nearly parallel direction, about the same distance, to Charlbury. The great road, therefore, from Alcester to Evesham continues, after it passes Tywford, through a narrow tongue of land bounded by the Avon, having considerable variety of elevation. Immediately below Twyford is a hollow, now called Battlewell, crossing which the road ascends to the elevated platform of Greenhill. Here, then, was the scene of that celebrated battle which put an end to the terrible conflicts between the Crown and the Nobility, and for a season left the land in peace under the sway of an energetic despotism. The circumstances which preceded that battle, as told in "The Chronicle of Evesham" (which in William Shakspere's time would have been read and remembered by many an old tenant of the Abbey), were singularly interesting. Simon Montfort, the great Earl of Leicester, was waiting at Evesham the arrival of his son's army from Kenilworth; but Prince Edward had surprised that army, and taken many of its leaders prisoners, and young Montfort durst not leave his stronghold. In that age rumour did not fly quite so quickly as in our days. The Earl of Leicester was ignorant of the events that had happened at Kenilworth. He had made forced marches from Hereford to Worcester, and thence to Evesham. There were solemn masses in the Abbey Church on the 3rd of August, 1265, and the mighty Earl, who had won for himself the name of "Sir Simon the Righteous," felt assured that his son was at hand, and that Heaven would uphold his cause against a perjured Prince. On the morning of the 4th of August the Earl of Leicester sent his barber Nicholas to the top of the Abbey tower, to look for the succour that was coming over the hills from Kenilworth. The barber came down with eager gladness, for he saw, a few miles off, the banner of young Simon de Montfort in advance of a mighty host. And again the Earl sent the barber to the top of

the Abbey tower, and the man hastily descended in fear and sorrow, for the banner of young de Montfort was no more to be seen, but, coming nearer and nearer, were seen the standards of Prince Edward, and of Mortimer, and of Gloucester. Then saw the Earl his imminent peril; and he said, according to one writer, "God have our souls all, our days are all done;" or, according to another writer, "Our souls God have,

for our bodies be theirs." But Montfort was not a man to fly. Over the bridge of Evesham he might have led his forces, so as to escape from the perilous position in which he was shut up. He hastily marched northward, with King Henry his prisoner, at two o'clock in the afternoon of that day. Before nightfall the waters of the little valley were blood-red. Thousands were slain between those two hills; thousands fled, but there was no escape but by the bridge of Evesham, and they perished in the Avon. The old King, turned loose upon a war-horse amidst the terrible conflict, was saved from death at the hands of the victors by crying out, "I am Henry of Winchester." The massacre of Evesham, where a hundred and eighty barons and knights, in arms for what they called their liberties, were butchered without quarter, was a final measure of royal vengeance. It was a great epic story.

It had dramatic points, but it was not essentially dramatic. If Shakspere had chosen the wars of the Barons, instead of the wars of the Roses, for a vast dramatic theme, the fate of Simon de Montfort and his gallant company might have been told so as never to have been forgotten. But he had another tale of civil war to tell; one more essentially dramatic in the concentration of its events, the rapid changes in its fortunes, the marked characters of its leaders. On the battle-field of Evesham he would indeed meditate upon "The ill success of treason, the fall of hasty climbers, the wretched end of usurpers, the misery of civil dissension, and how just God is evermore in punishing murder."* But these lessons were to be worked out more emphatically in other histories. Another Warwickshire poet, Drayton, would sing the great Battle of Edward and Leicester.

There is peace awhile in the land. A strong man is on the throne.

The first

Edward dies, and, a weak and profligate son succeeding him, there is again misrule and turbulence. Within ten miles of Stratford there was a fearful tragedy enacted in the year 1312. On the little knoll called Blacklow Hill, about a mile from Warwick, might William Shakspere ponder upon the fate of Gaveston. In that

* Nash.

secluded spot all around him would be peacefulness; the only sound of life about him would be the dashing of the wheel of the old mill at Guy's Cliff. The towers of Warwick would be seen rising above their surrounding trees; and, higher than all, Guy's Tower. He would have heard that this tower was not so called from the Saxon champion, the Guy of minstrelsy, whose statue, bearing shield and sword, he had often looked upon in the chapel of St. Mary Magdalen at Guy's Cliff. The Tower was called after the Guy whose common name—a name of opprobrium fixed on him by Gaveston-was associated with that of his maternal ancestors,-Guy, the Black Dog of Arden. And then the tragedy of Blacklow Hill, as he recollected this, would present itself to his imagination. There is a prisoner standing in the great hall of Warwick Castle. He is unarmed; he is clad in holiday vestments, but they are soiled and torn; his face is pale with fear and the fatigue of a night journey. By force has he been hurried some thirty miles across the country from Dedington, near Banbury; and amidst the shouts of soldiery and the rude clang of drum and trumpet has he entered the castle of his enemies, where they are sitting upon the dais,—Warwick and Lancaster, and Hereford and Arundel,—and the prisoner stands trembling before them, a monarch's minion, but one whom they have no right to punish. But the sentence is pronounced that he shall die. He sued for mercy to those whom he had called "the black dog" and "the old hog," but they spurned him. A sad procession is marshalled. The castle gates are opened; the drawbridge is let down. In silence the avengers march to Blacklow Hill, with their prisoner in the midst. He dies by the axe. In a few years his unhappy master falls still more miserably. Here was a story, which in some particulars Shakspere's judgment would have rejected, as unworthy to be dramatized. Another poet would arise, a man of undoubted power, of daring genius, of fiery temperament, who would seize upon the story of Edward II. and his wretched favourite, and produce a drama that should present a striking contrast to the drawling histories of the earlier stage. The subject upon which the "dead Shepherd" had put forth his strength was not to be touched by his greater rival.*

A reign of power succeeds to one of weakness. Edward III. is upon the throne. William Shakspere is familiar with the great events of this reign; for the "Chronicles" of Froissart, translated by Lord Berners, have more than the charm of the romance-writers; they present realities in colours more brilliant than those of fiction. The clerk of the chamber to Queen Philippa is overflowing with that genial spirit which was to be a great characteristic of Shakspere himself. Froissart looks upon nothing with indifference. He enters most heartily into the spirit of every scene into which he is thrown. The luxuries of courts unfit him not for a relish of the charms of nature. The fatigues of camps only prepare him for the enjoyment of banquets and dances. He throws himself into the boisterous sports of the field at one moment, and is proud to produce a virelay of his own composition at another. The early violets and white and red roses are sweet to his sense; and so is a night draught of claret or Rochelle wine. He can meditate and write as he travels alone upon his palfrey, with his portmanteau, having no follower but his faithful greyhound; he can observe and store up in his memory when he is in the court of David II. of Scotland, or of Gaston de Foix, or in the retinue of the Black Prince. The hero of Froissart is Edward Prince of Wales, the glorious son of a glorious father. William Shakspere was in the presence of local associations connected with

*The notice by Shakspere of Marlowe, in "As You Like It," is one of the few examples we have of any mention by the great poet of his contemporaries. This is a kind notice conveyed in the introduction of a line from Marlowe's "Hero and Leander:"

"Dead Shepherd! now I find thy saw of might
Who ever lov'd that lov'd not at first sight?"

this prince. Edward was especially Prince of Coventry; it was his own city; and he gave licence to build its walls and gates, and cherished its citizens, and dwelt among them. As the young poet walked in the courts of the old hall of St. Mary's, itself a part of an extensive palace, he would believe that the prince had sojourned there after he had won his spurs at Cressy; and he would picture the boy-hero, as Froissart had described him, left by his confiding father in the midst of danger to struggle alone, and alone to triumph. And then, it may be, the whole epopee of that great war for the conquest of France might be shaped out in the young man's imagination; and amidst its chivalrous daring, its fields of slaughter, its perils overcome by almost superhuman strength, kings and princes for prisoners, and the conqueror lowly and humble in his triumph, would there be touching domestic scenes,-Sir Eustace de Pierre, the rich burgher of Calais, putting his life in jeopardy for the safety of the good town, and the vengeance of the stern conqueror averted by his gentle queen, all arranging themselves into something like a great drama. But even here the dramatic interest was not sustained. There was a succession of stirring events,

but no one great action to which all other actions tended and were subservient. Cressy is fought, Calais is taken, Poictiers is to come, after the hero has marched through the country, burning and wasting, regardless of the people, thinking only of his father's disputed rights; and then a mercenary war in Spain in a bad cause, and the hero dies in his bed, and the war for conquest is to generate other wars. These are events that belong to the chronicler, and not to the dramatist. Romance has come in to lend them a human interest. The future conqueror of France is to be a weak lover at the feet of a Countess of Salisbury; to be rejected; to cast off his weakness. The drama may mix the romance and the chronicle together; it has done so; but we believe not that he who had a struggle with his judgment to unite the epic and the dramatic in the history of Henry V. ever attempted to dramatize the story of Edward III.*

* See our Notice of the play entitled "The Reign of Edward III." in "Studies," book vi., c. iv.