the drama always been, and such it was in the Christian world. But upon
the appearance of Protestantism in its broader sense, _i.e._, the
appearance of a new understanding of Christianity as of a teaching of
life, the dramatic art did not find a form corresponding to the new
understanding of Christianity, and the men of the Renaissance were
carried away by the imitation of classical art. This was most natural,
but the tendency was bound to pass, and art had to discover, as indeed
it is now beginning to do, its new form corresponding to the change in
the understanding of Christianity.

But the discovery of this new form was arrested by the teaching arising
among German writers at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the
nineteenth centuries--as to so-called objective art, _i.e._, art
indifferent to good or evil--and therein the exaggerated praise of
Shakespeare's dramas, which partly corresponded to the esthetic teaching
of the Germans, and partly served as material for it. If there had not
been exaggerated praise of Shakespeare's dramas, presenting them as the
most perfect models, the men of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
would have had to understand that the drama, to have a right to exist
and to be a serious thing, must serve, as it always has served and can
not but do otherwise, the development of the religious consciousness.
And having understood this, they would have searched for a new form of
drama corresponding to their religious understanding.

But when it was decided that the height of perfection was Shakespeare's
drama, and that we ought to write as he did, not only without any
religious, but even without any moral, significance, then all writers of
dramas in imitation of him began to compose such empty pieces as are
those of Goethe, Schiller, Hugo, and, in Russia, of Pushkin, or the
chronicles of Ostrovski, Alexis Tolstoy, and an innumerable number of
other more or less celebrated dramatic productions which fill all the
theaters, and can be prepared wholesale by any one who happens to have
the idea or desire to write a play. It is only thanks to such a low,
trivial understanding of the significance of the drama that there
appears among us that infinite quantity of dramatic works describing
men's actions, positions, characters, and frames of mind, not only void
of any spiritual substance, but often of any human sense.

Let not the reader think that I exclude from this estimate of
contemporary drama the theatrical pieces I have myself incidentally
written. I recognize them, as well as all the rest, as not having that
religious character which must form the foundation of the drama of the
future.

The drama, then, the most important branch of art, has, in our time,
become the trivial and immoral amusement of a trivial and immoral crowd.
The worst of it is, moreover, that to dramatic art, fallen as low as it
is possible to fall, is still attributed an elevated significance no
longer appropriate to it. Dramatists, actors, theatrical managers, and
the press--this last publishing in the most serious tone reports of
theaters and operas--and the rest, are all perfectly certain that they
are doing something very worthy and important.

The drama in our time is a great man fallen, who has reached the last
degree of his degradation, and at the same time continues to pride
himself on his past of which nothing now remains. The public of our time
is like those who mercilessly amuse themselves over this man once so
great and now in the lowest stage of his fall.

Such is one of the mischievous effects of the epidemic suggestion about
the greatness of Shakespeare. Another deplorable result of this worship
is the presentation to men of a false model for imitation. If people
wrote of Shakespeare that for his time he was a good writer, that he had
a fairly good turn for verse, was an intelligent actor and good stage
manager--even were this appreciation incorrect and somewhat
exaggerated--if only it were moderately true, people of the rising
generation might remain free from Shakespeare's influence. But when
every young man entering into life in our time has presented to him, as
the model of moral perfection, not the religious and moral teachers of
mankind, but first of all Shakespeare, concerning whom it has been
decided and is handed down by learned men from generation to generation,
as an incontestable truth, that he was the greatest poet, the greatest
teacher of life, the young man can not remain free from this pernicious
influence. When he is reading or listening to Shakespeare the question
for him is no longer whether Shakespeare be good or bad, but only: In
what consists that extraordinary beauty, both esthetic and ethical, of
which he has been assured by learned men whom he respects, and which he
himself neither sees nor feels? And constraining himself, and distorting
his esthetic and ethical feeling, he tries to conform to the ruling
opinion. He no longer believes in himself, but in what is said by the
learned people whom he respects. I have experienced all this. Then
reading critical examinations of the dramas and extracts from books with
explanatory comments, he begins to imagine that he feels something of
the nature of an artistic impression. The longer this continues, the
more does his esthetical and ethical feeling become distorted. He ceases
to distinguish directly and clearly what is artistic from an artificial
imitation of art. But, above all, having assimilated the immoral view of
life which penetrates all Shakespeare's writings, he loses the capacity
of distinguishing good from evil. And the error of extolling an
insignificant, inartistic writer--not only not moral, but directly
immoral--executes its destructive work.

This is why I think that the sooner people free themselves from the
false glorification of Shakespeare, the better it will be.

First, having freed themselves from this deceit, men will come to
understand that the drama which has no religious element at its
foundation is not only not an important and good thing, as it is now
supposed to be, but the most trivial and despicable of things. Having
understood this, they will have to search for, and work out, a new form
of modern drama, a drama which will serve as the development and
confirmation of the highest stage of religious consciousness in men.

Secondly, having freed themselves from this hypnotic state, men will
understand that the trivial and immoral works of Shakespeare and his
imitators, aiming merely at the recreation and amusement of the
spectators, can not possibly represent the teaching of life, and that,
while there is no true religious drama, the teaching of life should be
sought for in other sources.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This essay owes its origin to Leo Tolstoy's desire to contribute a
preface to the article he here mentions by Ernest Crosby, which latter
follows in this volume.--(_Trans._)

[2] "Shakespeare and His Writings," by George Brandes.

[3] A Russian poet, remarkable for the delicacy of his works.

PART II

APPENDIX

APPENDIX CONTENTS

 I. SHAKESPEARE'S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE
    WORKING CLASSES, BY ERNEST CROSBY,             127

II. LETTER FROM MR. G. BERNARD SHAW,               166

SHAKESPEARE'S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE WORKING CLASSES

BY ERNEST CROSBY

"Shakespeare was of us," cries Browning, in his "Lost Leader," while
lamenting the defection of Wordsworth from the ranks of progress and
liberalism--"Milton was for us, Burns, Shelley were with us--they watch
from their graves!" There can, indeed, be no question of the fidelity to
democracy of Milton, the republican pamphleteer, nor of Burns, the proud
plowman, who proclaimed the fact that "a man's a man for a' that," nor
of Shelley, the awakened aristocrat, who sang to such as Burns

    "Men of England, wherefore plow
     For the lords who lay ye low?"

But Shakespeare?--Shakespeare?--where is there a line in Shakespeare to
entitle him to a place in this brotherhood? Is there anything in his
plays that is in the least inconsistent with all that is reactionary?

A glance at Shakespeare's lists of _dramatis personæ_ is sufficient to
show that he was unable to conceive of any situation rising to the
dignity of tragedy in other than royal and ducal circles. It may be said
in explanation of this partiality for high rank that he was only
following the custom of the dramatists of his time, but this is a poor
plea for a man of great genius, whose business it is precisely to lead
and not to follow. Nor is the explanation altogether accurate. In his
play, the "Pinner of Wakefield," first printed in 1599, Robert Greene
makes a hero, and a very stalwart one, of a mere pound-keeper, who
proudly refuses knighthood at the hands of the king. There were other
and earlier plays in vogue in Shakespeare's day treating of the triumphs
of men of the people, one, for instance, which commemorated the rise of
Sir Thomas Gresham, the merchant's son, and another, entitled "The
History of Richard Whittington, of his Low Birth, his Great Fortune";
but he carefully avoided such material in seeking plots for his dramas.
Cardinal Wolsey, the butcher's son, is indeed the hero of "Henry VIII.,"
but his humble origin is only mentioned incidentally as something to be
ashamed of. What greater opportunity for idealizing the common people
ever presented itself to a dramatist than to Shakespeare when he
undertook to draw the character of Joan of Arc in the second part of
"Henry VI."? He knew how to create noble women--that is one of his
special glories--but he not only refuses to see anything noble in the
peasant girl who led France to victory, but he deliberately insults her
memory with the coarsest and most cruel calumnies. Surely the lapse of
more than a century and a half might have enabled a man of honor, if not
of genius, to do justice to an enemy of the weaker sex, and if Joan had
been a member of the French royal family we may be sure that she would
have received better treatment.

The question of the aristocratic tendency of the drama was an active one
in Shakespeare's time. There was a good deal of democratic feeling in
the burghers of London-town, and they resented the courtly prejudices of
their playwrights and their habit of holding up plain citizens to
ridicule upon the stage, whenever they deigned to present them at all.
The Prolog in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Knight of the Burning Pestle"
gives sufficient evidence of this. The authors adopted the device of
having a Citizen leap upon the stage and interrupt the Speaker of the
Prolog by shouting

    "Hold your peace, goodman boy!"

    Speaker of Prolog: "What do you mean, sir?"

    Citizen: "That you have no good meaning; this seven
     year there hath been plays at this house. I have observed
     it, you have still girds at citizens."

The Citizen goes on to inform the Speaker of the Prolog that he is a
grocer, and to demand that he "present something notably in honor of the
commons of the city." For a hero he will have "a grocer, and he shall do
admirable things." But this proved to be a joke over too serious a
matter, for at the first representation of the play in 1611 it was cried
down by the citizens and apprentices, who did not appreciate its satire
upon them, and it was not revived for many years thereafter. It will not
answer, therefore, to say that the idea of celebrating the middle and
lower classes never occurred to Shakespeare, for it was a subject of
discussion among his contemporaries.

It is hardly possible to construct a play with no characters but
monarchs and their suites, and at the same time preserve the
verisimilitudes of life. Shakespeare was obliged to make some use of
servants, citizens, and populace. How has he portrayed them? In one play
alone has he given up the whole stage to them, and it is said that the
"Merry Wives of Windsor" was only written at the request of Queen
Elizabeth, who wished to see Sir John Falstaff in love. It is from
beginning to end one prolonged "gird at citizens," and we can hardly
wonder that they felt a grievance against the dramatic profession. In
the other plays of Shakespeare the humbler classes appear for the main
part only occasionally and incidentally. His opinion of them is
indicated more or less picturesquely by the names which he selects for
them. There are, for example, Bottom, the weaver; Flute, the
bellows-maker; Snout and Sly, tinkers; Quince, the carpenter; Snug, the
joiner; Starveling, the tailor; Smooth, the silkman; Shallow and
Silence, country justices; Elbow and Hull, constables; Dogberry and
Verges, Fang and Snare, sheriffs' officers; Mouldy, Shadow, Wart, and
Bull-calf, recruits; Feebee, at once a recruit and a woman's tailor,
Pilch and Patch-Breech, fishermen (though these last two appellations
may be mere nicknames); Potpan, Peter Thump, Simple, Gobbo, and Susan
Grindstone, servants; Speed, "a clownish servant"; Slender, Pistol, Nym,
Sneak, Doll Tear-sheet, Jane Smile, Costard, Oatcake, Seacoal, and
various anonymous "clowns" and "fools." Shakespeare rarely gives names
of this character to any but the lowly in life, altho perhaps we should
cite as exceptions Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek in "Twelfth
Night"; the vicar, Sir Oliver Mar-Text, in "As You Like It"; Moth, the
page, in "Love's Labor Lost," and Froth, "a foolish gentleman," in
"Measure for Measure," but none of these personages quite deserves to
rank as an aristocrat. Such a system of nomenclature as we have exposed
is enough of itself to fasten the stigma of absurdity upon the
characters subjected to it, and their occupations. Most of the trades
are held up for ridicule in "Midsummer Night's Dream"; Holofernes, the
schoolmaster, is made ridiculous in "Love's Labor Lost," and we are told
of the middle-class Nym, Pistol, and Bardolph that "three such antics do
not amount to a man" (Henry V., Act 3, Sc. 2). But it is not necessary
to rehearse the various familiar scenes in which these fantastically
named individuals raise a laugh at their own expense.

The language employed by nobility and royalty in addressing those of
inferior station in Shakespeare's plays may be taken, perhaps, rather as
an indication of the manners of the times than as an expression of his
own feeling, but even so it must have been a little galling to the
poorer of his auditors. "Whoreson dog," "whoreson peasant," "slave,"
"you cur," "rogue," "rascal," "dunghill," "crack-hemp," and "notorious
villain"--these are a few of the epithets with which the plays abound.
The Duke of York accosts Thomas Horner, an armorer, as "base dunghill
villain and mechanical" (Henry VI., Part 2, Act 2, Sc. 3); Gloster
speaks of the warders of the Tower as "dunghill grooms" (Ib., Part 1,
Act 1, Sc. 3), and Hamlet of the grave-digger as an "ass" and "rude
knave." Valentine tells his servant, Speed, that he is born to be hanged
(Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 1, Sc. 1), and Gonzalo pays a like
compliment to the boatswain who is doing his best to save the ship in
the "Tempest" (Act 1, Sc. 1). This boatswain is not sufficiently
impressed by the grandeur of his noble cargo, and for his pains is
called a "brawling, blasphemous, uncharitable dog," a "cur," a
"whoreson, insolent noise-maker," and a "wide-chapped rascal." Richard
III.'s Queen says to a gardener, who is guilty of nothing but giving a
true report of her lord's deposition and who shows himself a
kind-hearted fellow, "Thou little better thing than earth," "thou
wretch"! Henry VIII. talks of a "lousy footboy," and the Duke of
Suffolk, when he is about to be killed by his pirate captor at Dover,
calls him "obscure and lowly swain," "jaded groom," and "base slave,"
dubs his crew "paltry, servile, abject drudges," and declares that his
own head would

         "sooner dance upon bloody pole
    Than stand uncovered to a vulgar groom."
                (Henry VI., Part 2, Act 4, Sc. 1.)

Petruchio "wrings Grumio by the ear," and Katherine beats the same
unlucky servant. His master indulges in such terms as "foolish knave,"
"peasant swain," and "whoreson malthorse drudge" in addressing him;
cries out to his servants, "off with my boots, you rogues, you
villains!" and strikes them. He pays his compliments to a tailor in the
following lines:

    "O monstrous arrogance! Thou liest, thou thread, thou thimble,
     Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail,
     Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter cricket thou;
     Braved in my own house by a skein of thread!
     Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant!"
                (Taming of the Shrew, Act 4, Sc. 3.)

Joan of Arc speaks of her "contemptible estate" as a shepherd's
daughter, and afterward, denying her father, calls him "Decrepit miser!
base, ignoble wretch!" (Henry VI., Part 1, Act 1, Sc. 2, and Act 5, Sc.
4.) It is hard to believe that Shakespeare would have so frequently
allowed his characters to express their contempt for members of the
lower orders of society if he had not had some sympathy with their
opinions.

Shakespeare usually employs the common people whom he brings upon the
stage merely to raise a laugh (as, for instance, the flea-bitten
carriers in the inn-yard at Rochester, in Henry IV., Part 1, Act 2, Sc.
1), but occasionally they are scamps as well as fools. They amuse us
when they become hopelessly entangled in their sentences (_vide_ Romeo
and Juliet, Act 1, Sc. 2), or when Juliet's nurse blunderingly makes
her think that Romeo is slain instead of Tybalt; but when this same
lady, after taking Romeo's money, espouses the cause of the County
Paris--or when on the eve of Agincourt we are introduced to a group of
cowardly English soldiers--or when Coriolanus points out the poltroonery
of the Roman troops, and says that all would have been lost "but for our
gentlemen," we must feel detestation for them. Juliet's nurse is not the
only disloyal servant. Shylock's servant, Launcelot Gobbo, helps Jessica
to deceive her father, and Margaret, the Lady Hero's gentlewoman, brings
about the disgrace of her mistress by fraud. Olivia's waiting-woman in
"Twelfth Night" is honest enough, but she is none too modest in her
language, but in this respect Dame Quickly in "Henry IV." can easily
rival her. Peter Thump, when forced to a judicial combat with his
master, displays his cowardice, altho in the end he is successful (Henry
VI., Act 2, Part 2, Sc. 3), and Stephano, a drunken butler, adorns the
stage in the "Tempest." We can not blame Shakespeare for making use of
cutthroats and villains in developing his plots, but we might have been
spared the jokes which the jailors of Posthumus perpetrate when they
come to lead him to the scaffold, and the ludicrous English of the clown
who supplies Cleopatra with an asp. The apothecary who is in such
wretched plight that he sells poison to Romeo in spite of a Draconian
law, gives us another unflattering picture of a tradesman; and when
Falstaff declares, "I would I were a weaver; I could sing psalms or
anything," we have a premature reflection on the Puritan, middle-class
conscience and religion. In "As You Like It," Shakespeare came near
drawing a pastoral sketch of shepherds and shepherdesses on conventional
lines. If he failed to do so, it was as much from lack of respect for
the keeping of sheep as for the unrealities of pastoral poetry. Rosalind
does not scruple to call the fair Phebe "foul," and, as for her hands,
she says:

    "I saw her hand; she has a leathern hand,
     A freestone colored hand; I verily did think
     That her old gloves were on, but 'twas her hands;
     She has a housewife's hand."

No one with a high respect for housewifery could have written that line.
When in the same play Jaques sees the pair of rural lovers, Touchstone
and Audrey, approaching, he cries: "There is, sure, another flood, and
these couples are coming to the ark! Here come a pair of very strange
beasts, which in all tongues are called fools" (Act 5, Sc. 4). The
clown, Touchstone, speaks of kissing the cow's dugs which his former
sweetheart had milked, and then marries Audrey in a tempest of
buffoonery. Howbeit, Touchstone remains one of the few rustic characters
of Shakespeare who win our affections, and at the same time he is witty
enough to deserve the title which Jaques bestows upon him of a "rare
fellow."

Occasionally Shakespeare makes fun of persons who are somewhat above the
lower classes in rank. I have mentioned those on whom he bestows
comical names. He indulges in humor also at the expense of the two
Scottish captains, Jamy and Macmorris, and the honest Welsh captain,
Fluellen (Henry V., Act 3, Sc. 2 _et passim_), and shall we forget the
inimitable Falstaff? But, while making every allowance for these
diversions into somewhat nobler quarters (the former of which are
explained by national prejudices), do they form serious exceptions to
the rule, and can Falstaff be taken, for instance, as a representative
of the real aristocracy? As Queen and courtiers watched his antics on
the stage, we may be sure that it never entered their heads that the
"girds" were directed at them or their kind.

The appearance on Shakespeare's stage of a man of humble birth who is
virtuous without being ridiculous is so rare an event that it is worth
while to enumerate the instances. Now and then a servant or other
obscure character is made use of as a mere lay figure of which nothing
good or evil can be predicated, but usually they are made more or less
absurd. Only at long intervals do we see persons of this class at once
serious and upright. As might have been expected, it is more often the
servant than any other member of the lower classes to whom Shakespeare
attributes good qualities, for the servant is a sort of attachment to
the gentleman and shines with the reflection of his virtues. The noblest
quality which Shakespeare can conceive of in a servant is loyalty, and
in "Richard II." (Act 5, Sc. 3) he gives us a good example in the
character of a groom who remains faithful to the king even when the
latter is cast into prison. In "Cymbeline" we are treated to loyalty _ad
nauseam_. The king orders Pisanio, a trusty servant, to be tortured
without cause, and his reply is,

    "Sir, my life is yours.
     I humbly set it at your will."
                (Act 4, Sc. 3.)

In "King Lear" a good servant protests against the cruelty of Regan and
Cornwall toward Gloucester, and is killed for his courage. "Give me my
sword," cries Regan. "A peasant stand up thus!" (Act 3, Sc. 7). And
other servants also show sympathy for the unfortunate earl. We all
remember the fool who, almost alone, was true to Lear, but, then, of
course, he was a fool. In "Timon of Athens" we have an unusual array of
good servants, but it is doubtful if Shakespeare wrote the play, and
these characters make his authorship more doubtful. Flaminius, Timon's
servant, rejects a bribe with scorn (Act 3, Sc. 1). Another of his
servants expresses his contempt for his master's false friends (Act 3,
Sc. 3), and when Timon finally loses his fortune and his friends forsake
him, his servants stand by him. "Yet do our hearts wear Timon's livery"
(Act 4, Sc. 2). Adam, the good old servant in "As You Like It," who
follows his young master Orlando into exile, is, like Lear's fool, a
noteworthy example of the loyal servitor.

    "Master, go on, and I will follow thee
     To the last gasp with truth and loyalty."
                (Act 2, Sc. 3.)

But Shakespeare takes care to point out that such fidelity in servants
is most uncommon and a relic of the good old times--

    "O good old man, bow well in thee appears
     The constant service of the antique world,
     When service sweat for duty, nor for meed!
     Thou art not for the fashion of these times,
     When none will sweat but for promotion."

Outside the ranks of domestic servants we find a few cases of honorable
poverty in Shakespeare. In the play just quoted, Corin, the old
shepherd, says:

     "Sir, I am a true laborer; I earn that I eat, get that I
     wear; owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness; glad of
     other men's good, content with my harm; and the greatest of
     my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck."
                (As You Like It, Act 3, Sc. 2.)

in short, an ideal proletarian from the point of view of the aristocrat.

The "Winter's Tale" can boast of another good shepherd (Act 3, Sc. 3),
but he savors a little of burlesque. "Macbeth" has several humble
worthies. There is a good old man in the second act (Sc. 2), and a good
messenger in the fourth (Sc. 2). King Duncan praises highly the sergeant
who brings the news of Macbeth's victory, and uses language to him such
as Shakespeare's yeomen are not accustomed to hear (Act 1, Sc. 2). And
in "Antony and Cleopatra" we make the acquaintance of several exemplary
common soldiers. Shakespeare puts flattering words into the mouth of
Henry V. when he addresses the troops before Agincourt:

    "For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
     Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile
     This day shall gentle his condition."
                (Act 4, Sc. 4.)

And at Harfleur he is even more complaisant:

    "And you, good yeomen,
     Whose limbs were made in England, shew us here
     The metal of your pasture; let us swear
     That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not,
     For there is none of you so mean and base
     That hath not noble luster in your eyes." (Act 3, Sc. 1.)

The rank and file always fare well before a battle.

    "Oh, it's 'Tommy this' and 'Tommy that' an' 'Tommy, go away';
     But it's 'Thank you, Mr. Atkins,' when the band begins to play."

I should like to add some instances from Shakespeare's works of serious
and estimable behavior on the part of individuals representing the lower
classes, or of considerate treatment of them on the part of their
"betters," but I have been unable to find any, and the meager list must
end here.

But to return to Tommy Atkins. He is no longer Mr. Atkins after the
battle. Montjoy, the French herald, comes to the English king under a
flag of truce and asks that they be permitted to bury their dead and

    "Sort our nobles from our common men;
     For many of our princes (wo the while!)
     Lie drowned and soaked in mercenary blood;
     So do our vulgar drench their peasant limbs
     In blood of princes." (Henry V., Act 4, Sc. 7.)

With equal courtesy Richard III., on Bosworth field, speaks of his
opponents to the gentlemen around him:

    "Remember what you are to cope withal--
     A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,
     A scum of Bretagne and base lackey peasants."
                (Act 5, Sc. 3.)

But Shakespeare does not limit such epithets to armies. Having, as we
have seen, a poor opinion of the lower classes, taken man by man, he
thinks, if anything, still worse of them taken _en masse_, and at his
hands a crowd of plain workingmen fares worst of all. "Hempen
home-spuns," Puck calls them, and again

    "A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,
     That work for bread upon Athenian stalls."

Bottom, their leader, is, according to Oberon, a "hateful fool," and
according to Puck, the "shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort"
(Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 3, Scs. 1 and 2, Act 4, Sc. 1). Bottom's
advice to his players contains a small galaxy of compliments:

     "In any case let Thisby have clean linen, and let not him
     that plays the lion pare his nails, for they shall hang out
     for the lion's claws. And, most dear actors, eat no onion or
     garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath, and I do not doubt
     to hear them say, it is a sweet comedy."
                (Ib., Act 4, Sc. 2.)

The matter of the breath of the poor weighs upon Shakespeare and his
characters. Cleopatra shudders at the thought that

         "mechanic slaves,
    With greasy aprons, rules and hammers, shall
    Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths
    Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded,
    And forced to drink their vapor."
                (Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, Sc. 2.)

Coriolanus has his sense of smell especially developed. He talks of the
"stinking breaths" of the people (Act 2, Sc. 1), and in another place
says:

    "You common cry of curs, whose breath I hate
     As reek of rotten fens, whose love I prize
     As the dead carcasses of unburied men
     That do corrupt the air, I banish you,"

and he goes on to taunt them with cowardice (Act 3, Sc. 3). They are the
"mutable, rank-scented many" (Act 3, Sc. 1). His friend Menenius is
equally complimentary to his fellow citizens. "You are they," says he,

    "That make the air unwholesome, when you cast
     Your stinking, greasy caps, in hooting at
     Coriolanus's exile."
                (Act 4, Sc. 7.)

And he laughs at the "apron-men" of Cominius and their "breath of
garlic-eaters" (Act 4, Sc. 7). When Coriolanus is asked to address the
people, he replies by saying: "Bid them wash their faces, and keep their
teeth clean" (Act 2, Sc. 3). According to Shakespeare, the Roman
populace had made no advance in cleanliness in the centuries between
Coriolanus and Cæsar. Casca gives a vivid picture of the offer of the
crown to Julius, and his rejection of it: "And still as he refused it
the rabblement shouted, and clapped their chapped hands, and threw up
their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath,
because Cæsar refused the crown, that it had almost choked Cæsar, for he
swooned and fell down at it. And for mine own part I durst not laugh,
for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air." And he calls
them the "tag-rag people" (Julius Cæsar, Act 1, Sc. 2). The play of
"Coriolanus" is a mine of insults to the people and it becomes tiresome
to quote them. The hero calls them the "beast with many heads" (Act 4,
Sc. 3), and again he says to the crowd:

    "What's the matter, you dissentious rogues,
     That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion
     Make yourself scabs?

    First Citizen. We have ever your good word.

    Coriolanus. He that will give good words to ye will flatter
     Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs,
     That like not peace nor war? The one affrights you,
     The other makes you proud. He that trusts to you,
     Where he would find you lions, finds you hares;
     Where foxes, geese; you are no surer, no,
     Than is the coal of fire upon the ice,
     Or hailstone in the sun. Your virtue is
     To make him worthy whose offense subdues him,
     And curse that justice did it. Who deserves greatness
     Deserves your hate; and your affections are
     A sick man's appetite, who desires most that
     Which would increase his evil. He that depends
     Upon your favors, swims with fins of lead,
     And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye?
     With every minute you do change a mind,
     And call him noble that was now your hate,
     Him vile that was your garland."
                (Act 1, Sc. 1.)

His mother, Volumnia, is of like mind. She calls the people "our general
louts" (Act 3, Sc. 2). She says to Junius Brutus, the tribune of the
people:

    "'Twas you incensed the rabble,
     Cats, that can judge as fitly of his worth
     As I can of those mysteries which Heaven
     Will not leave Earth to know."
                (Act 4, Sc. 2).

In the same play Cominius talks of the "dull tribunes" and "fusty
plebeians" (Act 1, Sc. 9). Menenius calls them "beastly plebeians" (Act
2, Sc. 1), refers to their "multiplying spawn" (Act 2, Sc. 2), and says
to the crowd:

     "Rome and her rats are at the point of battle."
                (Act 1, Sc. 2).

The dramatist makes the mob cringe before Coriolanus. When he appears,
the stage directions show that the "citizens steal away." (Act 1, Sc.
1.)

As the Roman crowd of the time of Coriolanus is fickle, so is that of
Cæsar's. Brutus and Antony sway them for and against his assassins with
ease:

      "First Citizen. This Cæsar was a tyrant.

       Second Citizen. Nay, that's certain.
    We are blessed that Rome is rid of him....

       First Citizen. (After hearing a description of the murder.)
    O piteous spectacle!

       2 Cit. O noble Cæsar!

       3 Cit. O woful day!

       4 Cit. O traitors, villains!

       1 Cit. O most bloody sight!

       2 Cit. We will be revenged; revenge! about--seek--burn,
    fire--kill--slay--let not a traitor live!" (Act 3, Sc. 2.)

The Tribune Marullus reproaches them with having forgotten Pompey, and
calls them

    "You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things."

He persuades them not to favor Cæsar, and when they leave him he asks
his fellow tribune, Flavius,

    "See, whe'r their basest metal be not moved?"
                (Act 1, Sc. 1.)

Flavius also treats them with scant courtesy:

    "Hence, home, you idle creatures, get you home.
     Is this a holiday? What! you know not,
     Being mechanical, you ought not walk
     Upon a laboring day without the sign
     Of your profession?"
                (Ib.)

The populace of England is as changeable as that of Rome, if Shakespeare
is to be believed. The Archbishop of York, who had espoused the cause of
Richard II. against Henry IV., thus soliloquizes:

    "The commonwealth is sick of their own choice;
     Their over greedy love hath surfeited;
     An habitation giddy and unsure
     Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
     O thou fond many! With what loud applause
     Didst thou beat Heaven with blessing Bolingbroke,
     Before he was what thou would'st have him be!
     And now being trimmed in thine own desires,
     Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him,
     That thou provokest thyself to cast him up.
     So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge
     Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard,
     And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up,
     And howlst to find it."
                (Henry IV., Part 2, Act 1, Sc. 3.)

Gloucester in "Henry VI." (Part 2, Act 2, Sc. 4) notes the fickleness of
the masses. He says, addressing his absent wife:

    "Sweet Nell, ill can thy noble mind abrook
     The abject people, gazing on thy face
     With envious looks, laughing at thy shame,
     That erst did follow thy proud chariot wheels
     When thou didst ride in triumph through the streets."

When she arrives upon the scene in disgrace, she says to him:

         "Look how they gaze;
    See how the giddy multitude do point
    And nod their heads and throw their eyes on thee.
    Ah, Gloster, hide thee from their hateful looks."

And she calls the crowd a "rabble" (Ib.), a term also used in "Hamlet"
(Act 4, Sc. 5). Again, in part III. of "Henry VI.," Clifford, dying on
the battlefield while fighting for King Henry, cries:

    "The common people swarm like summer flies,
     And whither fly the gnats but to the sun?
     And who shines now but Henry's enemies?"
                (Act 2, Sc. 6.)

And Henry himself, conversing with the keepers who have imprisoned him
in the name of Edward IV., says:

    "Ah, simple men! you know not what you swear.
     Look, as I blow this feather from my face,
     And as the air blows it to me again,
     Obeying with my wind when I do blow,
     And yielding to another when it blows,
     Commanded always by the greater gust,
     Such is the lightness of you common men."
                (Ib., Act 3, Sc. 1.)

Suffolk, in the First Part of the same trilogy (Act 5, Sc. 5), talks of
"worthless peasants," meaning, perhaps, "property-less peasants," and
when Salisbury comes to present the demands of the people, he calls him

         "the Lord Ambassador
    Sent from a sort of tinkers to the king,"
                (Part 2, Act 3, Sc. 2.)

and says:

    "'Tis like the Commons, rude unpolished hinds
     Could send such message to their sovereign."

Cardinal Beaufort mentions the "uncivil kernes of Ireland" (Ib., Part 2,
Act 3, Sc. 1), and in the same play the crowd makes itself ridiculous by
shouting, "A miracle," when the fraudulent beggar Simpcox, who had
pretended to be lame and blind, jumps over a stool to escape a whipping
(Act 2, Sc. 1). Queen Margaret receives petitioners with the words
"Away, base cullions" (Ib., Act 1, Sc. 3), and among other flattering
remarks applied here and there to the lower classes we may cite the
epithets "ye rascals, ye rude slaves," addressed to a crowd by a porter
in Henry VIII., and that of "lazy knaves" given by the Lord Chamberlain
to the porters for having let in a "trim rabble" (Act 5, Sc. 3). Hubert,
in King John, presents us with an unvarnished picture of the common
people receiving the news of Prince Arthur's death:

    "I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,
     The whilst his iron did on his anvil cool,
     With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news;
     Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,
     Standing on slippers (which his nimble haste
     Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet),
     Told of a many thousand warlike French
     That were embattailed and rank'd in Kent.
     Another lean, unwashed artificer,
     Cuts off his tale, and talks of Arthur's death."
                (Act 4, Sc. 2.)

Macbeth, while sounding the murderers whom he intends to employ, and who
say to him, "We are men, my liege," answers:

    "Ay, in the catalogue, ye go for men
     As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
     Shoughs, water-sugs, and demi-wolves, are cleped
     All by the name of dogs."
                (Act 3, Sc. 1.)

As Coriolanus is held up to our view as a pattern of noble bearing
toward the people, so Richard II. condemns the courteous behavior of the
future Henry IV. on his way into banishment. He says:

    "Ourselves, and Bushy, Bagot here and Green
     Observed his courtship to the common people;
     How he did seem to dive into their hearts
     With humble and familiar courtesy;
     What reverence he did throw away on slaves;
     Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles
     And patient overbearing of his fortune,
     As 'twere to banish their effects with him.
     Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;
     A brace of draymen did God speed him well
     And had the tribute of his supple knee,
     With 'Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends.'"
                (Richard II., Act 1, Sc. 4.)

The King of France, in "All's Well that Ends Well," commends to Bertram
the example of his late father in his relations with his inferiors:

    "Who were below him
     He used as creatures of another place,
     And bowed his eminent top to their low ranks,
     Making them proud of his humility
     In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man
     Might be a copy to these younger times."
                (Act 1, Sc. 2.)

Shakespeare had no fondness for these "younger times," with their
increasing suggestion of democracy. Despising the masses, he had no
sympathy with the idea of improving their condition or increasing their
power. He saw the signs of the times with foreboding, as did his hero,
Hamlet:

"By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it; the
age has grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near the
heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe." There can easily be too much
liberty, according to Shakespeare--"too much liberty, my Lucio,
liberty" (Measure for Measure, Act 1, Sc. 3), but the idea of too much
authority is foreign to him. Claudio, himself under arrest, sings its
praises:

         "Thus can the demi-god, Authority,
    Make us pay down for our offense by weight,--
    The words of Heaven;--on whom it will, it will;
    On whom it will not, so; yet still 'tis just."
                (Ib.)

Ulysses, in "Troilus and Cressida" (Act 1, Sc. 3), delivers a long
panegyric upon authority, rank, and degree, which may be taken as
Shakespeare's confession of faith:

         "Degree being vizarded,
    Th' unworthiest shews as fairly in the mask.
    The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center,
    Observe degree, priority, and place,
    Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
    Office and custom, in all line of order;
    And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol,
    In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
    Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye
    Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
    And posts, like the commandments of a king,
    Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets,
    In evil mixture, to disorder wander,
    What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
    What raging of the sea, shaking of the earth,
    Commotion of the winds, frights, changes, horrors,
    Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
    The unity and married calm of states
    Quite from their fixture! Oh, when degree is shaked,
    Which is the ladder of all high designs,
    The enterprise is sick. How could communities,
    Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
    Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
    The primogenity and due of birth,
    Prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, laurels,
    But by degree stand in authentic place?
    Take but degree away, untune the string,
    And hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
    In mere oppugnancy; the bounded waters
    Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
    And make a sop of all this solid globe;
    Strength should be lord of imbecility,
    And the rude son should strike his father dead;
    Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong,
    (Between whose endless jar justice resides)
    Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
    Then everything includes itself in power.
    Power into will, will into appetite;
    And appetite, a universal wolf,
    So doubly seconded with will and power,
    Must make perforce an universal prey,
    And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,
    This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
    Follows the choking;
    And this neglection of degree it is,
    That by a pace goes backward, in a purpose
    It hath to climb. The General's disdained
    By him one step below; he by the next;
    That next by him beneath; so every step,
    Exampled by the first pace that is sick
    Of his superiors, grows to an envious fever
    Of pale and bloodless emulation;
    And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,
    Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,
    Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength."

There is no hint in this eloquent apostrophe of the difficulty of
determining among men who shall be the sun and who the satellite, nor of
the fact that the actual arrangements, in Shakespeare's time, at any
rate, depended altogether upon that very force which Ulysses
deprecates. In another scene in the same play the wily Ithacan again
gives way to his passion for authority and eulogizes somewhat
extravagantly the paternal, prying, omnipresent State:

    "The providence that's in a watchful state
     Knows almost every grain of Plutus' gold,
     Finds bottom in th' incomprehensive deeps,
     Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the gods,
     Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.
     There is a mystery (with which relation
     Durst never meddle) in the soul of state,
     Which hath an operation more divine
     Than breath or pen can give expressure to."
                (Act 3, Sc. 3.)

The State to which Ulysses refers is of course a monarchical State, and
the idea of democracy is abhorrent to Shakespeare. Coriolanus expresses
his opinion of it when he says to the people:

                 "What's the matter,
    That in these several places of the city
    You cry against the noble Senate, who,
    Under the gods, keep you in awe, which else
    Would feed on one another?"
                (Act 2, Sc. 1.)

The people should have no voice in the government--

             "This double worship,--
    Where one part does disdain with cause, the other
    Insult without all reason, where gentry, title, wisdom,
    Can not conclude, but by the yea and no
    Of general ignorance,--it must omit
    Real necessities, and give away the while
    To unstable slightness. Purpose so barred, it follows,
    Nothing is done to purpose; therefore, beseech you,
    You that will be less fearful than discreet,
    That love the fundamental part of state
    More than you doubt the change on't, that prefer
    A noble life before a long, and wish
    To jump a body with a dangerous physic
    That's sure of death without it, at once pluck out
    The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick
    The sweet which is their poison."
                (Ib. Act 3, Sc. 1.)

It is the nobility who should rule--

    "It is a purposed thing and grows by plot
     To curb the will of the nobility;
     Suffer't and live with such as can not rule,
     Nor ever will be ruled."
                (Ib.)

Junius Brutus tries in vain to argue with him, but Coriolanus has no
patience with him, a "triton of the minnows"; and the very fact that
there should be tribunes appointed for the people disgusts him--

    "Five tribunes to defend their vulgar wisdoms,
     Of their own choice; one's Junius Brutus,
     Sicinus Velutus, and I know not--'Sdeath!
     The rabble should have first unroofed the city,
     Ere so prevailed with me; it will in time
     Win upon power, and throw forth greater themes."

And again:

    "The common file, a plague!--Tribunes for them!"
                (Act 1, Sc. 6.)

Shakespeare took his material for the drama of "Coriolanus" from
Plutarch's "Lives," and it is significant that he selected from that
list of worthies the most conspicuous adversary of the commonalty that
Rome produced. He presents him to us as a hero, and, so far as he can,
enlists our sympathy for him from beginning to end. When Menenius says
of him:

    "His nature is too noble for the world,"
                (Act 3, Sc. 1.)

he is evidently but registering the verdict of the author. Plutarch's
treatment of Coriolanus is far different. He exhibits his fine
qualities, but he does not hesitate to speak of his "imperious temper
and that savage manner which was too haughty for a republic." "Indeed,"
he adds, "there is no other advantage to be had from a liberal education
equal to that of polishing and softening our nature by reason and
discipline." He also tells us that Coriolanus indulged his "irascible
passions on a supposition that they have something great and exalted in
them," and that he wanted "a due mixture of gravity and mildness, which
are the chief political virtues and the fruits of reason and education."
"He never dreamed that such obstinacy is rather the effect of the
weakness and effeminacy of a distempered mind, which breaks out in
violent passions like so many tumors." Nor apparently did Shakespeare
ever dream of it either, altho he had Plutarch's sage observations
before him. It is a pity that the great dramatist did not select from
Plutarch's works some hero who took the side of the people, some Agis or
Cleomenes, or, better yet, one of the Gracchi. What a tragedy he might
have based on the life of Tiberius, the friend of the people and the
martyr in their cause! But the spirit which guided Schiller in the
choice of William Tell for a hero was a stranger to Shakespeare's heart,
and its promptings would have met with no response there.

Even more striking is the treatment which the author of "Coriolanus"
metes out to English history. All but two of his English historical
dramas are devoted to the War of the Roses and the incidental struggle
over the French crown. The motive of this prolonged strife--so
attractive to Shakespeare--had much the same dignity which distinguishes
the family intrigues of the Sublime Porte, and Shakespeare presents the
history of his country as a mere pageant of warring royalties and their
trains. When the people are permitted to appear, as they do in Cade's
rebellion, to which Shakespeare has assigned the character of the rising
under Wat Tyler, they are made the subject of burlesque. Two of the
popular party speak as follows:

       "John Holland. Well, I say, it was never merry world in
     England since gentlemen came up.

       George Bevis. O miserable age! Virtue is not regarded in
     handicraftsmen.

       John. The nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons."

When Jack Cade, alias Wat Tyler, comes on the scene, he shows himself to
be a braggart and a fool. He says:

     "Be brave then, for your captain is brave and vows
     reformation. There shall be in England seven half-penny
     loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten
     hoops, and I will make it a felony to drink small beer. All
     the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my
     palfrey go to grass. And when I am king asking I will be--

       All. God save your majesty!

       Cade. I thank you, good people--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."
                (Henry VI., Part 2, Act 4, Sc. 2.)

The crowd wishes to kill the clerk of Chatham because he can read,
write, and cast accounts. (Cade. "O monstrous!") Sir Humphrey Stafford
calls them

    "Rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent,
     Marked for the gallows."
                (Ib.)

Clifford succeeds without much difficulty in turning the enmity of the
mob against France, and Cade ejaculates disconsolately, "Was ever a
feather so lightly blown to and fro as this multitude?" (Ib., Act 4, Sc.
8.) In the stage directions of this scene, Shakespeare shows his own
opinion of the mob by writing, "Enter Cade and his rabblement." One
looks in vain here as in the Roman plays for a suggestion that poor
people sometimes suffer wrongfully from hunger and want, that they
occasionally have just grievances, and that their efforts to present
them, so far from being ludicrous, are the most serious parts of
history, beside which the struttings of kings and courtiers sink into
insignificance.

One of the popular songs in Tyler's rebellion was the familiar couplet:

    "When Adam delved and Eve span,
     Who was then the gentleman?"

Shakespeare refers to it in "Hamlet," where the grave-diggers speak as
follows:

       "First Clown. Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentleman
     but gardners, ditchers and grave-makers; they hold up Adam's
     profession.

       Second Clown. Was he a gentleman?

       First Clown. He was the first that ever bore arms.

       Second Clown. Why, he had none.

       First Clown. What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand
     the Scripture? The Scripture says, Adam digged; could he dig
     without arms?"
                (Act 5, Sc. 1.)

That Shakespeare's caricature of Tyler's rebellion is a fair indication
of his view of all popular risings appears from the remarks addressed by
Westmoreland to the Archbishop of York in the Second Part of "Henry IV."
(Act 4, Sc. 1). Says he:

              "If that rebellion
    Came like itself, in base and abject routs,
    Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags,
    And countenanced by boys and beggary;
    I say if damned commotion so appeared,
    In his true, native, and most proper shape,
    You, Reverend Father, and these noble lords
    Had not been here to dress the ugly form
    Of base and bloody insurrection
    With your fair honors."

The first and last of Shakespeare's English historical plays, "King
John" and "Henry VIII.," lie beyond the limits of the civil wars, and
each of them treats of a period momentous in the annals of English
liberty, a fact which Shakespeare absolutely ignores. John as king had
two great misfortunes--he suffered disgrace at the hands of his barons
and of the pope. The first event, the wringing of Magna Charta from the
king, Shakespeare passes over. A sense of national pride might have
excused the omission of the latter humiliation, but no, it was a triumph
of authority, and as such Shakespeare must record it for the edification
of his hearers, and consequently we have the king presented on the stage
as meekly receiving the crown from the papal legate (Act 5, Sc. 1).
England was freed from the Roman yoke in the reign of Henry VIII., and
in the drama of that name Shakespeare might have balanced the indignity
forced upon King John, but now he is silent. Nothing must be said
against authority, even against that of the pope, and the play
culminates in the pomp and parade of the christening of the infant
Elizabeth! Such is Shakespeare's conception of history! Who could guess
from reading these English historical plays that throughout the period
which they cover English freedom was growing, that justice and the
rights of man were asserting themselves, while despotism was gradually
curbed and limited? This is the one great glory of English history,
exhibiting itself at Runnymede, reflected in Wyclif and John Ball and
Wat Tyler, and shining dimly in the birth of a national church under the
eighth Henry. As Shakespeare wrote, it was preparing for a new and
conspicuous outburst. When he died, Oliver Cromwell was already
seventeen years of age and John Hampden twenty-two. The spirit of
Hampden was preeminently the English spirit--the spirit which has given
distinction to the Anglo-Saxon race--and he and Shakespeare were
contemporaries, and yet of this spirit not a vestige is to be found in
the English historical plays and no opportunities lost to obliterate or
distort its manifestations. Only in Brutus and his
fellow-conspirators--of all Shakespearian characters--do we find the
least consideration for liberty, and even then he makes the common, and
perhaps in his time the unavoidable, mistake of overlooking the
genuinely democratic leanings of Julius Cæsar and the anti-popular
character of the successful plot against him.

It has in all ages been a pastime of noble minds to try to depict a
perfect state of society. Forty years before Shakespeare's birth, Sir
Thomas More published his "Utopia" to the world. Bacon intended to do
the same thing in the "New Atlantis," but never completed the work,
while Sir Philip Sidney gives us his dream in his "Arcadia." Montaigne
makes a similar essay, and we quote from Florio's translation, published
in 1603, the following passage (Montaigne's "Essays," Book I, Chapter
30):

"It is a nation, would I answer Plato, that hath no kind of traffic, no
knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate
nor of political superiority; no use of service, of riches, or of
poverty; no contracts, no succession, no dividences; no occupation, but
idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no apparel, but natural; no
manuring of lands; no use of wine, corn, or metal. The very words that
import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envy,
detraction, and pardon were never heard among them."

We may readily infer that Shakespeare found little to sympathize with in
this somewhat extravagant outline of a happy nation, but he goes out of
his way to travesty it. In "The Tempest" he makes Gonzalo, the noblest
character in the play, hold the following language to the inevitable
king (Shakespeare can not imagine even a desert island without a king!):

    "Had I plantation of this isle, my lord,
     I' th' commonwealth I would by contraries
     Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
     Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
     Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
     And use of service, none; contract, succession,
     Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
     No use of metal, corn or wine or oil;
     No occupation; all men idle,--all,
     And women too, but innocent and pure;
     No sovereignty, ...

       Sebastian. Yet he would be king on't.

       Antonia. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets
     the beginning.

       Gonzalo. All things in common. Nature should produce
     Without sweat or endeavor; treason, felony,
     Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
     Would I not have; but Nature should bring forth
     Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance,
     To feed my innocent people.

       Seb. No marrying 'mong his subjects?

       Ant. None, man; all idle, whores, and knaves.

       Gon. I would with such perfection govern, sir,
     To 'xcel the golden age.

       Seb. 'Save his Majesty!

       Ant. Long live Gonzalo!

       Gon. And do you mark me, sir?

       King. Pr'ythee, no more; thou dost talk nothing to me.

       Gon. I do well believe your Highness; and did it to
     minister occasion to these gentlemen, who are of such
     sensible and nimble lungs that they always use to laugh
     at nothing.

       Ant. 'Twas you we laughed at.

       Gon. Who, in this kind of merry fooling, am nothing
     to you; so you may continue and laugh at nothing still."
                (Tempest, Act 2, Sc. 1.)

That all things are not for the best in the best of all possible worlds
would seem to result from the wise remarks made by the fishermen who
enliven the scene in "Pericles, Prince of Tyre." They compare landlords
to whales who swallow up everything, and suggest that the land be purged
of "these drones that rob the bee of her honey"; and Pericles, so far
from being shocked at such revolutionary and vulgar sentiments, is
impressed by their weight, and speaks kindly of the humble philosophers,
who in their turn are hospitable to the shipwrecked prince--all of which
un-Shakespearian matter adds doubt to the authenticity of this drama
(Act 2, Sc. 1).

However keen the insight of Shakespeare may have been into the hearts of
his high-born characters, he had no conception of the unity of the human
race. For him the prince and the peasant were not of the same blood.

           "For princes are
    A model, which heaven makes like to itself,"

says King Simonides in "Pericles," and here at least we seem to see the
hand of Shakespeare (Act 2, Sc. 2). The two princes, Guiderius and
Arviragus, brought up secretly in a cave, show their royal origin
(Cymbeline, Act 3, Sc. 3), and the servants who see Coriolanus in
disguise are struck by his noble figure (Coriolanus, Act 4, Sc. 5).
Bastards are villains as a matter of course, witness Edmund in "Lear"
and John in "Much Ado about Nothing," and no degree of contempt is too
high for a

          "hedge-born swain
    That doth presume to boast of gentle blood."
                (Henry VI., Part 1, Act 4, Sc. 1.)

Courage is only to be expected in the noble-born. The Duke of York says:

    "Let pale-faced fear keep with the mean-born man,
     And find no harbor in a royal heart."
                (Henry VI., Part 2, Act 3, Sc. 1.)

In so far as the lower classes had any relation to the upper classes, it
was one, thought Shakespeare, of dependence and obligation. It was not
the tiller of the soil who fed the lord of the manor, but rather the
lord who supported the peasant. Does not the king have to lie awake and
take thought for his subjects? Thus Henry V. complains that he can not
sleep

              "so soundly as the wretched slave,
    Who with a body filled and vacant mind,
    Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread,
    Never sees horrid night, the child of Hell,
    But like a lackey, from the rise to set,
    Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night
    Sleeps in Elysium....
    The slave, a member of the country's peace,
    Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots
    What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,
    Whose hours the peasant best advantages."
                (Henry V., Act 4, Sc. 1.)

And these lines occur at the end of a passage in which the king laments
the "ceremony" that oppresses him and confesses that but for it he would
be "but a man." He makes this admission, however, in a moment of danger
and depression. Henry IV. also invokes sleep (Part 2, Act 2, Sc. 1):

    "O thou dull god! why liest thou with the vile
     In loathsome beds?"

But plain people have to watch at times, and the French sentinel finds
occasion to speak in the same strain:

         "Thus are poor servitors
    (When others sleep upon their quiet beds)
    Constrained to watch in darkness, rain, and cold."
                (Henry VI., Part 1, Act 2, Sc. 1.)

Henry VI. is also attracted by the peasant's lot:

    "O God, methinks it were a happy life,
     To be no better than a homely swain....
     ... The shepherd's homely curds,
     His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
     His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade,
     All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,
     As far beyond a prince's delicates."
                (Henry VI., Part 3, Act 2, Sc. 5.)

All of which is natural enough, but savors of cant in the mouths of men
who fought long and hard to maintain themselves upon their thrones.

We have already shown by references to the contemporary drama that the
plea of custom is not sufficient to explain Shakespeare's attitude to
the lower classes, but if we widen our survey to the entire field of
English letters in his day, we shall see that he was running counter to
all the best traditions of our literature. From the time of Piers
Plowman down, the peasant had stood high with the great writers of
poetry and prose alike. Chaucer's famous circle of story-tellers at the
Tabard Inn in Southwark was eminently democratic. With the knight and
the friar were gathered together

    "An haberdasher and a carpenter,
     A webbe, a deyer and tapiser,"

and the tales of the cook and the miller take rank with those of the
squire and lawyer. The English Bible, too, was in Shakespeare's hands,
and he must have been familiar with shepherd kings and
fishermen-apostles. In the very year in which "Hamlet" first appeared, a
work was published in Spain which was at once translated into English, a
work as well known to-day as Shakespeare's own writings. If the
peasantry was anywhere to be neglected and despised, where should it be
rather than in proud, aristocratic Spain, and yet, to place beside
Shakespeare's Bottoms and Slys, Cervantes has given us the admirable
Sancho Panza, and has spread his loving humor in equal measure over
servant and master. Are we to believe that the yeomen of England, who
beat back the Armada, were inferior to the Spanish peasantry whom they
overcame, or is it not rather true that the Spanish author had a deeper
insight into his country's heart than was allotted to the English
dramatist? Cervantes, the soldier and adventurer, rose above the
prejudices of his class, while Shakespeare never lifted his eyes beyond
the narrow horizon of the Court to which he catered. It was love that
opened Cervantes's eye, and it is in all-embracing love that Shakespeare
was deficient. As far as the common people were concerned, he never held
the mirror up to nature.

But the book of all others which might have suggested to Shakespeare
that there was more in the claims of the lower classes than was dreamt
of in his philosophy was More's "Utopia," which in its English form was
already a classic. More, the richest and most powerful man in England
after the king, not only believed in the workingman, but knew that he
suffered from unjust social conditions. He could never have represented
the down-trodden followers of Cade-Tyler nor the hungry mob in
"Coriolanus" with the utter lack of sympathy which Shakespeare
manifests. "What justice is there in this," asks the great Lord
Chancellor, whose character stood the test of death--"what justice is
there in this, that a nobleman, a goldsmith, a banker, or any other man,
that either does nothing at all or at best is employed in things that
are of no use to the public, should live in great luxury and splendor
upon what is so ill acquired; and a mean man, a carter, a smith, a
plowman, that works harder even than the beasts themselves, and is
employed on labors so necessary that no commonwealth could hold out a
year without them, can only earn so poor a livelihood, and must lead so
miserable a life, that the condition of the beasts is much better than
theirs?"

How different from this is Shakespeare's conception of the place of the
workingman in society! After a full and candid survey of his plays,
Bottom, the weaver with the ass's head, remains his type of the artizan
and the "mutable, rank-scented many," his type of the masses. Is it
unfair to take the misshapen "servant-monster" Caliban as his last word
on the subject?

      "Prospero. We'll visit Caliban my slave who never
    Yields us kind answer.

      Miranda. 'Tis a villain, sir,
    I do not love to look on.

      Prospero. But as 'tis,
    We can not miss him! he does make our fire,
    Fetch in our wood, and serve in offices
    That profit us." (Tempest, Act 1, Sc. 2.)

To which I would fain reply in the words of Edward Carpenter:

    "Who art thou ...
     With thy faint sneer for him who wins thee bread
     And him who clothes thee, and for him who toils
     Day-long and night-long dark in the earth for thee?"

LETTER FROM MR. G. BERNARD SHAW

(Extracts)

As you know, I have striven hard to open English eyes to the emptiness
of Shakespeare's philosophy, to the superficiality and second-handedness
of his morality, to his weakness and incoherence as a thinker, to his
snobbery, his vulgar prejudices, his ignorance, his disqualifications of
all sorts for the philosophic eminence claimed for him.... The preface
to my "Three Plays for Puritans" contains a section headed "Better than
Shakespeare?" which is, I think, the only utterance of mine on the
subject to be found in a book.... There is at present in the press a new
preface to an old novel of mine called "The Irrational Knot." In that
preface I define the first order in Literature as consisting of those
works in which the author, instead of accepting the current morality and
religion ready-made without any question as to their validity, writes
from an original moral standpoint of his own, thereby making his book an
original contribution to morals, religion, and sociology, as well as to
_belles letters_. I place Shakespeare with Dickens, Scott, Dumas père,
etc., in the second order, because, tho they are enormously
entertaining, their morality is ready-made; and I point out that the one
play, "Hamlet," in which Shakespeare made an attempt to give as a hero
one who was dissatisfied with the ready-made morality, is the one which
has given the highest impression of his genius, altho Hamlet's revolt is
unskillfully and inconclusively suggested and not worked out with any
philosophic competence.[4]

May I suggest that you should be careful not to imply that Tolstoy's
great Shakespearian heresy has no other support than mine. The preface
of Nicholas Rowe to his edition of Shakespeare, and the various prefaces
of Dr. Johnson contain, on Rowe's part, an apology for him as a writer
with obvious and admitted shortcomings (very ridiculously ascribed by
Rowe to his working by "a mere light of nature"), and, on Johnson's, a
good deal of downright hard-hitting criticism. You should also look up
the history of the Ireland forgeries, unless, as is very probable,
Tolstoy has anticipated you in this. Among nineteenth-century poets
Byron and William Morris saw clearly that Shakespeare was enormously
overrated intellectually. A French book, which has been translated into
English, has appeared within the last ten years, giving Napoleon's
opinions of the drama. His insistence on the superiority of Corneille to
Shakespeare on the ground of Corneille's power of grasping a political
situation, and of seeing men in their relation to the state, is
interesting.

Of course you know about Voltaire's criticisms, which are the more
noteworthy because Voltaire began with an extravagant admiration for
Shakespeare, and got more and more bitter against him as he grew older
and less disposed to accept artistic merit as a cover for philosophic
deficiencies.

Finally, I, for one, shall value Tolstoy's criticism all the more
because it is criticism of a foreigner who can not possibly be enchanted
by the mere word-music which makes Shakespeare so irresistible in
England.[5] In Tolstoy's estimation, Shakespeare must fall or stand as a
thinker, in which capacity I do not think he will stand a moment's
examination from so tremendously keen a critic and religious realist.
Unfortunately, the English worship their great artists quite
indiscriminately and abjectly; so that is quite impossible to make them
understand that Shakespeare's extraordinary literary power, his fun, his
mimicry, and the endearing qualities that earned him the title of "the
gentle Shakespeare"--all of which, whatever Tolstoy may say, are quite
unquestionable facts--do not stand or fall with his absurd reputation as
a thinker. Tolstoy will certainly treat that side of his reputation with
the severity it deserves; and you will find that the English press will
instantly announce that Tolstoy considers his own works greater than
Shakespeare's (which in some respects they most certainly are, by the
way), and that he has attempted to stigmatize our greatest poet as a
liar, a thief, a forger, a murderer, an incendiary, a drunkard, a
libertine, a fool, a madman, a coward, a vagabond, and even a man of
questionable gentility. You must not be surprised or indignant at this:
it is what is called "dramatic criticism" in England and America. Only a
few of the best of our journalist-critics will say anything worth
reading on the subject.

        Yours faithfully,
                G. BERNARD SHAW.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Besides the prefaces here referred to, Mr. G. Bernard Shaw has at
various times written other articles on the subject.--(V. T.)

[5] It should be borne in mind that this letter was written before Mr.
G. B. Shaw had seen the essay in question, by Tolstoy, now published in
this volume.--(V. T.)

      "No one will peruse a page without laying down the book a
     better and a wiser man."--_Dundee Courier._

     Tolstoy's Essays and Letters

     By LEO TOLSTOY

     Translated by AYLMER MAUDE

     This work contains twenty-six essays and letters (many
     published for the first time) belonging to the last fifteen
     years of Tolstoy's career, the period in which he has
     devoted himself exclusively to humanitarian labors.
     Therefore each has a definite altruistic purpose. In the
     letters in particular we have, in the words of the
     translator, "Tolstoy's opinions in application to certain
     definite conditions. They thus help to bridge the gulf
     between theory and practise."

     HIGHLY COMMENDED

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     Tolstoy's Plays

     Also Annotated List of Works

     This volume, a new translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude,
     contains Tolstoy's three great plays, together with the
     Russian folk-tale of which one of them is the dramatized
     version. It also includes a complete annotated and
     chronological list of Tolstoy's works of special
     helpfulness to all readers and students of the great
     Russian writer.

     LIST OF THE PLAYS

     =The Power of Darkness=; or, If a Claw is Caught the Bird
     is Lost--A drama in five acts.

     =The First Distiller=--A comedy in six acts.

     =Fruits of Culture=--A comedy in four acts.

     INCLUDING ALSO

     =The Imp and the Crust=--This is a Russian folk-tale, of
     which "The First Distiller" is the dramatized version.

     =Their High Literary and Dramatic Value=

     To their literary merit Tolstoy's plays add the quality of
     being excellent acting dramas, as their success both in
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     It ought to be done. It is a stupendous tragedy; the effect
     on the stage is unparalleled."

     =Their Wide Range of Sentiment=

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     "'The Power of Darkness' and 'The Fruits of Culture,' the
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     A CLEAR AND HOPEFUL EXPOSITION OF TOLSTOY'S TEACHINGS

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          indispensable."--_San Francisco News-Letter._

     Tolstoy and His Problems

     Essays by AYLMER MAUDE

     Each essay in this volume expresses, in one form or other,
     Tolstoy's views of life; and the main object of the book is
     not to praise his views, but to explain them. Being the
     only Englishman who in recent years has had the advantage
     of intimate personal intercourse, continued over a period
     of some years, with Tolstoy, Mr. Maude is well qualified
     for his present work.

     CONTENTS

     Biography of Tolstoy      |  Introduction to "The Slavery
     Tolstoy's Teachings       |    of Our Times"
     An Introduction to "What  |  The Tsar's Coronation
       Is Art?"                |  Right and Wrong
     How "Resurrection" Was    |  War and Patriotism
       Written                 |  Talks With Tolstoy

          "Any one who takes up this delightful series of
          essays will not willingly lay it down without at
          least the determination to finish it."--_British
          Friend._

          "Mr. Maude's long and intimate acquaintance with
          Tolstoy enables him to speak with knowledge
          probably not possessed by any other
          Englishman."--_Morning Post._

     12mo, Cloth, 220 pages. Price, $1.00

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     Sevastopol

     AND OTHER MILITARY TALES

     By LEO TOLSTOY

     A new translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude, specially
     approved by the author. This book relates the author's own
     experiences, sensations, and reflections during the most
     noted siege of modern history. The translation has been
     authorized by Count Tolstoy, who has specially commended it
     for its accuracy, simplicity, and directness.

          "No other modern book approaches 'Sevastopol' in
          the completeness and directness with which it
          unveils the realities of war. There are
          picturesque glimpses in Mr. Kipling's vulgar
          stories of fighting. But the strongest meat Mr.
          Kipling can provide is milk for babes beside Count
          Tolstoy's seemingly casual sketches, which yet
          comprehend with merciless amplitude the whole
          atmosphere of war."--_The Morning Leader_, London.

     What Count Tolstoy Says of the Translators and
     Translation

     "Better translators, both for knowledge of the two
     languages and for penetration into the very meaning of the
     matter translated, could not be invented." Of their
     translation of Sevastopol, Tolstoy also says: "I think I
     already wrote you how unusually the first volume of your
     edition pleases me. All in it is excellent: the edition and
     the remarks, and chiefly the translation, and yet more the
     conscientiousness with which all this has been done."

     Handsomely printed on deckle-edge paper, gilt top,
     photogravure portrait of Tolstoy from a daguerreotype taken
     in 1855, map of Sevastopol; cover design in gold,
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     ESARHADDON

     King of Assyria, and Other Stories

     _By_ COUNT LEO TOLSTOY

     _Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, with an
     Introduction Containing Letters by Tolstoy_

     =Esarhaddon, King of Assyria.= An allegorical story with an
     Oriental setting, telling how a cruel king was made to feel
     and understand the sufferings of one of his captives, and
     to repent his own cruelty.

     =Work, Death, and Sickness.= A legend accredited to the
     South American Indians, showing the three means God took to
     make men more kind and brotherly toward each other.

     =Three Questions.= A quaint folk-lore tale answering the
     three questions of life: "What is the Best Time?" "Who Are
     the Most Important Persons?" "What Thing Should be Done
     First?"

     OPINION OF THE PRESS

          _St. Louis Globe-Democrat_: "Count Tolstoy is a
          man so sure of his message and so clear about it
          that he always finds something worth while to
          say.... There is a quality in the little tales
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          quickly suggestive of certain Biblical narratives.
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          contains, in half a dozen pages, an entire
          philosophy of life, and it is presented in such
          apt pictures and ideas that its meaning is not to
          be overlooked. It would be hard to suggest
          anything that could be read in five minutes that
          would impart so much to think about. 'Esarhaddon,'
          the sketch from which the volume takes its name,
          is of the same character, and the third tale,
          'Work, Death, and Sickness,' is full of very fine
          thought. There is, perhaps, no writer working
          to-day whose mind is centered on broader and
          better things than the Russian master, and the
          present offering shows him at his very best."

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     What Is Art?

     Translated from the Original Manuscript, with an
     Introduction by AYLMER MAUDE

     Art is a human activity, declares Tolstoy. The object of
     this activity is to transmit to others feelings the artist
     has experienced. By certain external signs--movements,
     lines, colors, sounds or arrangements of words--an artist
     infects other people so that they share his feelings; thus,
     "art is a means of union among men, joining them together
     in the same feeling." Without adequate expression there is
     no art, for there is no infection, no transference to
     others of the author's feeling. The test of art is
     infection. If an author has moved you so that you feel as
     he felt, if you are so united to him in feeling that it
     seems to you that he has expressed just what you have long
     wished to express, the work that has so infected you is a
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     A POWERFUL WORK FULL OF GENIUS AND ORIGINALITY

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          theories."--_Pittsburg Times._

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     Small 12mo, Cloth, 268 pp. 80 cts., post-paid

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  | Transcriber's Notes:                                         |
  | Page 7: Double quotes inside double quotes in Hallam         |
  | quotation replaced with single quotes.                       |
  | Page 9: Closing quotes moved from after "says Brandes" to    |
  | follow "... at the sight."                                   |
  | Page 20: strangset amended to strangest                      |
  | Page 56: insteading amended to instead                       |
  | Page 72: be amended to he ("he begins")                      |
  | Page 80: "... the then fashionable euphemism": There is a    |
  | possibility that "euphuism" should have been used, rather    |
  | than "euphemism."                                            |
  | Page 96: Closing quotes added after "... an artistic         |
  | impression."                                                 |
  | Page 102: Beaudelaire _sic_                                  |
  | Page 165: Mirander amended to Miranda                        |