the year of John's death” (Knight, Pictorial Shakspere, p. 57). In regard to Arthur, Shakespeare has made several more or less important deviations from history. When we first meet with him, as also at the time of his death, he is represented as little more than a child, while in reality he lived to be nearly eighteen years old. In the second place, his confinement and death are represented as taking place in England. In point of fact, he was first confined at Falaise, and afterwards at Rouen, where he died. Further, the scene between Hubert and Arthur has no historical authority, Hubert having, according to Holinshead, saved Arthur from the men sent to murder him. In the Play, Angiers refuses to acknowledge as its lord either John or Arthur until the question of right to the throne of England should be decided by battle; whereas in reality Anjou, Touraine, Maine, were from the first loyal to Arthur. Shakespeare's Constance is a widow; the real Constance was at this time married to her third husband, Guy De Thouars. Moreover, she died the year before Arthur fell into John's hands. The Austrian Archduke, who had confined Richard in a dungeon, is made to live five or six years after the date of his actual death, and is represented as one and the same person with Vidomar, Viscount of Limoges, in besieging whose castle of Chaluz, Richard was mortally wounded. The four wars between John and Philip are compressed into two; and at the close of the Play the Dauphin's return to France makes it appear that all idea of trying to conquer England had been abandoned, though in reality Philip's efforts were continued for two years longer. Finally, though Holinshed, on the authority of Caxton, speaks of John as having been

tions.

poisoned by a monk, he, according to the best authorities,

died at Newark of a fever, not at Swinstead. Reasons for For the more important of the foregoing deviations these devia

from history, Hudson finds a reason in the conception of John's character and of the events of his reign which the older play of the Troublesome Raigne, etc., and Bishop Ball's pageant of King John, had established in the popular mind. “The King John of the stage," he remarks, “striking in with the passions and interests of the time, had become familiar to the people, and twined itself closely with their feelings and thoughts. A faithful version would have worked at great disadvantage in competition with the theatrical one thus established. This prepossession of the popular mind Shakespeare may well have judged it unwise to disturb. In other words, the current of popular association being so strong, he probably chose rather to fall in with it than to stem it. We may regret that he did so; but we can hardly doubt that he did it knowingly and on principle: nor should we so much blame him for not stemming that current as thank him for purifying it.” Again, in regard to the behaviour of Angiers and the circumstances of Arthur's imprisonment and death, “These, however, are immaterial points in the course of the drama, save as the latter has the effect of bringing Arthur nearer to the homes and hearts of the English people ; who would naturally be more apt to resent his death if it occurred at their own doors." The representation of Constance as a widow, and the prolongation of her life beyond its actual date, Hudson considers "a breach of history every way justifiable, since it gives an occasion, not otherwise to be had, for some noble outpourings of maternal grief

and tenderness. And the mother's transports of sorrow might well consist with a second marriage, though to have represented her thus would have impaired the pathos of her situation, and at the same time have been a needless embarrassment of the action. It is enough that so she would have felt and spoken had she been still alive; her proper character being thus allowed to transpire in circumstances which she did not live to see.” The same reason, viz., that greater pathos could be given to the scenes in which Arthur appears, led Shakespeare to make him out much younger than he really was.

The Austrian Archduke, like Constance, is shown as alive some years after his actual death “for no other purpose than that Richard's natural son may have the honour of revenging his father's wrongs and death.” In following Holinshed's account of the cause of John's death, Shakespeare may have done so because he believed the fact to be as represented, or his object may have been to enhance the hatred in which John's subjects held him. Furnivall, noticing that in the older play the monk is prompted to the deed by John's anti-papal patriotism, considers that Shakespeare in setting this story aside has “left a serious blot on his drama which it is impossible to remove.” To me it seems more in keeping with his attitude in this play towards religious questions that he has omitted the question of motive on the monk's part, and Holinshed's account can scarcely be said to bear out the idea that religious fanaticism had anything to do with the action. His words are, “ There be which have written that after he had lost his army, he came to the abbey of Swinestead, in Lincolnshire, and there understanding the cheapness and plenty of corn, shewed him

stion of ral uracy in forical

self greatly displeased therewith; as that he for the hatred which he bare to the English people, that had so traitorously revolted from him unto his adversary Lewis, wished all misery to light upon them, and thereupon said in his anger, that he would cause all kind of grain to be at a far higher price ere many days should pass. Whereupon a monk who heard him speak such words, being moved with zeal for the oppression of his country, gave the King poison in a cup of ale, whereof he first took the assay, to cause the king not to suspect the matter, and so

they both died in manner at one time.” general On the subject of literal accuracy in historical dramas,

Knight remarks, “It would appear scarcely necessary

to entreat the reader to bear in mind ... that the mes.con- . Histories' of Shakspere are Dramatic Poems. And yet,

unless this circumstance be watchfully regarded, we shall fall into the error of setting up one form of truth in contradiction to, and not in illustration of, another form of truth. It appears to us to be worse than useless employment to be running parallels between the poet and the chronicler, for the purpose of showing that for the liberal facts of history the poet is not so safe a teacher as the chronicler ... The “lively images' of the poet present a general truth much more completely than the tedious narratives of the annalist. The ten magnificent “histories' of Shakspere ... stand in

the same lation to the contemporary historians of the events they deal with, as a landscape does to a map ... The principle, therefore, of viewing Shakspere's history through another medium than that of his art, and pronouncing, upon this view, that his historical plays cannot be given to our youth'as properly historical,' is nearly

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as absurd as it would be to derogate from the merits of Mr. Turner's beautiful drawings of coast scenery, by maintaining and proving that the draughtsman had not accurately laid down the relative positions of each bay and promontory ... There may be, in the poet, a higher truth than the literal, evolved in spite of, or rather in combination with, his minute violations of accuracy; men may in the poet better study history, 'so to speak after nature,' than in the annalist,--because the poet masses and generalizes his facts, subjecting them, in the order in which he presents them to the mind, as well as in the elaboration which he bestows upon them, to the laws of his art, which has a clearer sense of fitness and proportion than the laws of a dry chronology. But, at any rate, the structure of an historical drama and of an historical narrative are so essentially different, that the offices of the poet and the historian must never be confounded. It is not to derogate from the poet to say that he is not an historian ; it will be to elevate Shakspere when we compare his poetical truth with the truth of history. We have no wish that he had been more exact and literal.” Hudson, too, in noticing the anticipation by several years of the papal instigation as the cause of the war in which Arthur was taken prisoner, observes that “ The laws of dramatic effect often require that the force and import of divers actual events be condensed and massed together. To disperse the interest over many details of action involves such a weakening of it as poetry does not tolerate. So that the Poet was eminently judicious in this instance of concentration. The conditions of right dramatic interest clearly required something of the kind. United, the several events

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