my dangerous AFFAIRS"-So in the folio; the quartos, attempts,-which last, as it might here imply not defensive war, but hostile aggression, I take to have been changed by the author. "Herself, the land, and many a Christian soul, The passage runs thus in the quartos: Without her, follows to this land and me, "be not PEEVISH"-" Peevish" is silly. "Some light-foot friend post to the duke of Norfolk: Ratcliff, thyself,-or Catesby; where is he?" 'Richard's precipitation and confusion are in this scene very happily represented, by inconsistent orders and sudden variation of opinion."-JOHNSON. My mind is chang'd"-The quartos read, characteristically, "My mind is chang'd, sir; my mind is chang'd:" and a little after they repeat the words, "Well, sir, as you guess, as you guess." In both instances, the author's first intention may have been to express the hurry and excitement of rapid action; which, in revision, may well have seemed to him inconsistent with the cool self-possession and lofty bearing of Richard. -more COMPETITORS"-i. e. Associates, confederates; as in the Two GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, (act ii. scene 6.) "There is my purse"-According to the quartos, the King says, "O! I cry you mercy, I did mistake," and does not recompense the Messenger himself; his words are, "Ratcliff, reward him for the blow I gave him." In the Messenger's speech, just before, the older editions begin with, "Your grace mistakes; the news I bring is good." This line is too familiar and dilatory, and was, I suppose, intentionally omitted on that account. The other change may have been suggested by the better stage-effect. SCENE V. "the most DEADLY boar"-"This most bloody boar" is the reading of the quartos; the folio, "the most deadly." "Well, hie thee to thy lord; I kiss his hand: "This is the literal reading of the folio, and it appears unexceptionable. The quartos read— Return unto my lord, commend me to him. One reading or the other surely ought to be held tothe uncorrected or the corrected copy. But we have a jumble of both in the modern editions-a reading which is different from that of the Poet, in any stage of his labour."-KNIGHT. ACT V.-SCENE I. the DETERMIN'D RESPITE of my wrongs"-i. e. The fixed termination of the period to which the punishment of my wrong-doing has been respited. SCENE III. -our battalia trebles that account"-Richmond's forces are said to have been only five thousand; and Richard's army consisted of about twelve thousand. But Lord Stanley lay at a small distance with three thousand men, and Richard reckoned on them as his friends, though the event proved otherwise "Give me some ink and paper in my tent." The quarto editions place this line, and three others, in Richmond's last speech, before he and his officers withdraw into the tent. The later editors adhere to the arrangement of the folio; but Pope thought it more natural that these directions should come later. “LIMIT each leader”—i. e. Assign each leader to his separate duty. "keeps his REGIMENT"-i. e. Remains with the troops under his command-"regiment" being of old used in the broad sense of command, and not, even in military use, restricted to a limited subdivision of troops. Stanley's "regiment," spoken of soon after, was a force of above three thousand men, which, by going over, decided the battle. was. "It's supper time, my lord; it's NINE o'clock." Thus in the folio. The earlier editions all have, "It's six o'clock, full supper time." All the modern editions give it, "It's supper time, my lord; it's six o'clock." This is on the authority of Stevens, who remarks that "a supper, at as late an hour as nine o'clock, in 1485, would have been a prodigy." We know very well what the supper hour of the higher classes at that period Harrison tells us, (Preface to Hollingshed,) “the nobilitie, gentrie, and students ordinarily go to dinner at eleven before noon, and to supper at five, or between five and six, at afternoone." From this reason, I do not doubt that the Poet wrote originally "six o'clock." But, on revision, he saw that that hour would not agree with the context. The Earls of Pembroke and Surrey are said to have before gone through the army at " cockshut time," or twilight, which in August, in that part of England, (the battle of Bosworth Field was on August 22, 1485,) when the sunset is after seven, would be much later than the time assigned for this scene. sides, in the preceding scene, "the weary sun" had already "made a golden set;" and this scene, therefore, is long after six. It seems then that the Poet, perceiv ing that the whole conduct of this scene required a later hour, and wishing to preserve the incident of Richard's refusing to sup, altered the time to what-though not the common supper-hour of domestic life-might well be that of an army, which had just encamped, after a march. The insertion of six confuses the time of all this act. Be "Ratcliff!"-In the earlier editions Richard calls Catesby. According to the folio Richard calls Ratcliff twice; here, and at the end of his speech,-an alteration evidently of the author's, to increase the dramatic effect. 66 Give me a WATCH"-The verb "give," and the subsequent expression "bid my guard watch," show that Richard is not asking for a sentinel, as some have supposed. The "watch" is the watch-light. The nightcandle was divided by marks, to indicate how long it had burned; each part being a regular time in consuming. This, as it burned away, supplied the place of the modern watch. A guard would be placed at the royal tent, as a thing of course. Collier says. Modern edi tors have addressed 'Give me a watch' to Catesby, but there is no such stage-direction in any of the old copies." "Look that my STAVES be sound"—i. e. The "staves," or poles, of the lances. It was the custom to carry more than one into the field. – about COCK-SHUT time”—In Ben Jonson's "Satyr,” Kiss him in the cock-shut light. we have Whalley explains this expression as equivalent with twilight, and says it is derived from the name of a net for woodcock, a cockshut, which is used in the twilight. Gifford adopts the explanation, and adds, “the commentators on Shakespeare have trifled egregiously over this simple expression." Whatever be the true origin of the phrase, it is given as synonymous with twilight in Minshew's French and English Dictionary, (1617,) and As to its derivation, similar contemporary authorities. "-mortal-staring war"-i. e. War that looks death; stares fatality on its victims. "PEISE me down"-i. e. Weigh me down-a word, though then antiquated, still used by the poets. "The Ghost of Prince Edward, Son to Henry"—The hint for this scene is furnished by Hall or Hollingshed, who copy from Polydore Virgil:- It seemed to him. being asleepe, that he saw diverse ymages like terrible devilles, which pulled and haled him, not sufferynge him to take any quiet or reste. The which strange vision not so sodaynely strake his heart with a sodayne feare, but it stuffed his head with many busy and dreadful imaginations. And least that it might be suspected that he was abashed for fear of his enemies, and for that cause looked so piteously, he recited and declared to his familiar friends of the morning his wonderfull vysion and feareful dreame." The Legend of King Richard III. in the "Mirror for Magistrates," and Drayton, in the twenty-second Song of his "Polyolbion," have passages founded upon Shakespeare's description. 64 -ENTERS between the two Tents"-In the old copies, quarto and folio, the ghosts are said to "enter;" though Collier, the best authority as to the old English stage, informs us that at that date there were trap-doors in the stage, by which spirits and fiends sometimes ascended. All the modern editors, without authority, make the ghosts severally rise, according to the custom of the stage, which I believe the reform of Macready has here altered to the old mode. "FULSOME wine"-The epithet seems used in the sense of thick, or unctuous, as referring to the luscious sweet wine, Malmsey, in which tradition reported Clarence to have been immersed. "Think on lord Hastings. Despair, and die." Collier alone, of the modern editors, gives this line rightly. The rest have thrust and into the line, without the slightest authority; as if to amend the verse, when "Think on lord Hastings; and despair, and die," is infinitely less forcible than the old text, which corresponds with the conclusions of previous speeches. "Let us be LEAD within thy bosom"-The folio and later quartos read, "Let us be laid," etc.: but the context shows that lead was the original word, subsequently misprinted. "I died for hope"-Buckingham's hope of aiding Richmond induced him to take up arms; he lost his life in consequence, and therefore may be said to have died for hope-hope being the cause which led to that event. "Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I." "There is in this, as in many of the Poet's speeches of passion, something very trifling, and something very striking. Richard's debate, whether he should quarrel with himself, is too long continued; but the subsequent exaggeration of his crimes is truly tragical."-JOHNSON. "No doubt, my lord"-This answer by Ratcliff, and the preceding speech by Richard, are wanting in the folio. All the editors restore them from the prior old editions, but it may be doubted whether the author did not designedly omit them;-the dialogue proceeding as well without them, perhaps with more effect. "God, and Saint George!"-"Saint George!" was the cry of the English soldiers when they charged. The author of the Arte of Warre," printed in Elizabeth's reign, formally enjoins its use:-"Item, that all soldiers entering into battle assault, skirmish, or other faction of arms, shall have for their common cry and word, Saint George, forward!' or 'Upon them, Saint George!' whereby the soldier is much comforted, and the enemy dismayed, by calling to mind the ancient valour of England, which with that name has so often been victorious." 64 "He should have BRAV'D the east"-Stevens explains 'brave" here "to make splendid, or adorn;" as was certainly a common use of the word, as bravery was for decoration, splendid attire. Singer thus offers another sense:-"The common signification of the old verb to brave, was not what Stevens states it to be-'to challenge, or set at defiance;'-but to look aloft, and go gaily, desiring to have the preeminence.' This is old Baret's definition, which explains the text better than Mr. Stevens has done." I do not, however, see how "going gaily," or "looking aloft," can be the sense here, as the words stand. It would then be, "in the east." I must agree with the first explanation. "be not so bold"-The early copies, together with the folio, (1623,) have, "be not so bold") but the quarto of 1634 reads, "be not too bold," which agrees with the words in Hall and Hollingshed. All editors, except Knight, alter the Poet's word to that of the chroniclers. "And who doth lead them, but a paltry fellow, Long kept in Bretagne at our mother's cost," etc. Thus Hollingshed:-" You see further, how a company of traitors, thieves, outlaws, and runagates, be aiders and partakers of this feate and enterprise. And to begin with the Earl of Richmond, captaine of this rebellion, he is a Welsh milksop, brought up by my moother's means and mine, like a captive in a close cage in the court of Francis duke of Britaine."-(p. 756.) Hollingshed copied this verbatim from Hall, (edit. 1548, fol. 54;) but his printer has given us by accident the word moother instead of brother, as it is in the original, and ought to be in SHAKESPEARE. In the first edition of Hollingshed, the word is rightly printed brother; so that this circumstance not only shows that the Poet follows Hollingshed, but points out the edition used by him. "Spur your proud horses hard"-Richard alternately addresses the mounted "gentlemen" and the yeomen archers on foot, to whom the line before is addressed. "the enemy is pass'd the marsh"-There was a large marsh in Bosworth-plain, between the two armies. Henry passed it, and made such a disposition of his forces that it served to protect his right wing. By this movement he gained also another point, that his men should engage with the sun behind them and in the faces of their enemies: a matter of great consequence when bows and arrows were in use. SCENE IV. "I think there be six Richmonds in the field; Five have I slain to-day, instead of him.—' The Poet had here more than mere dramatic effect to excuse his making the tyrant fall by Richmond's hand. It is stated by the chroniclers that Richard was determined to engage with Richmond, if possible, in single combat. For this purpose he rode furiously to that quarter of the field where the Earl was; attacked his standard-bearer, (Sir William Brandon,) and killed him; then assaulted Sir John Cheny, whom he overthrew. Having thus cleared his way to his antagonist, he engaged in single combat with him, and probably would QUIT il in your age"-i. e. Quite or requite it- have been victorious: but at that instant Sir William a form of the word in very frequent use. Stanley joined Richmond's army, and the royal forces ["He advances to the Troops"]-"His oration to his soldiers" is placed, as a title, before this speech, in all the old copies. fled with great precipitation. Richard was soon afterwards overpowered by numbers, and fell fighting bravely to the last moment. They fight"-According to the old stage-direction Richard was killed before the audience. I restore the old direction, as the author's intention, instead of which the popular editions give us and exeunt fighting. The following is Hall's narrative of the battle of Bosworth Field:"In the mean season King Richard (which was appointed now to finish his last labour by the very divine justice and providence of God, which called him to condign punishment for his scelerate merits and mischievous deserts) marched to a place meet for two battles to encounter, by a village called Bosworth, not far from Leicester, and there he pitched his field, refreshed his soldiers, and took his rest. The fame went that he had the same night a dreadful and a terrible dream; for it seemed to him, being asleep, that he saw divers images like terrible devils, which pulled and hauled him, not suffering him to take any quiet or rest. The which strange vision not so suddenly strake his heart with a sudden fear, but it stuffed his head and troubled his mind with many dreadful and busy imaginations; for incontinent after, his heart being almost damped, he prognosticated before the doubtful chance of the battle to come, not using the alacrity and mirth of mind and countenance as he was accustomed to do before he came toward the battle. And lest that it might be suspected that he was abashed for fear of his enemies, and for that cause looked so piteously, he recited and declared to his familiar friends in the morning his wonderful vision and terrible dream." The plan of the battle is minutely detailed in the narratives; and Shakespeare has availed himself, with wonderful accuracy and spirit, of the circumstances attending the disposition of the field. According to the usual practice of the chroniclers, they give long orations, by the respective leaders, previous to the battle being joined. Shakespeare has availed himself of some of the most prominent parts of these apparently fictitious compositions. The legend of "Jocky of Norfolk" is told thus by Hall:-" Of the nobility were slain John Duke of Norfolk, which was warned by divers to refrain from the field, insomuch that the night before he should set forward toward the king one wrote on his gate Jack of Norfolk, be not too bold. For Dykon thy master is bought and sold." The battle and the victory are thus described by Hall:-" He had scantly finished his saying but the one army espied the other. Lord! how hastily the soldiers buckled their helms! how quickly the archers bent their bows and frushed their feathers! how readily the billmen shook their bills and proved their staves! ready to approach and join when the terrible trumpet should sound the bloody blast to victory or death. Between both armies there was a great morass, which the Earl of Richmond left on his right hand, for this intent, that it should be on that side a defence for his part; and in so doing he had the sun at his back and in the faces of his enemies. When King Richard saw the Earl's company was passed the morass, he commanded with all haste to set upon them; then the trumpets blew and the soldiers shouted, and the king's archers courageously let fly their arrows: the earl's bowmen stood not still, but paid them home again. The terrible shot once passed, the armies joined and came to hand-strokes, where neither sword nor bill was spared; at which encounter the Lord Stanley joined with the earl. The Earl of Oxford in the mean season, fearing lest while his company was fighting they should be compassed and circumvented with the multitude of his enemies, gave commandment in every rank that no man should be so hardy as go above ten foot from the standard; which commandment once known, they knit themselves together, and ceased a little from fighting. The adversaries, suddenly abashed at the matter, and mistrusting some fraud or deceit, began also to pause, and left striking, and not against the wills of many, which had liefer had the king destroyed than saved, and therefore they fought very faintly, or stood still. The Earl of Oxford, bringing all his band together on the one part, set on his enemies freshly. Again, the adversaries perceiving that, placed their men slender and thin before, and thick and broad behind, beginning again hardily the battle. While the two forwards thus mortally fought, each intending to vanquish and convince the other, King Richard was admonished by his explorators and espials that the Earl of Richmond, accompanied with a small number of men of arms, was not far off; and as he approached and marched toward him, he perfectly knew his personage by certain demonstrations and tokens which he had learnt and known of other; and being inflamed with ire and vexed with outrageous malice, he put his spurs to his horse and rode out of the side of the range of his battle, leaving the avant-gardes fighting, and like a hungry lion ran with spear in rest toward him. The Earl of Richmond perceived well the king furiously coming toward him, and, by cause the whole hope of his wealth and purpose was to be determined by battle, he gladly proffered to encounter with him body to body and man to man. King Richard set on so sharply at the first brunt that he overthrew the earl's standard and slew Sir William Brandon, his standard-bearer, (which was father to Sir Charles Brandon, by King Henry the Eighth created Duke of Suffolk,) and matched hand to hand with Sir John Cheinye, a man of great force and strength, which would have resisted him, and the said John was by him manfully overthrown; and so he making open passage by dint of sword as he went forward, the Earl of Richmond withstood his violence and kept him at the sword's point without advantage longer than his companions other thought or judged; which, being almost in despair of victory, were suddenly recomforted by Sir William Stanley, which came to succours with three thousand tall men, at which very instant King Richard's men were driven back and fled, and he himself, manfully fighting in the middle of his enemies, was slain and brought to his death as he worthily had deserved." Schlegel remarks, on the character of Richard-" His first speeches lead us already to form the most unfavourable prognostications respecting him: he lowers obliquely like a thunder-cloud on the horizon, which gradually approaches nearer and nearer, and first pours out the elements of devastation with which it is charged when it hangs over the heads of mortals." "The other characters of the drama are of too secondary a nature to excite a powerful sympathy; but in the back-ground the widowed Queen Margaret appears as the fury of the past, who calls forth the curse on the future: every calamity which her enemies draw down on each other, is a cordial to her revengeful heart. Other female voices join, from time to time, in the lamentations and imprecations. But Richard is the soul, or rather the demon, of the whole tragedy, and fulfils the promise which he formerly made to -set the murderous Machiavel to school. "Besides the uniform aversion with which he inspires us, he occupies us in the greatest variety of ways, by his profound skill in dissimulation, his wit, his prudence, his presence of mind, his quick activity, and his valour. He fights at last against Richmond like a desperado, and dies the honourable death of the hero on the field of battle."-But Shakespeare has satisfied our moral feelings:-"He shows us Richard in his last moments already branded with the stamp of reprobation. We see Richard and Richmond on the night before battle sleeping in their tents; the spirits of those murdered by the tyrant, ascend in succession, and pour out their curses against him, and their blessings on his adversary. These apparitions are, properly, merely the dreams of the two generals made visible. It is no doubt contrary to sensible probability, that their tents should only be separated by so small a space; but Shakespeare could reckon on poetical spectators, who were ready to take the breadth of the stage for the distance between the two camps, if, by such a favour, they were to be recompensed by beauties of so sublime a nature as this series of spectres, and the soliloquy of Richard on his awaking." "IN RICHARD III., (1593) Shakespeare put forth a power of terrific delineation, which with the exception of the death-scene of Cardinal Beaufort in the second part of HENRY VI., he had never before displayed. This tragedy forms an epoch in the history of our Poet, and in that of dramatic poetry. In his preceding dramas, he showed rather the suppleness than the knotted strength of his genius; but in the subtle cunning, the commanding courage, the lofty pride and ambition, the remorselessness of the third Richard, and in the whole sublime depravity of his character, he reminds us of the eulogium passed by Fuseli on Michael Angelo, who says, that Michael could stamp sublimity on the hump of a dwarf.' So complete was this picture of human guilt, that Milton, in seeking for a guilty hero, was obliged to descend to the nether regions. "It belongs to our historical rather than our dramatic curiosity, to inquire whether Shakespeare was justified by the facts of history, to describe Richard III. quite so blackly. Every one may have heard of the old Countess of Desmond's testimony, that Richard was a handsome man, and only second in appearance to his brother Edward IV., in the ball room, in which she danced with the former. Her declaration certainly proves that he could not have been a notoriously deformed man; but still I think there are proofs that he had one shoulder higher than the other, a defect, which, if he was otherwise personable, as he probably was, he might have well concealed by his dress; and to a girl of nineteen or twenty he might have easily appeared a handsome man. As to his true moral character, I know not what to say; Horace Walpole's 'Doubts,' I think, are themselves subject to doubts. I remember being in Drury Lane, when Kean played Richard III., and I had the felicity to sit in the same box with Madame de Staël and Sir James Mackintosh. Sir James gave us a long discourse on the utterly absurd traditions respecting Richard III.'s crimes and cruelties. He was at that time a thorough believer in the doubts of Horace Walpole. But when Sir James Mackintosh's History of England appeared, I looked in vain for a reassertion of the same scepticism respecting Richard's guilt; on the contrary, he seems to confess it. For my own part, I think that Richard was infamously abused after his death, by the Lancasterians, and afterwards by the Tudors; neither do I believe that he was a hunch-back; yet still I have my suspicions both as to the perfect equality of his shoulders, and the perfect morality of his conduct. In "The wretched taste of the public for many years neglected this sublime drama. In the days of Betterton, all the powers of that great actor could not give stage popularity to RICHARD III. Cibber at last brought it on the stage in a patched state, containing a portion of the original play, but mixed up with matter from other Shakespearian plays; and, strange to say, eked out with some of Cibber's own stuff. Yet with all this stuff, Cibber's edition of Richard III.' kept possession of the stage for one hundred and twenty years. 1741, when Garrick came out at Goodman's Fields, his utterance of the line, 'Off with his head! so much for Buckingham!' drew thunders of applause, and these words set the first seal on Garrick's popularity. That line, nevertheless, was not Shakespeare's, but Cibber's. "I have not before me Cibber's misadaptation to the stage of Richard III.;' but only that of John Kemble, and I fear that Kemble did little to restore the original; nay, it is certain that he did nothing material. The medley called Richard III.,' till lately acted on our boards, commences with Richard III. stabbing Henry VI. with his own hand. This might be well enough for the third part of HENRY VI., but it had no right to a place in the tragedy of RICHARD III. Shakespeare's object in the latter piece was to produce from Richard's character an impression of terror, not of disgust; and the Poet, therefore, exhibits on the stage none of the murders occasioned by Richard, except that of Clarence, whose previous guilt mitigates our anger at his fate, although he moves our pity. Clarence's dream, a piece of poetry which Charles Fox justly compared to the death-scene of Alcestis, in Euripides, is omitted in Kemble's edition of this drama. The complaint was, that Shakespeare's play was too long, and the remedy to which they resorted was to thrust in interpolations." CAMPBELL. Coleridge directs that this play should be “contrasted with RICHARD II. Pride of intellect is the characteristic of Richard, carried to the extent of even boasting to his own mind of his villainy, while others are present to feed his pride of superiority. Shakespeare here, as in all his great parts, developes in a tone of sublime morality the consequences of placing the moral in subordination to the mere intellectual being. Richard there is a predominance of irony, accompanied with apparently blunt manners to those immediately about him, but prolonged into a more set hypocrisy towards the people as represented by their magistrates." In The criticism of the German critic, Ulrici, is as usual refined to the very verge of ingenious paradox, while, at the same time, it contains original and impressive views of high import. After stating his critical objection to the play as a work of dramatic art, that Richard stands absolutely alone in the drama, and that the inferiority and feebleness of all the other personages destroys that mutual action and reaction, so powerful in real life. and so necessary to dramatic vividness, he thus proceeds to a higher tone of moral speculation: "But it should be remembered, that immobility and sameness, unnatural heaping of all the weights into one scale, want of organic interaction and co-operation between the body and the several parts, and consequently the greatest corruption in the political organization of society, constitute the very character of that form of tyranny in which an age of sufferings necessarily closes. But now the elucidation of the essence of tyranny is the historical import of the present drama, and the poetical element of the ground-idea is in this, as in all others of Shakespeare's pieces, with singular tact associated with it. Therefore, it is not to be denied, that this artistic defect was the price with which the Poet was forced to purchase the opportunity of depicting the ground-idea of his piece with greater force, depth, and truth. Tyranny is the historical phase of selfishness, and, consequently, of evil, in its highest possible consummation. A single ego arrogates to himself the power of the collective mind and energy; an individual, in spite of his finiteness, makes himself a whole nation; indeed humanity itself, and its supreme ruling power. This is the interpretation of Richard's words, I am myself alone,' with which the tyrant from his birth announces himself, and which reveals also his perfect consciousness of his true nature. Richard knows himself to be a tyrant; he knows himself and is willing to be a despot. This trait in his poetical character was necessary, since it is inconsistent with the Christian view to represent an individual as a mere machine in the hands of a superior and constraining power. This truth is at once the reason and the justification of the reflections which Richard makes upon himself and his own circumstances, in the many soliloquies which have been so frequently censured as unnatural. They are a necessary part of the character of a tyrant in Christian times; they are but the true utterance of his clear internal convictions, and Richard must speak with himself, since in his terrible isolation he has none else with whom he can hold communion." * * "The family of Henry the Sixth is utterly extinct; of the House of York none survive but the childless Richard, and a daughter of Edward the Fourth who is to form the link of union between the old and the new times. Thus must it ever be. The avenger-the founder of a new era-must come of a different blood; but at the same time he must form a true intermedium between the past and the future, and must furnish a real appeasing of history. Such was the Earl of Richmond, afterwards Henry the Seventh, and the husband of Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward, of the house of Lancaster, (Gaunt,) but not by descent from Henry the Fourth. He appears a pious harmless youth, and by no means a highly-gifted or eminent character. For an age so morally corrupt was unable to offer any opposition to the tyranny of Richard, much less to provide a deliverer from within itself. The true deliverer was God. It is as his captain that Richmond accounts himself,-it is not in himself, in his forces, or in circumstances that he places his hope; the conviction that he is but working the will of God, alone gives him energy for his enterprise. He is the man whom God has sent, and of whom the age stands in need; who alone is justified in acting as he does: it is God's arm that strengthens and protects him. With wonderful judgment has the Poet indicated all this by the unequalled scene of the fifth act, where the ghosts of the members of the royal family whom Richard had murdered rise one by one. As already observed, such ghostly apparitions belong not properly to the historic drama; history itself knows nothing of such things. The Poet, it is true, represents them but as the vivid visionary shapes which issue from the troubled conscience in one case, and of the pure consciousness on the other, but still in both cases he regards them as voices from God to encourage the innocent and to shake the resolution of the guilty. They therefore possess a perfect poetic reality, and it is no excuse for the Poet to urge that it is but as a dream that he has introduced them. However, the true poet has alway a good reason for his irregularities, and in the present case his excuse is obvious. The Poet does not paint history with the accuracy of a portrait-he also invents it; his invention, however, is but the very kernel and essence of history, which never attains to actual and immediate manifestation, even because its inmost heart is wrapped in the infinity of the divine ruler of the world. It is therefore necessary to show forth explicitly in the drama, what in history appears mediately and implicitly, being concealed beneath the very results to which it gives rise. This apparent offence, therefore, against history-by its application it ceases to be such-is made use of by the Poet for the clear realization of his leading idea, which has nothing less for its subject-matter than the elucidation of the true relation of history to God; or, in other words, the truths that God alone can restore sinful man, and that the penalty which his strict unyielding justice inflicts, is at the same time the proof of his protecting love. The history of the world, in short, is the gracious dispensation of this love and mercy, or, as the same idea is expressed by Henry, a little before he sees the spirits O thou! whose captain I account myself, That his prayer is heard he is assured by the spirits, whose speech concludes with the words: God and good angels fight on Richmond's side, Mr. Collier gives the following account of the dramas on this subject preceding Shakespeare's, which shows conclusively that the idea thrown out by some of the commentators, that he used them as the groundwork of his own tragedy, is quite unfounded: "It is certain that there was an historical drama upon some of the events of the reign of Richard III. anterior to that of Shakespeare. T. Warton quoted Harrington's Apologie for Poetry,' prefixed to his translation of Ariosto in 1591, respecting a tragedy of Richard the Third,' acted at St. John's, Cambridge, which would have moved Phalaris, the tyrant, and terrified all tyrannous-minded men;' and Heywood's Apology for Actors,' (1612,) repeats the words of Harrington. Both those authors referred to a Latin drama on the story of Richard III., written by Dr. Legge, and acted at Cambridge before 1583. Stevens followed up his quotation from Heywood by the copy of an entry in the Station ers' Registers, dated June 19, 1594, relating to an Eng lish play on the same subject. When Stevens wrote, it was not known that such a drama had ever been printed; but in 1821 Boswell reprinted a large fragment. A perfect copy of this rare play is in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire, with the following title-page: "The True Tragedie of Richard the third: Wherein is showne the death of Edward the fourth, with the smothering of the two young Princes in the Tower: With a lamentable ende of Shore's wife, an example for all wicked women. And lastly, the coniunction and ioyning of the two noble Houses, Lancaster and Yorke. As it was played by the Queenes Maiesties Players. London Printed by Thomas Creede, and are to be sold by William Barley, at his shop in Newgate Market, neare Christ Church door. 1594.' The piece, as a literary composition, deserves little remark; but as a drama it possesses several peculiar features. It is in some respects unlike any relic of the kind, and was evidently written several years before it came from Creede's press. It opens with a singular dialogue between Truth and Poetry : "Hence Truth proceeds with a sort of argument of the play; but before the Induction begins, the ghost of George, Duke of Clarence, had passed over the stage, delivering two lines as he went, which we give precisely as in the original copy now before us : Cresse cruor sanguinis, satietur sanguine cresse, Quod spero scitio. O scitio, scitio, vendicta! "The drama itself opens with a scene representing the death of Edward IV., and the whole story is thenceforward most inartificially and clumsily conducted, with a total disregard of dates, facts, and places, by characters imperfectly drawn and ill sustained. Shore's wife plays a conspicuous part; and the tragedy does not finish with the battle of Bosworth Field, but is carried on subsequently, although the plot is clearly at an end. The conclusion is as remarkable as the commencement. After the death of Richard, Report (a personification like some of those in the old Moralities) enters, and holds a dialogue with a Page, to inform the audience of certain matters not exhibited; and after a long scene between Richmond, the Queen mother, Princess Elizabeth, etc., two Messengers enter, and, mixing with the personages of the play, detail the succession of events and of monarchs from the death of Richard until the accession of Elizabeth. The Queen mother then comes forward, and pronounces a panegyric upon Elizabeth, ending thus: For which, if ere her life be tane away, God grant her soule may live in heaven for aye; "As in this epilogue no allusion is made to the Span ish Armada, though other public events of less promi nence are touched upon, we may infer that the drama was written before 1588 |