And the lyon them amonge; HISTORICAL. It would appear scarcely necessary to entreat the reader to bear in mind, before we place in apposition the events which these scenes bring before us, and the facts of history, properly so called, that the 'Histories' of Shakspere are Dramatic Poems. And yet, unless this circumstance be watchfully regarded, we shall fall into the error of setting up one form of truth in contradiction to, and not in illustration of, another form of truth. It appears to us a worse than useless employment to be running parallels between the poet and the chronicler, for the purpose of showing that for the literal facts of history the poet is not so safe a teacher as the chronicler; and yet, we have had offered to us a series of laborious essays, that undertakes to solve these two problems,-" What were Shakspere's authorities for his history, and how far has he departed from them? And whether the plays may be given to our youth as properly historical." The writer of these essays decides the latter question in the negative, and maintains that these pieces are "quite unsuitable as a medium of instruction to the English youth;" -and his great object is, therefore, to contradiet, by a body of minute proofs, the assertion of A. W. Schlegel, with regard to these plays, that "the principal traits in every event are given with so much correctness, their apparent causes and their secret motives are given with so much penetration, that we may therein study history, so to speak, after nature, without fearing that such lively images should ever be effaced from our minds." Schlegel appears to us to have hit the true cause why the youth of England have been said to take their history from Shakspere. The "lively images" of the poet present a general truth much more completely than the tedious narratives of the annalist. The ten English 'histories' of ShakspereShakspere's Historical Plays considered historically.' By the Right Hon. T. P. Courtenay. He loked aboute as he were madde; Kynge Rycharde bethought hym that tyde In at the throte his honde he gerte, "the magnificent dramatic Epopée, of which the separate pieces are different cantos "-stand in the same relation to the contemporary historians of the events they deal with, as a landscape does to a map. Mr. Courtenay says, "Let it be well understood that if in any case I derogate from Shakspere as an historian, it is as an historian only." Now, in the sense in which Mr. Courtenay uses the word "historian," by which he means one who describes past events with the most accurate observances of time and place, and with the most diligent balancing of conflicting testimony-Shakspere has no pretensions to be regarded. The principle, therefore, of viewing Shakspere's history through another medium than that of his art, and pronouncing, upon this view, that his historical plays cannot be given to our youth as "properly historical," is nearly as absurd as it would be to derogate from the merits of Mr. Turner's beautiful drawings of coast scenery, by maintaining and proving that the draughtsman had not accurately laid down the relative positions of each bay and promontory. It would not be, to our minds, a greater mistake to confound the respective labours of the landscape painter and the hydrographer, than to subject the poet to the same laws which should govern the chronicler. There may be, in the poet, a higher truth than the literal, evolved in spite of, or rather in combination with, his minute violations of accuracy; we may in the poet better study history, "so to speak, after nature," than in the annalist,-because the poet masses and generalizes his facts, subjecting them, in the order in which he presents them to the mind, as well as in the elaboration which he bestows upon them, to the laws of his art, which has a clearer sense of fitness and proportion than the laws of a dry chronology. But, at any rate, the structure of an historical drama and of an historical narrative are so essentially different, that the offices of the poet and the historian must never be confounded. It is not to derogate from the poet to say that he is not an historian; it will be to elevate Shakspere when we compare his poetical truth with the truth of history. We have no wish that he had been more exact and literal. The moving cause of the main action in the play of King John' is put before us in the very first lines. Chatillon, the ambassador of France, thus demands of John the resignation of his crown: "Philip of France, in right and true behalf To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine." In the year 1190, when Arthur was only two years old, his uncle, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, contracted him in marriage with the daughter of Tancred, king of Sicily. The good will of Richard towards Arthur, on this occasion, might be in part secured by a dowry of twenty thousand golden oncie which the Sicilian king paid in advance to him; but, at any rate, the infant Duke of Brittany was recognised in this deed, by Richard, as our most dear nephew, and heir, if by chance we should die without issue." When Richard did die, without issue, in 1199, Arthur and his mother Constance, who was really the Duchess regnant of Brittany, were on friendly terms with him, although in 1197 Richard had wasted Brittany with fire and sword; but John produced a testament by which Richard gave him the crown. The adherents of John, however, did not rely upon this instrument; and, if we may credit Matthew Paris, John took the brightest gem of the house of Anjou, the crown of England, upon the principle of election. His claim was recognised also in Normandy. Maine, Touraine, and Anjou, on the other hand, declared for Arthur; and at Angiers the young prince was proclaimed king of England. As Duke of Brittany Arthur held his dominion as a vassal of France;-but Constance, who knew the value of a powerful protector for her son, offered to Philip Augustus of France, that Arthur should do homage not only for Brittany, but also for Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou. Philip encouraged the pretensions of Arthur to the provinces for which he had offered homage, and he met his young vassal at Mans, where he received his See Daru,'Histoire de Bretagne,' tome i. p. 381. oath, bestowed on him knighthood, and took him with him to Paris. We may assume this point of the history of Arthur as determining the period when Shakspere's play of 'King John' commences. The hostility of Elinor to Constance is manifested in the first Scene: "What now, my son! have I not ever said, How that ambitious Constance would not cease, Holinshed assigns the reason for this enmity: -"Surely Queen Elinor, the king's mother, was sore against her nephew Arthur, rather moved thereto by envy conceived against his mother, than upon any just occasion given in the behalf of the child; for that she saw if he were king how his mother Constance would look to bear most rule within the realm of England, till her son should come to lawful age to govern of himself." SCENE I. ACT II. "A braver choice of dauntless spirits, Than now the English bottoms have waft o'er, Did never float upon the swelling tide." THE troops of William the Conqueror are said to have been borne to the invasion of England upon several thousand barks. Henry II. embarked his forces for the conquest of Ireland in four hundred vessels. In both these periods the craft must have been mere boats. But when Richard carried his soldiers to the Holy Land, his armament consisted of many large ships. This brilliant navy for the most part consisted of merchant vessels, collected from all the ports of the kingdom, each of which was bound, when required by the king, to furnish him with a certain number. John had a few galleys of his own. The first great naval victory of England, that of the Damme, or of the Sluys, was won in the reign of John, in 1213. The following representation of "English bottoms" is composed from several authorities, viz.:Cotton MS. Claudius D. 2, temp. Henry I.; MS. at Bennet Coll. Cambridge, (engraved in Strutt's 'Manners') temp. Henry III.; and Royal MS. 2 B. vii. temp. Edward I. when Callum Beg compares Waverley with his target to "the bra' Highlander tat 's painted on the board afore the mickle change-house they ca' Luckie Middlemass's."-We give a serious portrait of St. George, from an old illumination, "Pardon me, Julius: here wast thou bay'd, brave hart; Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand, Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy lethe." Old Tuberville gives us the details of this custom :-"Our order is, that the prince, or chief, if so please them, do alight, and take assay of the deer, with a sharp knife, the which is done in this manner-the deer being laid upon his back, the prince, chief, or such as they do appoint, comes to it, and the chief huntsman, kneeling if it be to a prince, doth hold the deer by the fore-foot, while the prince, or chief, do cut a slit drawn along the brisket of the deer." It would not be easy to effect this operation without the "purpled hands," and Johnson's suggestion that it was one of the savage practices of the chase, for all to stain their hands in the blood of the deer, as a trophy," is uncalled for. 66 13 SCENE II." The mutines of Jerusalem." The union of the various factions in Jerusalem, when besieged by Titus, is here alluded to. that the painters may go right, in future, who Malone gives a particular passage from the The events of nearly two years are crowded into the rapid movements of this Act. And yet, except in one circumstance, the general historical truth is to be found in the poet. That circumstance is the bringing of Austria upon the scene, with the assertion that "Richard, that robb'd the lion of his heart, And fought the holy wars in Palestine, By this brave duke came early to his grave." Leopold, the brutal and crafty gaoler of the lionheart, died some five years before Richard fell by a wound from a cross-bow, before the castle of the Viscount Lymoges; one of his vassals in Limousin "An arblaster with a quarrel him shot, As he about the castell went to spie." a In the third Act Constance exclaims, "O Lymoges, O Austria," making the two enemies of Richard as one. In the old play of King John' we have the same confusion of dates and persons: for there "the bastard chaseth Lymoges the Austrich duke, and maketh him leave the lyon's skin." It was unquestionably a principle with Shakspere not to disturb the conventional opinions of his audience by greatly changing the plots with which they were familiar. He knew full well, from his chronicles, that the injuries which Austria had heaped upon Richard could no longer be revenged by Richard's son,and that the quarrel of Faulconbridge was with Hardyng's 'Chronicle.' a meaner enemy, the Viscount Lymoges. But he adopted the conduct of the story in the old play; for he would have lost much by sacrificing the "lion's skin" of the subtle duke to an historical fact, with which his audience was not familiar. With the exception, then, of this positive violation of accuracy, we have, in this Act, a vivid dramatic picture of the general aspect of affairs in the contest between John and Philip. We have not, indeed, the exhibition of the slow course of those perpetually shifting manoeuvres which marked the policy of the wily King of France towards the unhappy boy whom he one day protected and another day abandoned; we have the fair promises kept and broken in the space of a few hours. Let us, however, very briefly trace the real course of events. Philip of France had been twenty years upon the throne when John leapt into the dominion of Richard, to whom he had been a rebel and a traitor, when the hero of the Holy Land was waging the mistaken fight of chivalry and of Christendom. Philip was one of the most remarkable examples that history presents of the constant opposition that is carried on, and for the most part successfully, of cunning against force. Surrounded as Philip was by turbulent allies and fierce enemies, he perpetually reminds us, in his windings and doublings, of his even more crafty successor, Louis XI. Arthur was a puppet in the hands of Philip, to be set up or |