But these be the gibes of Danes and Italians--not of the man Shakespeare or of Englishmen speaking with his voice. True it is that if Shakespeare was strongly patriotic, he was so only in common with the Englishmen of his day. He lived in an age when the English people were consumed with a spirit of burning affection for the isle which they inhabited--when the great religious upheaval which we call the Reformation had set the blood coursing through their veins, and infused new life into their heart and brain--and when the fear of Spanish domination had joined all classes in an indissoluble bond of love and loyalty. Probably the English nation never was more thoroughly united, more profoundedly in earnest, more closely attached to its traditions and its soil, than in those spacious times of great Elizabeth. And if Shakespeare produced play after play dealing with the history of his country, and presenting on the boards many of the most famous Englishmen of the past, he was led to do so, no doubt, not only because the topic had attractions for him, but because the Englishmen of his day revelled in such reminders of the stirring years gone by--of the great soldiers, statesmen, clerics, and the like, who had shed lustre on the national name. There must have been a decided and continuous demand for these elaborate chronicle-dramas, and it may be argued that the poet, in supplying them, did but comply with the call made upon him by his public patrons. The fact, however, that Shakespeare found historical plays a paying product will not wholly account for the powerfully patriotic strain in which they were composed. It is not only that the long series stretching from 'King John' to 'Henry VIII.' pulses from beginning to end with love of, and pride in, country; it is not only that the poet makes great Englishmen speak greatly--that, placing them in positions in which declarations of patriotism are natural and necessary, he makes those declarations eloquent and thrilling;--it is that he charges all his passages about England and the English with a passion of enthusiasm which can be explained only on the hypothesis that he was throwing his whole heart into the work, and sympathized deeply with the utterances of his creations. There is, for instance, something more than mere appropriateness to the character and the occasion in that marvellous piece of eulogy of which, in 'Richard II.,' John of Gaunt is made the spokesman. The poet seems unable to hold his admiration within bounds: 'This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden--demi-paradise--.... This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in a silver sea,.... This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This nurse, this teeming womb of Royal Kings... This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, Dear for her reputation through the world'--