wealth, as instances of Richard's despotism and rapacity, for both those events are intimately connected with the subsequent action of the play. This inadequate tribute having been paid to truth, the reverse of the picture is heightened by the most strenuous exertion of the poet's skill. Bold and various imagery, pious, philosophical, and sublime reflection, and all the graces of impassioned eloquence, are lavished on Richard. If he had manfully braved the buffets of calamity, and become a prey to sorrows, subdued only by the might of their accumulation, the struggle would have been awful. But as he pusillanimously yielded to despair, our sympathy is but slight, and Richard is upbraided and forgotten. Holinshed relates, that under his misfortunes, Richard was "almost consumed with sorrow, and in a manner half dead." Such is the historian's slight mention of the king's character in the hour of adversity; and this brief notice has been expanded by the magic genius of Shakspeare into a perfect picture of intellectual cowardice. He who was at one moment selfconfident, nothing doubting, comparing his power to that of the sun itself, was in the next plunged in the deepest despair, willing to resign his crown when he heard that some of his liege men had fallen off.

Notwithstanding all the pains bestowed on the delineation of the king, and the success with which those pains were followed, a heavy drama is still the result. With but one character that can be deemed a dramatic portrait, with a plot advanced as much by narrative as by action, and with a dialogue distributed into speeches of a length far exceeding the importance of their contents, Richard the Second, though an exquisite poem, is an indifferent play it is deficient in variety and contrast of character, a quick succession of incidents, and an animated and interesting dialogue.

145

HENRY IV. AND HENRY V.

First Part of Henry IV., 1597.

Second Part of Henry IV. and Henry V., 1599.

Con.

THESE three plays owe their origin to the same sources, the Chronicles of Holinshed, and an anonymous play, exhibited long before Shakspeare became a writer for the stage, entitled, "The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth. taining the Honourable Battell of Agincourt." The action of the First Part of Henry the Fourth begins immediately after the defeat of the Scots at Holmidon in 1402, the second year of Henry's reign, and terminates with the death of Hotspur about ten months afterwards. The news of this event commences the Second Part of the dramatised history; the death of Henry, and the coronation of his successor in 1413, form its close.

Henry the Fifth opens with the proceedings of the parliament held at Leicester in 1414, and rapidly glancing over the events of six years, exhibits, in conclusion, the marriage of Henry

with Katharine of France in 1420. The series of plays comprises the history of eighteen years.

"The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth" contains no allusion to the intestine broils which disturbed the peace of his predecessor; Shakspeare, therefore, derived no assistance whatever from that source in arranging the civil feuds of the fourth Harry's reign for dramatic representation, and he adopted few hints for the conduct of the wars of the conqueror of France. The historical events of the three plays were epitomised from Holinshed by Shakspeare himself, with few peculiarities of arrangement requiring any formal notice.

The life of Henry the Fifth, after his accession to the throne, is little more than a history of battles and sieges in a foreign land; the action of the play which bears his name is, therefore, principally laid in France. In opening with the Archbishop of Canterbury's arguments against the applicability of the Salique law to France, a deference is paid to the author of "The Famous Victories," but Holinshed taught Shakspeare to talk much more learnedly on the subject than his predecessor. The same historian also instructed the poet to transfer the Earl of Westmoreland's recommendation to subdue Scotland before France was invaded, from the Bishop,

who offers it in the old play, to its rightful

owner.

In the early scenes of Henry the Fifth the Dauphin appears an active agent, but silently disappears towards the conclusion of the fourth act, though many of the subsequent scenes are in the very court of France. History explains what Shakspeare has neglected to account for. "Shortly after (the battle of Agincourt,) either for melancholy that he had for the loss, or by some sudden disease, Lewis Dolphin of Viennois, heir-apparent to the French king, departed this life without issue."

Shakspeare would have had no reluctance to continue the character of the Dauphin on the scene, without at all noticing that the person represented was no longer the same t, had the

* Act I. sc. 2.

In Henry the Eighth, the Duke of Norfolk appears in the first scene of the play, and again in the second scene of the third act historically speaking, two different persons are represented in these different appearances; dramatically they are the same. As Shakspeare here made two persons into one, so, on the contrary, he has made one person into two. The Earl of Surrey, in the third act, is the nobleman who married the Duke of Buckingham's daughter. But Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, who married the Duke of Buckingham's daughter, was Duke of Norfolk at the time Wolsey was called upon to deliver up the seals, and is represented by Shakspeare in this very scene (Act III. sc. 2.)