Ant. Long live Gonzalo!
Gon. And do you mark me, sir?
King. Pr'ythee, no more; thou dost talk nothing to me.
Gon. I do well believe your Highness; and did it to
minister occasion to these gentlemen, who are of such
sensible and nimble lungs that they always use to laugh
at nothing.
Ant. 'Twas you we laughed at.
Gon. Who, in this kind of merry fooling, am nothing
to you; so you may continue and laugh at nothing still."
(Tempest, Act 2, Sc. 1.)
That all things are not for the best in the best of all possible worlds would seem to result from the wise remarks made by the fishermen who enliven the scene in "Pericles, Prince of Tyre." They compare landlords to whales who swallow up everything, and suggest that the land be purged of "these drones that rob the bee of her honey"; and Pericles, so far from being shocked at such revolutionary and vulgar sentiments, is impressed by their weight, and speaks kindly of the humble philosophers, who in their turn are hospitable to the shipwrecked prince—all of which un-Shakespearian matter adds doubt to the authenticity of this drama (Act 2, Sc. 1).
However keen the insight of Shakespeare may have been into the hearts of his high-born characters, he had no conception of the unity of the human race. For him the prince and the peasant were not of the same blood.
"For princes are
A model, which heaven makes like to itself,"
says King Simonides in "Pericles," and here at least we seem to see the hand of Shakespeare (Act 2, Sc. 2). The two princes, Guiderius and Arviragus, brought up secretly in a cave, show their royal origin (Cymbeline, Act 3, Sc. 3), and the servants who see Coriolanus in disguise are struck by his noble figure (Coriolanus, Act 4, Sc. 5). Bastards are villains as a matter of course, witness Edmund in "Lear" and John in "Much Ado about Nothing," and no degree of contempt is too high for a