aff; 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 as these there is not one lacking.
Nature appears here in all its violence, but also in all its fullness. If
nothing has been softened, nothing has been mutilated. It is the entire
man who is displayed, heart, mind, body, senses, with his noblest and
finest aspirations, as with his most bestial and savage appetites,
without the preponderance of any dominant passion to cast him altogether
in one direction, to exalt or degrade him. He has not become rigid as he
will under Puritanism. He is not uncrowned as in the Restoration." He has
entered like a young man into all the lusty experiences of life, every
allurement is known, the sweetness and novelty of things are strong with
him. He plunges into all sensations. "Such were the men of this time,
Raleigh, Essex, Elizabeth, Henry VIII himself, excessive and inconstant,
ready for devotion and for crime, violent in good and evil, heroic with
strange weaknesses, humble with sudden changes of mood, never vile with
premeditation like the roisterers of the Restoration, never rigid on
principle like the Pu