Commentators have, it is true, laboured to extract from these and others of his plays, the ideals which they suppose him to have cultivated, concerning the perfect king, the independence and greatness of England, the aristocracy, which in their judgment was the main-stay and glory of his country. They have discovered his Achilles (in the double form of "Achilles in Sciro" and of "Achilles at Troy") in Prince Henry, and his _pius Aeneas,_ in the same prince become Henry V, who, grown conscious of his new duties, resolutely and definitely severs himself, not from a Dido, but from a Falstaff. They have discovered his paladins in the great representatives of the English aristocracy, and as reflected in the Roman aristocracy, by a Coriolanus, and on the other hand the class which he suspected and despised, in the populace and plebeians of all time, whether of those that surrounded Menenius Agrippa or who created tumult for and against Julius Caesar in the Forum, or those others who bestowed upon Jack Cade a fortune as evanescent as it was sudden. Finally, his Trojans or Rutulians, enemies of his people, are supposed by them to be the French. But if the epic ideal had possessed real force and consistency in the mind of Shakespeare, we should not have needed industrious interpreters to track it down and demonstrate it. On the other hand, it is clear that the author of _Henry VI,_ in treating as he did Talbot and the Maid of Orleans, and the author of _Henry V,_ in his illustration of the struggles between the English and the French and the victory of Agincourt, restricted himself to adopting the popular and traditional English view, without identifying that with his spiritual self, or taxing it as his guide to the conception of the English and Roman plays. Nor is there any value in another view, to the effect that Shakespeare in these plays set the example and paved the way for what was afterwards called historical and romantic drama. Had he sought this end, he would not only have required some sort of political, social and religious ideal, but also historical reflection, the sense of what distinguishes and gives character to past times in respect to present, and also that nostalgia for the past, which both Shakespeare and the Italian and English Renaissance were altogether without. About two centuries had to elapse before an imitator of Shakespeare, or rather of some of his external forms and methods, arose, in the composer of _Goetz von Berlichingen._ He had assimilated the new historical curiosity and affection for the rude and powerful past, and there provided the first model of what was soon afterwards developed as historical romance and drama, especially by Walter Scott.