The triumph of sensualism, the glorification of beauty, the gratification of the passions, with the consequent profligacy, crime, treachery, cruelty, poisoning, and murderthese form the basis of Marlowe's "Jew of Malta," Webster's "Duchess of Malfi," of his "White Devil," of Ford's ""Tis Pity," among many others. A picture of this school is seen in Jonson's "Every Man out of His Humour"; and it reads like a chapter from Symond's "Renaissance in Italy." But there was another school of English dramatists, including Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, whose theme indeed was love, but the object of love with them was not the outward fairness of form or face, but the inward beauty of truth and holiness, as sung by Catholic poets in all time. Thus Sidney writes:

"Leave me, O love, which reacheth but to dust,
And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things;
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust;
Whatever fades but fading pleasure brings.
Oh, take fast hold, let that light be thy guide

In this small course which birth draws out of death."
-Last Sonnet.

Thus Spenser:

"For love is Lord of truth and loyalty,
Lifting himself out of the lowly dust
On golden plumes up to the purest sky,
Above the reach of loathly sinful lust,
Whose base affect, through cowardly distrust
Of his weak wings, dare not to heaven fly,
But like a moldwark in the earth doth lie."
-Hymn in Honour of Love, 176–182.

TEACHING OF THE SONNETS

23

If we find vestiges of Catholic teaching on this subject in Sidney and Spenser, we find the doctrine fully worked out in Shakespeare. We do not include the poems "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece." It is true that the poet deals with the subject as a spectator, not as an actor, and teaches incidentally some deep moral truths; yet his theme in these poems and his descriptions are of "loathly sinful lust," not of pure Christian love. Like Chaucer, like Spenser, Shakespeare had reason for bewailing these, the compositions of his youth. It is far otherwise with the work of his life, the sonnets and the plays.

In the sonnets which, according to Simpson, embody the poet's philosophy of love cast in allegorical form, the battle of life, as experienced in his own soul, is fought between true and intellectual and false and sensual love, or the "loves of comfort and despair." The object of true love is described now as a youth of youth of exceeding beauty, now as an angel; of false love, "a woman coloured ill." In the first series of sonnets (1-125) the youth leads the poet, much as Beatrice did Dante, not without severe conflict, much failure, and many tears, above the pleasure of sense, above the creation of phantasy, to the stage of ideal love; and with each succeeding step a higher conception is formed of the purity and devotion his love requires, and of the falsehood and nothingness of the world in which he lives. At last, by a supreme act of oblation and consecration,

the poet dedicates himself, in words taken from the Church's Liturgy, to the one, eternal, and only, fair.

The second series (123-146) show the misery of false, sensual love, and of the soul vanquished and wrecked by the siren's charms. The delusion consequent upon such a state, the degradation and blindness of the soul enslaved, its vain attempts at freedom, the fickleness and tyranny of the destroyer are clearly portrayed, and mark the essential opposition in the poet's mind between sensual and spiritual love.

And if it be said that this conclusion is only obtained by a strained, allegorical interpretation of the sonnets, at least of the first series, if we turn to the comedies and tragedies we find the same truth. The action of the play, the development of the characters for good or evil, the final issue for happiness or woe, are determined as the dominating principle is true, pure love or disordered passion. Nor does Shakespeare ever allow this issue to be confused. The principle of degree, order, priority, which he considers a fundamental law in the physical universe and also, as we shall see, in the body politic, applies with equal strictness to the moral sphere, the government of the appetites in the human soul. The lower appetite must yield to the higher, sense to reason, and this at any cost. All love, true or false, demands the surrender of all else for the one object: but in the one case the sacrifice ennobles and perfects the victim, in the

other, it degrades and destroys. "Omnis disordinatio poena sua"-Every disordered act brings its own punishment. Isabella, in "Measure for Measure," is the most perfect type of true love. Votarist or Postulant of St. Clare, she is "dedicate to nothing temporal." "By her renouncement" she had become, even in the eyes of the licentious and scurrilous Lucio, a "thing enskied and sainted," an immortal spirit. Yet hers is no spectral figure, devoid of human feeling. She is not a spirit, but a woman, and her natural affections are intensified, because purified by her supernatural love; and she undertakes the advocacy of Claudio, "though his is the vice she most abhors." The nature of true love is seen in the choice made between her honour and her brother's life. In both Cinthio's "Epitia " and Whetstone's "Cassandra," the sources of Shakespeare's plot, the heroines yield their chastity for their brother's sake; and, were domestic love the highest, their conduct would be worthy of praise. Isabella has no doubt; and her decision is inflexibly rooted, not from any principle of independent morality, but because her love of the All pure was her life, her life eternal, and

"Better it were, a brother died at once,
Than that a sister, by redeeming him,

Should die for ever."

-Measure for Measure, ii. 4.

She had rather be scourged and flayed than yield

her body "to such abhorred pollution." She casts off her brother and his sophistries as a foul tempter, defies him, and bids him perish. No wonder that her conduct has been so generally criticised for its gloom and ascetism. Hazlitt "has not much confidence in the virtue that is sublimely good at other people's expense." Knight finds the play full of revolting scenes. Coleridge thinks it the most painful of Shakespeare's plays. To the Catholic, Isabella represents the noblest ideal, the brightest, most blessed of Shakespeare's heroines, as the type of supernatural charity or of the highest sacrificial love.

In contradiction of what has been said, "Romeo and Juliet" is quoted by rationalist critics to show that Shakespeare knew nothing of this distinction of spiritual and sensual love. Romeo and Juliet are his ideals of perfect love, and the character of their affection was passionate throughout. "Such love," says Kreyzig, "is its own reward: life has nothing further to offer." But, all would admit, we suppose, that the poet never intended to exhibit in each play a type of absolute morality, but such a manner of conduct as essentially befitted the character represented. Thus Cleopatra and Cressida are dramatically perfect characters; but morally they are a shame to their

sex.

Now, Romeo and Juliet are types of passionate love, that is, love in which passion, not reason, is the dominant principle. The passions indeed are not evil, they are part of our nature, and are powerful