which scents out impurity in every bold sally, is, at best, but an
ambiguous criterion of purity of morals; and beneath this hypocritical
guise there often lurks the consciousness of an impure imagination.
The determination to tolerate nothing which has the least reference to
the sensual relation between the sexes, may be carried to a pitch
extremely oppressive to a dramatic poet and highly prejudicial to the
boldness and freedom of his compositions. If such considerations were
to be attended to, many of the happiest parts of Shakespeare's plays,
for example, in _Measure for Measure_, and _All's Well that Ends
Well_, which, nevertheless, are handled with a due regard to decency,
must be set aside as sinning against this would-be propriety.

Had no other monuments of the age of Elizabeth come down to us than
the works of Shakespeare, I should, from them alone, have formed the
most favorable idea of its state of social culture and enlightenment.
When those who look through such strange spectacles as to see nothing
in them but rudeness and barbarity cannot deny what I have now
historically proved, they are usually driven to this last resource,
and demand, "What has Shakespeare to do with the mental culture of his
age? He had no share in it. Born in an inferior rank, ignorant and
uneducated, he passed his life in low society, and labored to please a
vulgar audience for his bread, without ever dreaming of fame or
posterity."

In all this there is not a single word of truth, though it has been
repeated a thousand times. It is true we know very little of the
poet's life; and what we do know consists for the most part of
raked-up and chiefly suspicious anecdotes, of about such a character
as those which are told at inns to inquisitive strangers who visit the
birthplace or neighborhood of a celebrated man. Within a very recent