SCHELLING— THE COMMON FOLK OF SHAKESPEARE. 475 



gravity. . . . No man of the lean and dwarfish species can assume the 

 tranquil self-consequence of Dogberry. How could a thinly covered 

 soul [exhibit] . . . that calm interior glow, that warm sense, too, of 

 outward security, which so firmly speaks in Dogberry's content and 

 confidence."^ 



Our obvious generalization as to Shakespeare's estimate of the 

 learned professions, then, is this : he found, in all, earnest, honorable 

 and capable men and honored them as such ; and he found like- 

 wise among them the stupid, the pedantic, the pretentious and the 

 absurd. It was for their follies that he ridiculed them, not because 

 of their class or their station in life. 



Of the small gentry of Elizabethan England, Master Ford and 

 Master Page with their two merry wives offer us the best example 

 in comedy. The discordant plans and plots for a provision in life 

 for Mistress Anne Page are in keeping with many a like uncon- 

 scious parody on the grand alliances of folk of higher station. The 

 foolish Slender, who is likewise a small landed proprietor, is nearer 

 an absolute fool or " natural " than any of Shakespeare's clowns, 

 professional or other, for wit proceeds no more out of him, how- 

 ever he beget wit in others, than it ever comes forth from the mouth 

 of Andrew Aguecheek his cousin-german (so to speak) of Illyria. 

 In Alexander Iden, who meeting with Jack Cade in his Kentish 

 garden, kills him in single fight, we have a serious personage of 

 much Slender's station in life. But Iden has his wits as well as 

 his valor about him and his knighting is his deserved reward. 

 Nearer the soil, if closer to royalty, is the kind-hearted, allegorical 

 minded king's gardener who apprises the queen of Richard II. of 

 the monarch's mischance in falling into the hands of his enemy, 

 victorious Bolingbroke. In the country folk that fill in the back- 

 ground of "As You Like It" and the later acts of "The Winter's 

 Tale," Shakespeare's English spirit comes into contact with the 

 conventional types of Italian pastoral drama. Corin is the typical 

 shepherdess, beloved but not loving, and Sylvius, the pursuing shep- 

 herd unbeloved. But as if to correct an impression so artificial, we 

 have, beside them, William and Audrey, English country folk in 

 name and nature like Costard and Jaquenetta, and in Shakespeare's 



1 Henry Oiles, " Human Nature in Shakespeare," 1868. 



