Thy best of rest is sleep,

And that thou oft provok'st, yet grossly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more-

Act iii. Sc. I.

A sentiment which calls forth the 'indignation' of Johnson, and which our poet's most indulgent critics have been somewhat puzzled to account for. But what if he intended to represent the monk as in reality an unbeliever? There can be no doubt that Popery, from the excess and exorbitancy of its demands upon the faith of its adherents, has a tendency to produce reaction which has often led to open, and still more to secret infidelity,† especially in the monastic orders, ‡ and in the priesthood. The same sentiment occurs to Hamlet in his famous soliloquy :

No more,

To die to sleep

But then he presently corrects the thought :

To die to sleep

To sleep! perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,§

Must give us pause.||

Act iii. Sc. I.

Returning to the Church-membership of our poet,

if we are persuaded he was not a Romanist, we are

equally certain he was no Puritan. Young Charbon the Puritan, and old Poysam the Papist,' are named together in a passage of All's well that ends well, Act i. Sc. 3, not illnaturedly, but as if the writer had no more sympathy with the one than with the other. Probably, if the truth were known, of the two he had less liking for the newfangled species of religionism which had sprung up within his own time. We must not lay any great stress upon what passes in conversation between two such worthies as Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek and Sir Toby Belch; yet the following dialogue indicates, no doubt, a certain amount of popular feeling; and I think we may gather from it that our poet desired to side with those who could feel respect for piety and earnestness in any shape, rather than with the ignorant multitude who, without knowing why, would be prepared to persecute * it :

Sir Toby. Possess † us, possess us; tell us something of him.
Maria. Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of Puritan.
Sir Andr. O, if I thought that, I'd beat him like a dog.

Sir Toby. What, for being a Puritan? thy exquisite reason, dear knight.

Sir Andr. I have no exquisite reason for't, but I have reason good enough. Twelfth Night, Act ii. Sc. 3. At the same time he does not attempt to withhold from view, what he must have discovered from his own experience, that religious zeal, such as was manifested by the Puritans, is often hollow, and often both mistaken in its principles and mischievous in its results. We may not be able to determine the precise drift, or even the true reading -for Tyrwhitt and Malone concur in questioning the present text of a speech of the Clown in All's well that ends well; but we cannot doubt, I think, that it implies distrust, to some extent at least, of the Puritanical character :

Though honesty be no Puritan, yet it will do no hurt; it will wear the surplice of humility over the black gown of a big heart. Act i. Sc. 3.

That is, as I suppose, an honest man will not be troubled with unnecessary scruples, especially in a case where his obedience is required to a lawful command, however the command may be distasteful to himself. He will put on the surplice-to which the Puritans objected. But still when he has done so, though so far not a Puritan, this is no security that he may not be all the while, 'intus et in cute,' as bad as if he were-having as proud a heart as if he wore a black gown. Shakespeare generally uses the word 'big,' where moral qualities are concerned, in a bad sense. This is in character with the petulance of the Clown; but here again I could suspect that our poet wished to intimate that though he had no liking for the Puritans, yet he would not suffer others who might be as bad or worse to run them down. In this, as in other countless instances,

he shows himself the thorough Englishman; who, though he has his likes and dislikes, and will not conceal them, yet, above them all, loves to see fair play. We have another Clown in Winter's Tale, who cannot quite let the Puritans alone, and yet alludes to them in a good-humoured way. Mr. Bowdler, however, in his love of fair play, having altered 'Popish tricks, thought it necessary to omit the words to which I allude. They occur in Act iv. Sc. 2, where the Clown, son of the old shepherd, reputed father of Perdita, gives account of the preparations made by his supposed sister for the sheep-shearing feast :

but one

She hath made* me four-and-twenty nosegays for the shearers: three-man † song-men all, and very good ones Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes.

Act iv. Sc. 2.

The utmost offence which appears to be committed in these words is, that the Clown playfully satirizes the objectional practice which the Puritans introduced, which is still, unhappily, kept up in some places, of singing sacred songs to jiggish tunes.‡ There are other passages of a more serious caste in which Shakspeare, without mentioning the Puritans, may be thought to have them in his view. Such is the case, for instance, as Warburton has remarked, in Timon of Athens, where Timon's servant, speaking of Sempronius, one of his master's false friends, observes :

How fairly this lord strives to appear foul! takes virtuous copies to be wicked like those that under hot ardent zeal would set whole realms on fire! Act iii. Sc. 3.

A remarkable prediction of what actually came to pass less than thirty years after our poet's death! And it is not improbable that they are alluded to in what follows from the mouth of Polonius :

We are oft to blame in this,

'Tis too much proved, that with devotion's visage
And pious action, we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.

Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 1.

We may now inquire what positive evidence is to be produced respecting Shakspeare's conformity as a member of the Church of England. The familiar use of the response Amen (the τὸ ̓Αμὴν of S. Paul, Cor. xiv. 16), which occurs in our author's plays more than sixty times, may alone be regarded as a sufficient indication to that effect. There is something singularly solemn and impressive in his employment of it towards the close of King Henry V.:

That English may as French, French Englishmen,
Receive* each other God speak to this AMEN.

And again, at the end of King Richard III. :—
That peace may long live here-God say AMEN.