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Is Shakespeare Aristocratic?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Albert H. Tolman
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Extract

In the first scene of Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar the common people are depicted as if they were English mechanics. We are led to wonder whether the contempt expressed in this play for the vile-smelling and fickle-minded Roman mob represents Shakespeare's own attitude toward his humbler fellow-citizens. Indeed, a larger question suggests itself. John Hampden was already of age in 1616, when the dramatist died; in 1649 Charles I was beheaded, and England proclaimed itself a commonwealth. Did Shakespeare appreciate at all the strength of the movement which sought to put limitations upon the king and to increase the power of the people? Where were his sympathies?

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , 1914, pp. 277 - 298
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1914

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References

page 277 note 1 A few sentences of this paper have previously appeared in print.

page 277 note 2 V. C. Gildersleeve, Government Regulation of the Elizabethan Drama, Columbia Univ. Press, 1908, p. 37.

page 277 note 3 See preface to the revised edition of Sir Sidney Lee's A Life of William Shakespeare, Macmillan, 1909, pp. xvi ff.

page 277 note 4 Complete Works of Walt Whitman, Putnam's, 1902, 10 Vols.: Vol. v, pp. 90, 275–6 (“Collect”); Vol. vi, 137 (“November Boughs”).

page 277 note 5 In the vol. Tolstoy on Shakespeare, Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1906.

page 277 note 6 A Student's History of England, Longmans, 1892, pp. 322–3.

page 277 note 7 Edition of II Henry VI in The Bankside Shakespeare, Vol. xix, N. Y., 1892, Intro. p. xi.

page 277 note 8 The Works of Walter Bagehot, Hartford, Conn., 1889, Vol. i., pp. 288–9 (Essay on Shakespeare).

page 277 note 9 Macmillan, 1910, p. 518.

page 277 note 10 MacCallum, p. 525.

page 277 note 11 Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, Bohn Library, p. 53.

page 277 note 12 William Shakespeare, one vol. ed., Macmillan, 1899, pp. 534, 536, 542, etc.

page 277 note 13 Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, 3d ed., Clarendon Press, 1893, pp. 250–1.

page 277 note 14 Intro. to ed. of Merry Wives in The Bankside Shakespeare, Vol. i, N. Y., 1888, p. 1.

page 277 note 15 Cited by W. J. Rolfe in his old edition of Cymbeline, Harper, 1898, pp. 28–29, from the unpublished Second Series of the Shakespeare-Characters, loaned to him by Mrs. Cowden-Clarke.

page 277 note 16 The Shakespearian Drama: The Tragedies, St. Louis, 1887, Intro., p. xxxix.

page 277 note 17 Government Regulation of the Elizabethan Drama, Columbia Univ. Press, 1908, pp. 135–6.

page 277 note 18 In the vol. Tolstoy on Shakespeare, Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1907, pp. 166–7.