Though mean and mighty, rotting Together, make one dust; yet reverence,-- That angel of the world,--doth make distinction Of place 'twixt high and low. "Reverence, that angel of the world," is the ultimate bond of civil society, and can never be defied with impunity, it is the saving sanction of social order. V I have quoted some of Shakespeare's avowedly ethical utterances which bear on conditions of civil society--on morals in their social aspect. There is no obscurity about their drift. Apart from direct ethical declaration, it may be that ethical lessons touching political virtue as well as other specific aspects of morality are deducible from a study of Shakespeare's plots and characters. Very generous food for reflection seems to be offered the political philosopher by the plots and characters of _Julius Caesar_ and _Coriolanus_. The personality of Hamlet is instinct with ethical suggestion. The story and personages of _Measure for Measure_ present the most persistent of moral problems. But discussion of the ethical import of Shakespeare's several dramatic portraits or stories is of doubtful utility. There is a genuine danger of reading into Shakespeare's plots and characters more direct ethical significance than is really there. Dramatic art never consciously nor systematically serves obvious purposes of morality, save to its own detriment. Nevertheless there is not likely to be much disagreement with the general assertion that Shakespeare's plots and characters involuntarily develop under his hand in conformity with the straightforward requirements of moral law. He upholds the broad canons of moral truth with consistency, even with severity. There is no mistaking in his works on which side lies the right. He never renders vice amiable. His want of delicacy, his challenges of modesty, need no palliation. It was characteristic of his age to speak more plainly of many topics about which polite lips are nowadays silent. But Shakespeare's coarsenesses do no injury to the healthy-minded. They do not encourage evil propensities. Wickedness is always wickedness in Shakespeare, and never deludes the spectator by masquerading as something else. His plays never present problems as to whether vice is not after all in certain conditions the sister of virtue. Shakespeare never shows vice in the twilight, nor leaves the spectator or reader in doubt as to what its features precisely are. Vice injures him who practises it in the Shakespearean world, and ultimately proves his ruin. One cannot play with vice with impunity. The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us. It is not because Shakespeare is a conscious moralist, that the wheel comes full circle in his dramatic world. It is because his sense of art is involuntarily coloured by a profound conviction of the ultimate justice which governs the operations of human nature and society.