Page:A study of Shakespeare (IA cu31924013158393).pdf/113

 seasonable attraction served to float the now forgotten play of Samuel Rowley through several editions. The central figure of the huge hot-headed king, with his gusts of stormy good humour and peals of burly oaths which might have suited "Garagantua's mouth" and satisfied the requirements of Hotspur, appeals in a ruder fashion to the survival of the same sympathies on which Shakespeare with a finer instinct as evidently relied; the popular estimate of the bluff and brawny tyrant "who broke the bonds of Rome" was not yet that of later historians, though doubtless neither was it that of the writer or writers who would champion him to the utterance. Perhaps the opposite verdicts given by the instinct of the people on "bluff King Hal" and "Bloody Mary" may be understood by reference to a famous verse of Juvenal. The wretched queen was sparing of noble blood and lavish of poor men's lives—cerdonibus timenda; and the curses under which her memory was buried were spared by the people to her father, Lamiarum caede madenti. In any case, the humblest not less than the highest of the poets who wrote under the reign of his daughter found it safe to present him in a popular light before an audience of whose general prepossession in his favour William