FOARD 
 Shakspere*s Mission ^ Office
 
 % *^^*. Ir^ ^ 
 
 rfjj' 
 
 SHAKSPERE'S MISSION & OFFICE 
 
 AS THE 
 
 DRAMATIC & HISTRIONIC POET 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ENGLISH PEOPLE 
 
 ( With some comments 07i Mr. Cleme?it Scott's severe strictures on the Stai^ej 
 
 BEING AN 
 
 Address read at the Closing Meeting 
 
 Session of the Manchester Shakspere Ciub, 
 
 BY THE rRESIDENT 
 
 JAMES T. FOARD, ESQ.. 
 
 Barrister at Law. 
 April, i8g8. 
 
 PRICE SIXPENCE. 
 
 MANCHf,.^! bK: 
 
 J. !•:. Cornish, i6 St. Ann's SqItare. 
 
 1898.
 
 SHAKSPERE'S MISSION & OEFICE 
 
 AS THE 
 
 DRAMATIC & HISTRIONIC POET 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ENGLISH PEOPLE 
 
 ( IViJ/i so/lie cot/ime/its on Mr. Clement Scoffs severe strictures on the Sla^e ) 
 
 Address read at the Closing Meeting 
 
 Session of the Manchester Shnkspere Chtb, 
 
 RY THE PKESIDENP 
 
 JAMES r. FOARD. ESQ., 
 
 liAKKISTFH AT T,AVV. 
 
 April, i8qS. 
 
 iMANcni;sTi:R: 
 
 J. E. CoKNisii, i6 St. Ann's Souakk
 
 UNIi^ERSITY OF CALIFOR 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 WE are met proximately on this 282nd anniversary of the 
 death of the Poet, " who was not of an age but for all 
 time," to affirm and renew our homage and fealty* at his honoured 
 shrine. In a week from this we shall have arrived at the 334th 
 recurrence of his natal day, the day of our English Patron Saint 
 St. George, on which the poet certainly died. I have been 
 requested to place a Votive wreath on that splendid Mausoleum 
 of his life, his works ; which he himself, the only fit Architect of 
 such a Cenotaph, erected to his eternal honour and glory. Many 
 thousands of similar worshippers in every age, in every country 
 where the English language is heard, and where is it not, have 
 assembled to place similar wreaths as tokens of devotion, and of 
 more or less transitory significance, to wither and crumble away. 
 But the unassailable Altar remains. Without the necessity of 
 making a pilgrimage to Delphi, Eleusis, or Parnassus, or even 
 Stratford ; we are here with the desire to express in some feeble 
 sort our sense of obligation. We are unworthy worshippers, but 
 no man can give more than he possesses. We yield what we can. 
 I admit at once my unfitness as your spokesman, repine at it, 
 deprecate all malignity of criticism as doing my best, and simply 
 obey your commands. 
 
 I must confess I have been present on various occasions, 
 now long since passed, when similar tribute has been paid of a 
 worthier kind at the same season. I can recall, and do so with 
 fond and grateful recollection, when in 1859 I heard George 
 Dawson, with full and scholarly appreciation, with a colloquial 
 eloquence and aptitude of phraseology granted to few, expound 
 from the practical business-like Birmingham standpoint, but not 
 without poetic admiration and a chastened love, the urbane many 
 sided, commercial-traveller-and-bagman view of the worldly, 
 successful, actor Manager of the Globe Theatre. The scholarly 
 orator was full of admiration for the poor lad who had to fly his 
 native town, then little more than a village (in our modern view), 
 to start as a call boy, and become in turn, strolling vagabond and 
 player, and yet who was able to return in less than twenty years, a 
 landed proprietor and an Esquire bearing arms, high in respect 
 and honour of all with whom he had been brought in contact, or 
 by whom he was known. This was a genuine, commercial, and 
 business-like success. It was practical and was much appreciated 
 by the majority of his audience. 
 
 (*). Homage, says Littleton, is the most honourable service of reverence that a free 
 man may render to his Lortl. His fealty is the more sacred, for though it is incident to homage 
 the tenant is sworn thereto.
 
 I can recall in the year 1863* a dinner in the classic precincts 
 of St. John's Gate in the very room in which Sam. Johnson once 
 ate his meals behind a screen to hide his shabby clothes, and 
 where more remotely the great Knight's Templars formerly held 
 feast and sway, and where little Davy Garrick, the bankrupt trader, 
 who had, according to one of his good-natured friends, three bottles 
 of vinegar in a cellar, and called himself a wine merchant, first 
 played in "The Mock Doctor," and made his trembling and 
 fearsome debut in a career which finally landed him in West- 
 minster Abbey. Dr. Westland Marston, the suave and merciful 
 critic, and the author of "The Patrician's Daughter" and other 
 dramas, was in the chair, and Henry Marston (no relative), an 
 old Pauline, one of the most accomplished actors who ever graced 
 the British stage, proposed as a toast the theme of that and this 
 evening's address, "The Bard of Avon," The Divine Williams, as 
 the French phrase it. He poured out a libation, as to one of the 
 immortal Gods, with pure unstinted scholarly and appreciative 
 praise ; full of knowledge, as that of a man who had spent a 
 lifetime in the study of his great author, eloquent and sympathetic ; 
 as being offered by one who admired the Bard, in each respect, as 
 poet and actor, and as manager, and honoured him in all. These 
 are but incidental memories, but in what attitude shall I, a mere 
 lawyer, approach him to-night. In what aspect of his omniscient 
 presence first assail him. As Statesman, Historian, Author, 
 Manager, Actor, Playwright, Sailor, Soldier, Lawyer, Orator, 
 Philosopher, Patriot, Catholic or Protestant. As Naturalist or 
 Traveller, as Scotch or Welsh, as Mad Doctor or first Master 
 Mariner, or on which of his many other sides, first attack him. 
 To-night, I prefer my assault on his memory as an Englishman ; 
 as the incarnation of the noblest qualities and best attributes of 
 his race ; as the embodiment of its loftiest ideals and noblest 
 characteristics. 
 
 Whichever side I approach, I shall be in reference to achieve- 
 ment, the Poet's altitude and my own accomplishment, an object 
 of pity, but I seek to enlist your sympathy on this account. A 
 man who will not dare in a righteous cause to court even failure, 
 is a just object of contempt. I take, therefore, as my text, 
 Shakspere the Poet, the high priest of Apollo, the leader, 
 ruler and creator, the solace, the instructor of mankind, as an 
 Englishman. 
 
 Why, you may ask, when dealing with a writer so many- 
 sided, so impersonal, seize on this limited aspect. Because, I 
 dare to hope, it is the one on which he is most vulnerable. 
 
 (*) On the 13th of June, i860, at Knowle, Mr. Timmin's proposal to found a 
 ShaUspere Library in that City was discussed and considered by the Birmingham Shakspere 
 Club. Donations were then promised, and the suggestion which has given such a magnificent 
 endowment and heritage to that city was fully launched.
 
 Because I must commence somewhere, as you are beginning, no 
 doubt, to think ; and I cannot hope to grapple fully, even if 
 imperfectly, with any phase. I, therefore, choose for the subject 
 of our contemplation, "William Shakspere as the Playwright 
 and Poet Dramatist of the English People." 
 
 Apart from his so-called works, jestingly termed plays, he has 
 written verse which, as Poetry pure and simple, is as wise and 
 melodious and as ])erfect in rhythmic construction as any. In this 
 he also touched the highest watermark of human excellence, and of 
 finite passion and emotion, dithyrambic and sensuous ; but his 
 plays are his wisdom and his strength. In these are enshrined 
 the resources of his mighty mind. In these are laid up the secrets 
 of his penetrative intuition, his varied experiences of life, and the 
 philosophic and metaphysic insight disclosed by his genius and 
 universal intelligence. 
 
 Epic poetry has been said to be the most elevated of all 
 poetry, as enshrining each form — lyric, descriptive, dramatic, 
 dithyrambic — within itself, and as epitomising all. With this 
 opinion Aristotle did not concur. He, the wisest and most 
 accomplished of all antique critics, placed the tragedies of 
 yEschylus and Sophocles in the place of honour. It is obvious 
 that the rarest and most unattainable gift accorded to finite 
 intelligence is that of including and comprehending other minds. 
 The dominant capacity must be that which is capable of grasping, 
 absorbing, and bounding all other capacities. It must be the 
 loftiest, as being the most universal, as a whole is greater than its 
 parts, and as the circumference of a circle must be more than a 
 segment of the same circle. Thus the Dramatic faculty in its 
 highest form is that which compasses all inferior caj^abilities. It 
 presumes to think as a lower intelligence would think, under 
 certain given and altered conditions, acting as it would act, and 
 talking as it would talk, and thus arrogates the most elevated and 
 divine of human attributes. 
 
 To pass from the abstract proposition to the concrete 
 instance. The mind that can think and act like Ulysses, like 
 Brutus, like Henry the Fifth, that can present us with lofty ideals 
 of character as mirrored in Hamlet, in Antonio, in Timon, in 
 Lear, apart from their native infirmities, must include within 
 itself all these various and diverse idiosyncracies. Thus to very 
 few indeed in the world's history has been granted this semblalily 
 superhuman capacity. Milton, Byron, Wordsworth, to cite from 
 our own poetical celebrities, had no such gifts of acute meta- 
 physical analysis in any appreciable degree. All Byron's 
 characters, like Cain, Marino I''alicro, Manfred, were but 
 reproduced images and [)i(tures of himself. lie could not escajje 
 from his own personality. He drew imaginary beings in all 
 conceivable altitudes and situations, but IJyron's face appeared
 
 through the too transparent mask of all. His puppets all spoke 
 with one voice. They were but imperfectly ventriloquial. He 
 could no more escape from himself than poor Mr. Dick from 
 Charles the thirst. This was similarly true of the other Poets 
 named. As describers and delineators of other men, some of the 
 Novelists — Dickens, Thackeray, or Sir Walter Scott — have in 
 part succeeded better than the Poets. But their principal heroes 
 and heroines are limned from without, not from within. They 
 are masters of descriptive and penetrative narrative only. We 
 are as readers never summoned to commune with their 
 personalities while they think. We are not allowed to follow 
 and join in the mental operations of the minds of the actors 
 as we follow the processes of the mind in Macbeth, in Hamlet, 
 or in Shylock. 
 
 Brutus in Shakspere was a well-known Roman citizen, one 
 of the foremost figures in the antique world. If we compare the 
 speeches assigned by Shakspere to Brutus, with those that 
 Republican actually delivered on other topics on other occasions, 
 you will find that the creator of the character not only acts and 
 declaims for the time like Brutus, but thinks as he did. If you 
 examine the correspondence of the Patriot preserved to us, you 
 will find that the ideal image presented by the Poet cogitates, 
 expresses himself and acts, under altered conditions, precisely as 
 the real man thought and wrote, in fact and in history. The 
 Dramatist had mastered not merely the Historic man, but had 
 also so far analysed and traced the mechanism of his mind 
 and discovered the springs of those motives which impelled him, 
 that we look not merely on the form of the Hero, but on the 
 constraining causes, by which he was moved. We gaze, so to 
 speak, not on the hands and face of the clock, but are made 
 familiar with its machinery, and are able to trace the adjust- 
 ments, by which the whole is governed and sustained This is 
 one of the distinctive features of the Drama our Author has 
 created. His plots are autonomous, his men are autonomous. 
 Unlike the Greek plays, in which the heroes move only, as 
 they are constrained by the Gods, his drama evolves its plot 
 and action from the motives of humanity. The story, whatever 
 it may be, with its plan, progress, and final catastrophe, is but 
 the sequel and result of the thought and action of the ani- 
 mating personality. Destiny or fate, or external influences 
 count for little. From first to last, Macbeth moves but as his 
 passions urge him. He is hurried on by his ambition and 
 selfishness from crime to crime, bloody, vindictive, remorseless, 
 to his final ruin and fatal end. This is indeed the secret of all 
 the Tragedies. They all depend on the idiosyncracies of their 
 heroes. Their follies, vices, infirmities and passions are the 
 solution alike of incident, plot, story and circumstance.
 
 In truth, Shakspere was not in reference to his Art so much 
 the painter as the maker of men. His Hamlet, his Othello, his 
 Shylock, his Macbeth, are more real to the whole world, than 
 any actual Historic personage or Hero of their own, or of any 
 age. What arc Coligny, Don John, or even the Chevalier 
 Bayard, to you, and yet they are exactly and elaborately em- 
 balmed in history. Volumes of narrative, in panegyric and 
 description, have been penned in their praise and in that of 
 their real or assigned Virtues, and still they remain strangers 
 to most ot us. Or to adopt instances from our own History ; 
 what are Sir Philip Sydney, Leicester, Sir Anthony Shirley, Sir 
 Walter Raleigh, or the heroes of the commonwealth, familiar 
 as they are to most of us, compressed in prosaic Biography. 
 They are but Shadows, " Who come like Shadows, so depart." 
 
 But the Poet's men and women live again with us. They 
 think and talk and act as if alive. What says Pierce Penniless, 
 " How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the 
 French) to think that after he had lain 200 years in his Tomb, 
 he should triumph again on the stage, and have his bones 
 new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at 
 least (at several times) who, in the Tragedian that represents 
 his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding?" Shaks 
 pere by his art, indeed, breathes the breath of life into these 
 dead heroes of History, and they spring up vital, animated, 
 endowed with full volition, energy, power of thought and desire ; 
 a great army in full panoply and array. He infused his soul 
 into their dead bones. He not merely seems to look through 
 their eyes, but to speak through their lips as if they had 
 renewed life. These are no Puppets moved by wires and jerked 
 from without ; but livmg men re-endowed with all their natural 
 gifts in their habits as they lived. What said Heine on this 
 point? he, being a Jew and inimical to England and all things 
 English ; we and our land being denounced by him as a cheer- 
 less unrefreshing country, and a repulsive people, straight-ruled, 
 hide-bound, home-made, selfish, angular, anglican, these are his 
 precise epithets, declared ; "That being in Venice, he was haunted 
 everywhere by Shakspere. That if he went on to the Rialto, 
 he looked for Shylock, and again in the Synagogue, he expected 
 him to start up and outface him. That in that glorious city 
 rescued from the sea, amid all its ancient and renowned associa- 
 tions, architectural magnificence and splendid memories, he felt 
 Shylock's presence everywhere, saw him with his white lalar 
 on his head, praying more fervently devout, true worshi[)i)er, and 
 Hebrew that he was, than any of his fellow devotees, and 
 lilting up his soul full of wild and stormy passions to ihr 
 great and inexorable Jehovaii, as he believed in him." Is 
 not this homage ? Is not this a tribute to the commanding
 
 8 
 
 Genius of the straight-ruled, hide-bound, angular, Anglican. 
 
 With this enthusiastic and appreciative admiration of Shaks- 
 pere's creative realism, Mr. Zangwill, a modern Hebrew, lecturing 
 a short time since in Manchester, did not concur. He then said 
 Shakspere could not paint a true Hebrew, because he had not 
 seen one. If Mr. Zangwill, whose experience has perhaps been 
 with a limited and more debased class of Israelite, and there are 
 Jews and Jews, had been content to state his opinion and offer 
 no reasons for his belief, we could take it at its worth. But in 
 assigning a reason, he discredited his own testimony. Why 
 Gondomar the Spanish Ambassador to James I., one of the 
 best known figures in England of his day, was a Jew ; Perez 
 and Lopez, both well-known to the Poet, political intriguants 
 both, the one a doctor, and possibly Florio the author of the 
 Dictionary, and translator of Montaigne, were all Jews. Though 
 there were no Jewish rites sanctioned, there were many Hebrews 
 in this country, presumably from the time of Edward the third. 
 They were nominally Flemings, Italians and Spaniards in the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth. However, I do not proi)ose to 
 wander into an unprofitable discussion as an episode ; I am 
 content to say, that if personal knowledge of the higher forms of 
 Semitic character and idiosyncracy were needed he had full 
 opportunities of acquiring it, even if he did not, as many experts 
 have believed, visit Italy. Personal knowledge, was however, no 
 more requisite in Shylock's case than in that of Hamlet, or Caesar, 
 Brutus, Cicero, or Timon ; and I pit Heine's acumen and 
 intelligence, and his unbounded enthusiasm, against Mr. Zangwill's 
 perfunctory condemnation pretty confidently. 
 
 As a Dramatist and Poet, Shakspere the Englishman was 
 the furthest reach and achievement of the even tolerance, the 
 superabundant energy, the patriotism, the enterprise, the indepen- 
 dance, the individual resource of the English mind. In his 
 philosophy, illustrated in his Dramas ; is epitomised the most 
 beneficent, regal, contemplative and chivalrous attributes of our 
 race. Pie is the sum of all our greatness. He is the accepted 
 exponent of our proudest ambitions, the accredited creator and 
 depositary of our most exalted ideals. The supremest nation is 
 the creator of truly transcendent ideals. The Nation's Poet is the 
 creator of such ideals. The kingly majesty of Henry the Vth, the 
 patriotism of Talbot and John O'Gaunt, the daring of Falcon- 
 bridge, the noble tolerance of the Duke in " Measure for Measure;" 
 the benignity of Prospero ; these compass the full circle of our 
 native claim to superiority of mental resource, and to the great 
 fortunes comprised in our destiny. Let us then console ourselves 
 with this, that no man has imagined or thought of nobler men, 
 or of purer and holier women than he has created out of the 
 men and women of England he knew.
 
 There can be little doubt that the period in which Shakspere 
 appeared on the world of action was eminently favourable for the 
 evolution of his mind and art. It was an altogether heroic age. 
 The emancipation from the thraldom of Papal tyranny had given 
 an impetus and zest to every species of learning. The translation 
 of the Bible and the invention of printing had quickened the 
 sources of individual thought, and of mental, moral and spiritual 
 independence. Our wars in defence of religion in the low 
 countries, and against Philip and his armies on the Continent, and 
 tlie defeat of his vaunted Armada, stimulated the nobler resources 
 of our nature as patriots, as soldiers, as statesmen. Common 
 danger begets a common heroism, uncommon perils develope 
 uncommon resources. We were menaced on every side, the league 
 of our foes, Spanish, Italian and French united in the Papal bond, 
 intriguing among our nobles, assailing us in Holland, threatening 
 us in the West of Ireland, cons|)iring with the Irish and the Scotch, 
 tasked all our manhood. Happily we proved equal to our fortunes. 
 Thus, it is, that the many sided, resourceful, vital and exuberant 
 qualities of true and complete English life of that enterprising time 
 have been preserved ; to be a pattern to our children and our 
 children's children, and an ideal for our contemplation for ever. 
 
 This full tide of existence is embodied in Shakspere's Drama. 
 The characters in his plays epitomise the life we then enjoyed. 
 Not every age has its Homer. There were great men before 
 Agamemnon, but no blind bard to record or sing his great achieve- 
 ments. Shakspere has hymned the praises of the most chivalrous 
 and romantic figure of his age. Of the Earl of Essex, the hero of 
 Cadiz, in the chorus and text of Henry the Vth, as well as of John 
 O'Gaunt, and the great Talbot. He enshrined all the essential 
 aspects of our famous Island story ; i\gincourt, Poitiers, Rouen, 
 Shrewsbury, and Bosworth Field. Thus our English Drama which 
 may be said to have been comprised in Shakspere's working life 
 (of 2.5 years), presents us with a picture in little, of English History 
 and English fortunes in a period of transcendant glory, and in all 
 their most vivid and vital variety. The plays mirror the aspects 
 of our political institutions, our laws and lawlessness, our struggles 
 for freedom of thought and independent national existence; and 
 thus form a brief encyclopaedia of all the volcanic changes of 
 fortune, and of dynasty, and the convulsions and revolutions we 
 had then gone through. They are an abstract ; as living and real 
 as the Chronicles they enshrine. 
 
 The defect of Elizabethan literature has been said by the 
 more tame and degenerate spirits of our own day to have been 
 "over-ornamentation, exaggeration in sentiment and of expression, 
 and the absence of simplicity." Marlowe, Shakspere's first chief 
 and great master, the Canterbury cobbler's son, " Marlowe of the 
 mighty line" struck the key note. Tamerlane, it cannot be
 
 10 
 
 denied, was in a high sonorous stalking vein. With as much irony 
 as Shakspere ever indulged in, he satirised this mock heroic 
 manner in the inflated jargon of ancient Pistol. The hyperbolic 
 tall talk, the robustious bombast of Jeronimo, the violence of 
 incident, and the ferocity and brutality displayed in the elder 
 Dramas, viz., "The Jew of Malta," " Locrine," ''Titus 
 Andronicus," the two parts of Jeronimo, "The Yorkshire Tragedy," 
 are no doubt like Tamerlane, strong food. They were more or 
 less Gothic and based on the traditions of an older day, and 
 Shakspere's two earliest compositions, or those in which a 
 principal share was his, reflect these peculiarities. They supplied 
 the suggestions for the vigorous contrasts of violent cruelty and 
 passion delineated in Lear, Othello and Macbeth, which appear 
 pitched so much above the standard, of ordinary humdrum 
 respectability, and the perfect civic life. 
 
 Shakspere in truth was but an artistic and poetic inter- 
 preter of the scenes and emotions he saw about him. The 
 soldiers, adventurers, men of action, heroes and statesmen were 
 persons he had met and known. He perhaps had known no 
 soldier so brightly mercurial and witty as Mercutio, but he had 
 often talked with Raleigh. That Ixion career was in his ken. 
 A wise and discriminating critic of the past year has said, " The 
 comprehensiveness of his Shakspere's mind and sympathy is so 
 wide that it seems at first as if he had no special sympathies at 
 all." With this opinion I cannot (if I understand it aright) concur. 
 He betrayed no sympathies in his work in detail. He did not 
 pretend to be didactic. To have shown leaning or bias would have 
 been to violate the very purpose of his art and to have " over 
 stepped the modesty of nature." He has declared his view of 
 the players duty as the interpreter of a play, the purpose of playing 
 being: — "To hold as t'were the mirror up to nature; to show 
 virtue her own image scorn her own image, and the very age and 
 body of the time his form and pressure." This clearly was the 
 Poet's conception of dramatic representation and its proper 
 function. Thus he believed in, defined and abridged, his duty. 
 This was his limitation of his art, but with due subordination to 
 his purpose,- he was in no wise hindered from declaring his special 
 sympathies always on the side of right, for the cultivation of mercy, 
 honour, valour, friendship, self-restraint, courtesy, patriotism, pity, 
 generosity and the other virtues ; but always without pretence, 
 without discoverable aim, and without violation of the fundamental- 
 canons of all true art. 
 
 What then was his mission as he understood it ; his business 
 as he illustrated it : his purpose as he has declared it. To do 
 precisely what Greek art proposed to itself to do. That which the 
 Hellenic Sculptor attempted in his representation of the human 
 form — to generalise the individual ; universalise the single
 
 11 
 
 instance — ^just as the Venus of Milo embodies the perfection of 
 form to be discovered in no one woman in the universal world. 
 To unite the perfection of all forms in one ideal figure at the will 
 of the artist. Thus the Helen of Zeuxis was an abstract of the 
 perfection of form and beauty of all women. Romeo in like manner 
 is not so much a picture of a single lover, as of all lovers. He 
 was an ideal lover. Hamlet is an image, not of one merely con- 
 templative, imaginative and philosophic doubter, but of all 
 questioning, cynical and speculative scholars ; as Timon is of all 
 misanthropes, Othello of all jealous husbands, and Macbeth of all 
 unscrupulous and ambitious tyrants. It is true that the general 
 picture thus presented is made human and real by some artifice 
 and trivial instance, as by the "Prithee undo this button" of Lear, 
 or the abstracted ''Very like, very like" of Hamlet, and the 
 "What man ne'er pull your hat upon your brows," and the " He has 
 no children " in Macbeth. These were the tricks of art, these 
 lend the " Touch of Nature which makes the whole world kin.'' 
 The Poet's portraits are none of them individual, they are abstract 
 reflections of human nature, mirroring life so far individualised as 
 to be human, in no sense mere photographs of the peo|)le he 
 knew, but yet embodying and epitomising their virtues, capacities 
 and life, in a general idealised and exalted way. 
 
 It has been complained of the Poet that we gain irom his 
 plays no insight into the vital features of the History going on 
 about him, of the religious fervour of the Puritans, of that struggle 
 for freedom of thought and speech, then fermenting in the bosoms 
 of his countrymen, or of that intolerance of Regal tyranny so 
 soon to be manifested after his death. 
 
 There appears, it must be at once conceded, no consciousness 
 of those vast impending issues already ripening for decision, or of 
 the ever increasing increment of vice ensuing on the corruption of 
 the court and times. This is obvious, His Urama was a mirror only, 
 a mirror of men and of their constant and enduring features and 
 events and acts, and of representative people and their doings, not 
 of opinions, not of fugitive or transient, or accidental peculiarities, 
 not of mere principles, nor of speculations. In this manner, there 
 are no traces of theories of heredity, no pictures of abnormal types 
 of humanity, or of abnormal features in such humanity. We have 
 no impossible types of virtue and vice, of the kirk or the kennel 
 respectively. He offers us no problems based on unnatural 
 characteristics, either of unsexed men or of over-sexed or too sexual 
 women. He has no museum of monstrosities or freaks. No Hedda 
 Gabblers, no Mrs. Tanquerays or Dorian Grays, or Heavenly 
 Twins, no Bestial Idols. No Women with pasts, or afflicted with 
 unspeakable vices. His theatre was not a dissecting table. His 
 resemblances were neither realistic nor impressionist, to adopt the 
 modern slang. His aspects were of a counterfeit [)rcsenlment, at
 
 12 
 
 once gracious and benign. His pictures were pleasant and 
 elevating presentations of nature and humanity. They were not 
 base counterfeits of disease and crime. They presented life not 
 so much as it is, as it ought to be. What I have now said may 
 appear to conflict or even to contradict what was suggested with 
 reference to Brutus, Henry V., John O'Gaunt, or Falconbridge. 
 But recognised and authentic pictures, of well-known men, like 
 those of Antony, Cassius, Caesar, Decimus Brutus, Cicero, or even 
 of such mythic heroes as Ulysses, Hector, Thersites, Ajax, as 
 they have been presented by Homer, or in the antique drama, are 
 intended to be individual likenesses. Still this in no wise 
 conflicts, with the presentation of ideal representatives of the 
 passions or emotions, in an impersonal and universal sense, 
 or such a combined and idealised expression of their character as 
 I insist on. 
 
 The Shaksperean drama in contrast with that of Aristoph- 
 anes, or of Ben Jonson, assumes to be the mirror of nature; it 
 aspires to reflect life as a whole. The plays of Moliere (and 
 generally this may be said of Greek, Roman and French comedy), 
 only aimed at a satiric presentation of the manners and fashions 
 of the day. They presented the fugitive and transitory follies, 
 political abuses and frivolities of the hour, the fleeting aspects of 
 life. This was the characteristic of Ben Jonson's comedies. •' Every 
 Man in his humour," and "out of his humour." "Volpone," 
 "Bartholomew Fair," "The .Silent Woman, "copying thecomedies of 
 Plautus and Aristophanes, aimed at nothmg more than the satiric 
 delineation of peculiarites. Crites, Pantilius Tucca, Clove and 
 Orange, Hedon and Anaides, are not so much individual portraits 
 as superficial and savage caricatures. If they are types, they are 
 types of which no other human instance or example occurred. 
 Roman comedy was but the echo of that of Greece, and Jonson 
 based his plays wholly on antique example. English comedy 
 on the other hand as created by Shakspere offers us the Hving 
 portraiture of man, man made in the image of his Maker. On 
 this account no doubt, Heine vividly speaks of the Shaksperean 
 drama as the true worlds gospel, and of the Poet as the Sun of 
 English Life, its light and luminary, its vivifying power and 
 leavening influence, alike its stimulus and splendour, its grace 
 and glory. The essence of Greek Tragedy it has been well said, 
 is to prove man's powerlessness in the hands of the Gods. That 
 it presented its heroes struggling against fate. This was its 
 didactic lesson. Shakspere offers us another teaching. He is 
 anti-fatalistic. With him man is the author of his own destinies, 
 the carver of his own career, the source alike of his own fortunes 
 and misfortunes. Humanity is imperial, and is the prime mover 
 and controller of events, and the source of power in the Universe, 
 by which it is surrounded.
 
 13 
 
 On this ground then, if on no other, we must assign to 
 Shakspere the pre-eminent distinction that he first gave to humanity 
 in the Drama its true place in the Universe. Man neither in 
 Tragedy nor Comedy is with him, the bhnd and passive instrument 
 of the caprice or enmity of the Gods. He is no slave. In the 
 Eschylean Tragedy man is an automaton, he merely fulfils his 
 fate. The avenging deities control his every fortune. He suffers 
 for the inexpiable crimes of his ancestors. In Shakspere all the 
 heroes carve out their own calamities ; Romeo, Macbeth, Hamlet, 
 Brutus and Cassius, lago, Richard III., are the sole ministers to 
 their own misfortunes. In this aspect the Drama becomes a 
 mirror or picture of nature and life, and real men whom we have 
 known, seem to occupy the stage. Authorities as widely severed 
 in sentiment, nationality and feeling as Garibaldi and Mr. Lowell 
 have said " that Shakspere intended to impersonate in Hamlet 
 not a mere metaphysical entity, but a man of flesh and blood." 
 Thus we seem to know even the minor characters ; Shylock the 
 Jew, Mercutio the ready and reckless man of fashion, Falcon- 
 bridge, the outspoken soldier, Antonio the faithful friend. In 
 this, it is a Drama of character, of man's individualism and 
 personality. He thus occupies his due position in nature, and 
 lives his own life. The Antique Drama offered us the sorry 
 spectacle of a mortal in conflict with immortals. Its tragedy 
 was the vain struggle of the foredoomed victim against the force 
 majeure of his ancestral crimes, the animosity of the Gods, or the 
 curse of his race. yEgisthus, Clytemnestra, Orestes, suffer for the 
 sins of Atreus. 
 
 In contrast, the modern drama of free-will indicates the 
 universal by the particular, the general by the individual. The 
 character is of a type. Thus Imogen the perfect wife, is an 
 idealised example of the flawless matron ; it is the universal 
 prototype of complete womanhood embodied. This is not less 
 true of Cordelia, or Helena, or Desdemona, or Isabella, in their 
 respective fashions, nor indeed of any of the Poet's characters. 
 The "Persona" is the mask for the race. In this wise the 
 dramatist's plays offer the variety, the spontaneity, and the 
 exuberance of nature. They are not trammelled by the unities of 
 time and place. Unity of story and of action arc alone 
 regarded. Thus Othello gives us scenes in Venice and Cyprus, 
 at the house of Brabantio, on the quay and in the castle, and we 
 are transferred from place to place at the will and by the magic 
 art of the Author. Summarised, the result is a drama of character 
 and action, of circumstance and adventure, as varied as the 
 national life of the peo[)le for whom it was intended. It is, 
 indeed, its abstract and brief chronicle, its epitome in little, and 
 like Macbeth's face, it is as a book where men may read strange 
 matters.
 
 14 
 
 This aspect of man as the arbiter of his own destiny is not 
 the limit of the modern play. It was of the very essence of the 
 age. It reflected the very spirit, the form and pressure of the 
 hour. This accounts for, and in part explains the occasionally 
 lavish ornament and gaudy spectacles, the casual obscurities, the 
 brilliant blaze, the processions, tournaments, sieges, battles, the 
 alternations of gloom and dazzle, the sumptuous wantonness, 
 complexity, fertility, and in a word, the irridescence of Shaks- 
 pere's dramas. 
 
 One aid, operating to this freedom and even liberty of treat- 
 ment, was that our manners and modes of speech were then more 
 or less unconstrained. Thus the independence of language and 
 defiance assigned to King John, in his challenge to the Pope, 
 was evidence of the intellectual emancipation we had recently 
 attained. In like manner, the philosophic and metaphysic doubts 
 of Hamlet, the passionate invective of Timon, the outstretched 
 poesy of some of Macbeth's soliloquies, were of one proof and 
 texture. They all proclaimed freedom. They all asserted as with 
 one voice, release from Papal tyranny. They were declarations, 
 lusty with the vigour, self-confidence and impatience of restraint 
 of youth. They were void of all fear. The dungeons of the 
 inquisition, the terrors of burning and of the stake, had vanished. 
 The vision of Milton was in fact realised. " The noble and 
 puissant nation was rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, 
 and shaking her invincible locks ; the eagle was mewing her 
 mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day 
 beam." 
 
 The essential phase of this dignified exaltation of humanity 
 in the Universe as the source of action and ])ower. in contrast 
 with the view expressed by Pope, is declared by Hamlet. He 
 says of man : " How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in 
 form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like 
 an angel, in apprehension how like a God, the beauty of the world, 
 the paragon of animals.' Pope apostrophises him as a "vile 
 reptile, weak and vain, his lot only to suffer and die," and as 
 " Great Lord of all things yet a prey to all." These perceptions 
 mark that author's highest vision. In strong contrast, all the 
 stories that have been selected by the National Poet as the 
 foundation of his plays, enunciate man's superiority and dignity. 
 The respective tragedies of Lear, Macbeth, Timon, Coriolanus, 
 Hamlet, establish his imperialism and governance. They all 
 revolve on the idiosyncrasies of the central self-controlling, self- 
 sustaining and ruling man. The comedies and histories not less. 
 Henry the Vth, Angelo, Shylock, Leontes, Richard Ilnd and Ilird 
 are the moving causes of the plot and action in the respective 
 plays in which they appear. This extends to all the minor 
 episodes and incidents which are employed and introduced to
 
 15 
 
 illustrate and amplify the personality of the central character. 
 The robbery by Henry at Gad's Hill, and his noble response to 
 Westmoreland before Agincourt, when he wished for more men, 
 " If we are marked to die we are enow," &c. 
 
 are incidents equally intended to discover and unfold the heroes' 
 personality. In like manner, Lear's misguided affection and folly 
 IS employed chiefly as a key to unlock the characters of Goneril 
 and Regan, Kent, Gloucester, and Edgar. The story proceeds in 
 simple evolution of their ordinary courses of action. Similarly 
 Timon's reverse of fortune flows from his nature, his want from 
 his wantonness, his hatred from his too confiding love of mankind, 
 his misanthrophy is his mercy, gone mad. 
 
 I cannot, however, disguise from myself the fact that the 
 position I assume in this address for Shakspere as Philosopher, 
 Poet, and Teacher, will jar on the sensibilities of very many 
 estimable and worthy people. By association the National 
 Poet's name and fame are coupled with that of the stage. He 
 is a Playwri;iht. He wrote for the play-house. The theatre in 
 all ages has been connected in the minds of the ordinary and 
 average citizen, with profanity and vice ; and even with fair, pure- 
 minded and tolerant persons, with very much that is immoral, 
 lascivious and sensuous, if not sensual. 
 
 Mr. Clement Scott, a well-known and admired critic, a 
 popular author and dramatic writer, has within the past few 
 months, indirectly condemned (from the stand-point " of an 
 intimate connection with the stage of more than thirty-seven years 
 duration " ) its ministrations, its teachings and results. He thinks 
 that the constant presence of the "showy and the alluring " must 
 inevitably have a deleterious, often a dangerous, influence on 
 persons devoted to its allurements." He thinks compendiously, 
 to use a well-worn phrase, the theatre " a vanity, a delusion, and 
 a snare." That there is no school on earth " so bad for the 
 formation of character, or that so readily, so quickly, so 
 inevitably, draws out all that is worst in man or woman, as the 
 stage." If this is a sound conclusion, it will surely be advanced 
 adversely as an oblique, but severe condemnation of the great 
 Poet of the modern and christian world. For he is best known to 
 us as a caterer for the play-houses, and it is suggested by one who 
 professedly coming to bless the drama, curses it altogether. 
 
 How far then is this hostile indictment of histrionic enter- 
 tainment; just, candid and unprejudiced. Presumably, Mr. Scott 
 must be the furthest removed from prejudice, for he derives his 
 livelihood from the stage and its belongings, as critic, writer, 
 author, translator, essayist and editor; even if he be not more 
 closely and incimately associated. If he condemns honestly, from 
 his superior eminence, how can it be otherwise than tliat religious
 
 16 
 
 d'evout, and God-fearing people with smaller opportunities of 
 knowledge, who have been taught from infancy to shun the play- 
 house as a pitfall of Satan, as a home of frivolity and vice, as a 
 temple of impurity dedicated to the unclean gods ; should, with 
 honest and reasonable sincerity, join not less heartily in mis- 
 apprehension and misgiving, censure and dislike. Without 
 impugning, however, Mr. Scott's motives, or certainly the indis- 
 cretion of his strictures, I may mention that he has withdrawn 
 his allegations and apologised. He confesses himself mistaken, 
 and in fact admits that he generalized unjustly on imperfect 
 premises. 
 
 I should not have referred to this incident, but that it appears 
 to me, a symptom, of a widespread and I must also add ignorant 
 intolerance, directed alike against the Drama and those associated 
 with it. It matters little that the whole conclusion which links 
 the Poet to the stage is based on a false inference. People reason 
 very little in arriving at a prejudice. The antipathy exists, in spite 
 of, in opposition to, all reason. As against the stage, it may be 
 partially w^ell founded — I say, may be — -not that it is, but it must 
 be remembered, that if Shakspere was never acted, his poems as 
 poetry, for their eloquence, their magnificence of diction, their 
 fervency of expression, their just and pious sentiments, their 
 tolerance, charity, magnaninimity of feeling, quick sense of 
 honour, omniscience in knowledge and their philosophy, would 
 still be unrivalled, and shorn of none, or few, of their merits or 
 attractions. Charles Lamb went the length of saying, " that the 
 works of the Swan of Avon ought never to be acted." They were 
 to him a perfect literature. I wholly disagree w-ith him in this 
 fantastic suggestion. As to the major part of them, they were 
 written for nothing else but to be played ; but this view indicates 
 how far the poet and the theatre are several and severable. The 
 theatre with other authors and other plays may minister to 
 profanity and vice ; with Shakspere they cannot. My claims are 
 for the beneficence of all the ministrations of the dramatist, as 
 teacher and leader to virtue only. If he be ever used and 
 employed to vice, if he could be so used, surely my position would 
 be false and unfounded. By their fruits you shall know them, is 
 certainly as sound in doctrine and as a discrimination in literature, 
 as in all other practical experience. It matters nothing that the 
 work shall be cast in a dramatic or stage form, and is to be repre- 
 sented to the life, if its purpose is excellent, and is wholly directed 
 to the furtherance of virtue, to the maintenance of manhood, to 
 the advance and sustenance of truth, honour, and fidelity ; how 
 can it be other than admirable and beneficent. The teaching of 
 the Poet's plays is not merely to the pursuit of these laudable ends, 
 but to the honour and enforcement of revealed religion, in its 
 most ennobling aspects as far as it is known.
 
 17 
 
 Let us then consider what the nature of the prejudice against 
 the stage is, and how it has arisen. I speak of it as a prejudice 
 because I not only beheve it to be so, but think it as mischievous, 
 pernicious and misguided a heresy as any that ever infected the 
 human race. Let me offer an illustration. In a criticism published 
 some years ago, it is said from the pen of a great nonconformist 
 divine, this was written : — 
 
 " Shakspere has been called, and justly too, the Poet of Nature. 
 A slight acquaintance with the religion of the Bible will show, however, 
 that it is ot human nature in its worst form, deformed by the basest 
 passions and agitated by the most vicious propensities ; ihat the poet 
 became the Priest, and the incense ofifered at the Altar of his Goddess 
 will continue to spread its poisonous fumes over the hearts of his 
 countrymen till the memory of his works is extinct. Thousands of 
 unhappy spirits, and thousands yet to increase their number will ever- 
 lastingly look back with unutterable anguish on the nights and days 
 in which the plays of Shakspere ministered to their guilty delights, and 
 yet these are the plays which men consecrated to the services of Him 
 who styles himself the Holy One, have prostituted their pens to 
 illustrate. Epithets amounting to idolatry and honours approaching to 
 blasphemy have been and are shamelessly heaped upon his memory by 
 a country professing itself Christian, and for which it would have been 
 happy on moral considerations if he had never been born, and strange 
 to say, even our religious edifices are not free from the pollution of 
 his praise." Even in this year of grace, 1898, in reference to the 
 Stratford Shakspere celebrations, it has been said in Exeter Hall, 
 " Idolatrous observances are being paid to a lost soul (Shakspere) now 
 in perdition." 
 
 These aspersions which epitomise so much of the bigotry and 
 animosity as well as of the ignorance of persons unacquainted 
 with the poetry of Shakspere, must be accepted at their worth, 
 and against them may be pitted the testimony of two of the most 
 eminent scholars and divines of our generation. The present most 
 learned Bishop of Oxford when lecturing on the Poet, hypothetic- 
 ally questioned one of his own statements that the Bard was 
 inspired, thus : — " How could he speak of Shakspere as a 
 prophet, or even as a religious man? His answer to that was, 
 that he would not be able to speak of both, if he did not think 
 Shakspere was both. Shakspere was not a prophet or religious 
 teacher, in the sense say of Dr. Doddridge or Dr. Watts ; he was 
 something higher and better, he rose above mere morals and 
 preached and prophesied to us of life. AVhile not a priest in the 
 ordinary sense of the word, we must know how much he had 
 done to humanise and therefore christianise mankind. He who 
 had read the ' Merchant of Venice,' Macbeth or Hamlet, had 
 heard sermons more precious than any homilies of the rul]iit." 
 The late Bishop Fraser said, "No man could see Hamlet without 
 feeling his whole nature elevated and strengthened, and even 
 spiritualised, and he thought that in a play there should be nothing 
 that should compromise a man's dignity, nor a woman's purity.'
 
 18 
 
 In addition, let me add the statement of the Archbishop of Dublin, 
 " That Shakespeare was the child of the England of the Reforma- 
 tion and was born of its spirit." Testimony practically infinite, 
 might also be adduced from the writings of the noblest church- 
 men, that the poet's aim was wholly directed to the teaching of wise 
 well-doing, and courageous endurance, as the true secrets of life, 
 and that when death ensues, as ensue it must, the readiness is all. 
 
 A confessed, vehement, and inexorable hostility to the stage 
 is not, however, the growth of a day. It has a remote and vener- 
 able antiquity ; which was but the shadow and reflection of a too 
 vivid and sanctimonious asceticism and purity. Thus, it would 
 perhaps appear startling, and even shock some persons to be 
 told, that it was not the virtues but the vices of the early 
 Christians that led to their manifold persecutions. Their sense 
 of superiority made them intolerant. Secure in their own self- 
 satisfied sanctity, they regarded all out of their own pale, as outcasts 
 and heathens. Their morality had no leaven of sympathy or 
 charity. They enjoyed in contemplation the ages of "unutterable 
 anguish," which all unbelievers would be doomed to endure. The 
 unreformed were to them loathsome and hateful as children of the 
 devil. Their simplest usages were idolatrous. The most innoxious 
 customary rites of hospitality, piety, or sacrifice, were equally 
 condemned. This puritanic anathema was directed not only 
 against the dramatic stage, but against all and every species of 
 amusement and recreation. Against music in all its forms, dancing, 
 piping, health drinking, the use ot flowers, decoration with laurel 
 leaves, painting, sculpture, rhetoric, even poetry. Indeed all the 
 Arts presided over by Apollo and the Muses were denounced as 
 consecrated to idolatry and paganism. They were all the devices 
 and pollutions of the devil. These were "the pomps and vanities 
 of this wicked world" which still find a place in our Liturgy. 
 These were the '"'obscenities, heathen frivolities, superstitions and 
 lewdnesses" so obnoxious to the early fathers of our faith. 
 
 Tertullian comprehensively included every species of aesthetic 
 enjoyment in his vast and vigorous denunciation of worldly 
 pleasures. In his De Speciaculis, he as much assailed a tragedy 
 of Euripides, as a fight of gladiators. All jiublic spectacles, all 
 triumphs, ail open displays of elegance and luxury, were treated 
 as idolatrous and hellish in his so-called "Apology." He accused 
 the Pagan Gods of nameless and unspeakable crimes, denied alike 
 their power and immortality, satirised their religious rites, and 
 imputed debauchery to their Priests and Vestals. The Octavius 
 of Minucius Felix more temperate in tone is to the same end. 
 
 The first movement against the youthful and growing stage 
 in England by the Puritans, was a revival of this hostility. Gosson 
 who in his " School of Abuse " in 1579, opened an attack on the 
 drama and poetry generally, renewed and echoed this enmity,
 
 19 
 
 and adopted the same general, indiscriminate, and vehement tone 
 of invective and condemnation. All ministrants to pleasure and 
 amusement were abused as abominable. The Devil himself was 
 declared to be " The father and parent of theatrical interludes," 
 "which no man can disprove," says Gosson "by any orthodox 
 record," which was no doubt true. They were adders all, that 
 stung with pleasure and killed with pain. These charges were 
 again and again repeated between 1579 and 1633, when Prynne 
 poured forth the pent up vials of his Puritanic wrath in the 
 voluminous pages of "Histrio Mastix." 
 
 There is no mystery in this bigotry, this intolerance. Every 
 institution, no matter how elevated or elevating, no matter how 
 sacred and exalted, has its reverse side of debasement and defile- 
 ment. This is the inevitable lot of all earthly contrivances. I^et 
 us consider for a moment what crimes, what cruelties, what 
 atrocities have sheltered themselves under the ^-^^gis and sacred 
 protection of Christianity. Torture in all its worst aspects, 
 midnight massacres, and the burnings and stranglings of the most 
 innocent at the stake. The Auto da Fees, the immolations, the 
 life-long persecution of the most unoffending and virtuous, all have 
 been perpetrated in the sacred names of piety and religion. We 
 may thus realise at once how invariable this association of virtue 
 with vice is. It is as of substance and shadow. Just as light 
 begets darkness, so the shadow follows the sun. The reflex action 
 seems almost inevitable. The pious zeal of Prosclytism by man's 
 infirmity becomes the pernicious zeal of persecution. The trite 
 proverb " Omnium rerum quarum usus est j^otest esse abusus, 
 virtute sola excepta," is truest, without its limitation. Thus not 
 merely sober amusements and legitimate pleasures, but every virtue, 
 every excellence, patriotism, charity and devotion, have at times 
 been freighted with the follies, mischievous and misdirected zeal 
 and even crimes of their professors, and have a])peared to bear 
 within themselves the seeds of these their abuses ; their umbra as 
 part of their sweetness and light. 
 
 This inevitable tendency, for such it is, of pity or piety to 
 merge into passion, of temperance in thought, to become intem- 
 perance in act, of bias to become bigotry is universal. It seems 
 indeed the nexus or bond between virtue and vice, which often 
 makes excess the only measure of depravity. Vice being Init an 
 excess of virtue. This infirmity may well be supi)osed to be 
 exaggerated in every aspect of expression of sensuous or sensual 
 pleasure. A source of enjoyment and delight like the stage, 
 ministering to the natural appetite for recreation, and the sim])le 
 animal (also natural) craving for amusement, lends itself easily to 
 many abuses. Its innocent illusions submit themselves, almost 
 suggestively to deceit and self indulgence. Its ajsthetic fascina- 
 tions tend to immorality and as art advances to effeminacy and
 
 20 
 
 vice. The capacity to feign, the art of feigning, must of them- 
 selves and of necessity lend aid to inherent insincerity. Splendours 
 extravagance and display, lead naturally to dissipation and decay. 
 On this account in all ages, perhaps rationally, a prejudice 
 has existed against the influence of the stage on its special 
 ministrants, myrmidons and followers; especially its feminine allies, 
 and those who are most intimately connected, as Mr. Scott 
 phrases it, with its allurements, or engaged in its spectacles, 
 deceptions and illusions. The very attractiveness essential to 
 their success, in something which is to give pleasure and delight, 
 as being superior to ordinary life, is a well nigh fatal, certainly a 
 very hazardous possession. It constitutes its possessors, the 
 immediate objects of envy ; the most active, potent and uniformly 
 earnest agent of mischief in this sublunary world. It makes 
 them the cynosure of all eyes, the observed of all observers, and 
 the best detested people of their time. Well has the Poet said : 
 
 " Hard is his fate, on whom the public gaze 
 Is fixed for ever to detract or praise. 
 
 Tb.e secret enemy whose sleepless eye 
 Stands sentinel — accuser, judge — and spy. 
 
 Behold the host ! delighting to deprave, 
 Who track the steps of glory to the grave. 
 Distort the truth, accumulate the lie. 
 And pile the pyramid of calumny." 
 
 The boundary between excellence and its excess, as already 
 pointed out, being so narrow, the natural tendency of man is to 
 overstep the line of right. The step from propriety to impropriety 
 is easy and often tempting. In the most corrupt ages of the 
 Roman Empire in its decline, the fact that the stage was, as it is, and 
 ever must be, but an echo of the public taste, a mirror of its follies 
 a minister to its pleasures, and even to its depravities, induced no 
 doubt many deviations, from that purpose of moral teaching and 
 wise enjoyment, which was its proper mission. The worst 
 Emperors, Nero, Caligula, Tiberias, Augustus, Domitian, 
 pandering to the vicious tendencies and banalities of the mob 
 took part as we know m the games of the circus, and in stage 
 performances. They exalted base and animal pleasures above the 
 pursuits of reason or virtue. They degraded the stage from its 
 position of mentor and guide, to be a minister to their most 
 ignoble pleasures and basest inclinations. Thus fostered, it was 
 encouraged in every species of abuse and licentiousness, of 
 dissipation and display, as part of the means of popularity and of 
 the art of government. In like manner to adopt the weighty 
 words of Dryden when speaking of Shakspere, and Beaumont and 
 Fletcher : " That they had written to the genius of the age and
 
 21 
 
 nation in which they lived, which differs in every epoch, in every 
 cHmate, and every disposition of the people, transitory or other- 
 wise." It is thus we arrive at the gross indecencies of Congreve 
 and Wycherly, Vanbrugh, Dryden, and Mrs. Behn. The stage 
 but reflected back the morals and the manners of the hour. Of 
 that fateful and hateful time so powerfully described by Alacaulay : 
 
 " Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the 
 days of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish 
 talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, 
 the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The King 
 cringed to his rival, that he might trample on his people, sunk into a 
 viceroy of France and pocketed with complacent infamy her degrading 
 insults, and more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots, and the 
 jests of buffoons, regulated the measures of a government which had 
 just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. 
 
 Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace 
 
 till the race, accursed of God and man, was a second time driven forth 
 to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a by-word and a shaking 
 of head to the nations." 
 
 This state of morals, this degradation, this infamy, this 
 absence of all virtue and triumph of every vice, necessarily pro- 
 duced its reflection on the stage. We have another graphic 
 picture from the same pen of the results. " During the forty 
 years which followed the Restoration the whole body of the 
 dramatists invariably represent adultery, we do not say as a 
 peccadillo — ^we do not say as an error which the violence of 
 passion may excuse — but as the calling of a fine gentleman ; as a 
 grace without which his character would be imperfect " All the 
 agreeable qualities are always given to the gallant. All the 
 contempt and aversion are the portion of the unfortunate and 
 abused husband who is invariably represented as "a fool or a 
 tyrant, or both." 
 
 Naturally these scandalous immoralities provoked rebuke and 
 denunciation. Thus in 1698 when Jeremy Collier presented his 
 " Short View of the i)rofaneness and immorality of the English 
 stage " there was again revived and renewed the old antipathy 
 and intolerance. The denunciations of Tertullian, Origen, 
 Minucius Felix, and St. Chrysostom, of Gosson, Hey wood and 
 Prynne, against all theatric and histrionic art, were once more 
 repeated. Who shall say that they were not needed. No man, it is 
 true, had been found bold enough to denounce the vile iniquities 
 and indecencies of the stage, while Charles was on the throne as 
 their patron and examplar, but they were not the less flagrantly 
 and manifestly the proper objects of rei)rehension. The dramas 
 of the day were execrably immoral and lascivious. Dryden 
 confessed this remorsefully, and as he surveyed the monstrous 
 brood to which directly and indirectly he had given birth, 
 apologised in later life, with contrition for his delinquencies, llis
 
 22 
 
 followers and imitators, incapable of copying his excellencies, had 
 easily sur])assed him in his depravities. 
 
 When William III began his reign, Jeremy Collier could 
 assail all those vices which were no longer courtly or fashionable, 
 with impunity. He might now be convinced as he said, " That 
 stage i)oets and plays, had debauched the age." He could 
 transfer the obloquy, due to the vices of the court, to the theatre, 
 and thus make the play-house the scapegoat. In this, however, 
 he was confounding cause and effect. The decade had produced 
 enormities, and the stage but ministered to its vices. This was bad 
 enough, but obscene plays were the result, and not the cause, of the 
 pernicious morals and manners of the past reign. A man of singular 
 honesty, earnestness and purity of morals, so far as is known, he 
 was listened to with respect if not attention. With other times, 
 other manners. It was no longer fashionable to hate your 
 neighbour and to love your neighbour's wife ; it was no longer 
 bon ton to be a drunkard, gambler and debauchee ; no longer 
 essential to a nobleman that he should be without nobility ; no 
 longer claimed that adultery was the one approved grace of 
 fashionable life. His attack, consequently, was sanctioned, if not 
 received with sympathy, and the worst impurities of Mrs. Aphra 
 Behn and Congreve, were for the time, if not for ever, in ignominy 
 laid aside. 
 
 I do not defend the stage, but it is these crimes of ingrate 
 predecessors that have still to be lived down. It is these once 
 natural but now irrational prejudices which have to be super- 
 seded and set aside. It seems a positive anomaly, that so long 
 after the evil has passed away, its malodorous results should 
 survive in repute, if not in infamy. It seems an even greater 
 absurdity, that after the lapse of nearly 300 years, it should be 
 deemed necessary to step into the arena, to defend what is 
 demonstrably pure, and what is unequivocally unsullied, and to 
 ask tolerance for a drama dedicated to the noblest teaching, 
 and which is inspired by the holiest and most laudable virtues 
 of patriotism, honour, charity, and unalloyed excellence, as if 
 it were in fact vicious and detestable. The whole sequence 
 appears ludicrous. Profanity, obscenity, and vice are not 
 inculcated by pictures of exalted purity, nor by examples of 
 noble intention, nor is indecorum incited by elevated senti- 
 ments in exquisite diction. Vice cannot be fostered by a 
 teaching wholly to good, and yet this is the purpose, this is 
 the aim of all the eloquence, philosophy and poetry of our 
 National Poet. 
 
 There are of course gross and indecent expressions and 
 phrases in Shakspere, but they are more in manner than in 
 substance, and were due to the barbarity of the age, the degraded 
 tastes of masculine audiences, and the illiterate vulgarity of the
 
 23 
 
 mob, for whose amusement they were framed. A Drama must be 
 addressed to its auditory. It must not be above their heads, if 
 it is to teach, it must teach as though it taught them not, if it 
 aim to destroy " the cankerworms of peace," it must be easy to 
 be understood. If it exposes the vices of fraud and hypocrisy, 
 ambition or cruelty, it must be plain in its tuition. There are 
 some bad and detestable characters in the Poet ; but they are 
 few, and their vices are held up uniformly to reprehension. \\t; 
 despise even while we pity Othello, in spite ot his valour and 
 greatness of soul. We loathe lago in spite of his wit and transient 
 success. We honour Henry the Vth and Brutus, in spite of their 
 failings. The moral purpose of all the Poet's dramas is plain. 
 There are no attractive smiling and successful villains, no graceful 
 and accomplished scoundrels, no women of transcendant vices 
 and resplendant charms. The high way of honesty is maintained, 
 the lines of right and wrong are never confounded. There are no 
 gallant and exquisite adulterers, and on all occasions depravity is 
 scourged, humiliated and held up to our unqualified reprobation. 
 There is in Shakspere no adornment of what is in its nature 
 despicable, as in the dramas of a later, and indeed of the present 
 day. No exaltation of women with pasts, as if the only avenue to 
 our regard was infamy and the pathway to society was a sewer. 
 There is no homage to the Mrs. Hallers, or the Mrs. Tanquerays, 
 or the " Lady of the Camelias." No loathsome dissections of 
 cancerous, abnormal and indefinable abominations, as in Ibsen or 
 Zola. Such blemishes as really do exist, and they are not many, are 
 of expression only. They were part of the coarseness of the age, 
 they were intended for the Alsatians, the men of the camp and the 
 sword, the groundlings of the assembly, whom the Author catered 
 for, but despised. Even such objectionable phrases and allusions 
 as occur, are placed in the mouths of the ignoble and infamous, 
 the churls, fools and witlings, and the low comedians of the day, 
 and as part of the equipment of vicious and vulgar life which it 
 was the Poet's mission to present as faithfully as its higher phases. 
 But this charge of grossness of language, is slight and trivial and 
 immaterial, in relation to the body of Shaksperean literature. The 
 only serious or actual imputation is that, which is professedly 
 levelled against the teaching and mission of Shakspere. That 
 which I have indicated already, in the criticism I have read to you. 
 In that hostility which enshrines the prejudice of ages, in that 
 aversion of the ignorant virtuous, of the uninstructed and unin- 
 formed order loving citizen, and which is the vital and dangerous 
 antagonism to be faced. Prejudices die hard, they are not the less 
 difficult to kill, that they were originally misdirected or unfounded. 
 It matters not; tiiat this Stratford literature, the purest and noblest 
 in its essence that we own, is in its teaching jjious and even 
 religious that it enshrines in its matchless poetry an elevated
 
 24 
 
 philosophy, wit, homage to humanity, statesmanship, eloquence 
 and appeals of the most entrancing kind to our purest emotions, 
 our senses of charity, pity, mercy, forbearance, our honour, valour 
 and patriotism ; the prejudice (because these qualities are exhibited 
 in a play) still exists. It is misplaced, it is repugnant to reason; 
 still it is as hard to kill as any other ancient and established 
 superstition. The aversion as it survives, is not especial as against 
 Shakspere's plays, but is against all dramas, all stage plays, all 
 play-houses, all theatrical entertainments whatsoever, and it knows 
 neither tolerance nor discrimination. 
 
 Yet what can be more absurd, than an animosity levelled against 
 an institution as being impious, for maintaining follies which it 
 devotes itself to suppressing; when its mission also is a most exalted 
 Protestantism, whose teaching is not merely moral but devotional. 
 Which inculcates virtue in every line and thought, and inspires 
 men by pictures of a better life, and which in its most direct inten- 
 tion, in all elements of fundamental faith is in strict accord with 
 and fervently enforces, the teaching of the New Testament. It 
 is an imbecile fallacy to advance, that because poetry is dramatic 
 or histrionic, it must necessarily be impure and obnoxious. That 
 virtue is really vice if you but name it so. That good becomes 
 evil by so esteeming it. Shakspere wrote for the play-house 
 because his bitter fortune compelled him to that species of liveli- 
 hood. It was the only avenue of poetic thought in his day. The 
 world of readers was few, books were scarce and dear. The stage 
 play was the newspaper of the time. His probation, like that of 
 many geniuses before and since, was first to learn to live, and 
 then to live to learn. His experience epitomised both disciplines. 
 In this way alone, he was enabled to enrich his dramas with a 
 code of morals and of manners, and of practical wisdom of the 
 highest refinement, and to stud his slightest and most fugitive 
 dialogues with gems of thought and philosophy, which wholly 
 apart from their scenic aptitude and histrionic adaptation, were 
 enough to enrich all the literature of all the ages of all the peoples 
 of the earth. 
 
 My complaint against my fervid friend, Mr. Clement Scott, 
 is that he is too subsequent. That he revives the fanaticism of the 
 early fathers. That he ignores the examples of the highest 
 exponents of the art, he reveres, admires, and adorns. Are lawyers 
 better than play actors, that he should decry the players, or are 
 doctors, or even critics more perfect. 
 
 " I know your lawyers can with ease 
 
 Twist words and meanings as they please, 
 And language by iheir skill made pliant 
 Can bend to favour every client." 
 
 And about doctors and critics I could say something. I 
 would desire him to protest with St. Chrysostom, when denouncing
 
 25 
 
 Ibsen, " That theatres are oratories of the evil one, temples of 
 iniquity, and that they bring the oracles of God into contempt," 
 but not when they are performing noble service and doing their 
 duty. We do not deserve the indiscriminate animosity of the Saints. 
 That included, as we know, music and all necessary enjoyments 
 which administer to the most exalted and spiritual delights of man. 
 I object to his confounding elevated and pious instruction with 
 " the pomps and vanities of this wicked world." With his mixing 
 luxuries, lust and lasciviousness, with things of good report. Even 
 in the best ages of Greece, Plato denounced the open blasphtmies 
 against the immortal Gods, indulged in, in the choruses of Euripides ; 
 but he did not denounce Euripides, but the blasphemers. The 
 Puritans ascribed to the stage "the vices they had no mind to, 
 while practising all they were inclined to ; '" but with this genera! 
 denunciation we have no sympathy. Shall we denounce virtue 
 because it is sometimes intolerant ; piety because it has been 
 a nursing mother at times to cruelty, bigotry and intolerance. 
 I think not. What says Pierce Penniless in praise of the stage, 
 " That in plays all cunning devices, all frauds, overgilded with 
 holiness ; all stratagems of war, all the canker worms that breed on 
 the rust of peace are exposed. That God is evermore just in 
 punishing murder ; that the policy of plays is very necessary ; that 
 no immortality can be given on earth to a man, like being embalmed 
 in a stage play. That a hope of such immortality is better than can 
 be hoped from a mere love of lucre or filthy avarice." 
 
 Let us assume in drawing to a conclusion, that many plays 
 are in their nature and essence, evil. That they are malignantly 
 corrupt like Ibsen's, or foul and unnatural like Oscar Wild's, or 
 indecent like some of Pinero's ; shall we also, on that account, 
 forbear good and virtuous dramas. Shall I cease to eat because 
 many men have died of gluttony ; shall I fear to ride becau.se 
 many men have been thrown, or to go to sea because many men 
 liave been drowned ; I trow not. Is the food we enjoy, less 
 calculated to ncjurish us, because it was killed in a squalid 
 neighbourhood, m an iesthetically offensive slaughter house;? 
 We may still thrive on it. " Let the galled jade wince, our 
 withers are unwrung." I have again and again said, that the study 
 of Shakspere may be and is wholly independent of dramatic 
 interpretations, and further, 
 
 " That the .Stage but echoes hack the pul)Hc voice. 
 
 That the dramas Liws the dramas patrons give, 
 For they that live to ph'ase must please to live." 
 
 I'he stages assailants wotihl deny us fire-, because some houses 
 have been burned down. They would restrain the sober because' 
 many drink innncjderatcly, " not wisely, but loo well." 'i'hcy
 
 26 
 
 condemn all to penance, for an individual infirmity ; they would 
 muzzle all sound and healthy dogs, because one dog has gone mad. 
 We desire the fire to warm, the water to assuage our thirst, the 
 food to sustain us; and shall we ostracise all pleasures of the soul, 
 because many men are animal, some are bestial, a few unnatural. 
 
 I now return to my first, which is also my final aspect, of the 
 Poet, viz., his name and fame as an Englishman; as a representative 
 Englishman ; as a man of Teutonic and not of Celtic or Iberian, or 
 Semitic Race. His personal attributes, so far as they are known 
 to us like his name are all peculiarly English. He was patient, 
 undemonstrative, self-contained, self-restrained, gentle, earnest, 
 and sincere. His effigy bequeathed us, is that of a sanguine, fair- 
 haired, hazel-eyed Englishman. To adopt D'Israelis phrase he 
 was " A flat-nosed Frank." He may have had mixed blood in his 
 veins, but there is no trace of it in his sympathies. Living under 
 a Tudor sovereign, and with a Welsh patron, he is just to Welsh 
 valour, but does not spare the foibles of Fluellen or Evans on that 
 account. The first-named was the undoubted portrait of Sir 
 Roger Williams, a famous soldier who occupied an important 
 place in the history of his time, and was as familiar a figure in 
 London life between 1589 and December 1595 when he died, as 
 Sir John William Maclure to Manchester men to-day. 
 
 Naturally as a Briton, his portraits of men and women are 
 chiefly English, but the Poet's universal eye, had as we know, no 
 visible preference. In his Italian and Roman plays he has 
 preserved with fidelity the special characteristics of the people and 
 race he is delineating. Macbeth is a thorough Celt. The Poet 
 had no discoverable leanings. The only mode of tracing his 
 sympathies or partialities, if any, is by analysis of the utterances of 
 his heroes or the people he delighted to honour. These only 
 speak with the wisdom or nobility, that is not to be gainsayed. As 
 a whole, his works prove demonstrably, how generous, how candid 
 and tolerant he was in his judgments. That as he epitomised the 
 Protestantism, the love of liberty of his age, its adventure and 
 enterprise, indeed all its salient features, he in like manner 
 condensed the ideal character of the typical Englishman. This 
 personality has been said to be self-restrained, self-reliant, self- 
 contained and self-complacent. His enemies add also, selfish, 
 self-seeking, self-satisfied, all self. If this is true, Shakspere was 
 certainly impersonal. He is always impartial. His only leanings 
 are for virtue and right. He honours valour, firmness, truth, 
 justice, modesty and toleration. His resources of learning, of 
 wisdom, of generosity, are unparallelled. But it may be asked in 
 what respect are his attributes so peculiarly redolent of the soil, as 
 " native to the manner born." Toleration, patriotism, promptitude 
 in action, celerity of resolve, practical wisdom, a profound 
 reverence for discipline, or law and order, deference to authority
 
 '11 
 
 homage even to idolatry of women, humour, comradeship, fidehty 
 in friendship, sincerity, and a certain devil-may-care level- 
 headedness and severity on occasion, coupled with an almost 
 feminine tenderness. 
 
 " a tear for pity and a hand 
 Open as day for melting charity." 
 
 These are the qualities illustrated in Henry the Vth, Brutus and 
 Hamlet. Many of these features were proved in Alfred the 
 (ireat— a typical Englishman — the prototype of our race. They 
 are all expressed in the Poet's earliest favourite ideals. In 
 Mercutio, Valentine, Henry the IVth, P'alcon bridge, Theseus 
 Talbot, John O'Ciaunt, Ulysses, the Duke in "As You Like It," 
 and in later years, in Prospero, Othello, the Duke in " Measure 
 for Measure," and even VVolsey when baited by his despicable 
 assailants. Of friendship in its most robust form, as comradeship 
 or good fellowship, and as it is illustrated in Antonio, Hamlet, and 
 Horatio he has given us typical examples. 
 
 It must not be supposed that I arrogate these excellencies or 
 resources of character, as solely English, or as peculiar and proper 
 only to my countrymen : Heaven forbid. We have no monopoly 
 of virtue or manhood, whatever some of us may believe to the 
 contrary. Do not let me be misunderstood. They are only 
 English ideals wrought into their life, as exemplified in action and 
 dramatic representation. If they were lived up to in practice, they 
 would cease to be ideals. They are ideals so long as men are 
 inspired by their best aspects and example, and desire to emulate 
 and apply them. 
 
 Every nation has its own patriotism and devotion. Many 
 peoples have a higher general standard of honesty, of piety, of 
 religion, of gallantry, a livelier sense ol honour, and a more 
 sacred sense of filial duty and reverence. I must confess also that 
 these recited attributes of ours, as we claim them, are by no means 
 conceded by our rivals and enemies. The hero we enshrine in the 
 National Walhalla, by the light of hostile criticism, appears very 
 different in aspect and effect when seen from a distance, and in a 
 foreign land, or when approached from the reverse side. This 
 Anglican then appears perfidious, exclusive, intolerant, insatiable. 
 We are said to be purse-proud, ill-mannered, aggressive, insolent ; 
 we are symbolised by the cruel and treacherous leopard, who will 
 not change his spots, but who is always ready to seize those of 
 others. We are at once crafty, treacherous, and inexorable. VV^e 
 cannf)t hope to satisfy all critics We are angular, prudisli, 
 pragmatic, prejudiced, puritanic. These are the favourite descrip- 
 tive epithets ajjplied to us by friendly foreigners. Siiall we 
 gainsay them ? Without adnu'tting we are as black as we arc 
 painted, we confess the real ])ers()nality (alls vastly below llic 
 ideal. Shakspere only (jffers us his ideal.s. In his dramas we
 
 28 
 
 appear attractive. We seem full of charity, mercy and i)ity, 
 valiant, forbearing above all things, and nothing if not acting in 
 sincerity and with justice. 
 
 I have perhaps said more this evening than I intended, in 
 defending what needs no defence, the Poet's mission. That, to 
 some by no means hostile critics, I have claimed too much moral 
 purpose and even religious teaching in his dramas, seeing that 
 some are coarse and unplayable without mutilation, and none of 
 them have an obvious moral, except of the simplest kind. He in 
 truth was never didactic. Nature is not didactic ; yet to the 
 intelligent much is taught, much is discoverable. I merely insist 
 that the streams of life and nutrition in the poet flow in the 
 ancient, natural and accustomed channels. The rain falls on the 
 just and the unjust ; the brook flows to the river, the river to the 
 sea, as in nature. The sap ascends, and the currents of filial and 
 paternal love of womanly devotion, of man's affection, are 
 maintained in their antique and settled boundaries. In many 
 modern plays a different law obtains : the streams flow upward and 
 against nature, and all the accustomed forces seem turned topsy 
 turvey. In these, the scheme of conjugal life is to discover that 
 marriage spells misery, or how much two persons can justifiably 
 hate and detest each other. People marry only to divorce, and 
 divorce only to marry. The woman has no charm unless she be 
 an adulteress, past, present, or future, or one and all ; the man no 
 interest if he be not a seducer and a scoundrel. If some nameless 
 and unspeakable vice or passion, incestuous or worse, is not hinted 
 at or indicated, as in the natural course of events, we must consider 
 ourselves fortunate. The Bard of Avon to them worked on 
 contemptible lines ; he always followed nature, and nature 
 uniformly puts out these erotic geniuses. The sun extinguishes 
 these tallowy flickering flames. The "Poet of all time" was 
 content on all occasions to pursue the lines of truth : m some 
 world-renowned story, on the confines of tradition. In the 
 Chronicles, to adhere to history, as he understood it; yet on the 
 testimony of Marlborough, Chatham and Buonaparte, he was the 
 best English historian. 
 
 In his tragedies and comedies there are large lessons for the 
 intelligent. As the true lover of nature discovers gratitude, 
 grounds for aesthetic admiration, reverence, devotional worship, 
 awe, love, and beneficence in the beautiful world he surveys, 
 the genuine lover of art may discern marvellous lessons of moral 
 truth, in the Poet's dramas. Not merely the penalties that punish, 
 and wait on unbridled lust, ambition, or cruelty, but those that 
 pursue all excess. Excess of virtue as of vice ; excess in love, in 
 affection, of fatherly indulgence, even of generosity and confidence 
 in humanity, indeed of all ill-regulated, wanton, or unstinted 
 excellence and nominal excellence or supposed sanctity. Men
 
 29 
 
 are thereby taught the necessity of a discipHne of the mind. The 
 virtues of self-restraint ; the advantages of courtesy, refinement, 
 honour, and manners. In the plays, the spectator may see the 
 ideal of what a gentleman in reality is, and should be. He can 
 contemplate the highest standard of perfection in grace and valour, 
 and courtesy in man, and of purity and saintliness in woman. For 
 our Dramatist recognised his mission, as teacher and instructor, as 
 well as Creator. That in all ages poetry had been a stimulant and 
 incentive to an exalted and purer life ; that it has ever educated 
 and incited men to true renown; and "that a man's life is not to be 
 trifled away, but is to be sacrificed and offered up, to just causes, 
 honourable enterprises, great deeds, and a noble ambition." He 
 knew that in all ages, in poesy, this purpose had been maintained. 
 That as the Lacaedemonians had been provoked and instructed to 
 emulation, valour, and patriotism, by the verse of Tyrtaeus, and the 
 Argives by that of Telesilla, we might see in the noble exploits 
 of worthy captains, the famous enterprises of noble men, an exact 
 portraiture of our most considerable triumphs, and be offered a 
 worthy shrine for our admiration and homage. For this the 
 Poet's Chronicle plays, being as the critics say, " neither true 
 comedies nor true tragedies," embalm to us, such heroes as we 
 must be content with. No Thomas Carlyle it is true ; no faultless 
 monsters ; they are all in Drumtochty. He placed before us 
 images of the most perfect and ideal men, according to his 
 standard ; and who shall say they are not. They are by no means 
 perfect specimens of humanity. His figures are all very human. 
 Often faulty, foolish, weak, impulsive, credulous, and headstrong, 
 and which of us is otherwise. They include such poor creatures 
 as Talbot, Duke Humphrey, Mowbray, Wolsey, John O'Caunt, 
 King Hal, and the rest. They are not Andrew Langs, and I 
 cannot further defend them. 
 
 That the prejudice which confounds such creations with 
 impiety, with frivolity, with — as Prynne has said — " the pomps 
 and vanities, and the sinful lusts of the flesh " is surely a mere 
 intolerance at once unintelligent and malign. Unintelligent as 
 assailing j)urity with opprobrium ; malign as being perverse, 
 caluminous and bigotted. It takes the view of Tennyson's Aunt, 
 who, hearing that he wrote poetry, at once condemned him to 
 perdition. One day she said to him, " Alfred, Alfred, when I 
 look at you I think of the words of Holy Scripture, ' Depart from 
 me ye accursed into everlasting fire.' " This provided and 
 inevitable end of her nejjhew, was her chief source of happiness. 
 We are told she was a rigid Calvanist, " who would weep for hours 
 with joy because God was so infinitely good. Has he not 
 damned most of my friends ? But me, me, he has picked out for 
 eternal salvation ; me, who am no better than my neighbours." 
 Thus, men in their religious prejudices and jjcrsecutions, read
 
 30 
 
 their cruelty and vice into their creed, and called it Christianity. 
 They are but perlbrminy; the same function, in anathematising 
 generally, the drama. It is no i)art of piety to he intolerant ; no 
 such teaching is to be found in the text of their faith ; only patience, 
 indulgence and pity. But we know that in all ages men have 
 incorporated their own malignant and vehement infirmities; their 
 vain glory, pride, malice, and all uncharitableness, into their faith, 
 and thus belied the aim of all its sacred instruction. Thus, as a 
 consequence, converting the doctrine of universal love into that of 
 indiscriminate hate, and all true sympathy into a senseless 
 hostility. One word in conclusion as to the Poet's enforcement 
 of " revealed religion " as I have, I think, suggested. Throughout, 
 the plays are saturated with biblical expression and thought. The 
 author's various allusions to the terrors of death, to the beneficence 
 of Heaven, to the scheme of immortality, to the dignity of the 
 soul, the efficacy of prayer, all are strictly scriptural. The tone of 
 reflection is the same. If the student will take the trouble to 
 compare the forms of expression and allusions with the book of 
 Psalms, he will be at once surprised to see, how completely the 
 Poet echoes the sentiments derived from biblical teaching. His 
 uniform deference to the solace of devotion, and of divine worship, 
 are identical. When old Shallow says in his senility, repeating 
 the lessons of his youth, to Silence, " Death, as the Psalmist says, 
 is certain to all ; all shall die," the poet merely adopts and utters 
 in another form the words of the sacred bard. The plays are 
 indeed full of the simple phrases and language of the Genevese 
 version of the Bible, the only translation with which the Poet was 
 familiar. Such phrases as " the deaf adder," "the lantern to my 
 feet," "the feeding of the ravens," "whiter than snow," are all 
 unconscious allusions derived from the scriptures, which reflect or 
 radiate the inspiration of a studious and devotional life. I could 
 extend these references indefinitely, but it is unnecessary to labour 
 so obvious a point unduly 
 
 Let me briefly summarise the opinions I have advanced 
 to-night. That the Poet has woven into the thread of English life 
 the highest ideals which his poetic insight enabled him to conceive ; 
 models of the highest feminine purity and excellence, of the most 
 varied womanly kind, ideals of action, of honour, of patriotism, 
 fidelity in friendship, love, and justice, which are in their respective 
 aspects unique, in all exalted. He has augmented the joyous 
 illusions which are permitted to the soul, in spite of its earthy and 
 earthly environment, and has added a whole world of pastoral and 
 woodland beauty, of "deserts vast and antres wild," of the land- 
 scapes of Arden, of Belmont, and the Enchanted Isle quite beyond 
 our actual experiences. He has assuaged the pains and multiplied 
 the pleasures of ordinary existence. He has established his claims 
 as a moral and religious teacher above all others, in spite of prejudice
 
 31 
 
 and misguided fanaticism. That rightly understood, in spite of 
 occasional lapses of coarseness and impurity, which are much more 
 of manner than of matter, his ministrations are wholly to a pure 
 beneficence, to virtue, and the exaltation of religion and piety. 
 That the morals of his plays are uniformly sound, and that in all 
 his plots the great highways of nature are preserved. There are 
 no harmless or illicit vices. There is no varnish of specious 
 pleading tendered in favour of unnatural crimes. No attempt is 
 made to palliate the inexcusable. His life shows no beautiful and 
 attractive demons, or gallant and exquisite rogues ; and all its shows 
 and pageants are strictly in conformity with the harmony of nature. 
 Let me add my felicitations in my last words, that we are in 
 a liappier condition to understand and appreciate tns excellence 
 and his merits, than at any period, since in April 1616, he was laid 
 to his final rest. Our criticism is more reverential, more discerning 
 and apprehensive, more cultured and wise than at any antecedent 
 epoch in the history of his name and fame, and we are now in a 
 better position to know and discriminate the greatest glory of our 
 people, the very foremost man of the Universal world, who was 
 fortuitously born of an English speaking race.
 
 FS.t,
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 STACK COLLECTION 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW.
 
 1 
 
 3 1205 03058 8378 
 
 Lie SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A A 001 425 469 2
 
 :Wm^^^m