During the time of the civil wars of York and Lancaster, England was a perfect bear-garden, and Shakespeare has given us a very lively picture of the scene. The three parts of HENRY VI convey a picture of very little else; and are inferior to the other historical plays. They have brilliant passages; but the general ground-work is comparatively poor and meagre, the style 'flat and unraised'. There are few lines like the following:
Glory is like a circle in the water;Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,Till by broad spreading it disperse to naught.
The first part relates to the wars in France after the death of Henry V and the story of the Maid of Orleans. She is here almost as scurvily treated as in Voltaire's Pucelle. Talbot is a very magnificent sketch: there is something as formidable in this portrait of him, as there would be in a monumental figure of him or in the sight of the armour which he wore. The scene in which he visits the Countess of Auvergne, who seeks to entrap him, is a very spirited one, and his description of his own treatment while a prisoner to the French not less remarkable.
Salisbury. Yet tell'st thou not how thou wert entertain'd.
Talbot. With scoffs and scorns, and contumelious taunts,In open market-place produced they me,To be a public spectacle to all.Here, said they, is the terror of the French,The scarecrow that affrights our children so.Then broke I from the officers that led me,And with my nails digg'd stones out of the ground,To hurl at the beholders of my shame.My grisly countenance made others fly,None durst come near for fear of sudden death.In iron walls they deem'd me not secure:So great a fear my name amongst them spread,That they suppos'd I could rend bars of steel,And spurn in pieces posts of adamant.Wherefore a guard of chosen shot I had:They walk'd about me every minute-while;And if I did but stir out of my bed,Ready they were to shoot me to the heart.
The second part relates chiefly to the contests between the nobles during the minority of Henry and the death of Gloucester, the good Duke Humphrey. The character of Cardinal Beaufort is the most prominent in the group: the account of his death is one of our author's masterpieces. So is the speech of Gloucester to the nobles on the loss of the provinces of France by the king's marriage with Margaret of Anjou. The pretensions and growing ambition of the Duke of York, the father of Richard III, are also very ably developed. Among the episodes, the tragi-comedy of Jack Cade, and the detection of the impostor Simcox are truly edifying.
The third part describes Henry's loss of his crown: his death takes place in the last act, which is usually thrust into the common acting play of RICHARD III. The character of Gloucester, afterwards King Richard, is here very powerfully commenced, and his dangerous designs and long-reaching ambition are fully described in his soliloquy in the third act, beginning, 'Aye, Edward will use women honourably.' Henry VI is drawn as distinctly as his high-spirited Queen, and notwithstanding the very mean figure which Henry makes as a king, we still feel more respect for him than for his wife.
We have already observed that Shakespeare was scarcely more remarkable for the force and marked contrasts of his characters than for the truth and subtlety with which he has distinguished those which approached the nearest to each other. For instance, the soul of Othello is hardly more distinct from that of Iago than that of Desdemona is shown to be from Aemilia's; the ambition of Macbeth is as distinct from the ambition of Richard III as it is from the meekness of Duncan; the real madness of Lear is as different from the feigned madness of Edgar [Footnote: There is another instance of the name distinction in Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet's pretended madness would make a very good real madness in any other author.] as from the babbling of the fool; the contrast between wit and folly in Falstaff and Shallow is not more characteristic though more obvious than the gradations of folly, loquacious or reserved, in Shallow and Silence; and again, the gallantry of Prince Henry is as little confounded with that of Hotspur as with the cowardice of Falstaff, or as the sensual and philosophic cowardice of the Knight is with the pitiful and cringing cowardice of Parolles. All these several personages were as different in Shakespeare as they would have been in themselves: his imagination borrowed from the life, and every circumstance, object, motive, passion, operated there as it would in reality, and produced a world of men and women as distinct, as true and as various as those that exist in nature. The peculiar property of Shakespeare's imagination was this truth, accompanied with the unconsciousness of nature: indeed, imagination to be perfect must be unconscious, at least in production; for nature is so. We shall attempt one example more in the characters of Richard II and Henry VI.
The characters and situations of both these persons were so nearly alike, that they would have been completely confounded by a commonplace poet. Yet they are kept quite distinct in Shakespeare. Both were kings, and both unfortunate. Both lost their crowns owing to their mismanagement and imbecility; the one from a thoughtless, wilful abuse of power, the other from an indifference to it. The manner in which they bear their misfortunes corresponds exactly to the causes which led to them. The one is always lamenting the loss of his power which he has not the spirit to regain; the other seems only to regret that he had ever been king, and is glad to be rid of the power, with the trouble; the effeminacy of the one is that of a voluptuary, proud, revengeful, impatient of contradiction, and inconsolable in his misfortunes; the effeminacy of the other is that of an indolent, good-natured mind, naturally averse to the turmoils of ambition and the cares of greatness, and who wishes to pass his time in monkish indolence and contemplation.—Richard bewails the loss of the kingly power only as it was the means of gratifying his pride and luxury; Henry regards it only as a means of doing right, and is less desirous of the advantages to be derived from possessing it than afraid of exercising it wrong. In knighting a young soldier, he gives him ghostly advice—
Edward Plantagenet, arise a knight,And learn this lesson, draw thy sword in right.
Richard II in the first speeches of the play betrays his real character. In the first alarm of his pride, on hearing of Bolingbroke's rebellion, before his presumption has met with any check, he exclaims:
Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords:This earth shall have a feeling, and these stonesProve armed soldiers, ere her native kingShall falter under proud rebellious arms.. . . . .Not all the water in the rough rude seaCan wash the balm from an anointed king;The breath of worldly man cannot deposeThe Deputy elected by the Lord.For every man that Bolingbroke hath prest,To lift sharp steel against our golden crown,Heaven for his Richard hath in heavenly payA glorious angel; then if angels fight,Weak men must fall; for Heaven still guards the right.
Yet, notwithstanding this royal confession of faith, on the very first news of actual disaster, all his conceit of himself as the peculiar favourite of Providence vanishes into air.
But now the blood of twenty thousand menDid triumph in my face, and they are fled.All souls that will be safe fly from my side;For time hath set a blot upon my pride.
Immediately after, however, recollecting that 'cheap defence' of the divinity of kings which is to be found in opinion, he is for arming his name against his enemies.
Awake, thou coward Majesty, thou sleep'st;Is not the King's name forty thousand names?Arm, arm, my name: a puny subject strikesAt thy great glory.
King Henry does not make any such vapouring resistance to the loss of his crown, but lets it slip from off his head as a weight which he is neither able nor willing to bear; stands quietly by to see the issue of the contest for his kingdom, as if it were a game at push-pin, and is pleased when the odds prove against him.
When Richard first hears of the death of his favourites, Bushy, Bagot, and the rest, he indignantly rejects all idea of any further efforts, and only indulges in the extravagant impatience of his grief and his despair, in that fine speech which has been so often quoted:
Aumerle. Where is the duke my father, with his power?
K. Richard. No matter where: of comfort no man speak:Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyesWrite sorrow in the bosom of the earth!Let's choose executors, and talk of wills:And yet not so—for what can we bequeath,Save our deposed bodies to the ground?Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's,And nothing can we call our own but death,And that small model of the barren earth,Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.For heaven's sake let us sit upon the ground,And tell sad stories of the death of Kings:How some have been depos'd, some slain in war;Some haunted by the ghosts they dispossess'd;Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kili'd;All murder'd:—for within the hollow crown,That rounds the mortal temples of a king,Keeps death his court: and there the antic sits,Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp!Allowing him a breath, a little sceneTo monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;Infusing him with self and vain conceit—As if this flesh, which walls about our life,Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus,Comes at the last, and, with a little pin,Bores through his castle wall, and—farewell king!Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and bloodWith solemn reverence; throw away respect,Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,For you have but mistook me all this while:I live on bread like you, feel want, taste grief,Need friends, like you; subjected thus,How can you say to me I am a king?
There is as little sincerity afterwards in his affected resignation to his fate, as there is fortitude in this exaggerated picture of his misfortunes before they have happened.
When Northumberland comes back with the message from Bolingbroke, he exclaims, anticipating the result,—
What must the king do now? Must he submit?The king shall do it: must he be depos'd?The king shall be contented: must he loseThe name of king? O' God's name let it go.I'll give my jewels for a set of beads,My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,My gay apparel for an almsman's gown,My figur'd goblets for a dish of wood,My sceptre for a palmer's walking staff,My subjects for a pair of carved saints,And my large kingdom for a little grave—A little, little grave, an obscure grave.
How differently is all this expressed in King Henry's soliloquy, during the battle with Edward's party:
This battle fares like to the morning's war,When dying clouds contend with growing light,What time the shepherd blowing of his nails,Can neither call it perfect day or night.Here on this mole-hill will I sit me down;To whom God will, there be the victory!For Margaret my Queen, and Clifford too,Have chid me from the battle; swearing bothThey prosper best of all when I am thence.Would I were dead, if God's good will were so.For what is in this world but grief and woe?O God! methinks it were a happy lifeTo be no better than a homely swain,To sit upon a hill as I do now,To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,Thereby to see the minutes how they run:How many make the hour full complete,How many hours bring about the day,How many days will finish up the year,How many years a mortal man may live.When this is known, then to divide the times:So many hours must I tend my flock,So many hours must I take my rest,So many hours must I contemplate,So many hours must I sport myself;So many days my ewes have been with young,So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean,So many months ere I shall shear the fleece:So many minutes, hours, weeks, months, and yearsPast over, to the end they were created,Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.Ah! what a life were this! how sweet, how lovely!Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shadeTo shepherds looking on their silly sheep,Than doth a rich embroidered canopyTo kings that fear their subjects' treachery?O yes it doth, a thousand-fold it doth.And to conclude, the shepherds' homely curds,His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade,All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,Is far beyond a prince's delicates,His viands sparkling in a golden cup,His body couched in a curious bed,When care, mistrust, and treasons wait on him.
This is a true and beautiful description of a naturally quiet and contented disposition, and not, like the former, the splenetic effusion of disappointed ambition.
In the last scene of RICHARD II his despair lends him courage: he beats the keeper, slays two of his assassins, and dies with imprecations in his mouth against Sir Pierce Exton, who 'had staggered his royal person'. Henry, when he is seized by the deer-stealers, only reads them a moral lecture on the duty of allegiance and the sanctity of an oath; and when stabbed by Gloucester in the Tower, reproaches him with his crimes, but pardons him his own death.
RICHARD III may be considered as properly a stageplay: it belongs to the theatre, rather than to the closet. We shall therefore criticize it chiefly with a reference to the manner in which we have seen it performed. It is the character in which Garrick came out: it was the second character in which Mr. Kean appeared, and in which he acquired his fame. Shakespeare we have always with us: actors we have only for a few seasons; and therefore some account of them may be acceptable, if not to our cotemporaries, to those who come after us, if 'that rich and idle personage, Posterity', should deign to look into our writings.
It is possible to form a higher conception of the character of Richard than that given by Mr. Kean: but we cannot imagine any character represented with greater distinctness and precision, more perfectly ARTICULATED in every part. Perhaps indeed there is too much of what is technically called execution. When we first saw this celebrated actor in the part, we thought he sometimes failed from an exuberance of manner, and dissipated the impression of the general character by the variety of his resources. To be complete, his delineation of it should have more solidity, depth, sustained and impassioned feeling, with somewhat less brilliancy, with fewer glancing lights, pointed transitions, and pantomimic evolutions.
The Richard of Shakespeare is towering and lofty; equally impetuous and commanding; haughty, violent, and subtle; bold and treacherous; confident in his strength as well as in his cunning; raised high by his birth, and higher by his talents and his crimes; a royal usurper, a princely hypocrite, a tyrant and a murderer of the house of Plantagenet.
But I was born so high:Our aery buildeth in the cedar's top,And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.
The idea conveyed in these lines (which are indeed omitted in the miserable medley acted for Richard III) is never lost sight of by Shakespeare, and should not be out of the actor's mind for a moment. The restless and sanguinary Richard is not a man striving to be great, but to be greater than he is; conscious of his strength of will, his power of intellect, his daring courage, his elevated station; and making use of these advantages to commit unheard-of crimes, and to shield himself from remorse and infamy.
If Mr. Kean does not entirely succeed in concentrating all the lines of the character, as drawn by Shakespeare, he gives an animation, vigour, and relief to the part which we have not seen equalled. He is more refined than Cooke; more bold, varied, and original than Kemble in the same character. In some parts he is deficient in dignity, and particularly in the scenes of state business, he has by no means an air of artificial authority. There is at times an aspiring elevation, an enthusiastic rapture in his expectations of attaining the crown, and at others a gloating expression of sullen delight, as if he already clenched the bauble, and held it in his grasp. The courtship scene with Lady Anne is an admirable exhibition of smooth and smiling villainy. The progress of wily adulation, of encroaching humility, is finely marked by his action, voice and eye. He seems, like the first Tempter, to approach his prey, secure of the event, and as if success had smoothed his way before him. The late Mr. Cooke's manner of representing this scene was more vehement, hurried, and full of anxious uncertainty. This, though more natural in general, was less in character in this particular instance. Richard should woo less as a lover than as an actor—to show his mental superiority, and power of making others the playthings of his purposes. Mr. Kean's attitude in leaning against the side of the stage before he comes forward to address Lady Anne, is one of the most graceful and striking ever witnessed on the stage. It would do for Titian to paint. The frequent and rapid transition of his voice from the expression of the fiercest passion to the most familiar tones of conversation was that which gave a peculiar grace of novelty to his acting on his first appearance. This has been since imitated and caricatured by others, and he himself uses the artifice more sparingly than he did. His by-play is excellent. His manner of bidding his friends 'Good night', after pausing with the point of his sword drawn slowly backward and forward on the ground, as if considering the plan of the battle next day, is a particularly happy and natural thought. He gives to the two last acts of the play the greatest animation and effect. He fills every part of the stage; and makes up for the deficiency of his person by what has been sometimes objected to as an excess of action. The concluding scene in which he is killed by Richmond is the most brilliant of the whole. He fights at last like one drunk with wounds; and the attitude in which he stands with his hands stretched out, after his sword is wrested from him, has a preternatural and terrific grandeur, as if his will could not be disarmed, and the very phantoms of his despair had power to kill.—Mr. Kean has since in a great measure effaced the impression of his Richard III by the superior efforts of his genius in Othello (his masterpiece), in the murder-scene in MACBETH, in RICHARD II, in SIR GILES OVERREACH, and lastly in OROONOKO; but we still like to look back to his first performance of this part, both because it first assured his admirers of his future success, and because we bore our feeble but, at that time, not useless testimony to the merits of this very original actor, on which the town was considerably divided for no other reason than because they WERE original.
The manner in which Shakespeare's plays have been generally altered or rather mangled by modern mechanists, is a disgrace to the English stage. The patch-work Richard III which is acted under the sanction of his name, and which was manufactured by Cibber, is a striking example of this remark.
The play itself is undoubtedly a very powerful effusion of Shakespeare's genius. The ground-work of the character of Richard, that mixture of intellectual vigour with moral depravity, in which Shakespeare delighted to show his strength—gave full scope as well as temptation to the exercise of his imagination. The character of his hero is almost everywhere predominant, and marks its lurid track throughout. The original play is, however, too long for representation, and there are some few scenes which might be better spared than preserved, and by omitting which it would remain a complete whole. The only rule, indeed, for altering Shakespeare is to retrench certain passages which may be considered either as superfluous or obsolete, but not to add or transpose anything. The arrangement and development of the story, and the mutual contrast and combination of the dramatis personae, are in general as finely managed as the development of the characters or the expression of the passions.
This rule has not been adhered to in the present instance. Some of the most important and striking passages in the principal character have been omitted, to make room for idle and misplaced extracts from other plays; the only intention of which seems to have been to make the character of Richard as odious and disgusting as possible. It is apparently for no other purpose than to make Gloucester stab King Henry on the stage, that the fine abrupt introduction of the character in the opening of the play is lost in the tedious whining morality of the uxorious king (taken from another play);—we say TEDIOUS, because it interrupts the business of the scene, and loses its beauty and effect by having no intelligible connexion with the previous character of the mild, well-meaning monarch. The passages which the unfortunate Henry has to recite are beautiful and pathetic in themselves, but they have nothing to do with the world that Richard has to 'bustle in'. In the same spirit of vulgar caricature is the scene between Richard and Lady Anne (when his wife) interpolated without any authority, merely to gratify this favourite propensity to disgust and loathing. With the same perverse consistency, Richard, after his last fatal struggle, is raised up by some galvanic process, to utter the imprecation, without any motive but pure malignity, which Shakespeare has so properly put into the mouth of Northumberland on hearing of Percy's death. To make room for these worse than needless additions, many of the most striking passages in the real play have been omitted by the foppery and ignorance of the prompt-book critics. We do not mean to insist merely on passages which are fine as poetry and to the reader, such as Clarence's dream, &c., but on those which are important to the understanding of the character, and peculiarly adapted for stage-effect. We will give the following as instances among several others. The first is the scene where Richard enters abruptly to the queen and her friends to defend himself:
Gloucester. They do me wrong, and I will not endure it.Who are they that complain unto the king,That I forsooth am stern, and love them not?By holy Paul, they love his grace but lightly,That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours:Because I cannot flatter and look fair,Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,Duck with French nods, and apish courtesy,I must be held a rancorous enemy.Cannot a plain man live, and think no harm,But thus his simple truth must be abus'dWith silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?
Gray. To whom in all this presence speaks your grace?
Gloucester. To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace;When have I injur'd thee, when done thee wrong?Or thee? or thee? or any of your faction?A plague upon you all!
Nothing can be more characteristic than the turbulent pretensions to meekness and simplicity in this address. Again, the versatility and adroitness of Richard is admirably described in the following ironical conversation with Brakenbury:
Brakenbury. I beseech your graces both to pardon me.His majesty hath straitly given in charge,That no man shall have private conference,Of what degree soever, with your brother.
Gloucester. E'en so, and please your worship, Brakenbury,You may partake of anything we say:We speak no treason, man—we say the kingIs wise and virtuous, and his noble queenWell strook in years, fair, and not jealous.We say that Shore's wife hath a pretty foot,A cherry lip,A bonny eye, a passing pleasing tongue;That the queen's kindred are made gentlefolks.How say you, sir? Can you deny all this?
Brakenbury. With this, my lord, myself have nought to do.
Gloucester. What, fellow, naught to do with mistress Shore?I tell you, sir, he that doth naught with her,Excepting one, were best to do it secretly alone.
Brakenbury. What one, my lord?
Gloucester. Her husband, knave—would'st thou betray me?
The feigned reconciliation of Gloucester with the queen's kinsmen is also a masterpiece. One of the finest strokes in the play, and which serves to show as much as anything the deep, plausible manners of Richard, is the unsuspecting security of Hastings, at the very time when the former is plotting his death, and when that very appearance of cordiality and good-humour on which Hastings builds his confidence arises from Richard's consciousness of having betrayed him to his ruin. This, with the whole character of Hastings, is omitted.
Perhaps the two most beautiful passages in the original play are the farewell apostrophe of the queen to the Tower, where the children are shut up from her, and Tyrrel's description of their death. We will finish our quotations with them.
Queen. Stay, yet look back with me unto the Tower;Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes,Whom envy hath immured within your walls;Rough cradle for such little pretty ones,Rude, rugged nurse, old sullen play-fellow,For tender princes! The other passage is the account of theirdeath by Tyrrel:
Dighton and Forrest, whom I did subornTo do this piece of ruthless butchery,Albeit they were flesh'd villains, bloody dogs,—Wept like to children in their death's sad story:O thus! quoth Dighton, lay the gentle babes;Thus, thus, quoth Forrest, girdling one anotherWithin their innocent alabaster arms;Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,And in that summer beauty kissed each other;A book of prayers on their pillow lay,Which once, quoth Forrest, almost changed my mind:But oh the devil!—there the villain stopped;When Dighton thus told on—we smotheredThe most replenished sweet work of nature,That from the prime creation ere she framed.
These are some of those wonderful bursts of feeling, done to the life, to the very height of fancy and nature, which our Shakespeare alone could give. We do not insist on the repetition of these last passages as proper for the stage: we should indeed be loath to trust them in the mouth of almost any actor: but we should wish them to be retained in preference at least to the fantoccini exhibition of the young princes, Edward and York, bandying childish wit with their uncle.
This play contains little action or violence of passion, yet it has considerable interest of a more mild and thoughtful cast, and some of the most striking passages in the author's works. The character of Queen Katherine is the most perfect delineation of matronly dignity, sweetness, and resignation, that can be conceived. Her appeals to the protection of the king, her remonstrances to the cardinals, her conversations with her women, show a noble and generous spirit accompanied with the utmost gentleness of nature. What can be more affecting than her answer to Campeius and Wolsey, who come to visit her as pretended friends.
—'Nay, forsooth, my friends,They that must weigh out my afflictions,They that my trust must grow to, live not here;They are, as all my comforts are, far hence,In mine own country, lords.'
Dr. Johnson observes of this play, that 'the meek sorrows and virtuous distress of Katherine have furnished some scenes, which may be justly numbered among the greatest efforts of tragedy. But the genius of Shakespeare comes in and goes out with Katherine. Every other part may be easily conceived and easily written.' This is easily said; but with all due deference to so great a reputed authority as that of Johnson, it is not true. For instance, the scene of Buckingham led to execution is one of the most affecting and natural in Shakespeare, and one to which there is hardly an approach in any other author. Again, the character of Wolsey, the description of his pride and of his fall, are inimitable, and have, besides their gorgeousness of effect, a pathos, which only the genius of Shakespeare could lend to the distresses of a proud, bad man, like Wolsey. There is a sort of child-like simplicity in the very helplessness of his situation, arising from the recollection of his past overbearing ambition. After the cutting sarcasms of his enemies on his disgrace, against which he bears up with a spirit conscious of his own superiority, he breaks out into that fine apostrophe:
Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!This is the state of man; to-day he puts forthThe tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;The third day, comes a frost, a killing frost;And—when he thinks, good easy man, full surelyHis greatness is a ripening—nips his root,And then he falls, as I do. I have ventur'd,Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,These many summers in a sea of glory;But far beyond my depth: my high-blown prideAt length broke under me; and now has left me,Weary and old with service, to the mercyOf a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.Vain pomp and glory of the world, I hate ye!I feel my heart new open'd; O how wretchedIs that poor man, that hangs on princes' favours!There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to,That sweet aspect of princes, and our ruin,More pangs and fears than war and women have;And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,Never to hope again!—
There is in this passage, as well as in the well-known dialogue with Cromwell which follows, something which stretches beyond commonplace; nor is the account which Griffiths gives of Wolsey's death less Shakespearian; and the candour with which Queen Katherine listens to the praise of 'him whom of all men while living she hated most' adds the last graceful finishing to her character.
Among other images of great individual beauty might be mentioned the description of the effect of Ann Boleyn's presenting herself to the crowd at her coronation.
—While her grace sat downTo rest awhile, some half an hour or so,In a rich chair of state, opposing freelyThe beauty of her person to the people.Believe me, sir, she is the goodliest womanThat ever lay by man. Which when the peopleHad the full view of, 'such a noise aroseAs the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest,As loud and to as many tunes'.
The character of Henry VIII is drawn with great truth and spirit. It is like a very disagreeable portrait, sketched by the hand of a master. His gross appearance, his blustering demeanour, his vulgarity, his arrogance, his sensuality, his cruelty, his hypocrisy, his want of common decency and common humanity, are marked in strong lines. His traditional peculiarities of expression complete the reality of the picture. The authoritative expletive, 'Ha!' with which ne intimates his indignation or surprise, has an effect like the first startling sound that breaks from a thunder-cloud. He is of all the monarchs in our history the most disgusting: for he unites in himself all the vices of barbarism and refinement, without their virtues. Other kings before him (such as Richard III) were tyrants and murderers out of ambition or necessity: they gained or established unjust power by violent means: they destroyed their or made its tenure insecure. But Henry VIII's power is most fatal to those whom he loves: he is cruel and remorseless to pamper his luxurious appetites: bloody and voluptuous; an amorous murderer; an uxorious debauchee. His hardened insensibility to the feelings of others is strengthened by the most profligate self-indulgence. The religious hypocrisy, under which he masks his cruelty and his lust, is admirably displayed in the speech in which he describes the first misgivings of his conscience and its increasing throes and terrors, which have induced him to divorce his queen. The only thing in his favour in this play is his treatment of Cranmer: there is also another circumstance in his favour, which is his patronage of Hans Holbein.—It has been said of Shakespeare, 'No maid could live near such a man.' It might with as good reason be said, 'No king could live near such a man.' His eye would have penetrated through the pomp of circumstance and the veil of opinion. As it is, he has represented such persons to the life—his plays are in this respect the glass of history—he has done them the same justice as if he had been a privy counsellor all his life, and in each successive reign. Kings ought never to be seen upon the stage. In the abstract, they are very disagreeable characters: it is only while living that they are 'the best of kings'. It is their power, their splendour, it is the apprehension of the personal consequences of their favour or their hatred that dazzles the imagination and suspends the judgement of their favourites or their vassals; but death cancels the bond of allegiance and of interest; and seen AS THEY WERE, their power and their pretensions look monstrous and ridiculous. The charge brought against modern philosophy as inimical to loyalty is unjust because it might as well be brought lover of kings. We have often wondered that Henry VIII as he is drawn by Shakespeare, and as we have seen him represented in all the bloated deformity of mind and person, is not hooted from the English stage.
KING JOHN is the last of the historical plays we shall have to speak of; and we are not sorry that it is. If we are to indulge our imaginations, we had rather do it upon an imaginary theme; if we are to find subjects for the exercise of our pity and terror, we prefer seeking them in fictitious danger and fictitious distress. It gives a SORENESS to our feelings of indignation or sympathy, when we know that in tracing the progress of sufferings and crimes we are treading upon real ground, and recollect that the poet's 'dream' DENOTED A FOREGONE CONCLUSION—irrevocable ills, not conjured up by fancy, but placed beyond the reach of poetical justice. That the treachery of King John, the death of Arthur, the grief of Constance, had a real truth in history, sharpens the sense of pain, while it hangs a leaden weight on the heart and the imagination. Something whispers us that we have no right to make a mock of calamities like these, or to turn the truth of things into the puppet and plaything of our fancies. 'To consider thus' may be 'to consider too curiously'; but still we think that the actual truth of the particular events, in proportion as we are conscious of it, is a drawback on the pleasure as well as the dignity of tragedy.
KING JOHN has all the beauties of language and all the richness of the imagination to relieve the painfulness of the subject. The character of King John himself is kept pretty much in the background; it is only marked in by comparatively slight indications. The crimes he is tempted to commit are such as are thrust upon him rather by circumstances and opportunity than of his own seeking: he is here represented as more cowardly than cruel, and as more contemptible than odious. The play embraces only a part of his history. There are however few characters on the stage that excite more disgust and loathing. He has no intellectual grandeur or strength of character to shield him from the indignation which his immediate conduct provokes: he stands naked and defenceless, in that respect, to the worst we can think of him: and besides, we are impelled to put the very worst construction on his meanness and cruelty by the tender picture of the beauty and helplessness of the object of it, as well as by the frantic and heart-rending pleadings of maternal despair. We do not forgive him the death of Arthur because he had too late revoked his doom and tried to prevent it, and perhaps because he has himself repented of his black design, our MORAL SENSE gains courage to hate him the more for it. We take him at his word, and think his purposes must be odious indeed, when he himself shrinks back from them. The scene in which King John suggests to Hubert the design of murdering his nephew is a masterpiece of dramatic skill, but it is still inferior, very inferior to the scene between Hubert and Arthur, when the latter learns the orders to put out his eyes. If anything ever was penned, heart-piercing, mixing the extremes of terror and pity, of that which shocks and that which soothes the mind, it is this scene. We will give it entire, though perhaps it is tasking the reader's sympathy too much.
Enter Hubert and Executioner
Hubert. Heat me these irons hot, and look you standWithin the arras; when I strike my footUpon the bosom of the ground, rush forthAnd bind the boy, which you shall find with me,Fast to the chair: be heedful: hence, and watch.
Executioner. I hope your warrant will bear out the deed.
Hubert. Uncleanly scruples! fear not you; look to't.—Young lad, come forth; I have to say with you.
Enter Arthur
Arthur. Good morrow, Hubert.
Hubert. Morrow, little Prince.
Arthur. As little prince (having so great a titleTo be more prince) as may be. You are sad.
Hubert. Indeed I have been merrier.
Arthur. Mercy on me!Methinks no body should be sad but I;Yet I remember when I was in France,Young gentlemen would be as sad as night,Only for wantonness. By my Christendom,So were I out of prison, and kept sheep,I should be merry as the day is long.And so I would be here, but that I doubtMy uncle practises more harm to me.He is afraid of me, and I of him.Is it my fault that I was Geoffery's son?Indeed it is not, and I would to heav'nI were your son, so you would love me, Hubert.
Hubert. If I talk to him, with his innocent prateHe will awake my mercy, which lies dead;Therefore I will be sudden, and dispatch. [Aside.]
Arthur. Are you sick, Hubert? you look pale to-day?In sooth, I would you were a little sick,That I might sit all night and watch with you.Alas, I love you more than you do me.
Hubert. His words do take possession of my bosom.Read here, young Arthur—[Showing a paper.]How now, foolish rheum, [Aside.]Turning dis-piteous torture out of door!I must be brief, lest resolution dropOut at mine eyes in tender womanish tears.—Can you not read it? Is it not fair writ?
Arthur. Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul effect.Must you with irons burn out both mine eyes?
Hubert. Young boy, I must.
Arthur. And will you?
Hubert. And I will.
Arthur. Have you the heart? When your head did but ache,I knit my handkerchief about your brows,(The best I had, a princess wrought it me)And I did never ask it you again;And with my hand at midnight held your head;And, like the watchful minutes to the hour,Still and anon cheer'd up the heavy time,Saying, what lack you? and where lies your grief?Or, what good love may I perform for you?Many a poor man's son would have lain still,And ne'er have spoke a loving word to you;But you at your sick service had a prince.Nay, you may think my love was crafty love,And call it cunning. Do, and if you will:If heav'n be pleas'd that you must use me ill,Why then you must.—Will you put out mine eyes?These eyes, that never did, and never shall,So much as frown on you?
Hubert. I've sworn to do it;And with hot irons must I burn them out.
Arthur. Oh if an angel should have come to me,And told me Hubert should put out mine eyes,I would not have believ'd a tongue but Hubert's.
Hubert, Come forth; do as I bid you. [Stamps, and the men enter.]
Arthur. O save me, Hubert, save me! my eyes are outEv'n with the fierce looks of these bloody men.
Hubert. Give me the iron, I say, and bind him here.
Arthur. Alas, what need you be so boist'rous rough?I will not struggle, I will stand stone-still.For heav'n's sake, Hubert, let me not be bound!Nay, hear me, Hubert, drive these men away,And I will sit as quiet as a lamb:I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word,Nor look upon the iron angrily:Thrust but these men away, and I'll forgive you,Whatever torment you do put me to.
Hubert. Go, stand within; let me alone with him.
Executioner. I am best pleas'd to be from such a deed. [Exit.]
Arthur. Alas, I then have chid away my friend.He hath a stern look, but a gentle heart;Let him come back, that his compassion mayGive life to yours.
Hubert. Come, boy, prepare yourself.
Arthur. Is there no remedy?
Hubert. None, but to lose your eyes.
Arthur. O heav'n! that there were but a mote in yours,A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wand'ring hair,Any annoyance in that precious sense!Then, feeling what small things are boist'rous there,Your vile intent must needs seem horrible.
Hubert. Is this your promise? go to, hold your tongue.
Arthur. Let me not hold my tongue; let me not, Hubert;Or, Hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue,So I may keep mine eyes. O spare mine eyes!Though to no use, but still to look on you.Lo, by my troth, the instrument is cold,And would not harm me.
Hubert. I can heat it, boy.
Arthur. No, in good sooth, the fire is dead with grief.Being create for comfort, to be us'dIn undeserv'd extremes; see else yourself,There is no malice in this burning coal;The breath of heav'n hath blown its spirit out,And strew'd repentant ashes on its head.
Hubert. But with my breath I can revive it, boy.
Arthur. All things that you shall use to do me wrong,Deny their office, only you do lackThat mercy which fierce fire and iron extend,Creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses.
Hubert. Well, see to live; I will not touch thine eyesFor all the treasure that thine uncle owns:Yet I am sworn, and I did purpose, boy,With this same very iron to bum them out.
Arthur. O, now you look like Hubert. All this whileYou were disguised.
Hubert. Peace! no more. Adieu,Your uncle must not know but you are dead.I'll fill these dogged spies with false reports:And, pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure,That Hubert, for the wealth of all the world,Will not offend thee.
Arthur. O heav'n! I thank you, Hubert.
Hubert. Silence, no more; go closely in with me;Much danger do I undergo for thee. [Exeunt.]
His death afterwards, when he throws himself from his prison-walls, excites the utmost pity for his innocence and friendless situation, and well justifies the exaggerated denunciations of Falconbridge to Hubert whom he suspects wrongfully of the deed.
There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hellAs thou shalt be, if thou did'st kill this child.—If thou did'st but consentTo this most cruel act, do but despair:And if thou want'st a cord, the smallest threadThat ever spider twisted from her wombWill strangle thee; a rush will be a beamTo hang thee on: or would'st thou drown thyself,Put but a little water in a spoon,And it shall be as all the ocean,Enough to stifle such a villain up.
The excess of maternal tenderness, rendered desparate by the fickleness of friends and the injustice of fortune, and made stronger in will, in proportion to the want of all other power, was never more finely expressed than in Constance, The dignity of her answer to King Philip, when she refuses to accompany his messenger, 'To me and to the state of my great grief, let kings assemble,' her indignant reproach to Austria for deserting her cause, her invocation to death, 'that love of misery', however fine and spirited, all yield to the beauty of the passage, where, her passion subsiding into tenderness, she addresses the Cardinal in these words:
Oh father Cardinal, I have heard you sayThat we shall see and know our friends in heav'n:If that be, I shall see my boy again,For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,To him that did but yesterday suspire,There was not such a gracious creature born.But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud,And chase the native beauty from his cheek,And he will look as hollow as a ghost,As dim and meagre as an ague's fit,And so he'll die; and rising so again,When I shall meet him in the court of heav'n,I shall not know him; therefore never, neverMust I behold my pretty Arthur more.
K. Philip. You are as fond of grief as of your child.
Constance. 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.
The contrast between the mild resignation of Queen Katherine to her own wrongs, and the wild, uncontrollable affliction of Constance for the wrongs which she sustains as a mother, is no less naturally conceived than it is ably sustained throughout these two wonderful characters.
The accompaniment of the comic character of the Bastard was well chosen to relieve the poignant agony of suffering, and the cold, cowardly policy of behaviour in the principal characters of this play. Its spirit, invention, volubility of tongue, and forwardness in action, are unbounded. Aliquando sufflaminandus erat, says Ben Jonson of Shakespeare. But we should be sorry it Ben Jonson had been his licenser. We prefer the heedless magnanimity of his wit infinitely to all Jonson's laborious caution. The character of the Bastard's comic humour is the same in essence as that of other comic characters in Shakespeare; they always run on with good things and are never exhausted; they are always daring and successful. They have words at will and a flow of wit, like a flow of animal spirits. The difference between Falconbridge and the others is that he is a soldier, and brings his wit to bear upon action, is courageous with his sword as well as tongue, and stimulates his gallantry by his jokes, his enemies feeling the sharpness of his blows and the sting of his sarcasms at the same time. Among his happiest sallies are his descanting on the composition of his own person, his invective against 'commodity, tickling commodity', and his expression of contempt for the Archduke of Austria, who had killed his father, which begins in jest but ends in serious earnest. His conduct at the siege of Angiers shows that his resources were not confined to verbal retorts.—The same exposure of the policy of courts and camps, of kings, nobles, priests, and cardinals, takes place here as in the other plays we have gone through, and we shall not go into a disgusting repetition.
This, like the other plays taken from English history, is written in a remarkably smooth and flowing style, very different from some of the tragedies, MACBETH, for instance. The passages consist of a series of single lines, not running into one another. This peculiarity in the versification, which is most common in the three parts of HENRY VI, has been assigned as a reason why those plays were not written by Shakespeare. But the same structure of verse occurs in his other undoubted plays, as in RICHARD II and in KING JOHN. The following are instances:
That daughter there of Spain, the Lady Blanch,Is near to England; look upon the yearsOf Lewis the Dauphin, and that lovely maid.If lusty love should go in quest of beauty,Where should he find it fairer than in Blanch?If zealous love should go in search of virtue,Where should he find it purer than in Blanch?If love ambitious sought a match of birth,Whose veins bound richer blood than Lady Blanch?Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth,Is the young Dauphin every way complete:If not complete of, say he is not she;And she again wants nothing, to name want,If want it be not, that she is not he.He is the half part of a blessed man,Left to be finished by such as she;And she a fair divided excellence,Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.O, two such silver currents, when they join,Do glorify the banks that bound them in;And two such shores to two such streams made one,Two such controlling bounds, shall you be, kings,To these two princes, if you marry them.
Another instance, which is certainly very happy as an example of the simple enumeration of a number of particulars, is Salisbury's remonstrance against the second crowning of the king.
Therefore to be possessed with double pomp,To guard a title that was rich before;To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,To throw a perfume on the violet,To smooth the ice, to add another hueUnto the rainbow, or with taper lightTo seek the beauteous eye of heav'n to garnish:Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.