474 SCHELLING— THE COMMON FOLK OF SHAKESPEARE. 



is reported a man of dignity, learning and much experience in his 

 practice. The doctor in Macbeth has won the praises of his own 

 jealous profession with the professional aptitude of his comments on 

 the somnambulist symptoms of Lady Macbeth ; while the physician, 

 Cornelius, skilled as he is in poisons, honorably deceives the wicked 

 queen of Cymbeline with a sleeping potion instead of the deadly 

 drug which it was her purpose to administer to the unhappy 

 Imogen. 



Unlike his contemporary Middleton and some others, Shake- 

 speare does not satirize the profession of the law ; and the lawyer, as 

 such, scarcely figures in the plays. At opposite poles, in the plays 

 which have to do with Falstafif, we have Master Shallow " in the 

 county of Gloucester, justice of the peace and ' coram,' " described 

 by Falstafif as " a man made after supper of a cheese-paring . . . 

 for all the world like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved 

 upon it with a knife." And we have likewise the grave and honor- 

 able Chief Justice Gascoigne, whose courage and impartiality in the 

 exercise of his high functions caused the regenerate Prince to choose 

 him for his guide and counsellor on the assumption of his new royal 

 dignities. As to the lesser functionaries of the law, the watchman, 

 the constable and the beadle, Shakespeare exhibits the general free 

 spirit of his time and laughs, as the rest of the world has ever 

 laughed, at the insolence, ineptitude and ignorance of the small man 

 dressed in a little brief authority. It might be argued with some 

 likelihood of success that this is identically the spirit that marks 

 the Sheriff of Nottingham as the butt of the lawless pranks of Robin 

 Hood, the attitude towards constituted authority which combined in 

 the free ranging devils of the old miracle plays the functions of 

 policing the crowd and catering to its merriment. Beyond his 

 designation, " a constable," Dull in " Love's Labour's Lost," scarcely 

 represents for his class more than his name ; and as to Elbow in 

 " Measure for Measure," his " simplicity " like his malapropisms, 

 seems a faint and colorless repetition of these qualities in the im- 

 mortal Dogberry. Dogberry is universal, the ubiquitous, inevitable, 

 unescapable man of weight, ponderous alike physically and mentally ; 

 for I am persuaded with an old-fashioned American critic, that 

 Dogberry was "of ample size — no small man speaks with sedate 



