n "Pericles," and here at least we seem to see the
hand of Shakespeare (Act 2, Sc. 2). The two princes, Guiderius and
Arviragus, brought up secretly in a cave, show their royal origin
(Cymbeline, Act 3, Sc. 3), and the servants who see Coriolanus in
disguise are struck by his noble figure (Coriolanus, Act 4, Sc. 5).
Bastards are villains as a matter of course, witness Edmund in "Lear"
and John in "Much Ado about Nothing," and no degree of contempt is too
high for a

"hedge-born swain
That doth presume to boast of gentle blood."
(Henry VI., Part 1, Act 4, Sc. 1.)

Courage is only to be expected in the noble-born. The Duke of York says:

"Let pale-faced fear keep with the mean-born man,
And find no harbor in a royal heart."
(Henry VI., Part 2, Act 3, Sc. 1.)

In so far as the lower classes had any relation to the upper classes, it
was one, thought Shakespeare, of dependence and obligation. It was not
the tiller of the soil who fed the lord of the manor, but rather the
lord who supported the peasant. Does not the king have to lie awake and
take thought for his subjects? Thus Henry V. complains that he can not
sleep

"so soundly as the wretched slave,
Who with a body filled and vacant mind,
Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread,
Never sees horrid night, the child of Hell,
But like a lackey, from the rise to set,
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night
Sleeps in Elysium....
The slave, a member of the country's peace,
Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots
What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,
Whose hours the peasant best advantages."
(Henry V., Act 4, Sc. 1.)

And these lines occur at the end of a passage in which the king laments
the "ceremony" that oppresses him and confesses that but for it he would
be "but a man." He makes this admission, however, in a moment of danger
and depression. Henry IV. also invokes sleep (Part 2, Act 2, Sc. 1):

"O thou dull god! why liest thou with the vile
In loathsome beds?"

But plain people have to watch at times, and the French sentinel finds
occasion to speak in the same strain:

"Thus are poor servitors
(When others sleep upon their quiet beds)
Constrained to watch in darkness, rain, and cold."
(Henry VI., Part 1, Act 2, Sc. 1.)

Henry VI. is also attracted by the peasant's lot