58 L. A. Sherman 



when wilt thou leave fighting o' days, and foining o' nights, and begin to 

 patch up thine old body for heaven, 



we are with Falstaff for the moment, rather than with this voice 

 of the eternal witness. Is it original depravity, or is it only the 

 backward glance of the racial self, after it has learned 



By the means of Evil that Good is best, 



over years when the Tree of Knowledge was yet untasted? 

 Whatever the fellow element in us, Shakespeare plays upon it, 

 and we are helpless in his hands. 



And still the story of Falstaff remains half told. The paradox 

 of his personality is still unriddled. We face again the fact that 

 folk sensitive to every sort of sin and coarseness fail to react to 

 the flagrancies of his life and nature. Hazlitt, who is far from 

 tender of human frailties, and whom Quiller-Couch quotes ap- 

 provingly, pronounces him ' always a better man than Henry.' 

 This is neither moral anaesthesia nor hypnotism. It is only art, 

 and art consists in finding means to stir the senses and forces in 

 the soul. Shakespeare so knew the secret of these senses and 

 proclivities that he could make his audiences desire anything he 

 wished, and repudiate everything which, for dramatic or other 

 reasons, needed to be repudiated. This is the technical side of his 

 control. On the side of expedients and means, all human quali- 

 ties seem to have lain within his grasp and ken. He has made 

 Shylock and Falstaff surpassingly human, because, like in kind 

 Another, he knew what was in man. There was good in Judas of 

 which we have no knowledge, and which ensured to him his 

 chance. There was good in Falstaff which we cannot analyze, 

 and which did not ensure to him his chance. We can only say, 

 like the sailor preacher, There, but for the grace of God, go we. 

 No man else ever knew so well as Shakespeare that there are 

 graceless souls. 



V 



Of the remaining chapters in Quiller-Couch's volume, those 

 dealing with * Shakespeare's Later Workmanship,' ' Pericles and 

 Henry VIII,' ' Cymbeline/ and ' The Winter's Tale/ will be 

 passed over. The present writer once worked fatiguingly, at the 



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