And women too, but innocent, and pure :

No sovereignity,

Seb. Yet he would be king on't.

Aut. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning.

Gon. All things in common nature should produce,
Without sweat or endeavour: treason and felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,
Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance
To feed my innocent people.

Seb. No marrying among his subjects?

Aut.

None, man; all idle, whores and knaves.
Gon. I would with such perfection govern in,
To excel the golden age.

Seb. Save his majesty!
Aut. Long live Gonzalo."

CHAPTER III

SHAKESPEARE'S AGE, AND ITS CHARACTER

HAVING said so much in the last chapter of Shakespeare the man, and the few facts that are known about him, it might not be amiss to glance for a moment at the character of the age in which he lived, and of the nature of the intellectual soil from which he sprang.

We are all of us children of our surroundings, and men's thoughts and utterances are really as much the resultant of the spirit of the age in which they find themselves as of any pure virtue in themselves.

The

If Shakespeare were living in these days, it may be stated almost as a certainty, that he would not have written his works as we now know them. The age of Shakespeare was in literature as in most things an age of synthesis and construction. motto of his times might very well have been, "Touch, Taste, and Handle"-a practical time of very real and living representation in all departments of life. His literature was concrete and realistic; there was something very tangible and substantial about it. The dreary and rather dreamy carelessness and lassitude with all its analysis and introspection that stamps so much of modern popular writing was quite foreign to the times of Elizabeth.

Men in those days wrote down what they meant, and what they saw; there was, so to speak, no "true

inwardness," - dreadful phrase or rather, whatever "true inwardness" men possessed they converted at once into "real outwardness" usually very forcibly expressed in the current vernacular of the day.

There were no mental reservations, hidden meanings, and cryptic and esoteric utterances, left for the unwary and uninstructed reader to discover and decipher if he could.

It is unnecessary here, and not the intention of the writer, to put before the reader an appreciation of the mind and art of Shakespeare. It has been admirably done over and over again by many writers of many lands, and perhaps by none more effectively and with truer insight and power than by the late Professor Dowden, in his well-known work "Shakspere, His Mind and Art."

But at the same time it will not be purposeless, indeed it may be necessary and advantageous to the reader, for a proper understanding of Shakespeare's outlook, standpoint, and position, and of the realistic and concrete tendency of his writings, to remind him, as briefly as may be, of the mental habit of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and of the atmosphere and surroundings in which he lived, and moved, and had his being. And it would be impossible to do this better than by a few brief quotations from Professor Dowden himself.

One must presuppose in the reader some slight acquaintance, at any rate, with the age of Elizabeth. It was an age, in many respects like our own, of great stir and activity. Men's minds and bodies were reaching out in all directions. New discoveries were being made, new worlds were being conquered, old enemies were being encountered and overthrown. Gold was sought after as eagerly as now, but through the medium of piracy, instead of the Stock Exchange.

Men were in pursuit of the visible and tangible, and had little time or inclination for speculation on the hereafter. Life in those days was short; men were hurried and harried, all along the line and in every direction; they might be knocked on the head at any moment, and had as much as they could do to keep body and soul together from day to day.

And this spirit of concentrated vitality and activity is reflected in Shakespeare.

The same spirit of realisation and practical accommodation and application prevailed equally in Science and in the Church.

"Now," says Professor Dowden, "the same soil that produced Bacon and Hooker produced Shakspere; the same environment fostered the growth of all three. Can we discover anything possessed in common by the scientific movement, the ecclesiastical movement, and the drama of the period? That which appears to be common to all is a rich feeling for positive concrete fact.

"The facts with which the drama concerns itself are those of human character in its living play.

"And assuredly, whatever be its imperfections, its crudeness, its extravagancies, no other body of literature has amassed in equal fulness and equal variety a store of concrete facts concerning human character and human life; assuredly not the drama of Eschylus and Sophocles, not the drama of Calderon and Lope de Vega, not the drama of Corneille and Racine. These give us views of human life and select portions of it for artistic handling.

"The Elizabethan drama gives us the staff of life itself, the coarse with the fine, the mean with the heroic, the humorous and grotesque with the tragic and the terrible."

And again :

"A vigorous, mundane vitality-this constitutes the basis of the Elizabethan drama. Vigour reveals on the one hand the tragedy of life. Love and hatred, joy and sorrow, life and death being very real to a vigorous nature, tragedy becomes possible. To one who exists languidly from day to day, neither can the cross and the passion of any human heart be intelligible nor the solemn intensities of joy, the glorious resurrection, and ascension, of a life and soul. The heart must be all alive and sensitive before the imagination can conceive with swift assurance, and no hesitation or error, extremes of rapture and of pain."

"Now we know something of the Elizabethan period, and we know that Shakespeare was a man who prospered in that period. In that special environment he throve he put forth his blossoms, and bore fruit. And in the smaller matter of material success he flourished also. In an Elizabethan atmosphere he reached his full stature, and became not only great and wise, but famous, rich, and happy. Can we discover any significance in these facts? We are told that Shakespeare was not of an age, but for all time.' That assertion misleads us. He was for all time by virtue of certain powers and perceptions, but he also belonged especially to an age, his own age, the age of Spenser, Jonson, and Bacon-a Protestant age, a monarchical age, an age eminently positive and practical."

And then the Professor proceeds, and asks the question: "What is the ethical significance of that literary movement to which Shakespeare belonged and of which he was a part-the Elizabethan drama?” The question seems at first improper. There is perhaps no body of literature which has less of an express tendency for the intellect than the drama of