all antecedent to his own time, therefore he
never mentions either the drinking of tobacco, or the tumultuous
scenes of the ordinary which belonged to it, and which are so
constantly met with in his contemporary dramatists. Says one:

[Footnote 41: "Never did nature produce a Plant that in
a short Time became so universally used, for it was but
a short while known in Europe, till it was taken almost
everywhere, either chewed; smoked, or snuffed. A pipe of
tobacco is now the general and most frequent companion
of, Mug, Bottle, or Punch-bowl."--_T. Short._]

[Footnote 42: Gifford has also remarked that Shakspeare
is the only one of the dramatic writers of the age of
James who does not condescend to notice tobacco; all the
others abound in allusions to it. In Jonson we find
tobacco in every place--in Cob the waterman's house, and
in the Apollo Club-room, on the stage, and at the
ordinary. The world of London was then divided into two
classes--the tobacco-lovers and the tobacco-haters.]

"How is it that our great dramatist never once makes even
the slightest allusion to smoking? Who can suggest a reason?
Our great poet knew the human heart too well, and kept too
steadily in view, the universal nature of man to be afraid
of painting the external trapping and ephemeral customs of
his own time. Does he not delight to moralize on false hair,
masks, rapiers, pomandens, perfumes, dice, bowls,
fardingales, etc? Did he not sketch for us, with enjoyment
and with satire, too, the fantastic fops, the pompous
stewards, the mischievous pages, the quarrelsome revellers,
the testy gaolers, the rhapsodizing lovers, the sly cheats,
and the ruffling courtiers that filled the streets of
Elizabethan London, persons who could have been found
nowhere else nor in any other age? No one can dispute that
he drew the life that he saw moving around him. He sketched
these creatures because they were before his eyes and were
his enemies or his associates; they live still because their
creator's genius was Promethean, and endowed them with
immortality. Bardolph, Moth, Slender, Abhorson, Don Armado,
Mercutio, etc., are portraits, as everyone knows and feels