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

66 MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR " 257

monies of this stimulating scherzo. Parson Evans prays his Bible well, commends the virtue which resolves only to be "drunk in company with men who fear God" (i. 1); and through ignorance of Latin, condemns, as affected, quotations he should have recognised as biblical. Though he exerts a certain ministerial power, as when he bids Ford pray and not follow the imaginations of his own heart (iv. 2); yet in his peppery Welsh temper, his lax standard of morality, and his very unclerical duelling, feasting, and mumming, he still presents but a scurvy model of the Parson, very different from the Friars and Nuns of the plays above mentioned. In the "Merry Wives," the religion of the characters is all a chaos. It is "the Hundredth Psalm to the tune of Green Sleeves'" (ii. 1). Mistress Quickly does not much exaggerate the prevailing confusion when she calls it "peevishness to be given to prayer (i. 4), and encourages Falstaff to hope in Mrs. Page's compliance, because she is a "virtuous, civil, modest wife, and one that will not miss you morning nor evening prayer.” And again, "Good hearts! what ado there is to bring you together; sure one of you does not serve Heaven well, that you are so crossed" (ii. 5). Most of these extremely satirical hits at the religion of the characters appear first in the remodelled play. They are fit only for persons who belong to a system where the principles of morals are obscured, and such a system can only be found in Calvinism or Lutheranism, or their

R

progeny. Even those who most condemn the dogmatic system of the medieval Church, confess that she never obscured or perverted the principles of morals.

Mrs. Page has the cudgel wherewith Ford had beaten Falstaff "hallowed and hung o'er the altar" for its meritorious service (iv. 2). In the conversation between the two ladies about this beatingone affirming that it was pitifully done, and the other "most unpitifully "-there is a notable resemblance to Sir John Harrington's fine epigram on the execution of Essex, Blount, and Danvers―

"Is't not great pity, think you. No! said I,
There is no man of sense in all the city
Will say 'tis great, but rather little pity."

And the joke of Falstaff about Mr. Ford's "legions of angels" (i. 3) is found admirably developed in Harrington's character of Bishop Scory. The tale of Herne the hunter related by "the superstitious, idle-headed elf" is another instance of Shakespeare's contempt for unfounded stories of devilry.

Shakespeare in Fenton's defence of Anne Page's clandestine marriage lays down accurately the Catholic doctrine on the subject. The contracting parties have a right to perfect freedom of choice in the engagement they form. The wishes of the parents should indeed be consulted, and as far as possible followed. The children, however, are not bound to yield to parental injunctions which are unreason

MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM'

259

able, or are inspired by motives of worldly policy This is the pith of Fenton's

or sordid interest.

speech :

"Fenton.

Hear the truth of it.

You would have married her most shamefully
When there was no proportion held in love.
The truth is, she and I, long since contracted,
Are now so sure, that nothing can dissolve us.
The offence is holy that she hath committed;
And this deceit loses the name of craft,

Of disobedience, or unduteous title,
Since therein she doth evil hate and shun

A thousand irreligious cursed hours

Which forced marriage would have brought upon her" (v. 5).

The "Midsummer-Night's Dream" exhibits love in its second degree, when the object is created by the fantasy, uncontrolled by reason. Love thus begotten is essentially short-lived, transitory, and fickle, and becomes attached in turn to any object presented to the senses. This central idea is expressed when Hippolyta, tired of Bottom's interlude, yawns and says, "This is the silliest stuff." Theseus answers, "The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse if imagination mend them"; and she again replies, "It must be your imagination then, and not theirs" (v. 1). Theseus, in the opening speech of the fifth act, explains it more fully. Plato (Phædrus, c. 47, p. 244) enumerates four inspired frenzies which supersede reason; that of Apollo, or prophecy; of Dionysus, ritualistic religion; of the Muses, poetry; and of