In My Vicarage Garden 



stanza in The Phoenix and the Turtle : " Let the 

 priest in surplus white " sing the requiem. Of 

 the clergy, too, he has very little good to say ; 

 all degrees, whether Cardinal, Bishops, priests, or 

 curates, were, according to him, either proud or 

 ignorant, or both ; the only exception being Friar 

 Francis in Much Ado About Nothing^ and Friar 

 Laurence in Romeo and Juliet ', who are represented 

 as good men and wise counsellors. 



It is almost certain that Shakespeare was never 

 out of England ; and it is one of the common- 

 places of Shakespearian criticism that every 

 country in which the scenes are laid is still only 

 the England of his own time, and all the char- 

 acters, whatever foreign names they may bear, 

 are Englishmen and English women. Still, he 

 must have read much about foreign countries, 

 and must have conversed with many travellers, 

 and so must have read and heard of the beautiful 

 buildings in foreign countries ; yet he never 

 mentions them. Two entire plays are laid in 

 Venice, arid, more suo, he speaks of " that pleasant 

 country's earth," and he mentions the Rialto, but 

 of the grandeur of St Mark's or the Venetian 

 Palaces he says nothing. It is the same with all 

 the other foreign towns he names ; Milan, Vienna, 

 Verona (occupying two entire plays), Ephesus, 

 Sicily, Padua, Paris, Florence, etc., all celebrated 

 for their fine buildings ; but as far as we learn 

 anything of them from Shakespeare, they might 

 have been small English country villages of which 

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