Excepting _Henry
V._, the history plays are tragedies. They "tell sad stories of the
death of kings." But they do not merely illustrate the crushing
burdens of kingship or point the moral of the hollowness of kingly
pageantry; they explain why kingly glory is in its essence brittle
rather than brilliant. And since Shakespeare's rulers reflect rather
than inspire the character of the nation, we are brought to a study of
the causes of the brittleness of national glory.
The glory of a nation, as of a king, is only stable, we learn, when
the nation, as the king, lives soberly, virtuously, and wisely, and
is courageous, magnanimous, and zealous after knowledge. Cowardice,
meanness, ignorance, and cruelty ruin nations as surely as they ruin
kings. This is the lesson specifically taught in the most eloquent of
all the direct avowals of patriotism which are to be found in
Shakespeare's plays--in the dying speech of John of Gaunt.
That speech is no ebullition of the undisciplined patriotic instinct.
It is a solemn announcement of the truth that the greatness and glory,
with which nature and history have endowed a nation, may be dissipated
when, on the one hand, the rulers prove selfish, frivolous, and
unequal to the responsibilities which a great past places on their
shoulders, and when, on the other hand, the nation acquiesces in the
depravity of its governors.
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