RELIGIOUS ALLUSIONS 337 a consequence of rank: and again Othello says before he murders her "If you bethink yourself of any crime ... I would not kill thy unprepared spirit ; No, heaven forfend, I would not kill thy soul" (v. 2). And Gratiano says of Brabantio— "This right would make him do a desperate turn, Yea, curse his better angel from his side Y CHAPTER VIII. DIDACTIC PLAYS. MR. SIMPSON believes that in the plays classed in the following chapter as didactic there may be traced, besides the primary moral lesson, certain covert political allusions bearing on the religious situation of the poet's time. Commentators of the realistic school deny that Shakespeare ever employed allegory in his drama. The penetration and soundness of his judgment was seen, they say, in the avoidance of all theories, whether on politics or religion, and in confining himself exclusively to the psychological development of character. Now, the faithful portraiture of character was doubtless the poet's primary intention; but the absolute denial of the possibility of any secondary or figurative application of his plays shows a complete misunderstanding of both Shakespeare and his times. Allegory was, indeed, universally employed in the Elizabethan age. Spenser's "Faerie Queene was simply one long allegorical eulogy of Elizabeth, whose praise was the common theme of writers of the day. This kind of poetry was specially serviceable for purposes of attack. Under the veil of trope, POLITICAL ALLUSIONS 339 Thus the dramatist could satirise the object of his dislike, whether social, political, religious, even the Government itself, without fear of losing his ears. Bale and Fletcher, and the other dramatists mentioned in Chapter II., attacked the Papists. Lily, Marlowe, Greene, and Nash were engaged by Archbishop Whitgift, through Bancroft, to caricature the Puritans in revenge for the Marprelate Tracts. Further, a whole series of plays-"Gorbeduc" (1561), by Norton; "Damon and Pythias" (before 1568), by Walton; "The Woman in the Moon" (1597), "Midas" (1592), both by Lily; Marlowe's "Tamburlaine" (1587), aimed at exposing the abuses of the Government, the exactions and covetousness of ministers, the manœuvres of Elizabeth and her favourites, or the despotism of Philip II. or of James of Scotland. Shakespeare was no exception to the general rule. If, as he tells us himself, his purpose was to "hold the mirror up to Nature," it must have been reflected first from existing individuals, men and women, who were reproduced as universal types by his own genius. A thorough grasp of the real involves no exclusion of the universal and ideal. In truth, the more thoroughly the real is apprehended, the more easy is it to conceive the universal, which always has its basis on the real. That the contemporary public believed in his allegory and unhesitatingly interpreted it, there is no doubt. Elizabeth saw herself in Richard II., Lucy was recognised in Shallow, Cobham in Falstaff. "This author's comedies," says the preface to the first edition of "Troilus and Cressida" in 1609, "are so framed to the life, that they serve for the most common commentaries of all the actions of our lives." So again Sir C. Scroop wrote before 1686: "When Shakespeare, Jonson, Fletcher, ruled the stage, That there was scarce a knave or fool in town -Rochester's Works, 96. 1714. "They wrote," says Towers (1657), "in their neighbours' dialect, and brought their birthplace on the stage. They gathered humours from all kinds of people. Dogberry was a constable at Hendon, Shallow was Lucy with additions and variations. They did not spare the highest game." The Lord Chamberlain's players (Shakespeare's company) took a memorable part in Essex's conspiracy. They were called madmen, because under feigned persons they censured their sovereign.' The French ambassador declared (April 5, 1606) that they treated James in the most unseemly way, making him curse and swear and beat a gentleman who had called the hounds off the scent and made him lose a bird, and representing him as drunk at least once a day. And Chamberlain writes to Winwood about the trouble they got into for acting the Gowrie conspiracy and "playing princes on the stage in their lifetime." 2 1 MS. Sloane, 3543, fol. 20. 2 Von Raumer, ii. 219. " MERCHANT OF VENICE 341 The possible application of some at least of Shakespeare's plays in a figurative sense must, then, we think, be admitted. But such an interpretation offers no direct or cogent evidence as to his religious opinions. Simpson's readings of the following allegories are given because they are ingenious and interesting in themselves, and may have been in the author's mind as a possible application of his plot, but they are not put forth as any proof or support of his Catholicism. For that we need direct evidence. According to Simpson, then, some of Shakespeare's plays may be termed didactic, because the philosophical or metaphysical principle on which they are founded outweighs the imaginative, passionate, and poetical elements conspicuous in most of his dramas. In this class may be placed the "Merchant of Venice," "Measure for Measure," 'Cymbeline," and "Troilus and Cressida." These all seem written for a political object and with controversial purpose. The "Merchant of Venice" appears to have been, in all probability, founded on another play called "The Jew," which set forth "the greediness of worldly choosers and the bloody mind of usurers." Shakespeare's adaptation of it, while still enforcing its primary, obvious lesson, the evils of extortion or of extortionate contracts, presents secondarily and indirectly a plea for toleration. The argument is all the more forcible from being 1 H. Morley, Introduction "Merchant of Venice," 6. |