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upon the theme that we eagerly desire what we can not get:

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‘Quod licet, ingratumst: quod non licet, acrius urit."

Am. II, XIX, 3.

Am. III, IV, 17.

"Nitimur in vetitum semper cupimusque negata."

"Quicquid servatur, cupimus magis, ipsaque furem
Cura vocat: pauci, quod sinit alter, amant."

Am. III, IV,

Chaucer refers to this same theme as follows,-
Anelida, 201-203:

"The kinde of mannes herte is to delyte

In thing that straunge is, also god me save!
For what he may not get that wolde he have."

25-26.

Not only does the similarity to the Heroides indicate that the Anelida was written under the influence of the Heroides, but Chaucer's continued use of the Heroides in his subsequent work reinforces the position that he was writing under the influence of the Heroides here.

Some of the foregoing points may seem trifling in themselves, and it may be that Chaucer was not consciously borrowing in every case. At any rate he had so absorbed Ovid's epistles that he could write one in imitation of them and use perhaps unconsciously many of Ovid's details. Another example of such assimilation is to be found in Milton's Lycidas, which shows that its author was thoroughly saturated with the classical pastoral, though specific borrowings would be difficult to locate.

Thus we have found that the Anelida is like the Heroides, first, in general theme, man's unfaithfulness in love; second, in situation: a fair and faithful woman deserted by her false lover addresses a letter of complaint to him,

bemoaning the confidence she has placed in him, but avowing her constancy and offering forgiveness if he will return to her; third, in details, for almost every idea expressed in the Anelida has a parallel in some one of the Heroides.

Now, as we have seen, it is quite probable that Chaucer's мs. copy of Ovid, which he calls his "owne booke " 1 designated the Amores as Corinna. It is probable that this book included all of Ovid's amatory verse; for Chaucer's works indicate familiarity with all of it. If the Amores came first with the Heroides following, as may very reasonably have been the case, we should have an explanation of why Chaucer refers to his use of the Heroides in the Anelida under the name of Corinna. However that may have been, the striking similarity of this poem to the epistles of the heroines points to Ovid's Heroides as the model for Chaucer's Compleynt of Anelida. And we may reasonably conclude that Chaucer intends to indicate his indebtedness to Ovid under the name Corinna when he says,

66 'First folow I Stace and after him Corinne."

'House of Fame, Bk. 11, 712.

EDGAR F. SHANNON.

XXII. THE SHAKSPEREAN MOB

Among the scholars of Cambridge who essayed the presentation of Thomas Legge's Latin play of Richardus Tertius at St. John's in 1579, perhaps the most ambitious were those three ingenuous and versatile youths, Howland, Henlowe, Kendall, who enacted the "chorus tumultuantium civium." Surely, "a little o'erparted"! Easier far with three rusty swords to fight over York and Lancaster's long jars than to portray through three, four, six, or even seven or eight persons the many-headed monster in its varying moods. To trace the evolution of mob-mind from the stage of orderly self-possession and personal consciousness through the psychic process of the withering of the individual and the accumulation of collective energy under the stress of exciting causes to its final state of a fiercely emotional and keenly suggestible crowd-self, lay of course far beyond the purpose and powers of Thomas Legge. Far, too, was this above the aim of such controversial playwrights of the Reformation as that Catholic author of Respublica who presented "the people" in the guise of a single smatterer of dialect. Yet this study of multiplied suggestion which has taxed the observation of ancient historian and modern psychologist has always and with reason made large appeal to that analyst of many men's motives, the dramatist. Humanity in the mass exerted its fascination sometimes over Shakspere's fellows and followers; but it cast a far more potent spell upon Shakspere himself-notably in the Jack Cade scenes (2 Henry VI) and in the two Roman plays of Julius Cæsar and Coriolanus.

Critics as many-minded as the multitude have made their own attitude to society the touchstone of their interpretation of Shakspere's opinion of the common people. In the light of modern political ideals, socialists and democrats have been loud in dissent and depreciation. To Grabbe, Shakspere's early-nineteenth-century imitator, the English poet "seems to have fostered an almost aristocratic sentiment" and to have represented his Romans as "elender kindischer Pöbel." 1 To Walt Whitman "Shakspere is incarnated uncompromising feudalism in literature." What Coleridge calls "Shakspere's good-natured laugh at mobs" is deemed by Brandes "an unqualified contempt for the populace," "a violent aversion," "detestation of masses," "nothing but scorn for the people." And Tolstoy gives sad approval to Ernest Crosby's view 2 that "having a poor opinion of the lower classes taken man by man, Shakspere thinks, if anything, still worse of them taken en masse, and at his hands a crowd of plain workingmen fares worst of all." Contrary opinions are not far to seek. A. C. Bradley, whose word carries great weight, notes that "Shakspere's poor and humble are almost without exception sound and sweet, faithful and pitiful. He had no respect for the people as politicians, but a great respect and regard for their hearts." 3 According to Dowden, "Shakspere recognizes that the heart of the people is sound. Their feelings are generally right, but their view of facts is perverted by interests, by passions, by stupidity." Mezières marks 5 "the essential difference between Shak

1 Blumenthal, Grabbes Werke, IV, p. 159.

4

'Shakspere's Attitude to the Working Classes, 1907, p. 140. 'Cited by Verity, Coriolanus, 1905, p. xxxiii.

'Shakspere: His Mind and Art, p. 325.

Shakespeare, Ses Œuvres et ses Critiques, pp. 153-157.

spere and the French theatre in the English dramatist's regard for the effect of all incidents upon the people and in his recognition of the influence of every action of kings upon the lowest rank of society." And recently Professor Vetter, in his interesting though unconvincing Festvortrag at the 1910 meeting of the Deutsche ShakespeareGesellschaft,1 declares that "the poet is not the scorner of the people that many brand him, but the sincere and sympathetic friend of the folk." How easy it is for men "to construe things after their fashion clean from the purpose of the things themselves" is amusingly evidenced by the sharp contrast between the view of Voltaire 2 that "the folk-scenes of Julius Cæsar were written to please the common people who frequented shows and whom Shakspere served according to their taste," and the equally positive statement of Rümelin that Shakspere here wrote "to flatter the prejudice of the jeunesse dorée of the Elizabethan theatre."

4

However doctors may disagree regarding Shakspere's love or hatred of the people, they are at one in their diagnosis of Shakspere's mob-that it is something disorganized, dangerous, unintelligent. "When the people are seen in masses in Shakspere's plays," says Dowden,5 "they are nearly always shown as factious, fickle, and irrational." Shakspere shows himself anti-democratic," notes Verity, "in that he lays bare these weaknesses [of the crowd]-fickleness, liability to be flattered and

1

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6

Shakespeare Jahrbuch, XLVI, pp. xxxi-xxxii.

1Œuvres, 1819, vп, pp. 370, 383.

8 Shakspeare-Studien, p. 222.

Cf. Johnson, Shakspere and his Critics, pp. 285-286.

5 Pp. 319-320.

6 Coriolanus, p. xxxiii.

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