EULOGIES OF ELIZABETH.

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And again in a former one:

"Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure you,
Even that your pity will suffice to cure me."

And again, more proudly:

So much for the Sonnets, which are perhaps destined to remain enticing and baffling riddles, at once inviting and repelling curiosity. Of the loyalty of Shakspere his plays furnish many proofs. In Midsummer Night's Dream, there is a compliment to Elizabeth as "the fair Vestal throned in the West," whom Cupid's arrow could not pierce. The Merry Wives of Windsor contains a second indirect eulogy, the play itself being indeed, as tradition says, written in fourteen days, at the request of the queen, who wished to see Falstaff in love. There is also a tradition of her attempting to disturb his composure as a stage king by dropping her glove, and his returning it, without interrupting the play, with a speech in blank verse. In Macbeth there are two eulogies of James, one alluding to his touching for the king's evil, and another to the union of the two crowns. This whole play must have been aimed at the king, and was written three years after his accession. Its plot is drawn from Scotch history,

and deals with veritable witches. The scene is laid in Scotland, and describes the downfall of treason.

If tradition is true, the king complimented the poet in an autograph letter, afterwards in the possession of Davenant. Henry VIII.,—whoever wrote it, for it cannot be all Shakspere's, -is marred by a tedious eulogy, both of James and Elizabeth, which is put in the mouth of Cranmer, and delivered in a kind of prophetic rhapsody. The queen is to be wiser than Sheba, a pattern to all princes, a blessing to her subjects, and a terror to her enemies. James is the Phoenix rising from her ashes, adorned with "peace, plenty, love, truth, and terror."

Shakspere's pure feudal aristocratic principles adored divine right, and looked on a crown as a holy thing. His fancy rings wonderful changes upon it: he calls it the golden round, the glorious crown, the golden circuit, the garland, the hollow crown, the imperial metal; speaks with horror of the mob and rebellion, and pleads distinctly for the absolutism of sovereigns.

"Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm from an anointed head:
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord."

Shakespere's allusions to contemporary events are not numerous, however frequent may be his allusions to

THE PERFECT BEAR GARDEN.

63

contemporary manners.

In his historical plays, however,

we have seen that he mentions the departure of Essex

to Ireland, and King John's defiance to the pope.

We have no room to comment on many of Shakspere's

more direct references to the manners of his

age; but we stop for a moment to instance the numerous similes he drew from that bear garden which lay so near his own theatre. He describes the bears crushing the heads of foolish curs like rotten apples, frightening the dogs by the very shaking of their chains, or at bay among a circle of mastiffs. He sketches the dogs biting at those who withheld them, and whining under the bear's paw. Slender's first belief when he hears the dogs bark, is that some bears had entered the town, and he declares he has taken the famous bear Saccarson by the chain twenty times amid the crying and shrieking of the women.

From Hawking too he draws many similes. Othello talks of the jesses that bind Desdemona to him. In Henry VI. the king and queen talk pure hunting language.

"Believe me, lords, for flying on the brook,
I saw not better sport than yesterday;
Yet by your leave the wind was very high,
And ten to one old Joan had not gone out.

King. But what a point, my lord, your falcon made,
And what a pitch she flew above the rest."

Warwick, too, boasts that he is a judge of a hawk's flight, and says:

"The proudest he that holds up Lancaster

Dare stir a wing if Warwick shake his bells."

Of Painting he seems fond, but is no great judge of the art. In Hamlet he describes the earnest manner in which a painter views the face he is about to draw. In Timon of Athens he criticises a picture, and calls it a pretty mockery of the life. In Winter's Tale he speaks of that rare Italian master, Julio Romano. In Hamlet he mentions miniature painting. In Winter's Tale, he introduces very

the painted statue with the life still warm upon the lip. To conclude, the Merchant of Venice contains a beautiful eulogy of a fair lady's portrait :

"But her eyes,

How could he see to do them, &c."

On Music he is always eloquent. In his sonnets he notices the very technicalities of an art which he must himself have practised. He notes the sadness of some when they hear sweet music, and he believes in the music of the spheres.

In Religion, though defiant of the pope, he draws his priests generally as pious, self-denying, and sincere; his Protestant ministers foolish, knavish, and servile. On the one side are Evans, Martext, and Holofernes; on the other, Friar Patrick, the simulated monk in Measure for Mea

SHAKSPERE'S PATRIOTISM.

65

su re; the holy father in All's Well that Ends Well; and Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet. He leans to Purgatory in Clarence's dream, Claudio's musings, and many scenes in Hamlet.

His patriotic allusions must have been duly appreciated by men just fresh from discussing the pope's last bull, or his violent threatenings of excommunication. When the Armada was in sight of England must have been the time when patriots could call their island, with a strange moisture about their eyes,

-

"The precious stone set in the silver sea.

*

*

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of Majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise."

or, believe it

"Neptune's park ribbed and paled in,

With rocks unscaleable, and roaring waters,

With sands that will not bear your enemy's boats,
But suck them up to the topmast."

The whole play of Henry V. is full of eulogies of English yeomen, with noble lustre in their eyes, and of the honest national contempt for Frenchmen, or Barbaroi, the Gentiles.

He makes Portia kneel at wayside crosses; the Puritans he derides; the monks' abuses he hardly touches on;