There is another kind of criticism to which the plays have been subjected that imputes to them all the after-thoughts of later times. Ulrici derives from them an evangelical scheme of Christian ethics; a Roman Catholic claims the poet as an ardent adherent of the Pope; another commentator attributes to Shakspeare a deliberate purpose to write up the Protestant Reformation and write down the Pope, and finds a trace of Shakspeare's contempt for Romanism in "I Henry IV.," iv. I, where the troops of the Prince of Wales are described as--
"Glittering in golden coats, like images."
Sievers[11] thinks that the main thread of all Shakspeare's poetry was the "reproduction out of the nature of man of the Protestant scheme of Christianity"! It is shown particularly in the "Merchant of Venice" and "Hamlet." Tschischwitz's[12] book is as deterrent as his name. It is an attempt to develop Shakspeare's views upon the relation between ruler and people,--to show that he considered the state and kingdom to rest upon reciprocity of duties and upon the principle of piety. This is only another specimen of the terrific after-thoughts which the Germans force back upon Shakspeare. Gervinus calls him the perfect representative of modern Protestantism; Vischer concluded that he was a Pantheist; Bernays will not allow to him any religion at all; while Dr. Reichensperger, of the German Parliament, gives reasons in his book[13] for believing that he was an Ultramontanist! And Thomas Tyler, of the University of London, considers that Hamlet was a forerunner of Schopenhauer, and thoroughly pessimistic, because the calamity in the play does not respect personal character, and the future retributions and compensations are not clearly made out![14]
It would be a dreary business to construct a catalogue of all these modern slights to the memory of Shakspeare. They turn his plays into a system of theology. Some critics declare that his object was to make celibacy ridiculous and marriage honorable; some labor to prove that the plays are treatises upon the Christian doctrines of justification by faith and the salvation of man; some point to his Baconian method of induction; and others reject the whole over-done business of interpretation, because they simply claim for Bacon himself, the authorship of all the plays: as if Shakspeare were turned inside out, wrung dry, macerated and dispersed, by two centuries of vigorous comment, and it became necessary to begin operations upon a fresh person. These operations have enriched literature with its most grandiose specimens of futility.