After Mass, he exhorted the congregation to persevere in prayer for the soul of Lord Stourton; for he was roasting in the fires of Purgatory, and demanded the assistance of the living. Some say that the vision occurred at the commemoration of the living; others that it was seen by the server as well as the priest; but the affair was universally talked about, and is to this day a fixed tradition in the families of Stourton and Arundell." So wrote More in 1660. Challoner in his "Memoirs of Missionary Priests," vol. i. p. 310 (ed. Richardson, Derby, 1843) gives a similar account on still earlier authority: "When Mr. Cornelius was saying Mass for the soul of John, Lord Stourton (who had died unreconciled, but with great desire of the sacraments, and more than ordinary marks of sorrow and repentance), he had a vision, after the consecration and elevation of the chalice (i.e. at the commemoration of the dead), of the soul of the said Lord Stourton, then in Purgatory, desiring him to pray for him, and to request of the lady, his mother, to cause masses to be said for his soul. This vision was also seen at the same time by Patrick Salmon, a good religious soul, who was then serving Mr. Cornelius at Mass." We subjoin the following parallel between Hamlet and Essex, as showing how the poet is discovered to reflect in detail the history of his time. "Has it ever been hinted that the poet may have conceived his characters of Hamlet from Essex, and Horatio HAMLET AND ESSEX 323 from Southampton? If not, it might be well to consider the indications which would point to such a conclusion. They are not few, perhaps, whether regard be paid to the external or the personal facts. It will suffice here to suggest a line of inquiry. To the common people Essex was a prince. He was descended through his father from Edward III., and through his mother was the immediate kinsman of Elizabeth. Many persons, most absurdly, imagined his title to the throne a better one than the Queen's. In person, for he had his father's beauty, he was all that Shakespeare has described the Prince of Denmark to have been. Then, again, his mother had been tempted from her duty while her gracious and noble husband was alive. That handsome and generous husband was supposed to have been poisoned by the guilty pair. After the father's murder the seducer had married the mother. The father had not perished in his prime without feeling and expressing some doubt that foul play had been used against him, yet sending his forgiveness to the guilty woman who had sacrificed his honour, perhaps taken away his life. There is indeed an exceeding singularity of agreement in the facts of the case and the incidents of the play. The relation of Claudius to Hamlet are the same as those of Leicester to Essex : under pretence of fatherly friendship he was suspicious of his motives, jealous of his actions; kept him much in the country and at college; let him see little of his mother; and clouded his prospects in the world by an appearance of benignant favour. Gertrude's relations with her son were much like those of Lettice to Robert Devereux. Then, again, in his moodiness, in his college learning, in his love for the theatre and the players, in his desire for the fiery action for which his nature was most unfit, there are many characteristics of Essex which recall the image of the Danish prince.' "1 As "Hamlet" is the physiology of justifiable treason, so "Lear" is the development of the doctrine which was involved in Henry VIII.'s theory of Empire, and was broadly stated in the days of James I.-uni et univoce. The monarch has the monopoly of loyalty and obedience, and whoever gives only a divided allegiance is a traitor. Lear, the king and father, demands complete submission from his daughters. Goneril and Regan, while professing to grant it, give the king less than his due. Cordelia, while refusing to grant it, respects in practice the sovereign and paternal rights. Regan puts the problem to be solved in the play thus "How in one house Should many people, under two commands, It is to be noted that this idea is Shakespeare's own; neither the play nor the old chronicle makes Cordelia say that the reason why she cannot exclu 1 "Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne," by the Duke of Manchester, i. 297. LEAR'S ABSOLUTISM 325 sively love her father, is because it may be her duty to love another as much. Shakespeare alone points out the distinction of duties "Haply when I shall wed, That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry To love my father all" (i. 1). Lear would have all, and those who promise all end by giving none. Regan and Goneril find that in promising all they have promised the impossible. The religious allusions are few but suggestive. Goneril, whose profession pleased her father, exhibits a true Protestant dislike to the text which teaches that branches lopped off from the vine will wither, and must be burned. When Albany says to her— "She that herself will sliver and disbranch From her maternal sap, perforce must wither, She replies, "No more; the text is foolish "; and he answers, "Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile filths savour but themselves " (iv. 2). Cordelia, as Queen of France, is put in the position of a Catholic, and the terms used of her in the gentleman's description of her bearing, "She shook The holy water from her heavenly eyes" (iv. 3), have a Catholic tone about them-and the motives which keep Lear from Cordelia are much the same as those which were supposed to keep the English government from reconciling itself with the English Catholics. "A sovereign shame so elbows him; his own unkindness That stripped her from his benediction, turned her To foreign casualties, gave her dear rights To his dog-hearted daughters, these things sting Lear had already learned that the absolute submission professed by his daughters, and their readiness "To say 'ay' and 'no' to everything I said! Ay and 'no' too, was no good divinity" (iv. 6). The true theology is built on "distinctions" whose fan winnows away the bad and leaves the good. Lear, on first seeing Cordelia, cries out, as if from Purgatory "You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave: Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears And when he had overcome his shame, and had fully reconciled himself to Cordelia, then his joy puts on the solemn utterance of religion, and he gladly makes the sacrifice of life. "Come, let's away to prison, We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage. When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down |