on the other hand, a fulness of healthy vigor, which showed itself always with boldness, and sometimes also with coarseness.  The spirit of chivalry was not yet wholly extinct, and a queen, who was far more jealous in exacting homage to her sex than to her throne, and who, with her determination, wisdom, and magnanimity, was in fact well qualified to inspire the minds of her subjects with an ardent enthusiasm, inflamed that spirit to the noblest love of glory and renown.  The feudal independence also still survived in some measure; the nobility vied with one another in splendor of dress and number of retinue, and every great lord had a sort of small court of his own.  The distinction of ranks was as yet strongly marked—­a state of things ardently to be desired by the dramatic poet.  In conversation they took pleasure in quick and unexpected answers; and the witty sally passed rapidly like a ball from mouth to mouth, till the merry game could no longer be kept up.  This, and the abuse of the play on words (of which King James was himself very fond, and we need not therefore wonder at the universality of the mode), may, doubtless, be considered as instances of a bad taste; but to take them for symptoms of rudeness and barbarity is not less absurd than to infer the poverty of a people from their luxurious extravagance.  These strained repartees are frequently employed by Shakespeare, with the view of painting the actual tone of the society in his day; it does not, however, follow that they met with his approbation; on the contrary, it clearly appears that he held them in derision.  Hamlet says, in the scene with the gravedigger, “By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it:  the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe.”  And Lorenzo, in the Merchant of Venice, alluding to Launcelot: 

  O dear discretion, how his words are suited! 
  The fool hath planted in his memory
  An army of good words:  and I do know
  A many fools, that stand in better place,
  Garnish’d like him, that for a tricksy word
  Defy the matter.

Besides, Shakespeare, in a thousand places, lays great and marked stress on a correct and refined tone of society, and lashes every deviation from it, whether of boorishness or affected foppery; not only does he give admirable discourses on it, but he represents it in all its shades and modifications by rank, age, or sex.  What foundation is there, then, for the alleged barbarity of his age, its offences against propriety?  But if this is to be admitted as a test, then the ages of Pericles and Augustus must also be described as rude and uncultivated; for Aristophanes and Horace, who were both considered as models of urbanity, display, at times, the coarsest indelicacy.  On this subject, the diversity in the moral feeling of ages depends on other causes.  Shakespeare, it is true, sometimes introduces us to improper company;