merely a subjective creation, but consists in the conformity of the thought and its object.

But there was a worship severely condemned in Shakespeare's day as idolatry. In the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" (iv. 2) he employs the word in its Protestant sense for all worship of images or relics. He qualifies it, however, by leaving us to infer that there is a good idolatry, as well as the bad one that worships false deities. So he makes Sylvia say, when she gives her picture to Proteus :--

"I am very loth to be your idol, sir;

But since your falsehood shall become you well
To worship shadows, and adore false shapes,
Send to me in the morning, and I'll send it."

-Two Gentlemen of Verona, iv. 2.

A few scenes afterwards, Julia addresses this picture :

"O thou senseless form,

Thou shalt be worshipped, kissed, loved, and adored;
And were there sense in his idolatry,

My substance should be statue in thy stead" (iv. 4).

Compare what Helena says of Bertram in "All's Well that Ends Well."

"He's gone, and my idolatrous fancy

Must sanctify his relics" (i. 1).

This employment, in a good sense, of a term generally used in mockery is the boldest form of approval of the principle attacked.

The moral of the "Two Gentlemen of Verona is brought out in the contrast of the two characters

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LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP

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of Valentine and Proteus. Valentine is the prototype of fidelity, his fancy being subjected to his reason a type repeated in Bassanio and Henry V. Proteus represents inconstancy, for with him fancy commands reason, as in Romeo, Orsino in "Twelfth Night," and the two lovers in the "Midsummer-Night's Dream." The superior claims of pure friendship to love which terminates in marriage, a principle already enunciated in the sonnets, is enforced again in the readiness of Valentine to surrender Sylvia to Proteus (v. 4); and of Bassanio to sacrifice himself and his wife for Antonio ("Merchant of Venice," iv. 1). Proteus on the other hand, with a passion merely Arcita in Chaucer, could not understand how friendship should be respected in love (v. 4).

selfish, like that of

The supernatural development of the love of friendship appears in the "Midsummer Night's Dream" (i. 1), where human and divine love are compared, with the conclusion that, however happy the lot of the maiden loving and beloved, her happiness is more earthly than that of the thrice blessed nun, whose love is "dedicate to nothing temporal," but to God Himself. Charity thus eclipses all human loves, or rather embodies them in itself, transfigures and transubstantiates them into its own form and substance. We find something like this in "Hamlet" (i. 5). When he dedicates his life to performing the commands of his father's ghost, he casts out everything from his mind, except the one remembrance,

the one commandment, and at once, in obedience to this resolution, sacrifices the love of Ophelia. The sacrifice of a lower to a higher love is then no breach of constancy, but rather a severe and inexorable duty, imposed by the nature of the obligation already contracted. Shakespeare's teaching on this subject is thus, we see, in exact accordance with the Church's doctrine of the imperative and supreme claims of a religious vocation, in comparison with those of the closest human ties. The truth that the stronger absorbs the weaker flame is embodied in a proverbial expression often used by the poet, "Fire drives out fire." The principle, when perverted, applies of course also to an evil passion, if dominant; thus Lady Macbeth declared that her ambition overrode any maternal instinct.

The manners in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona are Catholic, and some Catholic expressions are used. The metaphor of having “a month's mind ” is an old Catholic expression still in use and is intended to designate the mass of requiem celebrated a month after a person's decease. Sylvia goes to Friar Patrick's cell for "holy confession"; Julia compares her affection to the unwearied steps of the time-devoted pilgrim. Thurio and Proteus are to meet at St. Gregory's Well, as in "Measure for Measure" (iv. 3) the Duke desires Angelo to meet him "at the consecrated fount a league below

"Coriolanus," iv. 7; "Julius Cæsar," iii. 1; "King John," "Romeo and Juliet," i. 2.

iii I;

the city." Launce appropriately invokes St. Nicholas to aid Speed to read, for this Saint was the patron of scholars. Sir Eglamour had made a solemn vow of chastity (iv. 3).

The "Comedy of Errors" is an early play of Shakespeare's, and is remarkable as his adaptation of Plautus to the English stage, representing the Latin comedy as "Richard III." does the Greek tragedy. Both are adaptations rather than imitations and as such, reveal to the inquirer many secrets concerning Shakespeare's art. With regard to his religious opinions the "Comedy of Errors" has not much to tell us. We find it an amusing specimen of Shakespeare's indifference to the conventionalities of time and place already referred to, when he endows the inhabitants of ancient Syracuse with the habits and customs of Catholic countries, and makes one of the Dromios call out for his beads and cross himself (ii. 2); while Adriana offers to shrive her husband (ii. 2). The theological jokes about bailiffs (iv. 2, 3), and the jest of mistaking the courtesan for the devil (iv. 3), all belong to Shakespeare's day; so do the conjurations of the cheating juggler Pinch, which belong to the same class of magical cheats as the pretensions of Glendower. But in this play Shakespeare is careful to distinguish between the illicit impostures of Pinch "conjuring by all the saints in heaven (iv. 4) and the lawful and remedial exorcisms of the Abbess-for Shakespeare will not deprive even

the Pagan Greeks of the benefits of the religious orders and of Christian charity.

"I will not let him stir

Till I have used the approved means I have
With wholesome syrups, drugs and holy prayers,
To make of him a formal man again :

It is a branch and parcel of mine oath,

A charitable duty of mine order” (v. 1).

But a duty of the effects of which poor Adriana complains.

"Ill doth it beseem your holiness

To separate the husband and the wife" (v. 1);

though her respect for the cloister will not allow her to force an entrance.

In this play, as in "Much Ado about Nothing," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Measure for Measure," the "religious," the Friar, and the Nun are not only patterns of personal purity, but centres of a soothing higher influence, in which the contradictions of the characters and the intricacies of the plot find their solution. But we shall have to return to this subject.

As Shakespeare in the "Comedy of Errors" has made Pagan Syracuse a Catholic city, so in the Merry Wives of Windsor" he has made the England of Henry V. Protestant: at least, he has peopled it with Protestant ministers and laymen. The religious element here, however, begets not peace, but discord, and awakes the pungent har