Angelo, the would-be Puritan ruler, was a "false seemer,"
Malvolio was a "chough." The peculiar virtues of the English middle
class, its courage and sheepishness; its good conduct and respect for
duties; its religious sense and cocksure narrow-mindedness, held no
attraction for Shakespeare, and, armoured in snobbishness, he utterly
missed what a knowledge of the middle classes might have given him.
Let us take one instance of his loss. Though he lived in an age of
fanaticism, he never drew a fanatic or reformer, never conceived a man
as swimming against the stream of his time. He had but a vague
conception of the few spirits in each age who lead humanity to new and
higher ideals; he could not understand a Christ or a Mahomet, and it
seems as if he took but small interest in Jeanne d'Arc, the noblest
being that came within the ken of his art. For even if we admit that he
did not write the first part of "Henry VI.," it is certain that it
passed through his hands, and that in his youth, at any rate, he saw
nothing to correct in that vile and stupid libel on the greatest of
women.
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