Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie Which we ascribe to Heaven: the fated sky Gives us full scope.
Men at some time are masters of their fate.
Omission to do what is necessary Seals a commission to a blank of danger.
And we have no right to expect that Providence will cancel it. If deeds do not go with prayer, prayer is not likely to be of much avail. So the Bishop of Carlisle in _Richard II._:--
The means that Heaven yields must be embrac’d And not neglected; else if Heaven would And we will not, Heav’n’s offer we refuse:--
while the words which he puts into the mouth of Leonine in _Pericles_ are, we feel, significant:--
Pray: but be not tedious, For the Gods are quick of ear, and I am sworn To do my work with haste.
He has no sympathy with pious recluses. He has depicted no saint or religious enthusiast, or written a line to indicate that he had any respect for their ideals. With him,--
Spirits are not finely touched But to fine issues.
They say best men are moulded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad.
Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds
are typical axioms in his philosophy of life. And the nearest approaches he has given us to the saintly type of character are the sentimental pietists, Henry VI. and Richard II., both of whom are failures, and border closely on moral imbecility. On the spiritual and moral efficacy of faith, he has nowhere laid stress. In his innumerable reflections on life and man, in his maxims and precepts, there is, as a rule, scarcely any flavour of Christian theology. They are just such as might be expected from a pure rationalist. Such is the philosophy of Hamlet, of Jacques, of the Duke in _Measure for Measure_, and of Prospero. Even Friar Laurence, though an ecclesiastic, reasons and advises just as a Stoic philosopher might have done. The friars in _Much Ado about Nothing_, and in _Measure for Measure_, the Bishop of Carlisle in _Richard II._, and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in _Henry IV._ and _Henry V._, and Cardinal Beaufort in _Henry VI._, act and speak like mere men of the world. A bulky volume would scarcely sum up the ethical and political reflections scattered up and down his plays; a few pages would comprise all that could be put down as exclusively theological. This complete subordination of the theological element to the ethical is the more conspicuous when we compare his dramas with the Homeric Epics, and with the tragedies of Æschylus and Sophocles.