And when, by her elevation to a rank next to that of a duchess, the royal prodigal had made manifest the evil of his designs, she

says,

"It faints me

To think what follows.

The Queen is comfortless, and we forgetful

In our long absence."

A miserable morality gives great latitude to this vice in princes. But Shakespeare invests the character of the author of the Anglican schism with still baser features. He depicts him as a mean and paltry hypocrite.

Says the lord chamberlain :

"It seems the marriage with his brother's wife

Has crept too near his conscience."

To which the Duke of Suffolk replies:

"No, his conscience

Has crept too near another lady.”

With his living wife's successor already chosen, he further says, addressing Wolsey:

"O, my lord,

Would it not grieve an able man to leave

So sweet a bedfellow? but conscience, conscience,

O, 'tis a tender place, and I must leave her."

Again:

"This respite shook

The bosom of my conscience, entered me,

Yea, with a splitting power, and made to tremble

The region of my breast."

And afterwards, to the court appointed to try the cause:

"Thus hulling in

The wild sea of my conscience, I did steer
Toward this remedy, whereupon we are
Now present here together; that's to say,
I meant to rectify my conscience, which

I then did feel full sick, and yet not well,-
By all the reverend fathers in the land,
And doctors learned."

And yet when this very court proceeded according to the forms. of law, this very man of such tender conscience, impatient to commit his crime, thus speaks of these "reverend fathers in the land. and doctors learned:"

"I may perceive

These cardinals trifle with me; I abhor

This dilatory sloth, and tricks of Rome.

My learned and well-beloved servant, Cranmer,
Prythee, return! With thy reproach, I know,
My comfort comes along."

The character of Wolsey, as drawn by Shakespeare, affords also presumptive evidence not a little convincing of his Catholic predilections. No intelligent person who studies it can believe it to have been drawn by a hearty adherent of the schism originated by Henry VIII. and continued by Elizabeth. It is difficult to suppose that a zealous Anglican, or an enemy of Rome, would have missed the opportunity of turning the authentic materials supplied by the history of a cardinal, and so illustrious a one, to the worst possible account. He would have loaded him with all the vices that generally accompany ambition. Not a redeeming feature would have been admitted. He would have been painted as evil in his fall as in his greatness; and if he had been permitted to be converted in the end, his conversion would have been one of the Protestant stamp.

Very different is the Wolsey of Shakespeare. Seizing, with remarkable fidelity, the leading characteristics revealed by his history, he nevertheless presents to us a noble character. The vice which defaces it is at least a great one. It is one which changed an archangel into a demon. He aspires to the most august dignity on earth, the chair of St. Peter. Boundless prodigality, at times not too scrupulous, the removal of every one who stood in his path, and the unworthy arts of a sycophantic courtier, are among the means he employs to reach his end. But the real nobility of the man shines through all. We feel as if he were a hero who by some mischance has become a captive. We expect every moment to see him rend his fetters and be free. We are not kept long in suspense. His ambitious schemes crumble beneath him. His worldly greatness disappears like a morning dream. It is then that he becomes really great. The clogs which bound him earthward have fallen off, and the heaven-born nature rises to the summit of its greatness. A beneficent catastrophe has riven the coils. of human ambition, and Wolsey is himself. We are inclined to despise him at his Whitehall revel, but when we hear him thus addressing Cromwell in answer to his inquiries:

Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory,
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honor,
Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in ;
A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it.
Mark but my fall, and that that ruined me.
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:
By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?

Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee;
Corruption wins not more than honesty.

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,

To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not :

Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,

Thy God's, and truth's; then if thou fall'st, O Cromwell,
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr!"

And when at last, with his mortal sickness on him, we listen to him thus soliciting "the reverend abbot, with all his convent," who with the charity of religious had "honorably received him,"

"O, Father Abbot,

An old man, broken with the storms of state,
Is come to lay his weary bones among ye;
Give him a little earth for charity!"

we are fain to worship him.

The character of Wolsey in Henry VIII. is a creation of no unCatholic hand. Within the limit of historical probability there was scope for making him an arch-villain. Such, under the circumstances, would he most certainly have been represented by an Elizabethan dramatist who was addicted to the new state of things and was disaffected toward the Roman See. In Shakespeare's hands, "this Cardinal," according to the description he himself gives of him in the mouth of Griffith, gentleman usher to Queen Katherine,

66

Though from an humble stock, undoubtedly

Was fashioned to much honor 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 summer.
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,
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 honors to his age

Than man could give him, he died fearing God.”
VOL. IV.-8

Of similar significance, but even to a more striking degree, is the exquisite being whom the poet presents to us in Queen Katherine. This royal lady was the daughter of the most Catholic of earthly potentates, whose son-her brother, consequently—had meditated, nay, had attempted, the extirpation from England of Elizabeth and Protestantism together. She it was whom Elizabeth's father had abandoned in the teeth of the Church's censures for the shameful intercourse of which Elizabeth was the offspring. This is the lady whom he selects to adorn with all the charms of his magic pencil. And he does it of set purpose, as we learn from his epilogue; for whether that were written by himself or by Ben Jonson matters not. It must at all events have conveyed his sentiments. In it we are told:

"For this play, at this time, is only in

The merciful construction of good women;

For such a one we showed 'em."

If we have been thus long detained by this play, it is because it appears to offer a whole body of evidence that its author was an adherent of the Catholic Church. The remainder of the evidence we shall adduce to a similar effect, will be culled here and there from his different dramas, and it will tend, we believe, to add very strong confirmation to the conclusion we have already drawn from the play of "Henry VIII."

There is one characteristic of Shakespeare's writings which is not without its weight as confirmatory evidence of his religious convictions. They are everywhere pervaded by a spirit of gentleness and sweetness, as well as a deep sympathy with the infirmities of his fellow-creatures, which presents a really striking contrast to the acid acrimoniousness and demure self-righteousness of the new religionists of every sect and persuasion.

The whole temper and spirit of Shakespeare is eminently conservative. No writer ever lashed with more merciless severity the abuse of authority by men in office to the gratification of their own selfish ends.

On the other hand, no writer has ever placed on a more lofty eminence, nor surrounded with nobler attributes, the legitimate exercise of authority on the one hand, and of dutiful obedience on the other. There was nothing of the revolutionist or free-thinker about him. His was a nature which had no more sympathy with rebellion than with tyranny. His exalted genius was little likely to be fooled by the modern inconsistency of divorcing independence of faith in religion and independence of action in morals. His plays overflow with satirical allusions to the license of thought and action introduced by the then recent revolt from the Catholic Church. His arrows aimed at the sectaries, none of which miss their mark,

hurtle in the atmosphere which surrounds them. Of such sort, we take it, is the song of the tipsy monster in the "Tempest :"

"No more dams I'll make for fish;

Nor fetch in firing

At requiring;

Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish;

'Ban, 'Ban; Cacaliban

Has a new master; get a new man.

Freedom, hey-day! hey-day, freedom! freedom, hey-day, freedom!"

To Escalus, whom the Duke of Vienna had deputed, with another, to govern in his absence, and who had inquired of his sovereign, who had unexpectedly returned disguised, "What news abroad i' the world?" "None," replies the Duke, "but that there is so great a fever on goodness that the dissolution 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. This news is old enough, yet it is every day's news."

'Why, headstrong liberty is lashed with woe," says Luciana, in the "Comedy of Errors," to her sister, Adriana, who is pleading with her for "woman's rights."

In "Love's Labor's Lost," the Princess replies to a forester who had changed his mind as to her beauty, after receiving a gratuity from her:

"See, see, my beauty will be saved by merit!

O heresy in fair, fit for these days!

A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise."

Beatrice, in "Much Ado About Nothing," says, in contempt of Benedick: "He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat, it ever changes with the next block."

"Though honesty be no Puritan," says the clown in "All's Well that Ends Well," "yet it will do no hurt, it will wear the surplice of humility over the black gown of a big heart." This is evidently an allusion to the new vestments affected by the ministers of the new Evangel.

Of a yet more profound satirical significance, as against the recently introduced license of private judgment, is the following speech of Lafeu in the same play:

"They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear."

When Gardiner, in Henry VIII., speaking of the new heresies, of partaking of which Cranmer was accused, says: