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
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