by Sir Sidney Lee
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To this text Shakespeare constantly recurs, and he bestows on it all his fertile resources of illustration. The reiterated exposition by Shakespeare of the hollowness of kingly ceremony is a notable feature of his political sentiment The dramatist's independent analysis of the quiddity of kingship is, indeed, alike in manner and matter, a startling contribution to sixteenth century speculation. In manner it is worthy of Shakespeare's genius at its highest. In matter it is for its day revolutionary rationalism. It defies a popular doctrine, held almost universally by Shakespeare's contemporary fellow-countrymen, that royalty is divine and under God's special protection, that the gorgeous ceremony of the throne reflects a heavenly attribute, and that the king is the pampered favourite of heaven.
Bacon defined a king with slender qualifications, as "a mortal god on earth unto whom the living God has lent his own name." Shakespeare was well acquainted with this accepted doctrine. He often gives dramatic definition of it. He declines to admit its soundness. Wherever he quotes it, he adds an ironical comment, which was calculated to perturb the orthodox royalist. Having argued that the day-labourer or the shepherd is far happier than a king, he logically refuses to admit that the monarch is protected by God from any of the ills of mortality. Richard II. may assert that "the hand of God alone, and no hand of blood or bone" can rob him of the sacred handle of his sceptre. But the catastrophe of the play demonstrates that that theft is entirely within human scope. The king is barbarously murdered. In Hamlet the graceless usurping uncle declares that "such divinity doth hedge a king," that treason cannot endanger his life. But the speaker is run through the body very soon after the brag escapes his lips.
Shakespeare is no comfortable theorist, no respecter of orthodox doctrine, no smooth-tongued approver of fashionable dogma. His acute intellect cuts away all the cobwebs, all the illusions, all the delusions, of formulæ. His untutored insight goes down to the root of things; his king is not Philosopher Bacon's "mortal god on earth"; his king is "but a man as I am," doomed to drag out a large part of his existence in the galling chains of "tradition, form and ceremonious duty," of unreality and self-deception.
Shakespeare's intuitive power of seeing things as they are, affects his attitude to all social conventions. Not merely royal rulers of men are in a false position, ethically and logically. "Beware of appearances," is Shakespeare's repeated warning to men and women of all ranks in the political or social hierarchy. "Put not your trust in ornament, be it of gold or of silver." In the spheres of law and religion, the dramatist warns against pretence, against shows of virtue, honesty, or courage which have no solid backing.
