light of contemporary life, its visions of empire, its spirit of adventure, its piracy, exploration, and warlike turmoil, its credulity and superstitious wonder at natural phenomena, its implicit belief in the supernatural, its faith, its virility of daring, coarseness of speech, bluntness of manner, luxury of apparel, and ostentation of wealth, the mobility of its shifting society, these dramas glow with a new meaning, and awaken a profounder admiration of the poet’s knowledge of human life.

The experiences of the poet began with the rude and rural life of England, and when he passed into the presence of the court and into the bustle of great London in an age of amazing agitation, he felt still in his veins the throb of the popular blood.  There were classic affectations in England, there were masks and mummeries and classic puerilities at court and in noble houses—­Elizabeth’s court would well have liked to be classical, remarks Guizot—­but Shakespeare was not fettered by classic conventionalities, nor did he obey the unities, nor attempt to separate on the stage the tragedy and comedy of life—­“immense and living stage,” says the writer I like to quote because he is French, upon which all things are represented, as it were, in their solid form, and in the place which they occupied in a stormy and complicated civilization.  In these dramas the comic element is introduced whenever its character of reality gives it the right of admission and the advantage of opportune appearance.  Falstaff appears in the train of Henry V., and Doll Tear-Sheet in the train of Falstaff; the people surround the kings, and the soldiers crowd around their generals; all conditions of society, all the phases of human destiny appear by turns in juxtaposition, with the nature which properly belongs to them, and in the position which they naturally occupy. . . .

“Thus we find the entire world, the whole of human realities, reproduced by Shakespeare in tragedy, which, in his eyes, was the universal theatre of life and truth.”

It is possible to make a brutal picture of the England of Shakespeare’s day by telling nothing that is not true, and by leaving out much that is true.  M. Taine, who has a theory to sustain, does it by a graphic catalogue of details and traits that cannot be denied; only there is a great deal in English society that he does not include, perhaps does not apprehend.  Nature, he thinks, was never so completely acted out.  These robust men give rein to all their passions, delight in the strength of their limbs like Carmen, indulge in coarse language, undisguised sensuality, enjoy gross jests, brutal buffooneries.  Humanity is as much lacking as decency.  Blood, suffering, does not move them.  The court frequents bull and bear baitings; Elizabeth beats her maids, spits upon a courtier’s fringed coat, boxes Essex’s ears; great ladies beat their children and their servants.  “The sixteenth century,” he says, “is like a den of lions.  Amid passions so strong