• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 20134 0

at the insolence of the Calvinists, are significantly expressed in terms which seem to hint at a possible return for help and protection to the shelter of the older faith and the support of its partisans. “An ’a speak anything against me, I’ll take him down an ’a were lustier than he is, and twenty such Jacks;” (the allusion here is again obvious, to the baptismal name of John Calvin and John Knox, if not also to the popular byword of Jack Presbyter;) “and if I cannot,” (here the sense of insecurity and dependence on foreign help or secular power becomes transparent) “I’ll find those that shall.” She disclaims communion with the Protestant Churches of the continent, with Amsterdam or Geneva: “I am none of his flirt-gills; I am none of his skains-mates.” Peter, who carries her fan (“to hide her face: for her fan’s the fairer face”; we may take this to be a symbol of the form of episcopal consecration still retained in the Anglican Church as a cover for its separation from Catholicism), is undoubtedly meant for Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury; the name Peter, as applied to a menial who will stand by and suffer every knave to use the Church at his pleasure, but is ready to draw as soon as another man if only he may be sure of having the secular arm of the law on his side, implies a bitter sarcasm on the intruding official of state then established by law as occupant of a see divorced from its connection with that of the apostle. The sense of instability natural to an institution which is compelled to rely for support on ministers who are themselves dependent on the state whose pay they draw for power to strike a blow in self-defence could hardly be better expressed than by the solemn and piteous, almost agonised asseveration; “Now, afore God, I am so vexed, that every part about me quivers.” To Shakespeare, it cannot be doubted, the impending dissolution or dislocation of the Anglican system in “every part” by civil war and religious discord must even then have been but too ominously evident.

If further confirmation could be needed of the underlying significance of allusion traceable throughout this play, it might amply be supplied by fresh reference to the first scene in which the Nurse makes her appearance on the stage, and is checked by Lady Capulet in the full tide of affectionate regret for her lost husband. We can well imagine Anne Boleyn cutting short the regrets of some indiscreet courtier for Sir Thomas More in the very words of the text;

Enough of this; I pray thee, hold thy peace.

The “parlous knock” which left so big a lump upon the brow of the infant Juliet is evidently an allusion to the declaration of Elizabeth’s illegitimacy while yet in her cradle. The seal of bastardy set upon the baby brow of

Anne Boleyn’s daughter may well be said to have “broken” it.

The counsel of the Nurse to Juliet in Act iii. Scene 5 to forsake Romeo for Paris indicates the bias of the hierarchy in favour of Essex—“a lovely gentleman”—rather than of the ultra-Protestant policy of Burghley, who doubtless in the eyes of courtiers and churchmen was “a dish-clout to him.”

These were a few of the points, set down at random, which he had been enabled to verify within the limits of a single play. They would suffice to give an idea of the process by which, when applied in detail to every one of Shakespeare’s plays, he trusted to establish the secret history and import of each, not less than the general sequence and significance of all. Further instalments of this work would probably be issued in the forthcoming or future Transactions of the Newest Shakespeare Society; and it was confidently expected that the final monument of his research when thoroughly completed and illustrated by copious appendices, would prove as worthy as any work of mere English scholarship could hope to be of a place beside the inestimable commentaries of Gervinus, Ulrici, and the Polypseudocriticopantodapomorosophisticometricoglossematographicomaniacal Company for the Confusion of Shakespeare and Diffusion of Verbiage (Unlimited).

CHIMÆRA BOMBINANS IN VACUO.