ant aggressiveness is as
familiar to the Shakespearean drama as to the external world; but it
is always exhibited by Shakespeare in its proper colours. The
Shakespearean "mob," unwashed in mind and body, habitually yields to
it, and justifies itself by a speciousness of argument, against which
a clean vision rebels. The so-called patriotism which seeks expression
in war for its own sake is alone intelligible to Shakespeare's
pavement orators. "Let me have war, say I," exclaims the professedly
patriotic spokesman of the ill-conditioned proletariat in
_Coriolanus_; "it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it's
spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy,
lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible.... Ay, and it makes men
hate one another." For this distressing result of peace, the reason is
given that in times of peace men have less need of one another than in
seasons of war, and the crude argument closes with the cry: "The wars
for my money." There is irony in this suggestion of the mercantile
value of war on the lips of a spokesman of paupers. It is solely the
impulsive mindless patriot who strains after mere military glory.

Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.

(I. _Henry VI._, I., ii., 133-5.)

No wise man vaunts in the name of patriotism his own nation's
superiority over another. The typical patriot, Henry V., once makes
the common boast that one Englishman is equal to three Frenchmen, but
he apologises for the brag as soon as it is out of his mouth. (He
fears the air of France has demoralised him.)

Elsewhere Shakespeare utters a vivacious warning against the patriot's
exclusive claim for his country of natural advantages, which all the
world shares substantially alike.

Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night,
Are they not but in Britain? I' the world's volume
Our Britain seems as of it, but not in 't;
In a great pool, a swan's nest: prithee, think
There's livers out of Britain.[36]

[Footnote 36: _Cymbeline_, III., iv., 139-43.]

It is not the wild hunger for war, but the stable interests of peace
that are finally subserved in the Shakespearean world by true and
well-regulated patriotism. _Henry V._, the play of Shakespeare which
shows the genuine patriotic instinct in its most energetic guise, ends
with a powerful appeal to France and England, t