Besides, Shakespeare, in a thousand places, lays great and marked
stress on a correct and refined tone of society, and lashes every
deviation from it, whether of boorishness or affected foppery; not
only does he give admirable discourses on it, but he represents it in
all its shades and modifications by rank, age, or sex. What foundation
is there, then, for the alleged barbarity of his age, its offences
against propriety? But if this is to be admitted as a test, then the
ages of Pericles and Augustus must also be described as rude and
uncultivated; for Aristophanes and Horace, who were both considered as
models of urbanity, display, at times, the coarsest indelicacy. On
this subject, the diversity in the moral feeling of ages depends on
other causes. Shakespeare, it is true, sometimes introduces us to
improper company; at others, he suffers ambiguous expressions to
escape in the presence of women, and even from women themselves. This
species of indelicacy was probably not then unusual. He certainly did
not indulge in it merely to please the multitude, for in many of his
pieces there is not the slightest trace of this sort to be found; and
in what virgin purity are many of his female parts worked out! When we
see the liberties taken by other dramatic poets in England in his
time, and even much later, we must account him comparatively chaste
and moral. Neither must we overlook certain circumstances in the
existing state of the theatre. The female parts were not acted by
women, but by boys; and no person of the fair sex appeared in the
theatre without a mask. Under such a carnival disguise, much might be
heard by them, and much might be ventured to be said in their
presence, which in other circumstances would have been absolutely
improper. It is certainly to be wished that decency should be observed
on all public occasions, and consequently also on the stage. But even
in this it is possible to go too far. That carping censoriousness