Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

sions with the real, though subdued, haugh- | the details of the quarrel scene in Westtiness of his threats

"If not, I'll use the advantage of my power." He marches "without the noise of threat'ning drum ;" but he marches as a conqueror upon an undefended citadel. On the one hand, we have power without menaces; on the other, menaces without power. How loftily Richard asserts to Northumberland the terrors which are in store-the "armies of pestilence" which are to defend his "precious crown!" But how submissively he replies to the message of Bolingbroke !—

"Thus the king returns:His noble cousin is right welcome hither.Speak to his gentle hearing kind commends." Marvellously is the picture of the struggles

of irresolution still coloured :

“Shall we call back Northumberland, and send Defiance to the traitor, and so die?" Beautiful is the transition to his habitual weakness-to his extreme sensibility to evils, and the shadows of evils-to the consolation which finds relief in the exaggeration of its own sufferings, and in the bewilderments of imagination which carry even the sense of suffering into the regions of fancy. We have already seen that this has been thought "deviating from the pathetic to the ridiculous." Be it so. We are content to accept this and similar passages in the character of Richard as exponents of that feeling which made him lie at the feet of Bolingbroke, fascinated as the bird at the eye of the serpent:

"For do we must what force will have us do."

This is the destiny of tragedy;—but it is a destiny with foregoing causes-its seeds are sown in the varying constitution of the human mind and thus it may be said, even without a contradiction, that a Bolingbroke governs destiny, a Richard yields to it.

We pass over the charming repose-scene of the garden-in which the poet, who in this drama has avoided all dialogues of manners, brings in "old Adam's likeness," to show us how the vicissitudes of state are felt and understood by the practical philosophy of the humblest of the people. We pass over, too,

minster Hall, merely remarking that those who say, as Johnson has said, "This play is extracted from the 'Chronicle' of Holinshed, in which many passages may be found which Shakspere has, with very little alteration, transplanted into his scenes," would have done well to have printed the passages of the Chronicle' and the parallel scenes of 'Rich

[ocr errors]

ard II.' This scene is one to which the remark refers. Will our readers excuse us giving them half-a-dozen lines as a specimen of this "very little alteration?"—

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

We have long borne with these misrepresentations of what Shakspere took from the 'Chronicles,' and what Shakspere took from Plutarch. The sculptor who gives us the highest conception of an individual, idealized into something higher than the actual man

(Roubiliac, for example, when he figured that sublime image of Newton, in which the upward eye, and the finger upon the prism, tell us of the great discoverer of the laws of gravity and of light)—the sculptor has to collect something from authentic records of the features and of the character of the subject he has to represent. The 'Chronicles' might, in the same way, give Shakspere the general idea of his historical Englishmen, as Plutarch of his Romans. But it was for

the poet to mould and fashion these outlines into the vital and imperishable shapes in which we find them. This is creation-not alteration.

Richard is again on the stage. Is there a jot in the deposition scene that is not perfectly true to his previous character? As to Bolingbroke's consistency, there cannot be a doubt, even with the most hasty reader. The king's dallying with the resignation of the crown-the prolonged talk, to parry, as it were, the inevitable act-the "ay, no! no, ay;"—the natural indignation at Northumberland's unnecessary harshness;—the exquisite tenderness of self-shrinking abasement, running off into poetry," too deep for tears"

"Oh, that I were a mockery king of snow, Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, To melt myself away in water drops;"

and, lastly, the calling for the mirror, and the real explanation of all his apparent affectation of disquietude;—

"These external manners of laments Are merely shadows to the unseen grief That swells with silence in the tortured soul:"

who but Shakspere could have given us these wonderful tints of one human mind-so varying and yet so harmonious-so forcible and yet so delicate without being betrayed into something different from his own unity of conception? In the parting scene with the queen we have still the same unerring consistency. We are told that "the interview of separation between her and her wretched husband is remarkable for its poverty and tameness." The poet who wrote the parting scene between Juliet and her Montague had, we presume, the command of his instruments; and though, taken separately from what is around them, there may be differences in the degree of beauty in these parting scenes, they are each dramatically beautiful, in the highest sense of the term. Shakspere never went from his proper path to produce a beauty that was out of place. And yet who can read these

* Skottowe's Life of Shakspeare,' vol. i. p. 441.

lines, and dare to talk of "poverty and tameness?"

"In winter's tedious nights sit by the fire With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales

Of woeful ages, long ago betid;

And, ere thou bid good night, to quit their grief,

Tell thou the lamentable fall of me,

And send the hearers weeping to their beds." We are told, as we have already noticed, that this speech ends with "childish prattle." Remember, Richard II. is speaking.-Lastly, we come to the prison scene. The soliloquy is Richard all over. There is not a sentence in it that does not tell of a mind deeply reflective in its misfortunes, but wanting the guide to all sound reflection—the power of going out of himself, under the conduct of a loftier reason than could endure to dwell

And

upon the merely personal. His self-consciousness (to use the word in a German sense) intensifies, but lowers, every thought. then the beautiful little episode of "Roan Barbary," and Richard's all-absorbing application to himself of the story of the " poor groom of the stable." Froissart tells a tale, how Richard was "forsaken by his favourite quaint historian, as well as the great dragreyhound, which fawns on the earl." The matist who transfused the incident, knew the avenues to the human heart. Steevens

His

thinks the story of Roan Barbary might have been of Shakspere's own invention, but informs us that "Froissart relates a yet more silly tale!" Even to the death, Richard is historically as well as poetically true. sudden valour is shown as the consequence of passionate excitement. A prose manuscript in the library of the King of France, exhibits a somewhat similar scene, when Lancaster, York, Aumerle, and others, went to him in the Tower, to confer upon his rewalked about the room; and at length broke signation "The king, in great wrath, out into passionate exclamations and appeals to heaven; called them false traitors, and offered to fight any four of them." The Chronicles which Shakspere might consult were somewhat meagre, and might gain much by the addition of the records of this

:

[ocr errors]

eventful reign which modern researches have | palus becomes a hero when the king is in discovered. If we compare every account, danger;-Richard, when the sceptre is struck we must say that the Richard II. of Shak- out of his hands, forgets that his ancestors spere is rigidly the true Richard. The poet won the sceptre by the sword. The one is is the truest historian in all that belongs to the sensualist of misdirected native energy, the higher attributes of history. who casts off his sensuality when the passion for enjoyment is swallowed up in the higher excitement of rash and sudden daring;-the other is the sensualist of artificial power, whose luxury consists in pomp without enjoyment, and who loses the sense of gratification when the factitious supports of his pride are cut away from him. Richard, who should have been a troubadour, has become a weak and irresolute voluptuary through the corruptions of a throne ;-Sardanapalus, who might have been a conqueror, retains a natural heroism that a throne cannot wholly corrupt. But here we stop. 'Sardanapalus' is a beautiful poem, but the characters, and especially the chief character, come before us as something shadowy, and not of earth. 'Richard II.' possesses all the higher attributes of poetry,-but the characters, and especially the leading character, are of flesh and blood like ourselves.

But with this surpassing dramatic truth in the Richard II.,' perhaps, after all, the most wonderful thing in the whole playthat which makes it so exclusively and entirely Shaksperean-is the evolvement of the truth under the poetical form. The character of Richard, especially, is entirely subordinated to the poetical conception of it-to something higher than the historical propriety, yet including all that historical propriety, and calling it forth under the most striking aspects. All the vacillations and weaknesses of the king, in the hands of an artist like Shakspere, are reproduced with the most natural and vivid colours, so as to display their own characteristic effects, in combination with the principle of poetical beauty, which carries them into a higher region than the perfect command over the elements of strong individualization could alone produce. For example, when Richard says— "Oh, that I were a mockery king of snow,

Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke !”– we see in a moment how this speech belongs to the shrinking and overpowered mind of the timid voluptuary, who could form no notion of power apart from its external supports. But then, separated from the character, how exquisitely beautiful is it in itself! Byron, in his finest drama of 'Sardanapalus,' has given us an entirely different conception of a voluptuary overpowered by misfortune; and though he has said, speaking of his ideal of his own dramatic poem, "You will find all this very unlike Shakspere, and so much the better in one sense, for I look upon him to be the worst of models, though the most extraordinary of writers"it is to us very doubtful if 'Sardanapalus' would have been written, had not the 'Richard II.' of Shakspere offered the temptation to pull the bow of Ulysses in the direction of another mark. The characters exhibit very remarkable contrasts. Sardana

And why is it, when we have looked beneath the surface at this matchless poetical delineation of Richard, and find the absolute king capricious, rapacious, cunning,-and the fallen king irresolute, effeminate, intellectually prostrate,-why is it, when we see that our Shakespere herein never intended to present to us the image of "a good man struggling with adversity," and conceived a being the farthest removed from the ideal that another mighty poet proposed to himself as an example of heroism when he described his own fortitude

"I argue not

Against heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
Right onward,"—

why is it that Richard II. still commands
our tears-even our sympathies? It is this:

His very infirmities make him creep into our affections; for they are so nearly allied to the beautiful parts of his character, that, if the little leaven had been absent, he might have been a ruler to kneel before, and a man

M

to love. We see, then, how thin is the par- he might have made the usurper one who tition between the highest and the lowliest had cast aside all selfish and unpatriotic parts of our nature-and we love Richard principles, and the legitimate king an uneven for his faults, for they are those of our mitigated oppressor, whose fall would have common humanity. Inferior poets might been hailed as the triumph of injured huhave given us Bolingbroke the lordly tyrant, manity. Impartial Shakspere! How many and Richard the fallen hero. We might of the deepest lessons of toleration and jushave had the struggle for the kingdom tice have we not learned from thy wisdom, painted with all the glowing colours with in combination with thy power! If the which, according to the authorities which power of thy poetry could have been sepaonce governed opinion, a poet was bound to rated from the truth of thy philosophy, how represent the crimes of an usurper and the much would the world have still wanted to virtues of a legitimate king; or, if the poet help it forward in the course of gentleness had despised the usual current of authority, and peace!

CHAPTER II.

KING HENRY IV.

SHAKSPERE found the stage in possession | throats,-when we see him, not seduced from

6

of a rude drama, The Famous Victories of Henry V.,' upon the foundation of which he constructed not only his two Parts of 'Henry IV.,' but his 'Henry V.* That old play was acted prior to 1588; Tarleton, a celebrated comic actor, who played the clown in it, having died in that year. It is, in many respects, satisfactory that this very extraordinary performance has been preserved. None of the old dramas exhibit in a more striking light the marvellous reformation which Shakspere, more than all his contemporaries, produced in the dramatic amusements of the age of Elizabeth.

It is to this rude drama (of which we have previously given a slight analysis) that the student of Shakspere must refer, to learn what the popular notion of the conqueror of Agincourt was at the period when Shakspere began to write, and, perhaps, indeed, up to the time when he gave us his own idea of Henry of Monmouth. When we have seen that, for some ten years at least, the Henry of the stage was an ill-bred unredeemed blackguard, without a single sparkle of a "better hope," surrounded by companions of the very lowest habits, thieves and cut*See Book I. chap. v. page 19.

the gravity of his station by an irrepressible love of fun, kept alive by the wit of his principal associate, but given up only to drinking and debauchery, to throwing of pots, and brawls in the streets,-when we see not a single gleam of that "sun,”

"Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world;"—

and when we know that nearly all the historians up to the time of Shakspere took pretty much the same view of Henry's character,—we may, perhaps, be astonished to be told that Shakspere's fascinating representation of Henry of Monmouth, "as an historical portrait, is not only unlike the original, but misleading and unjust in essential points of character."+ Misleading and unjust! We admire, and even honour, Mr. Tyler's enthusiasm in the vindication of his favourite hero from every charge of early impurity. In the nature of things it was impossible that Henry of Monmouth,—in many particulars so far above his age, in literature, in accomplishments, in real magnanimity of character,-should have been the

Henry of Monmouth,' by J. Endell Tyler, B.D., vol. i. p. 356.

low profligate which nearly all the ancient historians represent him to have been. But Mr. Tyler, instead of blaming Shakspere for the view which he took of Henry's character -instead of calling upon us "to allow it no weight in the scale of evidence;"-instead of informing us that the poet's descriptions are "wholly untenable when tested by facts, and irreconcileable with what history places beyond doubt;"-instead of attempting to shake our belief in Shakspere's general truth, by minute comparisons of particular passages with real dates, trying the poet by a test altogether out of the province of poetry;-instead of telling us that the great dramatist's imagination worked "only on the vague traditions of a sudden change for the better in the prince, immediately on his accession; "instead of all this, Mr. Tyler ought to have called our attention to the fact that Shakspere was the only man of his age who rejected the imperfect evidence of all the historians as to the character of Henry of Monmouth, and nobly vindicated him even from his own biographers, and, what was of more importance, from the coarser traditions embodied in a popular drama of Shakspere's own day. It is not our business to enter into a discussion whether the early life of Henry was entirely blameless, as Mr. Tyler would prove. This is a question which, as far as an editor of Shakspere is concerned, may be classed with a somewhat similar question of the character of Richard III., as argued in Walpole's 'Ilistoric Doubts.' But the real question for us to consider is this,-what were the opinions of all the historians up to Shakspere's own time? Mr. Tyler himself says, "Before Shakspere's day, the reports adopted by our historiographers had fully justified him in his representations of Henry's early courses." But we contend that Shakspere did not rest upon the historiographers; he did not give credence to the vulgar traditions; he did not believe in the story of Henry's sudden conversion;—he did not make him the low profligate of the old play, or of the older Chronicles. We are very much accustomed to say, speaking of Shakspere's historical plays, that he follows Holinshed. He does so, indeed, when the truth of the historian

is not incompatible with the higher poetical truth of his own conceptions. Now, what says Holinshed about Henry V.?—“ After that he was invested king, and had received the crown, he determined with himself to put upon him the shape of a new man, turning insolency and wildness into gravity and soberness. And whereas he had passed his youth in wanton pastime and riotous misorder, with a sort of misgoverned mates and unthrifty play feers, he now banished them from his presence." Holinshed wrote this in 1557; but did he invent this character? Thomas Elmham, a contemporary of Henry V., who wrote his Life, distinctly tells us of his passing the bounds of modesty, and, "when not engaged in military exercises, he also indulged in other excesses which unrestrained youth is apt to fall into." Of Henry's sudden conversion this author also tells the story; and he dates it from his father's deathbed. Otterburn, another contemporary of Henry, gives us also the story of his sudden conversion:-"repentè mutatus est in virum alterum." Hardyng, another contemporary, and an adherent of the house of Lancaster, says

"The hour he was crowned and anoint

He changed was of all his old condition;" or, as he says in the argument to this chapter of his Chronicle, "he was changed from all vices unto virtuous life." Walsingham, a fourth contemporary, speaking of a heavy fall of snow on the 9th of April, the day of his coronation, says, "that some interpreted this unseasonable weather to be a happy omen; as if he would cause the snow and frost of vices to fall away in his reign, and the serene fruit of virtues to spring up; that it might be truly said by his subjects, Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.' Who, indeed, as soon as he was invested with the ensigns of royalty, was suddenly changed into a new man, behaving with propriety, modesty, and gravity, and showing a desire to practise every kind of virtue." There is a ballad of Henry IV.'s time addressed to Prince Henry and his brothers, to dissuade them from spending time in "youthed folily." Caxton,

« VorigeDoorgaan »