e
thief? Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? And the
creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image
of authority; a dog's obeyed in office." "The great image of
authority" is often a brazen idol.

Hereditary rulers form no inconsiderable section of Shakespeare's
_dramatis personae_. In _Macbeth_ (IV., iii., 92-4) he specifically
defined "the king-becoming graces":--

As justice, verity, temperance, stableness,
Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,
Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude.

But the dramatist's main energies are devoted to exposure of the
hollowness of this counsel of perfection. Temptations to vice beset
rulers of men to a degree that is unknown to their subjects. To
avarice rulers are especially prone. Stanchless avarice constantly
converts kings of ordinary clay into monsters. How often they forge

Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal,
Destroying them for wealth.

(_Macbeth_, IV., iii., 83-4.)

Intemperance in all things--in business and pleasure--is a standing
menace of monarchs.

Boundless intemperance
In Nature is a tyranny: it hath been
Th' untimely emptying of the happy throne
And fail of many kings.

(_Macbeth_, IV., iii., 66-9.)

A leader of men, if he be capable of salvation, must "delight no less
in truth than life." Yet "truth," for the most part, is banished from
the conventional environment of royalty.

Repeatedly does Shakespeare bring into dazzling relief the irony which
governs the being of kings. Want of logic and defiance of ethical
principle underlie their pride in magnificent ceremonial and
pageantry. The ironic contrast between the pretensions of a king and
the actual limits of human destiny is a text which Shakespeare
repeatedly clothes in golden language.

It is to be admitted that nearly all the kings in Shakespeare's
gallery frankly acknowledge the make-believe and unreality which dogs
regal pomp and ceremony. In self-communion they acknowledge the
ruler's difficulty in finding truth in their traditional scope of
life. In a great outburst on the night before Agincourt, Henry V.--the
only king whom Shakespeare seems thoroughly to admire--openly
describes the inevitable confusion between fact and fiction which
infects the conditions of royalty. Anxiety and unhappiness are so
entwined with ceremonial display as to deprive the king of the reliefs
and recreations which freel