It would be vain to seek among the songs of Shakespeare for the song of reconciliation, of quarrels, composed of inner peace, of tranquillity achieved, but the song of justice echoes everywhere in his works. He knows neither perfect saints, nor perfect sinners, for he feels the struggle at the heart of reality as necessity, not as accident, artifice, or caprice. Even the good, the brave and the pure have evil, impurity and weakness in them: "fragility" is the word he utters most often, not only with regard to women; and on the other hand, even the wicked, the guilty, the criminal, have glimpses of goodness, aspirations after redemption, and when everything else is wanting, they have energy of will and thus possess a sort of spiritual greatness. One hears that song as a refrain in several of the tragedies, uttered by foes over the foes whom they have conquered. Anthony pronounces this elegy over the fallen Brutus:
"This was the noblest Roman of them all: All the conspirators, save only he, Did that they did in envy of great Caesar; He only in a general honest thought And common good to all, made one of them. His life was gentle and the elements So mix'd in him that nature might stand up And say to all the world 'This was a man.'"
Octavian, when he hears of the death of Anthony, exclaims:
"O Anthony! ... We could not stall together; but yet let me lament, With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts, That thou, my brother, my competitor In top of all design, my mate in empire, Friend and companion in the front of war, Unreconciliable should divide Where mine his thoughts did kindle, that our stars Unreconciliable should divide Our equalness to this."
It is above all in _Henry VIII_ that this feeling for justice widens into a feeling towards oneself and others. We find a particularly good instance of it in the dialogues between Queen Catherine and her great enemy Wolsey. When the queen has mentioned all the grave misdeeds of the dead man in her severe speech, Griffith craves permission to record in his turn all the good there was in him; and with so persuasive an eloquence does he record this good, that the queen, when she has heard him, concludes with a sad smile:
"After my death I wish no other herald, No other speaker of my living actions, But such an honest chronicler as Griffith. Whom I most hated living thou hast made me, With thy religious truth and modesty, Now in his ashes honour: peace be with him!"