Ah what a life were this! how sweet, how lovely! To shepherds looking on their silly sheep To kings that fear their subjects' treachery? His body couched in a curious bed, 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: For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground Keeps death his court; and there the antic sits, To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks, Bores through his castle-wall; and-farewell king! For you have but mistook me all this while; How can you say to me, I am a king? Yet it may be questioned whether there was in Richard the will to repent. WAR.-In the period to which Shakspeare's Histories relate England was incessantly at war. There were the wars with the French, sometimes on foreign soil and sometimes on the soil of England. Then there followed the Civil Wars, when the claims of the rival roses were being determined. Wherever war is taking place, it must move every section of society; and it was especially the absorbing interest of the classes with which Shakspeare chiefly concerned himself—the kings and the nobles. It was their trade and even their pastime; for the chief public entertainment was the mimic war of the tournament. Accordingly the pages of these Histories are crowded with war in all its phases. On the eve of an outbreak we hear the country ringing with the hammers of armourers and see the young men selling their all to buy a sword and a horse. Then, amidst sounds confused, the levies are shipped at the seaport; and now behold the threaden sails, Borne with the invisible and creeping wind, Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea, Then we see some French town approached from opposite sides by the contending armies, while the citizens tremble and their magistrates come out on the walls to carry on the difficult negotiations. Per haps the flags of war are folded up, the dispute being settled by a contract of marriage between two young people of the contending countries, whereon ensues the stately ceremonial of the wedding. Or, if the valour of the troops is put to the proof, then at last the English are carried back again to the shores of Albion, where the inhabitants await them on the white cliffs; and the conqueror passes on, to enter London in triumph. Shakspeare is very great in the description of pageants; and never does his verse move with a lighter measure than when he is picturing the crowds, the flags and the cheering for a victory. But, while he unfolds all the splendour of his genius in depicting the glorious side of war, he is not forgetful of the other side of the lives sacrificed, of the weeping mothers and widows, of the fields torn up and the country harried. Along with brave men there went to the French wars all the tag-rag-andbobtail of the country; and multitudes, dishabituated to honest labour in the wars, became, when they returned home, the pests of the country. This class is depicted in Falstaff and his companions-the cowardly braggadocio Pistol, the fiery-faced Bardolph, the pot-valorous Nym and the rest. As the type of those soldiering days we may take Harry Hotspur. This valiant dog-of-war never can get enough of fighting and marches to battle as gaily |