Part 1 — CHAPTER V. (continued 2)

It is the beginning of these yet beginning Modern Ages, the ages of a practical learning, and scientific relief to the human estate, which this Pastime marks with its blazoned, illuminated initial. It is the opening of the era in which a common human sense is developed, and directed to the common-weal, which this Pastime celebrates; the opening of the ages in which, ere all is done, the politicians who expect mankind to entrust to them their destinies, will have to find something better than 'glass eyes' to guide them with; in which it will be no longer competent for those to whom mankind entrusts its dearest interests to go on in their old stupid, conceited, heady courses, their old, blind, ignorant courses,—stumbling, and staggering, and groping about, and smelling their way with their own narrow and selfish instincts, when it is the common-weal they have taken on their shoulders;—running foul of the nature of things—quarrelling with eternal necessities, and crying out, when the wreck is made, 'Alack! why does it so?'

This Play, and all these plays, were meant to be pastime for ages in which state reasons must needs be something else than 'the pleasure' of certain individuals, 'whose disposition, all the world well knows, will not be rubbed or stopped;' or 'the quality,' 'fiery' or otherwise, of this or that person, no matter 'how unremoveable and fixed' he may be 'in his own course.'

It was to the 'far off times;' and not to the 'near,' it was to the advanced ages of the Advancement of Learning, that this Play was dedicated by its Author. For it was the spirit of the modern ages that inspired it. It was the new Prometheus who planned it; the more aspiring Titan, who would bring down in his New Organum a new and more radiant gift; it was the Benefactor and Foreseer, who would advance the rude kind to new and more enviable approximations to the celestial summits. He knew there would come a time, in the inevitable advancements of that new era of scientific 'prudence' and forethought which it was given to him to initiate, when all this sober historic exhibition, with its fearful historic earnest, would read, indeed, like some old fable of the rude barbaric past—some Player's play, bent on a feast of horrors—some Poet's impossibility. And that—was the Play,—that was the Plot. He knew that there would come a time when all this tragic mirth—sporting with the edged tools of tyranny—playing around the edge of the great axe itself—would be indeed safe play; when his Fool could open his budget, and unroll his bitter jests—crushed together and infolded within themselves so long—and have a world to smile with him, and not the few who could unfold them only. And that—that was 'the humour of it.'

Yes, with all their philosophy, these plays are Plays and Poems still. There's no spoiling the 'tragical mirth' in them. But we are told, on the most excellent contemporaneous authority—on the authority of one who was in the inmost heart of all this Poet's secrets—that 'as we often judge of the greater by the less, so the very pastimes of great men give an honourable idea to the clear-sighted of THE SOURCE FROM WHICH THEY SPRING.'