SCHELLING— THE COMMON FOLK OF SHAKESPEARE. 479 



Next to the merchants come Shakespeare's seamen, the noble- 

 minded Antonio of " Twelfth Night," Sebastian's friend, the out- 

 spoken sea-captain, boatswain and mariners of "The Tempest," the 

 attendant sailors and fisher folk of " Pericles." Shakespeare was a 

 landman ; save for an occasional line, his descriptions of the sea, in 

 the richest of all literatures in this respect, are none of them im- 

 portant. The mariner as such he treats with the respect due a person 

 only partially known. With the soldier, in a martial age, Shake- 

 speare was better acquainted and he knew him from the kings and 

 great commanders of the historical plays to such pasteboard and 

 plaster military men as Parolles, Nym and Pistol. Of Falstaff's 

 levy and his rabble attendants, from Bardolph of the carbuncled nose 

 to the minute page, it may be said that they cut a sorrier figure in 

 France than at the Boarshead in Eastcheap. But Shakespeare's 

 army levied better men than these ; the heroic gunners on the walls 

 of Orleans, the brave and capable captains of four kingdoms, Gower, 

 Fluellen, MacMorris, and Jamey in " Henry V.," and the manly 

 English soldiers Bates, Court and Williams. If the refined, modern 

 critic, versed in the psychological researches of an incessantly prying 

 world, would learn whether the old dramatist, Shakespeare, had 

 any notions as to the mental processes and moral stability of the 

 common man, let him read and ponder the simple incident of King 

 Henry V. incognito, and the soldier Williams and their arguments 

 .pro and con as to the responsibility of princes. Williams is the type 

 of the honest, fearless, clear-headed " man in the street " who honors 

 his king, not slavishly because he is a king, but for the qualities that 

 make him kingly, who respects manhood (his own included) above 

 rank and is the more valiant that he knows the cost of valor. There 

 are several well-known tales of military devotion — they are not 

 English — of the soldier, wounded unto death in a quarrel, the 

 righteousness or wrong of which he cares not even to inquire, who 

 dies blessed and content that he has obeyed in unquestioning faith, the 

 august commands of his master. Williams is not of this type. His 

 free soul will challenge his gage in the eye of his prince and when 

 his heart tells him he is right, let the devil forbid. Shakespeare, 

 too, knew the common man, who is bleeding today for England ; 

 and his trust, like ours, was in him. Nor did our wise old dramatist, 



PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC. , VOL. LV, DD, JULY I9, I916. 



