is, may answer the
purpose of imparting some just notion of the growth and progress of
the English Drama till it reached the eve of its maturity. The
allegorical drama had great influence, no doubt, in determining the
scope and quality of the proper drama of comedy and tragedy; since, by
its long discipline of the popular mind in abstract ideas, or in the
generalized forms of ethical thought, it did much towards forming that
public taste which required and prompted the drama to rise above a
mere geography of facts into the empyrean of truth; and under the
instructions of which Shakespeare learned to make his persons
embodiments of general nature as well as of individual character. For
the excellences of the Shakespearian Drama were probably owing as much
to the mental preparation of the time as to the powers of the
individual man. He was in demand before he came; and it was that
pre-existing demand that taught and enabled him to do what he did. If
it was the strength of his genius that lifted him to the top of the
heap, it was also the greatness of the heap that enabled him to reach
and maintain that elevation. For it is a great mistake to regard
Shakespeare as standing alone, and working only in the powers of his
individual mind. In fact, there never was any growth of literature or
art that stood upon a wider basis of collective experience, or that drew
its form and substance from a larger or more varied stock of
historical preparation.[5]

[5] Since the passage in the text was written, I have met with
some well-drawn remarks of a like drift in Froude's _History of
England_, Chapter I.: "The chroniclers have given us many
accounts of the masques and plays which were acted in the Court,
or in the castles of the noblemen. Such pageants were but the
most splendid expression of a taste which was national and
universal. As in ancient Greece, generations before the rise of
the great dramas of Athens, itinerant companies wandered from
village to village, carrying their stage furniture in their
little carts, and acted in their booths and tents the grand
stories of the mythology; so in England the mystery-players
haunted the wakes and fairs, and in barns or taverns, tap-rooms,
or in the farm-house kitchen, played at saints and angels, and
transacted on their petty stage the entire drama of the
Christian Faith. We allow ourselves to think of Shakespeare or
of Raph