But Richard abandons himself to his de- | chester, in 1772, gave us a new Richard II.', "No matter where; of comfort no man speak." His grief has now evaporated in words :"This ague-fit of fear is over-blown; An easy task it is to win our own. not the additional scene of Northumberland's Say, Scroop, where lies our uncle with his mounted his difficulties but for an accident. Scroop's reply is decisive : It was his business to show what was essentially true (though one episode of the truth "Your uncle York hath join'd with Boling- might be wanting), that Bolingbroke was broke." Richard is positively relieved by knowing the climax of his misfortunes. The alternations of hope and fear were too much for his indecision. He is forced upon a course, and he is almost happy in his weakness :— "Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth Of that sweet way I was in to despair! What say you now? What comfort have we now? By heaven, I'll hate him everlastingly That bids me be of comfort any more." Shakspere has painted indecision of character in Hamlet-but what a difference is there between the indecision of Hamlet and of Richard! The depth of Hamlet's philosophy engulfs his powers of action; the reflective strength of his intellect destroys the energy of his will:-Richard is irresolute and inert, abandoning himself to every new impression, because his faculties, though beautiful in parts, have no principle of cohesion ;-judgment, the key-stone of the arch, is wanting. Bolingbroke is arrived before Flint Castle. Mr. Courtenay says, "By placing the negociation with Northumberland at Flint, Shakspere loses the opportunity of describing the disappointment of the king, when he found himself, on his progress to join Henry at Flint, a prisoner to Northumberland, who had concealed the force by which he was accompanied.' A Mr. Goodhall, of Man *Shakspeare's Historical Plays considered Historically. coming upon him with steps as certain as tenant of a naked sea-rock. What was still that of a rising tide towards the shivering more important, it was his aim to exhibit the overthrow of Richard, and the upraising of Bolingbroke, as the natural result of the collision of two such minds meeting in mortal conflict. The mighty physical force which Bolingbroke subdued to his purpose was called forth by his astute and foreseeing intellect every movement of this wary chief -perhaps even from the hour when he resolved to appeal Norfolk—was a consequence from a calculated cause. On the other hand, Richard threw away every instrument of defence; the "one day too late," with which Salisbury reproaches him-which delay was the fruit of his personal weakness and vacillation-shows that it was impossible to save him. Had he escaped from Conway, after being reduced to the extremities of poverty and suffering, in company with a wretched followers, he must have rushed, from his utter want of the ability to carry through a consistent plan, into the toils of Bolingbroke. Shakspere, as we must repeat, painted events whilst he painted characters. Look at Bolingbroke's bearing when York reproaches Northumberland for not saying 'King Richard ;"-look at his decision when he learns the king is at Flint;-look at his subtlety in the message to the king : 66 - few On both his knees doth kiss King Richard's hand." Compare the affected humility of his profes sions with the real, though subdued, haugh- | the details of the quarrel scene in Westtiness of his threats "If not, I'll use the advantage of my power." He marches "without the noise of threat'ning drum ;" but he marches as a conqueror upon an undefended citadel. On the one hand, we have power without menaces; on the other, menaces without power. How loftily Richard asserts to Northumberland the terrors which are in store-the "armies of pestilence" which are to defend his "precious crown!" But how submissively he replies to the message of Bolingbroke !— "Thus the king returns:His noble cousin is right welcome hither.Speak to his gentle hearing kind commends." Marvellously is the picture of the struggles of irresolution still coloured :— "Shall we call back Northumberland, and send Defiance to the traitor, and so die?" Beautiful is the transition to his habitual weakness-to his extreme sensibility to evils, and the shadows of evils-to the consolation which finds relief in the exaggeration of its own sufferings, and in the bewilderments of imagination which carry even the sense of suffering into the regions of fancy. We have already seen that this has been thought "deviating from the pathetic to the ridiculous." Be it so. We are content to accept this and similar passages in the character of Richard as exponents of that feeling which made him lie at the feet of Bolingbroke, fascinated as the bird at the eye of the serpent "For do we must what force will have us do." This is the destiny of tragedy;-but it is a destiny with foregoing causes-its seeds are sown in the varying constitution of the human mind and thus it may be said, even without a contradiction, that a Bolingbroke governs destiny, a Richard yields to it. We pass over the charming repose-scene of the garden-in which the poet, who in this drama has avoided all dialogues of manners, brings in "old Adam's likeness," to show us how the vicissitudes of state are felt and understood by the practical philosophy of the humblest of the people. We pass over, too, minster Hall, merely remarking that those who say, as Johnson has said, "This play is extracted from the 'Chronicle' of Holinshed, in which many passages may be found which Shakspere has, with very little alteration, transplanted into his scenes," would have done well to have printed the passages of the Chronicle' and the parallel scenes of 'Richard II.' This scene is one to which the remark refers. Will our readers excuse us giving them half-a-dozen lines as a specimen of this "very little alteration?"— HOLINSHED. "The Lord Fitzwater herewith rose up, and said to the king, that, where the Duke of Aumerle excuseth himself of the Duke of Glou cester's death, I say (quoth he) that he was the very cause of his death; and so he appealed him of treason, offering, by throwing down his hood as a gage, to prove it with his body." SHAKSPERE. "If that thy valour stand on sympathies, There is my gage, Aumerle, in gage to thine: By that fair sun that shows me where thou stand'st, I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak'st it, That thou wert cause of noble Gloster's death. If thou deny'st it, twenty times thou liest; And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart, Where it was forged, with my rapier's point.” We have long borne with these misrepresentations of what Shakspere took from the 'Chronicles,' and what Shakspere took from Plutarch. The sculptor who gives us the highest conception of an individual, idealized into something higher than the actual man (Roubiliac, for example, when he figured that sublime image of Newton, in which the upward eye, and the finger upon the prism, tell us of the great discoverer of the laws of gravity and of light)-the sculptor has to collect something from authentic records of the features and of the character of the subject he has to represent. The 'Chronicles' might, in the same way, give Shakspere the general idea of his historical Englishmen, as Plutarch of his Romans. But it was for the poet to mould and fashion these outlines into the vital and imperishable shapes in which we find them. This is creation-not alteration. Richard is again on the stage. Is there a jot in the deposition scene that is not perfectly true to his previous character? As to Bolingbroke's consistency, there cannot be a doubt, even with the most hasty reader. The king's dallying with the resignation of the crown-the prolonged talk, to parry, as it were, the inevitable act-the "ay, no! no, ay ;"—the natural indignation at Northumberland's unnecessary harshness;-the exquisite tenderness of self-shrinking abase ment, running off into poetry," too deep for tears" 66 'Oh, that I were a mockery king of snow, Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, To melt myself away in water drops; " and, lastly, the calling for the mirror, and the real explanation of all his apparent affectation of disquietude ;— "These external manners of laments Are merely shadows to the unseen grief That swells with silence in the tortured soul:" "In winter's tedious nights sit by the fire With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales Of woeful ages, long ago betid; And, ere thou bid good night, to quit their grief, Tell thou the lamentable fall of me, And send the hearers weeping to their beds." We are told, as we have already noticed, that this speech ends with "childish prattle." Remember, Richard II. is speaking.—Lastly, we come to the prison scene. The soliloquy is Richard all over. There is not a sentence in it that does not tell of a mind deeply reflective in its misfortunes, but wanting the guide to all sound reflection-the power of going out of himself, under the conduct of a loftier reason than could endure to dwell upon the merely personal. His self-consciousness (to use the word in a German sense) intensifies, but lowers, every thought. And then the beautiful little episode of “Roan Barbary," and Richard's all-absorbing application to himself of the story of the "poor groom of the stable." Froissart tells a tale, how Richard was "forsaken by his favourite who but Shakspere could have given us these greyhound, which fawns on the earl." The wonderful tints of one human mind-so varying and yet so harmonious-so forcible and yet so delicate-without being betrayed into something different from his own unity of conception? In the parting scene with the queen we have still the same unerring consistency. We are told that "the interview of separation between her and her wretched husband is remarkable for its poverty and tameness."* The poet who wrote the parting scene between Juliet and her Montague had, we presume, the command of his instruments; and though, taken separately from what is around them, there may be differences in the degree of beauty in these parting scenes, they are each dramatically beautiful, in the highest sense of the term. Shakspere never went from his proper path to produce a beauty that was out of place. And yet who can read these *Skottowe's Life of Shakspeare,' vol. i. p. 441. quaint historian, as well as the great dramatist who transfused the incident, knew the avenues to the human heart. Steevens thinks the story of Roan Barbary might have been of Shakspere's own invention, but in-forms us that "Froissart relates a yet more silly tale!" Even to the death, Richard is historically as well as poetically true. His sudden valour is shown as the consequence of passionate excitement. A prose manuscript in the library of the King of France, exhibits a somewhat similar scene, when Lancaster, York, Aumerle, and others, went to him in the Tower, to confer upon his resignation :- "The king, in great wrath, walked about the room; and at length broke out into passionate exclamations and appeals to heaven; called them false traitors, and offered to fight any four of them." The Chronicles which Shakspere might consult were somewhat meagre, and might gain much by the addition of the records of this eventful reign which modern researches have | palus becomes a hero when the king is in discovered. If we compare every account, danger;-Richard, when the sceptre is struck we must say that the Richard II. of Shak-out of his hands, forgets that his ancestors spere is rigidly the true Richard. The poet won the sceptre by the sword. The one is is the truest historian in all that belongs to the sensualist of misdirected native energy, the higher attributes of history. who casts off his sensuality when the passion, for enjoyment is swallowed up in the higher excitement of rash and sudden daring;—the other is the sensualist of artificial power, whose luxury consists in pomp without enjoyment, and who loses the sense of gratification when the factitious supports of his pride are cut away from him. Richard, who should have been a troubadour, has become a weak and irresolute voluptuary through the corruptions of a throne ;-Sardanapalus, who might have been a conqueror, retains a natural heroism that a throne cannot wholly corrupt. But here we stop. 'Sardanapalus' is a beautiful poem, but the characters, and especially the chief character, come before us as something shadowy, and not of earth. Richard II.' possesses all the higher attributes of poetry,—but the characters, and especially the leading character, are of flesh and blood like ourselves. But with this surpassing dramatic truth in the Richard II.,' perhaps, after all, the most wonderful thing in the whole playthat which makes it so exclusively and entirely Shaksperean—is the evolvement of the truth under the poetical form. The character of Richard, especially, is entirely subordinated to the poetical conception of it-to something higher than the historical propriety, yet including all that historical propriety, and calling it forth under the most striking aspects. All the vacillations and weaknesses of the king, in the hands of an artist like Shakspere, are reproduced with the most natural and vivid colours, so as to display their own characteristic effects, in combination with the principle of poetical beauty, which carries them into a higher region than the perfect command over the elements of strong individualization could alone produce. For example, when Richard says— "Oh, that I were a mockery king of snow, And why is it, when we have looked beneath the surface at this matchless poetical delineation of Richard, and find the absolute king capricious, rapacious, cunning,-and the fallen king irresolute, effeminate, intellectually prostrate,-why is it, when we see that our Shakespere herein never intended to present to us the image of "a good man struggling with adversity," and conceived a being the farthest removed from the ideal that another mighty poet proposed to himself as an example of heroism when he described his own fortitude— "I argue not Against heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot why is it that Richard II. still commands His very infirmities make him creep into our affections; for they are so nearly allied to the beautiful parts of his character, that, if the little leaven had been absent, he might have been a ruler to kneel before, and a man M to love. We see, then, how thin is the par- he might have made the usurper one who tition between the highest and the lowliest parts of our nature-and we love Richard even for his faults, for they are those of our common humanity. Inferior poets might have given us Bolingbroke the lordly tyrant, and Richard the fallen hero. We might have had the struggle for the kingdom painted with all the glowing colours with which, according to the authorities which once governed opinion, a poet was bound to represent the crimes of an usurper and the virtues of a legitimate king; or, if the poet had despised the usual current of authority, had cast aside all selfish and unpatriotic principles, and the legitimate king an unmitigated oppressor, whose fall would have been hailed as the triumph of injured humanity. Impartial Shakspere! How many of the deepest lessons of toleration and justice have we not learned from thy wisdom, in combination with thy power! If the power of thy poetry could have been separated from the truth of thy philosophy, how much would the world have still wanted to help it forward in the course of gentleness and peace! CHAPTER II. KING HENRY IV. the gravity of his station by an irrepressible love of fun, kept alive by the wit of his principal associate, but given up only to drinking and debauchery, to throwing of pots, and brawls in the streets,-when we see not a single gleam of that “sun,” SHAKSPERE found the stage in possession throats,-when we see him, not seduced from of a rude drama, 'The Famous Victories of Henry V.,' upon the foundation of which he constructed not only his two Parts of 'Henry IV.,' but his 'Henry V.'* That old play was acted prior to 1588; Tarleton, a celebrated comic actor, who played the clown in it, having died in that year. It is, in many respects, satisfactory that this very extraordinary performance has been preserved. None of the old dramas exhibit in a more striking light the marvellous reformation which Shakspere, more than all his contemporaries, produced in the dramatic amusements of the age of Elizabeth. It is to this rude drama (of which we have previously given a slight analysis) that the student of Shakspere must refer, to learn what the popular notion of the conqueror of Agincourt was at the period when Shakspere began to write, and, perhaps, indeed, up to the time when he gave us his own idea of Henry of Monmouth. When we have seen that, for some ten years at least, the Henry of the stage was an ill-bred unredeemed blackguard, without a single sparkle of a "better hope," surrounded by companions of the very lowest habits, thieves and cut*See Book I. chap. v. page 19. 66 "Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world;"and when we know that nearly all the historians up to the time of Shakspere took pretty much the same view of Henry's character, we may, perhaps, be astonished to be told that Shakspere's fascinating representation of Henry of Monmouth, as an historical portrait, is not only unlike the original, but misleading and unjust in essential points of character."+ Misleading and unjust! We admire, and even honour, Mr. Tyler's enthusiasm in the vindication of his favourite hero from every charge of early impurity. In the nature of things it was impossible that Henry of Monmouth,—in many particulars so far above his age, in literature, in accomplishments, in real magnanimity of character,—should have been the Henry of Monmouth,' by J. Endell Tyler, B.D., vol. i. p. 356. |