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The Shaksperean Mob

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Extract

Among the scholars of Cambridge who essayed the presentation of Thomas Legge's Latin play of Richardus Tertius at St. John's in 1579, perhaps the most ambitious were those three ingenuous and versatile youths, Howland, Henlowe, Kendall, who enacted the “chorus tumultuantium civium.” Surely, “a little o'erparted”! Easier far with three rusty swords to fight over York and Lancaster's long jars than to portray through three, four, six, or even seven or eight persons the many-headed monster in its varying moods. To trace the evolution of mob-mind from the stage of orderly self-possession and personal consciousness through the psychic process of the withering of the individual and the accumulation of collective energy under the stress of exciting causes to its final state of a fiercely emotional and keenly suggestible crowd-self, lay of course far beyond the purpose and powers of Thomas Legge. Far, too, was this above the aim of such controversial playwrights of the Reformation as that Catholic author of Respublica who presented “the people” in the guise of a single smatterer of dialect. Yet this study of multiplied suggestion which has taxed the observation of ancient historian and modern psychologist has always and with reason made large appeal to that analyst of many men's motives, the dramatist. Humanity in the mass exerted its fascination sometimes over Shakspere's fellows and followers; but it cast a far more potent spell upon Shakspere himself—notably in the Jack Cade scenes (2 Henry VI) and in the two Roman plays of Julius Cæsar and Coriolanus.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1912

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