he poet's career. These reiterated
opinions frequently touch the conditions of well-being or calamity in
civilised society; they often deal with man in civic or social
relation with his neighbour; they define the capabilities of his will.
It is unlikely that observations of this nature would be repeated if
the sentiments they embody were out of harmony with the author's
private conviction. Often we shall not strain a point or do our
critical sense much violence if we assume that these recurring
thoughts are Shakespeare's own. I purpose to call attention to a few
of those which bear on large questions of government and citizenship
and human volition. Involuntarily, they form the framework of a
political and moral philosophy which for clear-eyed sanity is without
rival.

III

Shakespeare's political philosophy is instinct with the loftiest moral
sense. Directly or indirectly, he defines many times the essential
virtues and the inevitable temptations which attach to persons
exercising legalised authority over their fellow-men. The topic always
seems to stir in Shakespeare his most serious tone of thought and
word. No one, in fact, has conceived a higher standard of public
virtue and public duty than Shakespeare. His intuition rendered him
tolerant of human imperfection. He is always in kindly sympathy with
failure, with suffering, with the oppressed. Consequently he brings at
the outset into clearer relief than professed political philosophers,
the saving quality of mercy in rulers of men. Twice Shakespeare pleads
in almost identical terms, through the mouths of created characters,
for generosity on the part of governors of states towards those who
sin against law. In both cases he places his argument, with
significant delicacy, on the lips of women. At a comparatively early
period in his career as dramatist, in _The Merchant of Venice_, Portia
first gave voice to the political virtue of compassion. At a much
later period Shakespeare set the same plea in the mouth of Isabella in
_Measure for Measure_. The passages are too familiar to justify
quotation. Very brief extracts will bring out clearly the identity of
sentiment which finds definition in the two passages.

These are Portia's views of mercy on the throne (_Merchant of Venice_,
IV., i., 189 _seq._):--

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;

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