as digged. With a deep and abiding pride of race, linking
him spiritually with the historic past of his people, he was inclined to
look askance at the subverting spirit of Puritanism, which was now
beginning to give Merrie England food for serious thought. His
temperamental bias against Puritanism was accentuated by the openly
avowed hostility of the Puritans to his chosen profession. Though born
of the people, Shakespeare's social ideals were strongly aristocratic,
and, while possessing, in an unusual degree that unerring knowledge of
human nature in all classes and conditions of men, and broad tolerance
of human foibles and weaknesses, attainable only by spiritual sympathy,
in the political wisdom of democracy as it could then be conceived he
had little confidence.

We have good evidence that Shakespeare's father was a Catholic, and it
is more than likely that Shakespeare's sympathies were Catholic. His
most intimate affiliations were Catholic. Southampton's family, the
Wriothesleys, and his mother's family, the Browns, were adherents of the
old faith, and though Southampton, in later life, turned to
Protestantism he was Catholic during the early years of his intimacy
with Shakespeare. For the clergy of the Established Church Shakespeare
had little respect; he probably regarded the majority of them as
trimmers and time-servers. He always makes his curates ridiculous; this,
however, was probably due to his hostility to Roydon, whom he
caricatures. On the other hand, his priests and friars, while erring and
human, are always dignified and reverend figures. There is, however, no
indecision in his attitude towards Rome's political pretensions. The
most uncompromising Protestant of the time sounds no more defiant
national note than he.

In _King John_ we have an ingenuous revelation of Shakespeare's outlook
on life while he was still comparatively young, and within a few years
of his advent in London. He was yet unacquainted with the Earl of
Southampton at the date of its composition, early in 1591.

In the character of Falconbridge, with which one instinctively feels its
creator's sympathy, I am convinced that Shakespeare portrayed the
personality of Sir John Perrot, an illegitimate son of Henry VIII., and
half-brother to Queen Elizabeth. The immense physical proportions of
both Perrot and Falconbridge; their characteristic and temperamental
resemblances; their common illegitimate birth; the fact that both were
trusted