QUEEN ELINOR.

O Lymoges! O Austria! thou dost shameThat bloody spoil! thou slave! thou wretch! thou coward! &c.

it is as if she had concentrated the burning spirit of scorn, and dashed it in his face: every word seems to blister where it falls. In the scolding scene between her and Queen Elinor, the laconic insolence of the latter is completely overborne by the torrent of bitter contumely which bursts from the lips of Constance, clothed in the most energetic, and often in the most figurative expressions.

ELINOR.Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?CONSTANCE.Let me make answer; Thy usurping son.ELINOR.Out insolent! thy bastard shall be king,That thou may'st be a queen, and check the world!CONSTANCE.My bed was ever to thy son as true,As thine was to thy husband; and this boyLiker in feature to his father Geffrey,Than thou and John in manners: being as likeAs rain to water, or devil to his dam.My boy a bastard! By my soul, I thinkHis father never was so true begot;It cannot be, an if thou wert his mother.ELINOR.There's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.CONSTANCE.There's a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee.* * * *ELINOR.Come to thy grandam, child.CONSTANCE.Do child; go to its grandam, child:Give grandam kingdom, and its grandam willGive it a plum, a cherry, and a fig:There's a good grandam.ARTHUR.Good my mother, peace!I would that I were low laid in my grave;I am not worth this coil that's made for me.ELINOR.His mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps.CONSTANCE.Now shame upon you, whe'r she does or no!His grandam's wrongs, and not his mother's shame,Draw those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyesWhich heaven shall take in nature of a fee:Ay, with these crystal beads heav'n shall be bribedTo do him justice, and revenge on you.ELINOR.Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!CONSTANCE.Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth!Call me not slanderer; thou and thine usurpThe dominations, royalties, and rightsOf this oppressed boy. This is thy eldest son's sonInfortunate in nothing but in thee.* * * *ELINOR.Thou unadvised scold, I can produceA will that bars the title of thy son.CONSTANCE.Ay, who doubts that? A will! a wicked will—A woman's will—a canker'd grandam's will!KING PHILIP.Peace, lady: pause, or be more moderate.

ELINOR.

Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?

CONSTANCE.

Let me make answer; Thy usurping son.

ELINOR.

Out insolent! thy bastard shall be king,That thou may'st be a queen, and check the world!

CONSTANCE.

My bed was ever to thy son as true,As thine was to thy husband; and this boyLiker in feature to his father Geffrey,Than thou and John in manners: being as likeAs rain to water, or devil to his dam.My boy a bastard! By my soul, I thinkHis father never was so true begot;It cannot be, an if thou wert his mother.

ELINOR.

There's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.

CONSTANCE.

There's a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee.

* * * *

ELINOR.

Come to thy grandam, child.

CONSTANCE.

Do child; go to its grandam, child:Give grandam kingdom, and its grandam willGive it a plum, a cherry, and a fig:There's a good grandam.

ARTHUR.

Good my mother, peace!I would that I were low laid in my grave;I am not worth this coil that's made for me.

ELINOR.

His mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps.

CONSTANCE.

Now shame upon you, whe'r she does or no!His grandam's wrongs, and not his mother's shame,Draw those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyesWhich heaven shall take in nature of a fee:Ay, with these crystal beads heav'n shall be bribedTo do him justice, and revenge on you.

ELINOR.

Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!

CONSTANCE.

Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth!Call me not slanderer; thou and thine usurpThe dominations, royalties, and rightsOf this oppressed boy. This is thy eldest son's sonInfortunate in nothing but in thee.

* * * *

ELINOR.

Thou unadvised scold, I can produceA will that bars the title of thy son.

CONSTANCE.

Ay, who doubts that? A will! a wicked will—A woman's will—a canker'd grandam's will!

KING PHILIP.

Peace, lady: pause, or be more moderate.

And in a very opposite mood, when struggling with the consciousness of her own helpless situation, the same susceptible and excitable fancy still predominates:—

Thou shalt be punish'd for thus frighting me;For I am sick, and capable of fears;Oppressed with wrongs, and therefore full of fearsA widow, husbandless, subject to fears;A woman, naturally born to fears;And though thou now confess thou didst but jestWith my vexed spirits, I cannot take a truce,But they will quake and tremble all this day.What dost thou mean by shaking of thy head?Why dost thou look so sadly on my son?What means that hand upon that breast of thine?Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum,Like a proud river peering o'er his bounds?Be these sad signs confirmers of thy words?* * * *Fellow, begone! I cannot brook thy sight—This news hath made thee a most ugly man!

* * * *

Fellow, begone! I cannot brook thy sight—This news hath made thee a most ugly man!

It is the power of imagination which gives so peculiar a tinge to the maternal tenderness of Constance; she not only loves her son with the fond instinct of a mother's affection, but she loves him with her poetical imagination, exults in his beauty and his royal birth, hangs over him with idolatry, and sees his infant brow already encircled with the diadem. Her proud spirit, her ardent enthusiastic fancy, and her energetic self-will, all combine with her maternal love to give it that tone and character which belongs to her only: hence that most beautiful address to her son, which coming from the lips of Constance, is as full of nature and truth as of pathos and poetry, and which we could hardly sympathize with in any other:—

ARTHUR.I do beseech you, madam, be content.CONSTANCE.If thou, that bid'st me be content, wert grim,Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother's womb,Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains,Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious.Patched with foul moles and eye-offending marks,I would not care—I then would be content;For then I should not love thee; no, nor thouBecome thy great birth, nor deserve a crown.But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy!Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great:Of Nature's gifts thou mayest with lilies boast,And with the half-blown rose: but Fortune, O!She is corrupted, chang'd, and won from thee;She adulterates hourly with thine uncle John;And with her golden hand hath pluck'd on FranceTo tread down fair respect of sovereignty.

ARTHUR.

I do beseech you, madam, be content.

CONSTANCE.

If thou, that bid'st me be content, wert grim,Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother's womb,Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains,Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious.Patched with foul moles and eye-offending marks,I would not care—I then would be content;For then I should not love thee; no, nor thouBecome thy great birth, nor deserve a crown.But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy!Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great:Of Nature's gifts thou mayest with lilies boast,And with the half-blown rose: but Fortune, O!She is corrupted, chang'd, and won from thee;She adulterates hourly with thine uncle John;And with her golden hand hath pluck'd on FranceTo tread down fair respect of sovereignty.

It is this exceeding vivacity of imagination which in the end turns sorrow to frenzy. Constance is not only a bereaved and doating mother, but a generous woman, betrayed by her own rash confidence; in whose mind the sense of injury mingling with the sense of grief, and her impetuous temper conflicting with her pride, combine to overset her reason; yet she is not mad: and how admirably, how forcibly she herself draws the distinction between the frantic violence of uncontrolled feeling and actual madness!—

Thou art not holy to belie me so;I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;My name is Constance; I was Geffrey's wife;Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost:I am not mad; I would to Heaven I were!For then, 'tis like I should forget myself:O, if I could, what grief should I forget!

Not only has Constance words at will, and fastas the passionate feelings rise in her mind they are poured forth with vivid, overpowering eloquence; but, like Juliet, she may be said to speak in pictures. For instance:—

Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum?Like a proud river peering o'er its bounds.

And throughout the whole dialogue there is the same overflow of eloquence, the same splendor of diction, the same luxuriance of imagery; yet with an added grandeur, arising from habits of command, from the age, the rank, and the matronly character of Constance. Thus Juliet pours forth her love like a muse in a rapture: Constance raves in her sorrow like a Pythoness possessed with the spirit of pain. The love of Juliet is deep and infinite as the boundless sea: and the grief of Constance is so great, that nothing but the round world itself is able to sustain it.

I will instruct my sorrows to be proud;For grief is proud and makes his owner stout.To me, and to the state of my great griefLet kings assemble, for my grief's so great,That no supporter but the huge firm earthCan hold it up. Here I and Sorrow sit;Here is my throne,—bid kings come bow to it!

An image more majestic, more wonderfully sublime, was never presented to the fancy; yet almost equal as a flight of poetry is her apostrophe to the heavens;—

Arm, arm, ye heavens, against these perjured kingsA widow calls!—be husband to me, heavens!

And again—

O that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth,Then with a passion would I shake the world!

Not only do her thoughts start into images, but her feelings become persons: grief haunts her as a living presence:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child;Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,Remembers me of all his gracious parts,Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;Then have I reason to be fond of grief.

And death is welcomed as a bridegroom; she sees the visionary monster as Julietsaw"the bloody Tybalt festering in his shroud," and heaps one ghastly image upon another with all the wild luxuriance of a distempered fancy:—

O amiable, lovely death!Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,Thou hate and terror to prosperity,And I will kiss thy detestable bones;And put my eye-balls in thy vaulty brows;And right these fingers with thy household worms;And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust;And be a carrion monster like thyself;Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil'st,And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love,O come to me!

Constance, who is a majestic being, is majestic in her very frenzy. Majesty is also the characteristic of Hermione: but what a difference betweenhersilent, lofty, uncomplaining despair, and the eloquent grief of Constance, whose wild lamentations, which come bursting forth clothed in the grandest, the most poetical imagery, not only melt, but absolutely electrify us!

On the whole, it may be said that pride and maternal affection form the basis of the character of Constance, as it is exhibited to us; but that these passions, in an equal degree common to many human beings, assume their peculiar and individual tinge from an extraordinary development of intellect and fancy. It is the energy of passion which lends the character its concentrated power, as it is the prevalence of imagination throughout which dilates it into magnificence.

Some of the most splendid poetry to be met with in Shakspeare, may be found in the parts of Juliet and Constance; the most splendid, perhaps, excepting only the parts of Lear and Othello; and for the same reason,—that Lear and Othello as men, and Juliet and Constance as women, are distinguished by the predominance of the same faculties,—passion and imagination.

The sole deviation from history which may be considered as essentially interfering with the truthof the situation, is the entire omission of the character of Guy de Thouars, so that Constance is incorrectly represented as in a state of widowhood, at a period when, in point of fact, she was married. It may be observed, that her marriage took place just at the period of the opening of the drama; that Guy de Thouars played no conspicuous part in the affairs of Bretagne till after the death of Constance, and that the mere presence of this personage, altogether superfluous in the action, would have completely destroyed the dramatic interest of the situation;—and what a situation! One more magnificent was never placed before the mind's eye than that of Constance, when, deserted and betrayed, she stands alone in her despair, amid her false friends and her ruthless enemies![88]The image of the mother-eagle, wounded and bleeding to death, yet stretched over her young in an attitude of defiance, while all the baser birds of prey are clamoring around her eyry, gives but a faint idea of the moral sublimity of this scene. Considered merely as a poetical or dramatic picture, the grouping is wonderfully fine; on one side, the vulture ambition of that mean-souled tyrant, John; on the other, the selfish, calculating policy of Philip: between them, balancing their passions in his hand, the cold, subtle, heartless Legate: the fiery, reckless Falconbridge; the princely Louis; the still unconquered spirit of that wrangling queen, old Elinor; the bridal loveliness and modestyof Blanche; the boyish grace and innocence of young Arthur; and Constance in the midst of them, in all the state of her great grief, a grand impersonation of pride and passion, helpless at once and desperate,—form an assemblage of figures, each perfect in its kind, and, taken all together, not surpassed for the variety, force, and splendor of the dramatic and picturesque effect.

Elinor of Guienne, and Blanche of Castile, who form part of the group around Constance, are sketches merely, but they are strictly historical portraits, and full of truth and spirit.

At the period when Shakspeare has brought these three women on the scene together, Elinor of Guienne (the daughter of the last Duke of Guienne and Aquitaine, and like Constance, the heiress of a sovereign duchy) was near the close of her long, various, and unquiet life—she was nearly seventy: and, as in early youth, her violent passions had overborne both principle and policy, so in her old age we see the same character, only modified by time; her strong intellect and love of power, unbridled by conscience or principle, surviving when other passions were extinguished, and rendered more dangerous by a degree of subtlety and self-command to which her youth had been a stranger. Her personal and avowed hatred for Constance, together with its motives, are mentioned by the old historians. Holinshed expressly says, that Queen Elinor was mightily set against her grandson Arthur, rather moved thereto by envy conceived against his mother, than by any fault of the young prince, for that she knew and dreaded the high spirit of the Lady Constance.

Shakspeare has rendered this with equal spirit and fidelity.

QUEEN ELINOR.What now, my son! have I not ever said,How that ambitious Constance would not cease,Till she had kindled France and all the worldUpon the right and party of her son?This might have been prevented and made wholeWith very easy arguments of love;Which now the manage of two kingdoms mustWith fearful bloody issue arbitrate.KING JOHN.Our strong possession and our right for us!QUEEN ELINOR.Your strong possession much more than your right;Or else it must go wrong with you and me.So much my conscience whispers in your ear—Which none but Heaven, and you, and I shall hear.

QUEEN ELINOR.

What now, my son! have I not ever said,How that ambitious Constance would not cease,Till she had kindled France and all the worldUpon the right and party of her son?This might have been prevented and made wholeWith very easy arguments of love;Which now the manage of two kingdoms mustWith fearful bloody issue arbitrate.

KING JOHN.

Our strong possession and our right for us!

QUEEN ELINOR.

Your strong possession much more than your right;Or else it must go wrong with you and me.So much my conscience whispers in your ear—Which none but Heaven, and you, and I shall hear.

Queen Elinor preserved to the end of her life her influence over her children, and appears to have merited their respect. While intrusted withthe government, during the absence of Richard I., she ruled with a steady hand, and made herself exceedingly popular; and as long as she lived to direct the counsels of her son John, his affairs prospered. For that intemperate jealousy which converted her into a domestic firebrand, there was at least much cause, though little excuse. Elinor had hated and wronged the husband of her youth,[89]and she had afterwards to endure the negligence and innumerable infidelities of the husband whom she passionately loved:[90]—"and so the whirligig of time brought in his revenges." Elinor died in 1203, a few months after Constance, and before the murder of Arthur—a crime which, had she lived, would probably never have been consummated; for the nature of Elinor, though violent, had no tincture of the baseness and cruelty of her son.

Blanche of Castile was the daughter of Alphonso IX. of Castile, and the grand-daughter ofElinor. At the time that she is introduced into the drama, she was about fifteen, and her marriage with Louis VIII., then Dauphin, took place in the abrupt manner here represented. It is not often that political marriages have the same happy result. We are told by the historians of that time, that from the moment Louis and Blanche met, they were inspired by a mutual passion, and that during a union of more than twenty-six years they were never known to differ, nor even spent more than a single day asunder.[91]

In her exceeding beauty and blameless reputation; her love for her husband, and strong domestic affections; her pride of birth and rank; her feminine gentleness of deportment; her firmness of temper; her religious bigotry; her love of absolute power, and her upright and conscientious administration of it, Blanche greatly resembled Maria Theresa of Austria. She was, however, of a more cold and calculating nature; and in proportion as she was less amiable as a woman, did she rule more happily for herself and others. There cannot be a greater contrast than between the acute understanding, the steady temper, and the cool intriguing policy of Blanche, by which she succeeded in disuniting and defeating the powers arrayed against her and her infant son, and the rash confiding temper and susceptible imagination of Constance, which rendered herselfand her son easy victims to the fraud or ambition of others. Blanche, during forty years, held in her hands the destinies of the greater part of Europe, and is one of the most celebrated names recorded in history—but in what does she survive to us except in a name? Nor history, nor fame, though "trumpet-tongued," could do forherwhat Shakspeare and poetry have done for Constance. The earthly reign of Blanche is over, her sceptre broken, and her power departed. When will the reign of Constance cease? when willherpower depart? Not while this world is a world, and there exists in it human souls to kindle at the touch of genius, and human hearts to throb with human sympathies!

There is no female character of any interest in the play of Richard II. The Queen (Isabelle of France) enacts the same passive part in the drama that she does in history.

The same remark applies to Henry IV. In this admirable play there is no female character of any importance; but Lady Percy, the wife of Hotspur, is a very lively and beautiful sketch: she is sprightly, feminine, and fond; but without any thing energetic or profound, in mind or in feeling. Her gayety and spirit in the first scenes, are the result of youth and happiness, and nothing can be more natural than the utter dejection and brokenness of heart which follow her husband's death: she is no heroine for war or tragedy; she has nothought of revenging her loss; and even her grief has something soft and quiet in its pathos. Her speech to her father-in-law, Northumberland, in which she entreats him "not to go to the wars," and at the same time pronounces the most beautiful eulogium on her heroic husband, is a perfect piece of feminine eloquence, both in the feeling and in the expression.

Almost every one knows by heart Lady Percy's celebrated address to her husband, beginning,

O, my good lord, why are you thus alone?

and that of Portia to Brutus, in Julius Cæsar,

... You've ungently, Brutus,Stol'n from my bed.

The situation is exactly similar, the topics of remonstrance are nearly the same; the sentiments and the style as opposite as are the characters of the two women. Lady Percy is evidently accustomed to win more from her fiery lord by caresses than by reason: he loves her in his rough way "as Harry Percy's wife," but she has no real influence over him: he has no confidence in her.

LADY PERCY.... In faith,I'll know your business, Harry, that I will.I fear my brother Mortimer doth stirAbout this title, and hath sent for youTo line his enterprise, but if you go—HOTSPUR.So far afoot, I shall be weary, love!

LADY PERCY.

... In faith,I'll know your business, Harry, that I will.I fear my brother Mortimer doth stirAbout this title, and hath sent for youTo line his enterprise, but if you go—

HOTSPUR.

So far afoot, I shall be weary, love!

The whole scene is admirable, but unnecessary here, because it illustrates no point of character in her. Lady Percy has nocharacter, properly so called; whereas, that of Portia is very distinctly and faithfully drawn from the outline furnished by Plutarch. Lady Percy's fond upbraidings, and her half playful, half pouting entreaties, scarcely gain her husband's attention. Portia, with true matronly dignity and tenderness, pleads her right to share her husband's thoughts, and proves it too

I grant I am a woman, but withal,A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife,I grant I am a woman, but withal,A woman well reputed—Cato's daughter.Think you, I am no stronger than my sexBeing so father'd and so husbanded?* * * *BRUTUS.You are my true and honorable wife:As dear to me, as are the ruddy dropsThat visit my sad heart!

* * * *

BRUTUS.

You are my true and honorable wife:As dear to me, as are the ruddy dropsThat visit my sad heart!

Portia, as Shakspeare has truly felt and represented the character, is but a softened reflection of that of her husband Brutus: in him we see an excess of natural sensibility, an almost womanish tenderness of heart, repressed by the tenets of his austere philosophy: a stoic by profession, and in reality the reverse—acting deeds against his natureby the strong force of principle and will. In Portia there is the same profound and passionate feeling, and all her sex's softness and timidity, held in check by that self-discipline, that stately dignity, which she thought became a woman "so fathered and so husbanded." The fact of her inflicting on herself a voluntary wound to try her own fortitude, is perhaps the strongest proof of this disposition. Plutarch relates, that on the day on which Cæsar was assassinated, Portia appeared overcome with terror, and even swooned away, but did not in her emotion utter a word which could affect the conspirators. Shakspeare has rendered this circumstance literally.

PORTIA.I pr'ythee, boy, run to the senate house,Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone.Why dost thou stay?LUCIUS.To know my errand, madam.PORTIA.I would have had thee there and here again,Ere I can tell thee what thou should'st do there.O constancy! be strong upon my side:Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue!I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.... Ah me! how weak a thingThe heart of woman is! O I grow faint, &c.

PORTIA.

I pr'ythee, boy, run to the senate house,Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone.Why dost thou stay?

LUCIUS.

To know my errand, madam.

PORTIA.

I would have had thee there and here again,Ere I can tell thee what thou should'st do there.O constancy! be strong upon my side:Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue!I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.... Ah me! how weak a thingThe heart of woman is! O I grow faint, &c.

There is another beautiful incident related by Plutarch, which could not well be dramatized. When Brutus and Portia parted for the last timein the island of Nisida, she restrained all expression of grief that she might not shakehisfortitude; but afterwards, in passing through a chamber in which there hung a picture of Hector and Andromache, she stopped, gazed upon it for a time with a settled sorrow, and at length burst into a passion of tears.[92]

If Portia had been a Christian, and lived in later times, she might have been another Lady Russel; but she made a poor stoic. No factitious or external control was sufficient to restrain such an exuberance of sensibility and fancy: and those who praise thephilosophyof Portia and theheroismof her death, certainly mistook the character altogether. It is evident, from the manner of her death, that it was not deliberate self-destruction, "after the high Roman fashion," but took place in a paroxysm of madness, caused by overwrought and suppressed feeling, grief, terror, and suspense. Shakspeare has thus represented it:—

BRUTUS.O Cassius! I am sick of many griefs!CASSIUS.Of your philosophy you make no use,If you give place to accidental evils.BRUTUS.No man bears sorrow better; Portia's dead.CASSIUS.Ha!—Portia?BRUTUS.She is dead.CASSIUS.How 'scap'd I killing when I cross'd you so?O insupportable and touching loss—Upon what sickness?BRUTUS.Impatient of my absence,And grief that young Octavius with Mark AntonyHad made themselves so strong—(for with her deathThese tidings came)—with this she fell distract,And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire.

BRUTUS.

O Cassius! I am sick of many griefs!

CASSIUS.

Of your philosophy you make no use,If you give place to accidental evils.

BRUTUS.

No man bears sorrow better; Portia's dead.

CASSIUS.

Ha!—Portia?

BRUTUS.

She is dead.

CASSIUS.

How 'scap'd I killing when I cross'd you so?O insupportable and touching loss—Upon what sickness?

BRUTUS.

Impatient of my absence,And grief that young Octavius with Mark AntonyHad made themselves so strong—(for with her deathThese tidings came)—with this she fell distract,And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire.

So much for woman's philosophy!

Malone has written an essay, to prove from external and internal evidence, that the three parts of King Henry VI. were not originally written by Shakspeare, but altered by him from two old plays,[93]with considerable improvements and additions of his own. Burke, Porson, Dr. Warburton,and Dr. Farmer, pronounced this piece of criticism convincing and unanswerable; but Dr. Johnson and Steevens would not be convinced, and, moreover, have contrived to answer theunanswerable. "Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" The only arbiter in such a case is one's own individual taste and judgment. To me it appears that the three parts of Henry VI. have less of poetry and passion, and more of unnecessary verbosity and inflated language, than the rest of Shakspeare's works; that the continual exhibition of treachery, bloodshed, and violence, is revolting, and the want of unity of action, and of a pervading interest, oppressive and fatiguing; but also that there are splendid passages in the Second and Third Parts, such as Shakspeare alone could have written: and this is not denied by the most skeptical.[94]

Among the arguments against the authenticity of these plays, the character of Margaret of Anjou has not been adduced, and yet to those who have studied Shakspeare in his own spirit, it will appear the most conclusive of all. When we compare her with his other female characters, we are struck at once by the want of family likeness; Shakspeare was not always equal, but he had not twomanners, as they say of painters. I discern his hand in particular parts, but I cannot recognize his spirit in the conception of the whole: he may have laid on some of the colors, but the original design has a certain hardness and heaviness, very unlike his usual style. Margaret of Anjou, as exhibited in these tragedies, is a dramatic portrait of considerable truth, and vigor, and consistency—but she is not one of Shakspeare's women. He who knew so well in what true greatness of spirit consisted—who could excite our respect and sympathy even for a Lady Macbeth, would never have given us a heroine without a touch of heroism; he would not have portrayed a high-hearted woman, struggling unsubdued against the strangest vicissitudes of fortune, meeting reverses and disasters, such as wouldhave broken the most masculine spirit, with unshaken constancy, yet left her without a single personal quality which would excite our interest in her bravely-endured misfortunes; and this too in the very face of history. He would not have given us, in lieu of the magnanimous queen, the subtle and accomplished French woman, a mere "Amazonian trull," with every coarser feature of depravity and ferocity; he would have redeemed her from unmingled detestation; he would have breathed into her some of his own sweet spirit—he would have given the woman a soul.

The old chronicler Hall informs us, that Queen Margaret "excelled all other as well in beauty and favor, as in wit and policy, and was in stomach and courage more like to a man than to a woman." He adds, that after the espousals of Henry and Margaret, "the king's friends fell from him; the lords of the realm fell in division among themselves; the Commons rebelled against their natural prince; fields were foughten; many thousands slain; and, finally, the king was deposed, and his son slain, and his queen sent home again with as much misery and sorrow as she was received with pomp and triumph."

This passage seems to have furnished the groundwork of the character as it is developed in these plays with no great depth or skill. Margaret is portrayed with all the exterior graces of her sex; as bold and artful, with spirit to dare, resolution to act, and fortitude to endure; but treacherous,haughty, dissembling, vindictive, and fierce. The bloody struggle for power in which she was engaged, and the companionship of the ruthless iron men around her, seem to have left her nothing of womanhood but the heart of a mother—that last stronghold of our feminine nature! So far the character is consistently drawn: it has something of the power, but none of the flowing ease of Shakspeare's manner. There are fine materials not well applied; there is poetry in some of the scenes and speeches; the situations are often exceedingly poetical; but in the character of Margaret herself, there is not an atom of poetry. In her artificial dignity, her plausible wit, and her endless volubility, she would remind us of some of the most admired heroines of French tragedy, but for that unlucky box on the ear which she gives the Duchess of Gloster,—a violation of tragic decorum, which of course destroys all parallel.

Having said thus much, I shall point out some of the finest and most characteristic scenes in which Margaret appears. The speech in which she expresses her scorn of her meek husband, and her impatience of the power exercised by those fierce overbearing barons, York, Salisbury, Warwick, Buckingham, is very fine, and conveys as faithful an idea of those feudal times as of the woman who speaks. The burst of female spite with which she concludes, is admirable—

Not all these lords do vex me half so muchAs that proud dame, the Lord Protector's wife.She sweeps it through the court with troops of ladies,More like an empress than Duke Humphrey's wife.Strangers in court do take her for the queen:She bears a duke's revenues on her back,And in her heart she scorns our poverty.Shall I not live to be avenged on her?Contemptuous base-born callet as she is!She vaunted 'mongst her minions t'other day,The very train of her worst wearing gownWas better worth than all my father's lands,Till Suffolk gave two dukedoms for his daughter.

Her intriguing spirit, the facility with which she enters into the murderous confederacy against the good Duke Humphrey, the artful plausibility with which she endeavours to turn suspicion from herself—confounding her gentle consort by mere dint of words—are exceedingly characteristic, but not the less revolting.

Her criminal love for Suffolk (which is a dramatic incident, not an historic fact) gives rise to the beautiful parting scene in the third act; a scene which it is impossible to read without a thrill of emotion, hurried away by that power and pathos which forces us to sympathize with the eloquence of grief, yet excites not a momentary interest either for Margaret or her lover. The ungoverned fury of Margaret in the first instance, the manner in which she calls on Suffolk to curse his enemies, and then shrinks back overcome by the violence of the spirit she had herself evoked, and terrified by the vehemence of his imprecations; the transition in her mind from the extremity of rage to tearsand melting fondness, have been pronounced, and justly, to be in Shakspeare's own manner.

Go, speak not to me—even now begone.O go not yet! Even thus two friends condemn'dEmbrace, and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves,Loather a hundred times to part than die:Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee!

which is followed by that beautiful and intense burst of passion from Suffolk—

'Tis not the hand I care for, wert thou hence;A wilderness is populous enough,So Suffolk had thy heavenly company:For where thou art, there is the world itself,With every several pleasure in the world;And where thou art not, desolation!

In the third part of Henry the Sixth, Margaret, engaged in the terrible struggle for her husband's throne, appears to rather more advantage. The indignation against Henry, who had pitifully yielded his son's birthright for the privilege of reigning unmolested during his own life, is worthy of her, and gives rise to a beautiful speech. We are here inclined to sympathize with her; but soon after follows the murder of the Duke of York; and the base revengeful spirit and atrocious cruelty with which she insults over him, unarmed and a prisoner,—the bitterness of her mockery, and the unwomanly malignity with which she presents him with the napkin stained with the blood of hisyoungest son, and "bids the father wipe his eyes withal," turn all our sympathy into aversion and horror. York replies in the celebrated speech, beginning—

She-wolf of France, and worse than wolves of France,Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth—

and taunts her with the poverty of her father, the most irritating topic he could have chosen.

Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult?It needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen,Unless the adage must be verified,That beggars, mounted, ride their horse to death.'Tis beauty, that doth oft make women proud;But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small.'Tis virtue that doth make them most admired;The contrary doth make thee wondered at.'Tis government that makes them seem divine,The want thereof makes thee abominable.* * * *O tiger's heart, wrapped in a woman's hide!How could'st thou drain the life-blood of the childTo bid the father wipe his face withal,And yet be seen to bear a woman's face?Women are soft, mild, pitiful and flexible,Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless!

* * * *

O tiger's heart, wrapped in a woman's hide!How could'st thou drain the life-blood of the childTo bid the father wipe his face withal,And yet be seen to bear a woman's face?Women are soft, mild, pitiful and flexible,Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless!

By such a woman as Margaret is here depicted such a speech could be answered only in one way—with her dagger's point—and thus she answers it.

It is some comfort to reflect that this trait of ferocity is not historical: the body of the Dukeof York was found, after the battle, among the heaps of slain, and his head struck off: but even this was not done by the command of Margaret.

In another passage, the truth and consistency of the character of Margaret are sacrificed to the march of the dramatic action, with a very ill effect. When her fortunes were at the very lowest ebb, and she had sought refuge in the court of the French king, Warwick, her most formidable enemy, upon some disgust he had taken against Edward the Fourth, offered to espouse her cause; and proposed a match between the prince her son and his daughter Anne of Warwick—the "gentle Lady Anne," who figures in Richard the Third. In the play, Margaret embraces the offer without a moment's hesitation:[95]we are disgusted by her versatile policy, and a meanness of spirit in no way allied to the magnanimous forgiveness of her terrible adversary. The Margaret of history sternly resisted this degrading expedient. She could not, she said, pardon from her heart the man who had been the primary cause of all her misfortunes. She mistrusted Warwick, despised him for the motives of his revolt from Edward, and considered that to match her son into the family of her enemy from mere policy was a species of degradation. It took Louis theEleventh, with all his art and eloquence, fifteen days to wring a reluctant consent, accompanied with tears, from this high-hearted woman.

The speech of Margaret to her council of generals before the battle of Tewksbury, (Act v. scene 5,) is as remarkable a specimen of false rhetoric, as her address to the soldiers, on the eve of the fight, is of true and passionate eloquence.

She witnesses the final defeat of her army, the massacre of her adherents, and the murder of her son; and though the savage Richard would willingly have put an end to her misery, and exclaims very pertinently—

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