PREFERENCE FOR ARISTOTLE 35 From the same principle was derived, as we believe, Shakespeare's extraordinary and perhaps unequalled power of delineating character. Each individual, with him, is a separate creation of his genius. Each stands by itself in its beginning, growth, and term. The growth may be from evil to good, as with Henry V., or from bad to worse, as with Antony; but with each, the germ of the improvement or the declension is seen in its beginning and throughout its course, till it bears its legitimate fruit, as the voice of conscience or of self-love has been followed. And these individual creations are so real and lifelike, because the poet believed in the "peculiar and single" reality of each human life. Shakespeare's adherence to the scholastic philosophy in these and other points, and the predilection which he generally manifests for a system so unpopular, and essentially unprotestant, is a further proof of his antagonism to his times. He may ridicule Pythagoras and his transmigration of souls, the Stoics and their affected indifference as to sufferings they had never experienced, the philosophical persons who account for everything by natural causes. But of Aristotle he speaks with respect. Lucentio, at Padua, is not to be so absorbed in Aristotle as to forget Ovid; but the teaching of that philosopher is for the serious and sincere, not for the shallow and superficial, those "young men whom Aristotle thought unfit to hear moral philosophy." The ease 1 "Troilus and Cressida," ii. 2. and accuracy again with which he employs scholasticism as the vehicle for his deepest thoughts show, that with a master mind like his, as with Dante and Calderon, poetic and philosophic truth are one, and that a nomenclature, superficially regarded as crabbed, meaningless, and obsolete, can furnish expression for the richest poetry. Another distinctive characteristic of Shakespeare is his use of casuistry, or the science which decides the application in particular cases of a general moral law or principle; there being many cases when such a decision is, for unaided reason, extremely difficult. For instance, does a rash oath bind? Must the truth be always told, even to one who has no right to know, and when its disclosure inflicts a grievous injury on an innocent person? The dilemma in both cases is, that if the obligation hold, wrong is done, whichever course is taken. Now, according to the main principles of Protestantism, by which each man is the sole interpreter of the moral law, as of revealed doctrine, and human engagements are supreme, the oath or word must be kept at any cost; and the difficulty of the sinful consequences would be met by the Calvinistic axiom, that "some commandments of God are impossible." Now Shakespeare discusses both these cases, and teaches exactly the contrary doctrine. He shows by the mouth of Pandulph that the sanctity of an oath or vow is based primarily on our reverence to God, whose name has been invoked, and that a rash or sacrilegious oath must not be kept, else art thou "Most forsworn to keep what thou didst swear." -King John, iii. 1. And a complete exposition of when an unlawful oath may be kept, not vi juramenti, but through a notable change of circumstances, is found in the same speech, as will be seen in Chapter III. Similarly, the lawfulness of the use of equivocation, when the truth is unjustly demanded, is laid down by the Duke in "Measure for Measure" in precise terms :— "Pay with falsehood false exacting." -Measure for Measure, iii. 2. Truth is a coin, and we may pay a thief in false money. Isabella feels the difficulty of following the Duke's advice and "speaking thus indirectly"; but she is advised to do it "to veil full purpose." That is, the truth and fidelity we owe to some may be at times only discharged by veiling truth to others. This is so, of course, as regards the professional secrets of lawyers, physicians, priests; but though recognised and acted on in practice, the theory of equivocation was denounced in Shakespeare's time as Jesuitical and vile, as much as it is now; and it is remarkable that he should be again found defending the unpopular and Catholic side. Proceeding now from Shakespeare's philosophy to his portraiture of his age and its politics, his antagonism will, we think, be found equally apparent. It has been remarked that Shakespeare, in spite of the all-embracing character of his verse, makes no allusion to ecclesiastical architecture, "a fact the more remarkable because of the number of grand churches, abbeys, and shrines he must have passed in his annual journey from Stratford to London." 1 The omission is doubtless remarkable, but it becomes intelligible when we remember that churchbuilding practically ceased in England from the accession of Elizabeth till the reign of Charles I., and that the ancient fanes and sanctuaries had been wrecked and gutted. What Shakespeare did see was, not the noble abbeys and religious houses in their sacred grandeur and beauty, but "Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang." -Sonnet lxxiii. There have been repeated suppressions of religious orders; but nowhere as in England has the work of the spoiler left so indelible a mark. In the French revolution the monastic buildings were quarried or otherwise effaced. In Italy, in our own times, the religious houses when secularised have been converted into hospitals or barracks, or preserved as national monuments. In our own country they fell into the hands of the king or his favourites, who unroofed and gutted them for the lead and valuables they contained, but left the walls as a witness to their work of destruction. 1 Guardian, March 19, 1897. RUINED SHRINES 39 Now, besides the ruins of the Augustinian monastery at Kenilworth, and of the Benedictine monks at Coventry in his own Warwickshire, there lay in or about his London journey, ruined, dismantled, or secularised, St. Frideswide's priory of Augustinian friars, six Benedictine monasteries and colleges at Oxford, the Benedictine nunneries at Godstone, Abingdon, and Wallingford, the Augustinian Canons at Goring and Dorchester; the vast remains of Reading Abbey, the last superior of which, Abbot Cook, had been hanged and martyred at the Abbey Gate, November 15, 1539; Medenham Abbey of the Augustinian Canons, and the Benedictine nunnery at Marlow, both on the river-side. Again, on the Thames, at Twickenham, of the Brigettine nuns of Sion, and the Carthusians at Sheen, built by Henry V., as Shakespeare himself tells us, in expiation of his father's dethronement of Richard II., the "Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests The poet knew then the origin of the monastic foundations and some of the purposes they served; and the two last named had been restored by Mary, and suppressed only on Elizabeth's accession. And what was the motive of all this wreck and ruin? The visitation conducted by the king's commissioners had proved the religious houses, great and small, free from scandals, observant, and reli |