Medicine and letters | 13 May 2006

‘That Shakespeare,’ a German friend of mine once said to me, ‘knew a thing or two.’

‘That Shakespeare,’ a German friend of mine once said to me, ‘knew a thing or two.’

You can say that again. Sometimes, indeed, I think he knew everything, at least everything about human nature. When a religious fanatic tells me that this or that holy scripture is all I need as a guide to life, I reply with a single exclamatory word, ‘Shakespeare!’ He even knew about — or perhaps I should say, anticipated — insurance and social security fraud. At any rate, they would not have surprised him, or an attentive reader of him.

I suppose that the three parts of Henry VI are by general consent not among his greatest works (if, indeed, they are his, which some deny, and not only Baconians and Oxfordians). Yet Part 2 has illumination in it for those who have what Pasteur called, with regard to the favours conferred by chance, the prepared mind.

For example, anyone who has frequented criminals as much as I have will recognise the truth of the Duke of York’s bitter words:

Pirates may make cheap pennyworths of their pillage,
And purchase friends, and give to courtezans,
Still revelling like lords till all be gone …

As for the man who is robbed, who according to the modern police is the true author of his own downfall, in that he failed to take enough precautions to secure his property, he merits not our tears:

…the silly owner of the goods
Weeps over them, and wrings his hapless hands,
And shakes his head, and trembling stands aloof,
While all is shared and all is borne away…
Serves him jolly well right, then.

When the court has removed to St Albans, an impostor called Saunder Simpcox is brought before it.