Shakespeare's darkest, bitterest plays are probably "King Lear," "Timon of Athens," and "Troilus and Cressida." The darkness of "King Lear" is illumined by Cordelia. The fidelity of his steward Flavius forces Timon to admit that the world contains "one honest man." But "Troilus and Cressida" contains neither a good woman nor a good servant. It is in this unpleasant play that we find the lines upon "degree," Shakespeare's most elaborate setting forth of feudal principles. It seems to have been when the poet's mind was least wholesome that it was most aristocratic.

IV

Mr. Denton J. Snider holds that "the purely moral standpoint is not strong in Shakespeare; he is decidedly institutional. He has portrayed no great, heroic, triumphant personage whose career is essentially moral, and who collided with the established system of an epoch and ultimately overthrew it by his thought and example, like Socrates or Christ. . . . The sympathies of Shakespeare were decidedly conservative, institutional." 1

A recent writer, Miss Gildersleeve, speaks thus of Shakespeare's detachment from the political questions of his own day:

Obviously in sympathy with the government and the customs prevailing in his time, the great poet seems to have looked with some contempt upon the populace and their desire for civic rights. But on the whole such questions interested him little, and religion apparently scarcely at all. The persons with whom he associated, the audiences for whom

1 The Shakespearian Drama: The Tragedies, St. Louis, 1887, Intro., p. xxxix.

he wrote, the patrons who assisted him, had no real concern with these ideas which were about to revolutionize the nation.1

If these words are correct, then Caius Marcius expresses a feeling like Shakespeare's own when he says contemptuously of the Roman populace:

They'll sit by the fire, and presume to know
What's done i' the Capitol.

Coriolanus, I, i, 195-6.

A better expression of the American ideal of government than that given in these words could hardly be found. Mr. George Bernard Shaw says:

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 lettres. I place Shakespeare with Dickens, Scott, Dumas père, etc., in the second order, because, though they are enormously entertaining, their morality is ready-made.'

These are cogent words; but what writers can be placed in the first order? The great Goethe would very plainly be excluded. Who, in addition to the redoubtable Mr. Shaw himself, is to be included in this select company?

Elsewhere Shaw says:

Shakespeare's weakness lies in his complete deficiency in that highest sphere of thought, in which poetry embraces

1 Government Regulation of the Elizabethan Drama, Columbia Univ. Press, 1908, pp. 135-6.

2 In the vol. Tolstoy on Shakespeare, Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1907, pp. 166-7.

religion, philosophy, morality, and the bearing of these on communities, which is sociology.

Any natural reformer, any one whose instinctive response to "this sorry scheme of things" is a passionate wish to "re-mold it nearer to the heart's desire," is apt to be repelled from Shakespeare, not so much because he is aristocratic or democratic as because he is neither. To such a mind, Shakespeare's acceptance of life and society as he found it, his delight in the varied spectacle of life, his sympathy with all sorts and conditions of men, are bewildering. William James wrote:

A cork in the rapids, with no ballast of his own, without religious or ethical ideals, accepting uncritically every theatrical and social convention, he [Shakespeare] was simply an aeolian harp passively responding to the stage's call. Was there ever an author of such emotional importance whose reaction against false conventions of life was such an absolute zero as his? I know nothing of the other Elizabethans, but could they have been as soulless in this respect?"

How far does the conservative character of Shakespeare's mind lessen his greatness? Could he have portrayed the world for us with all the fulness and delight for which we thank him if his attention had been diverted to doctrinaire schemes for reform? This much, however, I admit: if in Shakespeare's own thinking he had no vision of the coming of more democratic institutions, then by so much his strong mind failed him.

1 London Daily News, Apl. 17, 1905, p. 12. Loaned me by

Professor Archibald Henderson.

2 The Letters of William James, The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920, Vol. II, 336.

CONCLUSION

Great poets sum up and interpret the entire develop⚫ment of civilization up to their own time. The greatest pass on from this to forecast in some degree what is to come. Seeing the invisible future, they become true seers, and

do attain

To something like prophetic strain.

Plainly the author of "All's Well" and "Henry V” had some measure of this forward vision.

Shakespeare's natural affinities were with the court and the nobility, the wealthy and influential patrons of the stage. His usual ideal of government was the rule of a benevolent despot, assisted by public-spirited nobles. His general attitude toward society was plainly aristocratic. But he would not be the many-sided genius that the world honors if he had accepted the restrictions of any one set of men, if he had rested content with a single point of view. Man so delighted him, and woman too, that he transcended at times the limitations of his own class, and felt his way to a very clear expression of some of the choicest ideas that we associate with the conception of democracy. No one has expressed more effectively than Shakespeare the great truths that rank and honor should be the reward of proved merit; that the settled opinion of the entire people is probably right; that birth is of small importance in comparison with worth; and that faithful love, irrespective of rank, is the greatest thing in the world. Shakespeare has not expressed all the truth about human nature and society, for all time; but who else has expressed so much? Take him for all in all, we shall hardly look upon his like again.

DRUNKENNESS IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS.1

IN Shakespeare's day the drinking of alcoholic liquors was universal. Everybody drank, and at some time in his life even the most abstemious man was likely to be overcome by his potations. It would be absurd to look upon the drinking habits of an Elizabethan through the eyes of an American of the twentieth century. An occasional indulgence in intoxication was considered entirely pardonable. Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher, who died more than sixty years after Shakespeare, calculated late in life that he had been drunk a hundred times. No wonder that such a model of correctness lived to be nearly ninety-two. A man was expected now and then to reach one of the clown's three degrees of drunkenness: "One draught above heat makes him a fool, the second mads him, and a third drowns him." 2

We cannot take note of every draught of liquor mentioned in Shakespeare as it disappears down "the red pathway of fate." The life which he portrays is interspersed with drinking almost as systematically as the punctuation marks break up a printed page. But we shall glance at some interesting cases.

The kindliness of Shakespeare toward his topers is noteworthy. Examples of his tolerant attitude come to mind at once. Sir John Falstaff and Sir Toby Belch, who lubri1 Reprinted from Modern Language Notes, xxxiv (1919), 82-88. 'Twelfth Night, I, v, 139-41.