ians were still in the future. As for the multitude, they are, as Falstaff calls them, "food for powder" in the quarrels of their superiors. So supreme was the position of the king that he to whom it was vouchsafed was supposed to have been destined for it by the special appointment of Heaven, and it was sacrilege to remove him : Not all the water in the rough-rude sea But, although this was the accepted theory, which was of course firmly held by those to whom, in the distribution of fortune, had fallen this incomparable lot, yet the divinity that doth hedge a king did not prevent those who were not born to the position from aiming at it. The Histories are full of the attempts of princes to dethrone the Lord's anointed. King John usurped the seat which belonged by right to Arthur; King Henry the Fourth reigned through the deposition of Richard Second; Richard Third had to cut ever so many rivals out of the way before he reached the throne. These ambitions are the springs on which the history moves. Shakspeare discusses every aspect of the regal position; and out of these plays there might easily be culled a book of maxims for those in authority: A sceptre snatched with an unruly hand Let not the world see fear and sad distrust Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire; Treason is but trusted like the fox, Who, ne'er so tame, so cherished and locked up, Will have a wild trick of his ancestors. When King John, aware of the unsoundness of his own title, resolved to be crowned a second time, a wise councillor said: To be possessed with double pomp, To smooth the ice, or add another hue To seek the beautous eye of heaven to garnish When a king is asked whence he has obtained his commission to fight in the quarrel of one who is being wronged, he answers nobly: From that supernal Judge that stirs good thoughts In any breast of high authority To look into the blots and stains of right. Those, however, who, whether by inheritance or by force, attained the coveted possession of the crown found that it was not all of velvet. It brought with it a thousand duties which, if performed, wore out the life prematurely and, being neglected, involved the land in confusion. Says a king : O God, methinks it were a happy life So many days my ewes have been with young, Ah what a life were this! how sweet, how lovely! To shepherds looking on their silly sheep To kings that fear their subjects' treachery? When care, mistrust and treason wait on him. And another far more strenuous king, worn out with labour and ceremony, thus apostrophizes sleep: O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, And steep my senses in forgetfulness? Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, And hushed with buzzing nightflies to thy slumber, Than in the perfumed chambers of the great Under the canopies of costly state, And lulled with sounds of sweetest melody? Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy mast, In cradle of the rude, imperious surge, And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them The knightliest figure in Shakspeare is a deposed king. Richard the Second is the prey of favourites, wastes his substance and neglects his duties, till a rival, the shrewd and splendid Bolingbroke, profiting by his neglect, thrusts him from his seat. But, in the hour of humiliation, all the king awakens in Richard—not, indeed, the royal courage to reassert his claims, but the full sense of the dignity which he has lost, of the opportunities which he has thrown away, and of the God whom he has offended. He bends patiently beneath his heavy fate, as the storm of misfortune breaks over him; yet, as he goes to his doom, it is with steps more kingly than he has ever walked with before; and none of Shakspeare's kings in their glory affect us as does this one, when, almost mad with grief, he cries: |