This vigorous opposition to the stage had its advantage. It kept managers alive to their responsibilities, and obliged them to maintain a high standard of work. The poets were called upon to justify the existence of playhouses, and to defend their own reputations, and in this they were triumphant. They showed that playwrights had followed the advice of Cicero, and could create a drama which was "the schoolmistress of life, the looking-glass of manners, and the image of truth." They contended that in the theatre men were shown, as in a mirror, "their faults though ne'er so small." Of Shakespeare's comedies it was said, they are "so framed to the life, that they serve for the most common commentaries of all the actions of our lives, and all such dull and heavy-witted worldings, as were never capable of the wit of a comedy, coming by report of them to his representations have found that wit there that they never found in themselves, and have parted better-witted than they came." Thomas Heywood contended that plays had made "the ignorant more apprehensive, taught the unlearned the knowledge of many famous histories, instructed such as cannot read in the discovery of all our English Chronicles, and what man have you now of that weak capacity that cannot discourse of any notable thing recorded, even from William the Conqueror; nay, from the landing of Brute until this day." Perhaps it was well for the public of Shakespeare's day that it attached an educational value to the theatre, and consciously adopted an attitude of diffidence towards the labours of the dramatist. He was left free to teach as well as to amuse. If the amusement consisted in putting into the mouths of the clowns "unsavoury morsels of unseemly sentences," the teaching consisted in making folly appear ridiculous and vice odious. So long as the dramatists were not hampered by demands from the audience to have its social, political, or aesthetic fancies humoured, and from the actor to have his egotism flattered, the drama flourished as an art as well as a business. But when managers began to consider the whims of their patrons, when the King's Players petitioned the People's Parliament for leave to continue their vocation because "they will not entertain any comedian that shall speak his part in a tone as if he did it in derision of some of the pious," then the theatre ceased to be a looking-glass that could image life truthfully. Indeed, it cannot be doubted that if ever the drama shall again enlist the best talent of the time in its service it will be when the nation becomes conscious of the power of the stage, which is capable, as Bacon says, "of no small influence, both of discipline and corruption." II THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE SOME MISTAKES OF THE EDITORS. SOME MISTAKES OF THE ACTORS. THE CHARACTER OF LADY MACBETH. SHAKESPEARE'S JEW AND MARLOWE'S CHRISTIANS. THE AUTHORS OF "KING HENRY THE EIGHTH." "TROILUS AND CRESSIDA." II THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE[4]