The body of Richard was brought to London; and, being publicly exposed, was removed to Langley for interment. Henry V., who appears always to have cherished a generous regard for the memory of the unfortunate king, caused it to be removed in great state to Westminster Abbey.

VOL. IV.

2 K

-

WE scarcely know how to approach this drama, even for the purpose of a simple analysis. We are almost afraid to trust our own admiration when we turn to the cold criticism by which opinion in this country has been wont to be governed. We have been told that it cannot be said much to affect the passions or enlarge the understanding."* It may be so. And yet, we think, it might somewhat "affect the passions," for "gorgeous tragedy" hath here put on her" scepter'd pall," and if she bring not Terror in her train, Pity, at least, claims the sad story for her own. And yet it may somewhat " enlarge the understanding,"-for, though it abound not in those sententious moralities which may fitly adorn a theme at school," it lays bare more than one human bosom with a most searching anatomy; and, in the moral and intellectual strength and weakness of humanity, which it discloses with as much precision as the scalpel reveals to the student of our physical nature the symptoms of health or disease, may we read the proximate and final causes of this world's success or loss, safety or danger, honour or disgrace, elevation or ruin. And then, moreover, the profound truths which, half-hidden to the careless reader, are to be drawn out from this drama, are contained in such a splendid frame-work of

* Johnson.

66

the picturesque and the poetical, that the setting of the jewel almost distracts our attention from the jewel itself. We are here plunged into the midst of the fierce passions and the gorgeous pageantries of the antique time. We not only enter the halls and galleries, where is hung

"Armoury of the invincible knights of old,"

but we see the beaver closed, and the spear in rest :-under those cuirasses are hearts knocking against the steel with almost more than mortal rage;-the banners wave, the trumpet sounds-heralds and marshals are ready to salute the victor-but the absolute king casts down his warder, and the anticipated triumph of one proud champion must end in the unmerited disgrace of both. The transition is easy from the tourney to the battle-field. A nation must

.

bleed that a subject may be avenged. A crown is to be played for, though

"Tumultuous wars

Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound."

The luxurious lord,

"That every day under his household roof

Did keep ten thousand men,"

perishes in a dungeon ;-the crafty usurper sits upon his throne, but it is undermined by the hatreds even of those who placed him on it. Here is, indeed, "a kingdom for a stage." And has the greatest of poets dealt with such a subject without affecting the passions or enlarging the understanding? No. No. Away with this. We will trust our own admiration.

It is a sincere pleasure to us to introduce our remarks upon the Richard II.' by some acute and just observations upon Shakspere's historical plays in general from a French source. The following passage is from the forty-ninth volume of the Dictionnaire de la Conversation et de la Lecture.' (Paris, 1838.) The article bears the signature of Philarète Chasles :—

"This poet, so often sneered at as a frantic and barbarous writer, is, above all, remarkable for a judgment so high, so firm, so uncompromising, that one is almost tempted to impeach his coldness, and to find in this impassable observer something that may be almost called cruel towards the human race. In the historical pieces of Shakspere, the picturesque, rapid, and vehement genius which has produced them seems to bow before the superior law of a judgment almost ironical in its clear-sightedness. Sensibility to impressions, the ardent force of imagination, the eloquence of

passion-these brilliant gifts of nature, which would seem destined to draw a poet beyond all limits, are subordinated in this extraordinary intelligence to a calm and almost deriding sagacity, which pardons nothing and forgets nothing. Thus, the dramas of which we speak are painful as real history. Eschylus exhibits to us Fate hovering over the world; Calderon opens to us heaven and hell as the last words of the enigma of life; Voltaire renders his drama an instrument for asserting his own peculiar doctrines;—but Shakspere seeks his Fate in the hearts of men, and when he makes us see them so capricious, so bewildered, so irresolute, he teaches us to contemplate, without surprise, the untoward events and sudden changes of fortune. In the purely poetical dramas to which this great poet has given so much verisimilitude, we console ourselves in believing that the evils which he paints are imaginary, and that their truth is but general. But the dramatic chronicles which Shakspere has sketched are altogether real. There we behold irrevocable evils-we see the scenes that the world has seen, and the horrors that it has suffered. The more the details that accompany these events are irresistible in their truth, the more they grieve us. The more the author is impartial, the more he wounds and overpowers us. This employment of his marvellous talent is in reality a profound satire upon what we are, upon what we shall be, upon what we were."

It is this wonderful subjection of the poetical power to the higher law of truth-to the poetical truth, which is the highest truth, comprehending and expounding the historical truth-which must furnish the clue to the proper understanding of the drama of‘Richard II.' It appears to us that, when the poet first undertook

"to ope

The purple testament of bleeding war,"

to unfold the roll of the causes and consequences of that usurpation of the house of Lancaster which plunged three or four generations of Englishmen in bloodshed and misery-he approached the subject with an inflexibility of purpose as totally removed as it was possible to be from the levity of a partisan. There were to be weighed in one scale the follies, the weaknesses, the crimes of Richard-the injuries of Bolingbroke the insults which the capricious despotism of the king had heaped upon his nobles-the exactions under which the people groaned the real merits and the popular attributes of him who came to redress and to repair. In the other scale were to be placed the afflictions of fallen greatness-the revenge and

treachery by which the fall was produced-the heartburnings and suspicions which accompany every great revolution-the struggles for power which ensue when the established and legitimate authority is thrust from its seat.-All these phases, personal and political, of a deposition and an usurpation, Shakspere has exhibited with that marvellous impartiality which the French writer whom we have quoted has well described. The political impartiality is so remarkable, that, during the time of Elizabeth, the deposition scene was neither acted nor printed, lest it should give occasion to the enemies of legitimate succession to find examples for the deposing of a monarch. Going forward into the spirit of another age, during the administration of Walpole, the play, in 1738, had an unusual success, principally because it contained many passages which seemed to point to the then supposed corruption of the court; and on this occasion, a letter published in The Craftsman,' in which many lines of the play were thus applied to the political topics of the times, was the subject of state prosecution. The statesmen of Elizabeth and of George II. were thus equally in fear of the popular tendencies of this history. On the other hand, when Richard, speaking dramatically in his own person, says,

"Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm from an anointed king;
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord,”-

Dr. Johnson rejoicingly says, "Here is the doctrine of indefeasible right expressed in the strongest terms; but our poet did not learn it in the reign of James, to which it is now the practice of all writers whose opinions are regulated by fashion or interest to impute the original of every tenet which they have been taught to think false or foolish." Again, when the Bishop of Carlisle, in the deposition scene, exclaims,

"And shall the figure of God's majesty,

His captain, steward, deputy elect,
Anointed, crowned, planted many years,
Be judg'd by subject and inferior breath,
And he himself not present?"-

Johnson remarks, "Here is another proof that our author did not learn in King James's court HIS elevated notions of the right of kings. I know not any flatterer of the Stuarts who has expressed this doctrine in much stronger terms." Steevens adds that Shakspere found the speech in Holinshed, and that "the politics of the historian were the politics of the poet." The contrary aspects which