:

"O God, methinks it were a happy life,
To be no better than a homely swain....
... The shepherd's homely curds,
His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade,
All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,
As far beyond a prince's delicates."
(Henry VI., Part 3, Act 2, Sc. 5.)

All of which is natural enough, but savors of cant in the mouths of men
who fought long and hard to maintain themselves upon their thrones.

We have already shown by references to the contemporary drama that the
plea of custom is not sufficient to explain Shakespeare's attitude to
the lower classes, but if we widen our survey to the entire field of
English letters in his day, we shall see that he was running counter to
all the best traditions of our literature. From the time of Piers
Plowman down, the peasant had stood high with the great writers of
poetry and prose alike. Chaucer's famous circle of story-tellers at the
Tabard Inn in Southwark was eminently democratic. With the knight and
the friar were gathered together

"An haberdasher and a carpenter,
A webbe, a deyer and tapiser,"

and the tales of the cook and the miller take rank with those of the
squire and lawyer. The English Bible, too, was in Shakespeare's hands,
and he must have been familiar with shepherd kings and
fishermen-apostles. In the very year in which "Hamlet" first appeared, a
work was published in Spain which was at once translated into English, a
work as well known to-day as Shakespeare's own writings. If the
peasantry was anywhere to be neglected and despised, where should it be
rather than in proud, aristocratic Spain, and yet, to place beside
Shakespeare's Bottoms and Slys, Cervantes has given us the admirable
Sancho Panza, and has spread his loving humor in equal measure over
servant and master. Are we to believe that the yeomen of England, who
beat back the Armada, were inferior to the Spanish peasantry whom they
overcame, or is it not rather true that the Spanish author had a deeper
insight into his country's heart than was allotted to the English
dramatist? Cervantes, the soldier and adventurer, rose above the
prejudices of his class, while Shakespeare never lifted his eyes beyond
the narrow horizon of the Court to which he catered. It was love that
opened Cervantes's eye, and it is in all-embracing love that Shakespeare
was deficient. As far as the common peo