation of saints and
400 SHAKESPEARE S ETHICS
angels, is repeated through the plays with regard to
those still liviag on earth. Ferdinand would know
Miranda's name chiefly that he "may set it in"
his prayers ("Tempest," iii. i), and Hamlet asks
Ophelia —
" Nymph, in thy orisons,
Be all my sins remembered." — Hamlet, iii. i.
Thus prayer is the bond of union between man and
man, as between God and man.
The attitude for prayer is that of kneeling as a
humble suppliant. Portia, says Stephano,
" Doth stray about
By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays
For happy wedlock hours." — Merchant of Venice, v. i.
So Macduff to Malcolm thus expresses the sacrificial
character of prayer —
" The Queen that bore thee,
Oft'ner upon her knees, than on her feet,
Died every day she lived." — Macbeth, iv. 3.
In spite of the warning of Reformers against vain
repetitions, and against prayers for the dead, Imogen
says for Belisarius, supposed to be slain, " a century
of prayers " (" Cymbeline," iv. 2) twice o'er, whilst
she wept and sighed.
Prayer must be made " with fasting " (" Othello,"
iii. 4), with spiritual labour, fasting, and striving
(" Measure for Measure," ii. 2).
UNANSWERED PRAYER 40I
Prayer even works miracles, for St. Edward cures
the sick by
" Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
Put on with holy prayers." — Macbeth, iv. 3.
Prayer obtains both the prevenient grace which
preserves the soul from sin, and pardon after the
fall—
" What's in prayer, but this twofold force,
To be forestalled, ere he come to fall,
Or pardoned, being down ? " — Hamlet, iii. 3.
But prayer must be offered with faith and resig-
nation to God's will, for, as St. Augustine says,
" What He refuses to our prayers He grants to our
salvation."
" We, ignorant of ourselves.
Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers
Deny us for our good ; so find we profit,
By losing of our prayers." — Antony and Cleopatra, ii. i.
Conscience, then, according to Shakespeare, is
man's guide, God's law, his rule ; and his free-will,
aided by grace and prayer, are the means by which
he masters his lower nature, and rises to better
things. Such are the poet's ethics, and a further
comparison between them and modern agnostic
theories offers some instructive contrasts.
First, as regards the moral law, according to the
moderns there is no fixed right or wrong. Kant's
vaunted " categorical imperative " of which we hear
so much is practically a phantom, for it is self-
2 c
402 SHAKESPEARE S ETHICS
imposed, and since man is autonomous, he can
charge or dispense himself, at will, from his own law.
Nay, not only can he do so, but according to the
necessitarians he must do so, when under the influ-
ence of overpowering temptation or, again, when his
character or destiny is, under the force of circum-
stances, taking its necessary development. What
stress of circumstances exempts man from the guilt
of murder, adultery, or theft, is left undecided, but
a true fellow-feeling with all that is human will
teach the careful, discriminating observer that our
complex life is "not to be embraced by any set
of maxims (that is, the ten commandments), and
that to lace ourselves up in such formularies represses
the divine prompting and inspiration which spring
from growing insight and sympathy." ^ Thus spoke
George Elliot, and the novelists who have followed
in her train have developed their plots on these
lines.
In the " Manxman " Pete leaves his affianced bride
in charge of Philip, his dearest friend. His trust is
betrayed. On his return from South Africa Pete
marries the faithless one, and discovers when too
late the treachery of which he was the victim ; with
what result ? True to the principle of modern
altruism and necessitarianism, Pete sees that he
should not stand in the way of his wife and her
lover, so he surrenders her to him, goes back himself
to South Africa, and the curtain falls on Philip and
^ "Mill on the Floss," ii. 462, 463.
" THE MANXMAN 403
Kate descending the castle steps of Douglas arm in
arm, transfigured in the glory of the setting sun.
Charles Lamb said of the characters in Congreve's
comedies that though all were vain and worthless,
yet " they never offended his moral sense, because
they never appealed to it at all. They seemed
engaged in their proper element. They broke no
laws, no conscientious restraints. They knew of
none." ^ But our modern novelist goes further. The
heroine of to-day is not presented merely inane and
unprincipled, as a theme for the satirist's pen, but
she appeals to our admiration in her falseness and
shame, and in the depth of her degradation demands
the approval of our moral sense. " The source of a
good woman's fall," says Mr. Caine, is due not
" to the stress of passion, or the fever of instinct,
but because she is the slave of the sweetest,
tenderest, most spiritual and pathetic of all human
fallacies — the fallacy that by giving herself to the
man she loves she attaches herself to him for
ever." 2
On Mr. Hall Caine's principles, Othello should
have handed Desdemona over to Cassio and returned
himself to Barbary. He adopted, however, a difterent
course, for he did not regard her supposed unfaith-
fulness as either " the sweetest or most spiritual of
human fallacies." Hear how he speaks. He could
have borne what affliction Heaven had pleased — all
1 " Elia and Eliana," 185. 1893.
"^ "Manxman," 124. 1894.
404 SHAKESPEARE S ETHICS
kinds of sores and shames on his bare head — to be
steeped in poverty to the very lips, to be
" A fixed figure, for the time of scorn
To point his slow and moving finger at ;
Yet could I bear that too ; well, very well ;
But there, where I have garner'd up my heart.
Where either I must live, or bear no life,
The fountain from the which my current runs.
Or else dries up ; to be discarded thence,
Or keep it as a cistern, for foul toads
To knot and gender in ! " — Othello, iv. 2.
She is still beautiful, still has all her outward
grace, but what was gone in his eyes is her fidelity
and purity. These he loved; these are gone, and
their loss is irreparable.
" 0 thou weed !
Who art so lovely fair, and smell'st so sweet,
That the senses ache at thee, would thou hadst
Ne'er been born ! " — Othello, iii. 2.
This is Shakespeare's constant teaching. Man
loves a woman because she is good, and because she
quickens and evokes all the good in him, for virtue
with Shakespeare is beauty, and sin a deformity.
Shakespeare's heroines thus represent the religious
sentiment, conscience, fidelity, truth. They are to
be wooed and won, not by an appeal to their lower
nature, but by reverence and sacrifice. They are
placed by man's side, as Eve was by Adam in Paradise,
to lead him to higher things. Where disordered
passion is pursued instead of true love, wreck and
I
SHAKESPEARE S HEROINES 405
ruin follow, as with Cleopatra, or, in a lesser degree,
with Juliet. Another characteristic of Shakespeare's
heroines is that they are essentially feminine, and
are loved for that quality. The " new woman,"
when not corrupt, is engaged in a lifelong
endeavour to unsex herself and become as far
as possible a man. In such a metamorphosis
Shakespeare would have seen only a hybrid or
deformity.
" A woman impudent and mannish grown
Is not more loathed than an effeminate man
In time of action." — 2'roilus and Cressida, iii. 3.
Portia indeed has great intellectual gifts, and per-
forms marvellously her lawyer's part, but she evokes
our admiration, not by her power in pleading or her
matchless eloquence, but because she exerted these
gifts and braved all danger for her husband's
sake. She may put on man's attire, but she never
divests herself of her womanly dignity and modesty,
of her pledged affection, and of her high religious
principles. Ophelia, on the other hand, has no
striking mental qualities, yet she wins the affec-
tion of Shakespeare's most intellectual character,
Hamlet, because of her innocence, simplicity,
trustfulness, and the depth of her affection for
him.
" I loved Ophelia ; forty thousand brothers
Could not with all their quantity of love
Make up my sum," — Hamlet, v, i.
4o6 shakespeaee's ethics
And simple though she was, she could appreciate
him. He was all in all to her.
" The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword,
Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
Th' observed of all observers, quite, quite, down !
And I, of ladies, most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows.
Now see that noble, and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh ;
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth.
Blasted with ecstasy. 0 woe is me !
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see."
— Hamlet, iii, i.
Again, it was the gentleness and S3rmpathy of
Desdemona which first captured Othello's heart, as
his valour and renown mastered hers.
" She loved me for the dangers I had passed.
And I could love her that she did pity them."
— Hamlet, i. 3.
And so we might go on page after page. Shake-
speare would have us regard women as God made
them, and he portrays his heroines with those special
feminine traits which alone render them loving and
loved.
Nor is his idea of man less lofty and true. Man's
nature is indeed complex and diverse. If the soul
can reach to heaven the body is but of clay, and
has appetites in common with the beast. Hamlet,
I
MANS RATIONAL NATURE 407
in one of his gloomy moods, puts both sides
before us : —
"What a piece of work is man ! How noble in reason !
how infinite in faculties ! in form and moving how express
and admirable ! in action how like an angel ! in apprehension
how like a god ! the beauty of the world ! the paragon of
animals ! And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust ?
Man delights not me ; no, nor woman neither." — Hamlet,
ii. 2.
On his earthly side man is indeed of himself but a
" poor, bare, forked animal " (" Lear," iii. 4). But
he has that which gives him dominion over all the
lower creatures.
" Men, more divine, the masters of all these.
Lords of the wide world, and wild wat'ry seas.
Indued with intellectual sense and souls.
Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls,
Are masters to their females, and their lords ;
Then let your will attend on their accords."
— Comedy of Errors, ii. i.
By his intellectual soul man is great, and that soul
he holds from God, and for his use of this gift of
reason he is responsible.
' 'What is man.
If his chief good, and market of his time,
Be but to sleep and feed ? A beast, no more.
Sure, He, that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason.
To fust in us unused." — Hamlet, iv. 4.
Shakespeare knows nothing of man's evolution
40 8 Shakespeare's ethics
from a brute, and he is wholly a stranger to the
doctrine of Professor Huxley, that " the cunning and
brutal instincts of the ape or tiger ancestors must
at times break out in any human being." Man can
with God's help keep all God's law, and be ever
chaste, true, loyal, and just. The modest and
chivalrous Macduff thus speaks when forced to
speak the truth about himself: —
" I am yet
Unknown to woman ; never was forsworn ;
Scarcely have coveted what was mine own ;
At no time broke my faith ; would not betray
The devil to his fellow, and delight
No less in truth than life." — Macbeth, iv. 3.
However coarse the poet may be at times in words
or jests, though who can say how much his writings
have been interpolated, no moralist was ever more
severe on vice. Impurity, in his judgment, is allied
to murder, for both sins assail God's creative power.
The one " coins heaven's image in stamps forbid,"
the other " steals from nature man already made "
(" Measure for Measure," ii. 4), and the affinity of
these two sins is again declared by Pericles —
" One sin I know another doth provoke ;
Murder's as near to lust, as flame to smoke."
— Pericles, i. i.
The contrast we have noted between modern
ethical teachers and Shakespeare in the moral law
is found also in their view of nature. God made
the world, and " He saw that it was good," says the
TENNYSON ON NATURE 409
ancient Scripture, and all men of the ancient faith
believed this to be true. It is not so now. Men
look at the same fair nature, the work of the all- wise
and all-good Creator, but they survey it through the
gloom of their own doubt or unbelief, and its fair-
ness is lost. Consider on this point the reflections
of Tennyson, the recognised teacher of higher things
in this age. Nature, he says, is alike prodigal and
improvident. Out of forty-nine seeds cast into the
earth only one fructifies, the rest die barren. She
cares indeed for the species or race, but she is
" careless of the single life," ^ and is absolutely indif-
ferent as to the pain and misery of the many, pro-
vided only the type is preserved. Nay, she cares
not for type neither. " I care for nothing — all shall
go," ^ she is made to say ; as a proof see the fossilised
remains of whole genera and tribes of birds, beasts,
plants, cast as rubbish to the wind. What then
can man think of nature's Lord ! He
" Trusted God was love indeed,
And love's creation's final law,
Tliougli nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieks against his creed." — Ibid.
And what is man himself? In his weakness, igno-
rance, grossness, he fares no better ; he is
" A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tore each other in their slime,
Are mellow music matched with him." — Ibid.
1 "In Memoriam," liv. * Ibid., Iv,
410 SHAKESPEARE S ETHICS
Now compare Friar Laurence's reflections on the
same subject. He surveys the same universe; he
faces the same difficulties — physical pain, growth
and corruption, moral evil and sin, life and death.
His is no Utopian, rose-coloured optimism ; he sees
things as they are. But through the light of faith
in his own soul, he can tell how in these apparent
contradictions " one thing is set against another,"
evil ministers to good, poisons have a healing power,
and death follows life.
" The earth that's Nature's mother is her tomb ;
What is her burying grave, that is her womb ;
And from her womb children of divers kind,
We sucking on her natural bosom find ;
Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some, and yet all different.
0 ! mickle is the powerful grace, that lies
In plants, herbs, stones, and their tnte qualities ;
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live.
But to the earth some special good doth give ;
Nor aught so good, but, strained from that fair use,
Eevolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse :
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied ;
And vice sometime 's by action dignified."
— Borneo and Juliet, ii, 3.
Bishop Wordsworth finds these last lines hard to
explain, and suggests as one solution the fact that
it is a Romanist Friar who speaks, one who would
hold that evil may be done for a good end. But
the Friar is speaking of the physical, not the
moral order. Virtue here signifies what is good,
vile what is vile, in the material world, and the
MODERN PESSIMISM 4 1 I
vilest things become valuable in ministering to a
good purpose. The concluding lines merely repeat
the sentiment already expressed. That this is so,
is clearly shown in the conclusion of the speech,
when the Friar shows that nature finds its counter-
part in man, in whose heart also are two opposing
principles, and who becomes good or evil as he
follows his own corrupt will, or the grace of God.
" Within the infant rind of this weak flower
Poison hath residence, and med'cine power :
For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part ;
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposed kings encamp them still
In man as well as lierhs, grace and rude will ;
And where the worser is predominant
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant"
— Romeo and Juliet, ii, 3.
And now let us inquire as to the cause of the
prevailing widespread pessimism. Why, for in-
stance, should the poetry of to-day be, as Mr. A.
Symonds tells us, the poetry of despair; or the
keynote of the age be heard in such tones as —
" Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought."
Or this —
" Tears from the depths of some divine despair."
And the answer is that with the endeavour to
measure all things by human rule and gauge, and
the rejection of any higher guide, no clue is left
to solve the mysteries of life. Our teachers and
412 SHAKESPEARE S ETHICS
poets spend their time in criticism, introspection,
and analysis, and the result is nil.
" Seek, seeker, in thyself, submit to find
For the stone, bread, and life in the blank mind."
The best they can hope for is thus expressed by
Cloiigh —
" To finger idly some old Gordian knot,
Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave.
And with much toil attain to half believe."
" Victorian poets," says Mr. Symonds, " have lost
the spontaneity and the joyful utterance of the
Elizabethan age." Like lago, they are nothing if
they are not critical ; and the criticism is that of
the philosophy and science of the day. Marvellous
are the discoveries of science, but the ultimate
results of its analysis are immeasurable realms of
space, and endless epochs of time ; and man is
overwhelmed by the immensity and eternity dis-
closed to him. Philosophies innumerable spring up,
but none survive a decade. There is more wealth
now than was ever dreamt of in the past. This is
the golden age, yet face to face with a plutocracy
is a grim, menacing multitude, filled with envy
and discontent, waiting only for the time to seize
what others have. Political experiments — extended
franchise, compulsory education, sanitary improve-
ments, have all been tried. What is the product ?
The fear of a social upheaval unparalleled in
SHAKESPEARE S BELIEF IN GOD 4^3
magnitude and disaster. The distant rumbling of
the earthquake may even now be heard. Such,
almost in Mr. Symonds' words, is his summary of
the world in which we live, and his only apparent
escape from the gathering storm and darkness " is
to retire from the world into an artificial paradise
of art, and there among exotic fragrances and
foreign airs to seek a refuge from the sombre
problems forced upon him by the actualities of
life." ^ Yet again, this as a fact he had tried. He
was both the historian and the advocate of the
heathen Renaissance, of the philosophy of pleasure ;
but he could not escape from the problems of
death and doubtful immortality, " than which none
others rack the heart of man in his impotence and
ignorance more cruelly." ^
To all this poisonous malaria and gloom Shake-
speare supplies an antidote which is light and life.
He does so, not by excluding the actualities of life,
but by keeping us in the presence of the one infinite,
personal eternal God, the first cause and last end of
all things. For God with him is not a mere abstract
principle or an architect outside his own work, or
a world soul confined within the confines of the
universe — his God is Adonai, the " I am who am,"
the King of Kings, the Lord of Hosts. He is all-
seeing ("Richard III.," v. i), has countless eyes to
view men's acts, omniscient (" All's Well," ii. i ), Imows
1 "Essays, Speculative and Suggestive," vol. ii. 237, 238.
2 Ibid., Appendix, 285.
414 SHAKESPEARE S ETHICS
when we are falsely accused (" Winter's Tale," ii. i),
never sleeps ('" Richard III.," iv. 4), reads the hearts
(" Henry VIII.," iii. i ), unravels the thoughts (" Ham-
let," iii. 3), is our Father, cares for the aged, feeds
the ravens, caters for the sparrow (" As You Like It,"
ii. 3), the widow's champion and defender (" Richard
II.," i. 2), works in all His creatures (" Henry VI.,"
ii. i), His sun shines on the court and the cottage
("Winter's Tale," iv. 3), is just, rights the innocent
(" Richard III.," i. 3), the one supreme appeal (" Mac-
beth," iv. 3), guards the night (" Richard II.," iii. 2),
" an incorruptible judge " (Henry VIII.," iii. 2)
" To whose High Will we bound our calm contents."
— Richard IL, v. i.
" To believing souls
Gives light in darkness, comfort in despair."
— Henry VI., ii. i.
Mercy is His attribute. "'Tis mightiest in the
mightiest." God's mercy to us obliges us to be
merciful to our brethren (" Merchant of Venice,"
iv. i). All human duties and obligations are founded
on our duty to Him. Kings and all in authority are
His deputies, stewards, ministers.^ Man and wife
are united in Him.^ And therefore marriage is in-
dissoluble,^ He is the God of armies.
'* 0 Thou, whose captain I account myself,
Look on my forces with a gracious eye !
Put in their hands thy bruising irons of wrath,
^ " Measure for Measure," iii. 2. ^ "Henry V.," v. 2.
» " Twelfth Night," v. i.
NOT GODS SPY 41$
That they may crush down with a heavy fall
The usurping helmets of our adversaries !
Make us the ministers of Thy chastisement,
That we may praise Thee in Thy victory !
To Thee I do commend my watchful soul,
Ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes ;
Sleeping, and waking, 0, defend me still."
— Richard III., v. 3.
To Him alone victory is due.
"0 God, Thy arm was here." — Henry V., iv. 8.
Shakespeare's idea of the Deity is, then, that of an
all-wise, all-powerful, and all-good and loving God.
Doubtless he saw the difficulties that men feel in
the scheme of divine economy. He can make Lear
complain in his bitterness that the gods make us to
destroy us like wanton flies. Hamlet can regard
" this world as a congregation of pestilential vapours "
(" Hamlet," ii. 2). The poet is not " God's spy." He
bows his head to the inscrutable divine decrees with-
out a moment's doubt of their justice.
" The words of Heaven ; — on whom it will, it will,
On whom it will not, so ; yet still 'tis just."
— Measure for Measure, i. 3.
But he does, as we have already said, find good in
evil, and a divine purpose in the pains and sorrows
of life. The sufferings we endure are often the
remedial chastisements of our own sins.
" The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us.'"' — Lear, v. 3.
And the calamities which befall the innocent are
4i6 Shakespeare's ethics
not the cruel effects of a blind destiny, but are in-
flicted by God on His chosen ones to purify their
souls for Him.
"Whom best I love I cross." — Cymbeline, v. 4.
So, too, when the pure die young it is lest malice
should pervert their understanding.
*' You snatch some hence for little faults ; that's love
To have them fall no more ; you some permit
To second ills with ills, each elder worse."
— Cymbeline, v. i.
Now, Shakespeare's knowledge of God is faith in
Him through Christ ; and it is instructive in these
days, when our Lord is spoken of as a mere human
teacher, and His teaching is compared with that of
Mahommed and Buddha, to note the reverence, love,
and devotion with which our Saviour, the grace of
His Kedemption, His Blessed Mother, and all that is
His, are treated by the poet. Thus Clarence to His
murderers —
" I charge you, as you hope to have redemption
By Christ's dear blood shed for our grievous sin,
That you depart, and lay no hands on me."
— Richard III., i. 4.
Battles, and suffering endured for Christ form the
Christian knight, the true Crusader.
" As far as to the sepulchre of Christ, —
Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross
We are impressed and engaged to fight, —
Forthwith a power of English shall we levy ;
A CHRISTIAN KNIGHT 417
Whose arms were moulded in their mothers' wombs
To chase these pagans in those holy fields
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,
Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nailed
For our advantage on the bitter cross,"
— I Henry IV., i. i.
And again —
" Many a time hath banished Norfolk fought
For Jesu Christ, in glorious Christian field.
Streaming the ensign of the Christian Cross,
Against black pagans, Turks, and Saracens ;
And, toiled with works of war, retired himself
To Italy ; and there, at Venice, gave
His body to that pleasant country's earth,
And his pure soul unto his captain Christ,
Under whose colours he had fought so long."
— Richard II., iv. i.
His country is dear to him, most of all, because she
produced a race of these Christian knights ; and he
contrasts England, once Catholic, free, and chivalrous,
with the degraded, enslaved country of his own age.
" This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of Majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise ;
This fortress, built by nature for herself,
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it as the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Feared by their breed, and famous by their birth,
2 D
4l8 SHAKESPEARE'S ETHICS
Renowned for their deeds as far from home
(For Christian service, and true chivalry),
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son.
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out (I die pronouncing it),
Like to a tenement or pelting i&rm."— Richard IL, ii. i.
The poet's faith is seen, last of all, in his death
scenes. He fully realises the horrors of the throes
of dissolution. He knows it as " a carrion monster,
with its fulsome dust " and " vanity brows " and
" sound rottenness " and " detestable bones " ; and he
describes all this almost in the words of Job. He
feels keenly the mystery of the
" Undiscovered country, from whose bourne
No traveller returns." — Hamlet, iii. i.
Yet, with the Patriarch, " after darkness he hopes
for light " again. EIze says that the word immor-
tality only occurs once in Shakespeare, and then in
reference to unending life on earth (" Pericles," iii. 2).
But the equivalent in the adjective form is repeatedly
given. We have seen how Macbeth speaks of his
soul as his " eternal jewel " ; how Isabel names sin
" a death for ever " ; and Hamlet tells us that the
ghost could do nothing with his soul,
" Being a thing immortal as itself " (i. 4).
And so Poins distinguished between FalstafFs sound-
ness of body and the need his " immortal part had
of a physician " (" 2 Henry IV.," ii. 2).
RIPENESS IS ALL 419
The poet's teaching as to a future state is, how-
over, far more clearly learnt from the lessons he
inculcates as to the importance of dying well, than
from the use of any particular term. And his
teaching may be summarised in Edgar's words to
the desponding Gloster :^
*' What, ill thoughts again ? Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither.
Ripeness is all." — Lear, v. 2.
And that ripeness is obtained through the Sacra-
ments of the Church. The acme of the Ghost's
sufferings is reached, not in the fact that he had
been foully murdered, but that the death-blow was
struck when he was " unhousel'd, disappointed, un-
anel'd" (" Hamlet," i. 5). The intensity of Hamlet's
vindictive purpose is seen in that he will not slay his
stepfather when he is at prayer, but when he is
" About some act,
That has no relish of salvation in it ;
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven ;
And that his soul may be as damned and black
As hell, whereto it goes." — Hamlet, iii. 3.
So Hastings says : —
" It is a vile thing to die
When men are unprepared and look not for it."
— Richard III., iii. 2.
The horror of Beaufort's death was in his dying
without one repentant sign. Othello would not slay
Desdemona when she was unprepared. The same
42 O SHAKESPEARE S ETHICS
truth is enforced by the care to provide a priest for
the condemned criminals, Abhorson and Claudio,
before they met their end; and while he calls
those
" Fools of time,
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime."
— Sonnet cxxiv.,
he yet recognises that a death-bed repentance, with
proper dispositions, does justify the soul. The
rule with him is : as a man lives, so shall he die.
The selfish, the brutal, the unfaithful Christian, die
without a sign of rehgion, often by their own hand ;
without a hope, save some natural desire, such as Cleo-
patra's, of meeting Antony in the Elysian fields. The
consolations of religion, the hope that dieth not, the
prayers and the guardianship of angels, are reserved
for those who, at least at the end, have made their
peace with God. How could the Christian philo-
sophy on life and death be better expressed than as
follows on Wolsey's fall and end : —
" His overthrow heaped happiness on him ;
For then, and not till then, he felt himself,
And found the blessedness of being little :
And to add greater honours to his age
Than man could give him, he died fearing God."
— Henry VIII., iv. 2.
Again, how deeply Catholic is the dying speech of
Buckingham : —
" You few that loved me,
And dare be bold to weep for Buckingham,
His noble friends and fellows — whom to leave
A CATHOLIC DEATH-BED 42 I
Is only bitter to him, only dying,
Go with me, like good angels, to my end ;
Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice,
And lift my soul to heaven." — Ibid., ii. i.
Or to what creed belongs the description of the
vision of the dying Catherine, the faithful Catholic
Queen ?
" No ! saw you not, even now, a blessed troop
Invite me to a banquet ; whose bright faces
Cast thousand beams upon me, like the sun ?
They promised me eternal happiness ;
And brought me garlands, Griffith, which I feel
I am not worthy yet to wear, I shall assuredly." — Ibid.
We think, then, Shakespeare's moral teachings in
direct opposition to those of modern growth. He
made it his task to show "virtue her feature, scorn
her image," and his characters, not the plot, are the
aim of his drama. His characters show that the
rule of man's life, and his way to perfection, is no
shifting, vague, subjective standard of his own making,
but the unchangeable law of God. Hence, in his
eyes, right and wrong are always in necessary and
essential antagonism ; and though full of tender com-
passion for human frailty, he exhibits no morbid
sympathy with sin, nor regards its punishment as
other than a retributive act of divine justice. As
Coleridge says, he " has no interesting adulteries or
innocent incests, no virtuous vice. He never renders
that amiable which reason and religion alike teach
42 2 SHAKESPEARE S ETHICS
US to detest, or clothes impurity in the garb of
virtue." In his sonnets and dramas he forbids
"... Fond
Lascivious metres to whose venom sound
The open ear of youth does always listen."
— Richard HI,, ii. i.
His heroes are brave, good, and true. But their
goodness is based, not on Puritan self-complacency,
or, negatively, on the absence of temptation, but on
self-conflict, waged and won for God's sake and
through His grace.
In an age of doubt and despondency, single
sentences of Shakespeare speak like the voice of
conscience. Against unbelief, he warns us that
" reverence is the angel of the world." The philo-
sophy of the day is " excellent foppery." Against
novelties he tells us " to stick to the journal course,"
and he never allows us to be " out of countenance
with one's nativity," or to fear in the hour of dark-
ness if our souls are prepared. " Ripeness is all."
Hence he performs the poet's true function, the
cleansing of the sick soul ; and he does so with in-
comparable charm and power, not only by aid of his
matchless genius, but because his mind is filled with
the eternal forms of truth and beauty, and his ideals
are divine.
INDEX OF NAMES
Alabaster, 99
Alcock, John, Bishop of Ely, 6
Alleyne, 349
Alphonsus of Liguori, St., 380
Anjou, Duke of, 161
Antonio of Portugal, 161
Appletree, Sir John, 80
Arden, family of, 60, 65
Ardeu, Edward, 66, 91-95, 123
Arden, Mr. Edward, 66, 79, 94
Arden, Sir John, 66, 101
Arden, Mary, 65, 66
Arden, Simon, 67
Arden, Thomas, 66
Ariosto, 9
Aristotle, 34, 35
Arnold, Matthew, 30
Arrowsmith, John, 84
Arundell of Wardour, family of,
320, 322
Augustine, St., 5, 19, 210, 218,
221, 223, 237, 269, 368, 401
B
Babington, Anthony, 1 23
Bacon, Lord, 41, 43, 176
Bainton, William, 80
Bale, 45, 119, 120, 339
Ball, John, 184
Bancroft, 339
Barber, Mrs., 81
Bardolph, George, 81, 83
Barlow, F., 79
Barne, 115
Barnes, 345
Barneshurst, Nicholas, 80
Barrett, Dr., 80
Bartlett, Thomas, 82
Bates, 80, 83
Bates, John, 78, 103
Bates, Thomas, 78, 103
Beaton, Cardinal, 123
Beatrice, 23
Beaufort, Cardinal, 123
Beaufort, Margaret, of Rich-
mond, 6
Beaumont, 154
Beccadelli, 21
Bellamy, 361
Bentivoglio, Cardinal, 56
Bere, Abbot, 6
Bernard, St., 357, 368
Birch, 395
Birde, 6
Bishop, William, Dr., 80
Blackfriars Theatre, 373
Blount, Sir 0., loi
Boccacio, 53
Boetius, St., 218, 220, 267
Bohn, 358
Bolt, 78
Bona, Cardinal, 273
Bos well, 150
Bowdler, 48
Bowman, 40
Braun, 144
Braye, Sir Reginald, 6
Brenner, Fried rich, 273
Brethgirdle, 69
Brettergle, William, 95
Brewer, 265
Brooke, 1 16
Brooke, William, 79
Browne, Sir Henry, 66
Bruno, Giordano, 20, 34
Bryce, 289
424
INDEX OF NAMES
Bucknill, 390
Burbage, John, 82
Burbage, Richard, 98
Burke, 182
Burleigh, Lord, 97, 318-320
Burnett, 127
Buswell, John, 80
Caied, 5, 383, 388, 394
Calderon, 36
Calvin, 5, 29
Camden, 159
Campbell, 342
Campion, Edmund, 13, 198, 333,
354
Carlyle, 10
Carter, Rev. T., 9, 47. Chap. II.
passim
Cartwright, 73, 74
Cary, Sir George, 319
Catesby, family of, 65, 66
Catesby, Anne, 66
Catesby, Lady, 66
Catesby, Robert, 78, lOi, 103,
123
Catesby, Sir William, 66
Catherine of Siena, St., 197
Cayley, 351
Cecil, 42, 93, 99, loi, 103, 176
Cellini, Benvenuto, 8
Challoner, 32
Chaucer, 23, 53, 265
Chettle, 102
Cheyney, Bishop of Gloucester, 81
Cinthio, 25
Clapton, Mrs. William, 82
Clarence, George, Duke of, 61
Clifford, Bishop, 271
Clopton, family of, 64
Clopton, Hugh, 60, 64
Clough, 412
Coleridge, S. T., 26, 154
Colet, Dean, 6
Collier, 97, 108
Combe, John, 64
Commander Michael, 84
Cook, Abbot, 39
Cook, George, 77
Cook, John (alias Cawdry), 82
Cook, William (alias Cawdry), 82
Coombe, family of, 64, 93
Cope, Alan, 213
Cornelius, Father, 321, 322, 333
Cotton, Sir Robert, 68
Cotton, Robert, 64, 77
Court, Julian, 81-83
Cranmer, Archbishop, 5, 29
Crescembeni, 308
Creswell, Father, 68
D
Dante, 4, 9, 15, 17, 19, 23, 31, 32,
36, 197, 292, 390, 397
Danvers, Sir John, lOl
Darlington, Father, 296
Darrell, 328 -
Davenant, 149
Davenport, Rev. T., 88
Davies, Rev. John, 109
Davies, Rev. Richard, loi
Davila, 190
Davis, Rev. T., 96
Davison, 133
Dekker, 45, 1 16, 173
Dene, Bishop, 7
Derby, family of, 320
Derby, Edward, Earl of, 321
Devas, 181
Devereux, Robert. See Earl of
Essex
Dibdale, Richard, 78
Digby, 123
Dimmock, Roger, 78
Dionysius the Areopagite, 19
Dios, Roger, 69
Dodd, 163
DoUinger, Dr., 29, 46, 204
Donne, 103, 105, 106
Donne, Henry, 106
Douce, 270, 312
Dowden, 3, 5, 31, 32, 41, 45, 50, 52
Drake, 216
Drayton, Michael, 136
E
Edward L, 60
Edward III., 60, 323
Edward VI., 63
INDEX OF NAMES
425
Elliot, George, 402
Elze, 19, 125, 418
Erasmus, 6
Essex, Lettice, Countess of, 93.
See Countess of Leicester.
Essex, Robert Devereux, Earl of,
99, 100, 307, 319, 322-324
F
Fawkes, Guy, 123
Feis, Jacob, 295
Fisher, John, B., 6, 197
Fitzherbert, 64, 190
Flathe, Dr., 314
Fletcher, 45, 154, 203, 205, 33c
Flower, Sir John, 150
Fluellen, William, 80, 83
Fox, Bishop of Winchester, 6
Foxe, 179, 187, 189
Francis of Valois, 161
Freeman, 189
Fulman, Rev. William, 109
G
Garnet, Father, 363
Gasquet, Dr., 6, 8, 187
Gervinus, 112, 117, 1 2 1, 127, 209,
216, 364, 395
Giffard, Bishop of Worcester, 60
Goodman, 123
Gower, 78
Gowrie, Conspiracy of, 340
Green, Edward, 82
Green, J. R., 184
Green, Rev. T., 88
Green, William, loi
Greene, Robert, 11, 21, 98, 113,
114, 218, 314,339
Gregory XI., 197
Gregory XIII., 357
Gresham, 123
Greville, family of, 64, 93
Greville, Sir Fulke, 77
Greville, John, 64
Griffin, ap Roberts, 81
Grocyn, 6
H
Hackett, 73
Hales, 392
Hall, 204
Hall, the Rev., 94
Hall Caine, 402, 403
Hal lam, 30
Halliwell, 59, 82, 87, 88, 95, 98,
109, no
Harrington, Father, 106
Harrington, Sir John, 258
Harrington, Richard, 80
Harsnett, Bishop, 281, 328
Hart, Thomas, 88
Hartley, 328
Hatton, Sir Christopher, 1 14, 176
Hay ward, Dr., 99, 102, 121, 156
Hazlitt, 26, 342
Heath, Archbishop of York, 95
Heine, 15
Henri II., 161
Henry of Navarre, 161
Hense, 19, 20
Hentznei", 42
Hergenrother, 123, 148
Hey croft, Henry, 70, 71
Heywood, Elias, 106
Heywood, Jasper, 106
Hollinshed, 118, 198, 204, 208,
366, 388
Holloway, Prior, 6
Horner, 4, 31
Howard, family of, 43
Howard, 59
Howard, Lord William, 107
Huddesford, family of, 79
Hunsdon, 357
Hunter, 286, 320
Huxley, 408
I
Infanta of Spain, 133
Ireland, 90
Ireland, Samuel Henry, 90
James of Compostella, St., 280
James I., 149, 161, 322, 339,
349. 352, 354, 356, 368
426
INDEX OF NAMES
James, Thomas, 80
Jeffreys, Mrs., 78, 8 1
Jennings, John, 84
John XXIL, 212
John of Austria, Don, l6l
Johnson, Dr, 150
Jones, Richard, 78
Jonson, Ben, 22, 45, 49, 103-105.
251, 270, 349, 350, 367, 373,
374. 376
Jordan, 87-90
K
Kant, 399, 401
Kanns, 123
Keble, 30, 32, 33
King, Bishop, 6
Knight, 26, 87, 264, 265
Koleheth, 295
Kreyzig, 26, 119, 128, 209, 216
Lamb, Charles, 403
Lambarde, loi
Lang, Andrew, 123
Langton, Stephen, 117
Large, Sir Edward, 63
Lee, Sidney, 59, 87, 218, 244,
270
Leicester, Dudley, Earl of, 74,
93, 94, 176, 319, 323
Leicester, Lettice, Countess of,
319,324. (See Countess of Essex
Lettice. See above
I^ily. "3, 339
Linacre, 6
Lingard, 160
Lists of disaffected Nobles and
Gentry, 162, 163
Littleton, Sir Thomas, 61
Lodge, Thomas, 113
Louis, Dauphin of France, 133
Lucy, family of, 64, 93
Lucy, Sir Thomas, 73, 77, 81, 95,
138
Lucy, William, 64
Luther, 5, 9, 13, 33, 47, 368, 378
M
Macaulay, 56, 57, 112
Malone, 88-90
Manchester, Duke of, 324
Manzoni, 265
Margaret, Lady, 61
Marlowe, Christopher, 11, 22, 113-
115, 156, 203, 205, 218, 339,
345
Marsden, 73
Marston, 114, 373
Martene, 272
Maskell, 87, 381
Massey, G., 2i6
May, Philip, 357
Medina Sidonia, 133
Melanchthon, 122
Middlemore, family of, 65, 78, 80
Middlemore, Robert, 67
Milton, 30-32, 181, 392
Montague, family of, 66, 320
Lord, 91, 107
Montaigne, 19, 20, 295
Monteagle, Earl of, 10 1
Moore, Philip, 80
More, 320, 321, 363
More, Thomas, B., 6, 20, 54, 106,
204, 329, 330, 333, 371
Morley, H., 201. 277, 341
Morris, Father, 328, 329
Moaeley, Thomas, 88-90
Mountfort, 78
Munday, Anthony, 136, 203,205
N
Nash, 113, 339
Neale, 74
Neri, Philip, St., 393
Nevile, family of, 43
Newman, Cardinal, 32, 33, 394
Norfolk Register, 187
Norton, 339
Norwich Lollards, 188
Nottingham, Earl of, 351
o
Oldcastle, Sir John, 135-138
Ovid, 35
INDEX OF NAMES
427
Page, William, 79, 83
Parma, Duke of, 133
Parsons, Father, 68, 69, 176, 193,
333. 351. 357, 368
Paul v., 368
Paulet, 42
Paulett, Sir Amyas, 133
Payton, 88-90
Peckham, Sir George, 328, 333
Peele, George, 1 14
Percy, family of, 43
Perrot, Robert, 65
Petrarch, 9, 197, 220
Petre, Dr., 91
Philip II., 133, 161, 339, 357
Phillipps, Halliwell. See Halli-
well
Pius v., St., 68. 272
Pius IX., 191
Plato, 34, 218, 259
Plautus, 255
Plumptre, Dr., 295
Plymley, Peter, 351
Porter, family of, 93
Poundes, 333
Prynne, 109
Pynson, 312
Pythagoras, 3:], 35
R
Raich, 128, 134
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 41, 351
Ranke, 367
Redman, Bishop of Ely. 6, 7
Reynolds, Thomas, 83
Rheims, Seminary, 278
Richard II., 80
Rutland, Earl of, loi
S
St. Cross, Hospital of, 195
Salmon, Patrick, 321
Sanders, 69, 148, 154
Savage, 70
Scory, Bishop, 258
Scott, Mumford, 78
Scott, Sir Walter, 48
Scroop, Sir C, 340
Selden, 347, 365
Sellyng, 5
Shakespeare, Christopher, 82
Shakespeare, John, Chap. II.
passim
Sheffield, Lady, 93
Sidney, Sir Philip, 22, 23, 218
Silkstride, Prior, 6
Skevirigton, Bishop, 7
Skinner, William Colyn, 188
Smith, William, Bishop of Lin-
coln, 6
Somerville, 92-94, 123
Somerville, Mrs., 94
Southampton, family of, 320
Southampton, Henry Wriothesley,
Earl of, 66, 97, loi, 216, 242-
244. 323
Southampton, Mary Browne,
Countess of, 66, 97
Southwell, Robert, B., 270, 361,
362
Spedding, 201, 203
Spenser, 8, 9, 11, 22, 23, 45, 218,
220, 222, 338
Stamford, Henrj', 106
Stapleton, 190
Starchie, 328
Stourton, family of, 320, 322
Stourton, Lord, 320-322
Stuart, Mary, 123, 133, 161
Stubbs, Bishop, 208
Sude, William, 60
Surrey, Lord, 10, 22, 218, 220
Sutton, Sir Richard, 6
Swift, Dean, 150
Symonds, Addington, 411-413
T
Taine, 31
Taylor, Jeremy, 360
Templars, Order of, 212
Tennyson, Lord, 409
Thacker, William, 94
Theobald, Count, 358
Thomas of Aquinas, St., 5, 19,
218, 246
Thornbuiy, 107
Throckmorton, family of, 65, 66
428
INDEX OF NAMES
Throckmorton, Francis, 123
Throckmorton, Sir George, 66
Throckmorton, Job, 113
Throckmorton, Sir John, 67
Throckmorton, Sir Robert, 66
Thuinmel, 205
Tich borne, 123
Towers, 339
Trench, Archbishop, 30
Tyler, 335
Ulrici, 115
U
V
Valla, Lorenzo, 21
Vaux, Lord, 328
Vehse, 3
Vienne, Council of, 212
Virgil, 4
w
Walton, 339
Warburtoii, 286
Warham, Archbishop, 6
Warwick, Earl of, 61
Watson, 134, 163
Webster, 22
Welsh, Joan, 81
Wentworth, Sir Roger, 329
West, Bishop, 6
Westmoreland, Earl of, 159
Weston, William, Father, 328, 333
Whateley, Sir Robert, 80
Wheeler, John, 65, 72, 80, 82,
lOI
Wheeler, Mrs., 81
Wheeler, Thomas, I02
Whetstone, 25
VVhitgift, Archbishop, 339
Wilkes, 150, 179
WilloHgliby, Mrs., 80
Wilson, 159
Wilson, R., 136
Winter, Thomas, 103
Winwood, 340
Wise, John, 84
Wishart, 123
Wolsey, Cardinal, 5, 7
Wordsworth, Bishop of St. An-
drews, 46, 48, 396, 410
Wyatt, 9
Wycliffe, 183, 184
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