92 



for subsistence, and of his killing a calf in heroic style — 

 has been, no doubt, the chief cause of his religious and 

 moral dignity as an author having been impugned or 

 doubted. Add to this the fact of his havuig been an 

 actor, and of his reputation having literally to run the 

 gauntlet of the next generation of Roundheads, who 

 hated players with a bigotted zeal, as men of Belial, and 

 we may understand how much of this opinion may have 

 arisen. That prejudice, in his own and in the succeeding 

 age, would have forbidden the idea, that a player would 

 trouble himself with the inculcation of religious truths, 

 or with doctrines for the special projection of moral and 

 Christian axioms, is positive. Very few persons since the 

 time of the Puritans would have dared to assert as much 

 as this, or combat the prejudices which four generations 

 have made law. 



It "will be seen that these arguments, which I have 

 imperfectly catalogued, amount to little if united, and 

 taken separately are likely to be estimated at a very 

 different value by different persons. Some of them 

 answer themselves or each other, or are not worth reply. 

 To meet others would be impossible Avith the scanty 

 evidence at command. Attaching little importance to 

 them myself, I merely offer them as the basis on which 

 the superstructure of very much modern criticism is 

 founded. Having been a long time accepted as facts, the 

 tone of disquisition usually proceeds from an assumption 

 that the levity of construction they involve, is proved. 

 They arm the battery aimed at the moral dignity of 

 Shakspere's dramas, and no less at the memory of 

 Shakspere himself, that I would wish, once and for ever, 

 to see razed and scattered to the winds. There are a few 

 others which I purposely omit, such as his asserted 

 sacrifice of truth in his historical portraits of Joan of 

 Arc and Richard III., to flatter the ignorant prejudices 



