Preciation of the fact that
things in his time were by no means as they ought to be, that he was fallen on evil days and evil tongues--an ap preciation which doubtless most great souls, short of the few greatest, have had
at most periods of the world's history--and you have the key to much that no ordinary theory of party-spirit will explain. Men of this temper
care little for the party cries of everyday politics; and
yet they cannot quite sit outside the world of affairs and watch the players, as we may imagine Shakespeare to have done, in calm consciousness that the shaping
of our rough-hewn ends was in other hands than ours. No great historian of Shakespeare's time devoted a whole

chapter to his