SCHELLING— THE COMMON FOLK OF SHAKESPEARE. 477 



is represented in all three cases as fickle, turbulent, cruel, foul and 

 possessed of a rude sense of humor; and this last is Shakespeare's — 

 perhaps, more accurately, the Elizabethan — contribution to the pic- 

 ture. It has been well observed that Tudor England presented no 

 precise parallel to the persistent struggle of the Roman plebs against 

 the bulwarks of patrician oligarchy. And it is doubtful if Shake- 

 speare would have sought for such parallels had they existed. In 

 unessentials — and the picture of the mob is such to the dramatic ac- 

 tion of these two Roman plays — Shakespeare is always faithful to 

 his sources, and Plutarch's crowd is cruel, seditious, and " con- 

 temptibly responsive" to the most obvious blandishments of the 

 demagogue. In the admirable scenes of Jack Cade's rebellion, 

 although the material was nearer home, Shakespeare once more 

 followed his sources, here in Holinshed and Halle. Neither of these 

 worthies comprehended in the slightest degree the actual political 

 issues underlying the Kentishmen's revolt, which historically was as 

 respectable as it was fruitless. But Shakespeare was not seeking 

 historical accuracy, but dramatic eflfectiveness and fidelity to the ob- 

 served characteristics of ignorant men escaped from the curb of the 

 law. Shakespeare, as to the mob, was no sociologist, and his yearn- 

 ing for the submerged tenth was not that of many a worthy gentle- 

 man of our own time who otherwise misrepresents the unshriven 

 objects of his solicitude. In short a mob was to the unlettered 

 dramatist merely a mob. Man running in packs unbridled by 

 authority was a phenomenon better known to unpoliced Elizabethan 

 England than to us, and Shakespeare found most of his own im- 

 pressions in this matter to tally remarkably with those of Plutarch 

 and Holinshed. 



With Shakespeare's mob we leave the country and meet with the 

 small tradesmen of towns ; for even the Kentish " rabblement " of 

 Jack Cade is represented, like that of ancient Rome, as made up of 

 small trades people — cobblers, butchers, smiths and the like — not folk 

 of the fields. Individually as collectively, Shakespeare has a greater 

 appreciation for the humors of the tailor, the joiner, and the bellows- 

 mender than for his psychology. The drunken tinker of " The 

 Shrew " the author found in his source and, unlike that source, 

 wearied, he dropped his adventures when the play within the play 



