Only one degree more inward than this survival of a religious vocabulary in profane speech is the reference we often find in Shakespeare to religious institutions and traditions. There are monks, bishops, and cardinals; there is even mention of saints, although none is ever presented to us in person. The clergy, if they have any wisdom, have an earthly one. Friar Lawrence culls his herbs like a more benevolent Medea; and Cardinal Wolsey flings away ambition with a profoundly Pagan despair; his robe and his integrity to heaven are cold comfort to him. Juliet goes to shrift to arrange her love affairs, and Ophelia should go to a nunnery to forget hers. Even the chastity of Isabella has little in it that would have been out of place in Iphigenia. The metaphysical Hamlet himself sees a "true ghost," but so far reverts to the positivism that underlies Shakespeare's thinking as to speak soon after of that "undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns." There are only two or three short passages in the plays, and one sonnet, in which true religious feeling seems to break forth. The most beautiful of these passages is that in "Richard II," which commemorates the death of Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk-- "Many a time hath banished Norfolk fought For Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field, Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross Against black Pagans, Turks, and Saracens; And, toiled with works of war, retired himself To Italy; and there, at Venice, gave His body to that pleasant country's earth, And his pure soul unto his captain Christ, Under whose colours he had fought so long." This is tender and noble, and full of an indescribable chivalry and pathos, yet even here we find the spirit of war rather than that of religion, and a deeper sense of Italy than of heaven. More unmixed is the piety of Henry V after the battle of Agincourt:-- "O God, thy arm was here; And not to us, but to thy arm alone, Ascribe we all!--When, without stratagem, But in plain shock and even play of battle, Was ever known so great and little loss, On one part and on the other?--Take it, God, For it is none but thine.... Come, go we in procession to the village, And be it death proclaimed through our host, To boast of this, or take that praise from God, Which is his only.... Do we all holy rites; Let there be sung _Non nobis_ and _Te Deum_." This passage is certainly a true expression of religious feeling, and just the kind that we might expect from a dramatist. Religion appears here as a manifestation of human nature and as an expression of human passion. The passion, however, is not due to Shakespeare's imagination, but is essentially historical: the poet has simply not rejected, as he usually does, the religious element in the situation he reproduces.[1]