the new political faith—Burghley, Ralegh, and Walsingham—mean nothing.
Shakespeare’s patriotism also, glowing though it is, is traditional and essentially pre-Elizabethan. He has nothing of the new imperialism so dominant in Ralegh and Spenser, and very little indeed of the sense of the gorgeous Indies and the new world beyond the seas that Marlowe shows everywhere. He was distinctly a ‘little Englander.’ He glories in the thought of the aloofness and self-sufficiency of his island,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-Paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself.”[1]
His vision stops at the ideal of a hermit kingdom, free from foreign entanglements, safe in the unity of its citizens and in a proudly defensive attitude toward the world:
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.
Now these her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them.’[2]
Wars abroad are for him but sallies from the fortress, heroic, yet of dubious advisability. Henry the Fifth has prudential and legalistic aims in invading France, but no imperial aims. He embarks upon his expedition because his crafty father has advised him to end civil discord in England by busying ‘giddy minds with
- ↑ Richard II, II. i. 40 ff.
- ↑ King John, V. vii. 112 ff.
