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.
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