Copernicus.

No great general ever arose out of a nation of cowards; no great statesman
or philosopher out of a nation of fools; no great artist out of a nation of
materialists; no great dramatist except when the drama was the passion of
the people. Acting was the especial amusement of the English, from the
palace to the village green. It was the result and expression of their
power over themselves, and power over circumstances. They were troubled
with no subjective speculations; no social problems vexed them with which
they were unable to deal; and in the exuberance of vigour and spirits they
were able, in the strict and literal sense of the word, to play with the
materials of life. The mystery plays came first; next the popular legends;
and then the great figures of English history came out upon the stage, or
stories from Greek and Roman writers; or sometimes it was an extemporised
allegory. Shakspeare himself has left us many pictures of the village
drama. Doubtless he had seen many a Bottom in the old Warwickshire hamlets;
many a Sir Nathaniel playing "Alissander," and finding himself "a little
o'erparted." He had been with Snug the joiner, Quince the carpenter, and
Flute the bellows-mender, when a boy we will not question, and acted with
them, and written their parts for them; had gone up with them in the
winter's evenings to the Lucy's Hall before the sad trouble with the
deer-stealing; and afterwards, when he came to London and found his way
into great society, he had not failed to see Polonius burlesquing Caesar on
the stage, as in his proper person Polonius burlesqued Sir William Cecil.
The strolling players in _Hamlet_ might be met at every country wake or
festival; it was the direction in which the especial genius of the people
delighted to revel. As I desire in this chapter not only to relate what
were the habits of the people, but to illustrate them also, within such
compass as I can allow myself, I shall transcribe out of Hall[71] a
description of a play which was acted by the boys of St. Paul's School, in
1527, at Greenwich, adding some particulars, not mentioned by Hall, from
another source.[72] It is a good instance of the fantastic splendour with
which exhibitions of this kind were got up, and it possesses also a
melancholy interest of another kind, as showing how little the wisest among
us can foresee our own actions, or assure ourselves that the convictions of
to-day will alike be the convictions of t