It

dred and eighty barons and knights, in arms for what they called their liberties, were butchered without quarter, was a final measure of royal vengeance. 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 would sing the great Battle of Edward and Leicester :

"In that black night before this sad and dismal day,

Were apparitions strange, as dread Heaven would bewray
The horrors to ensue : O most amazing sight!

Two armies in the air discerned were to fight,

Which came so near to earth, that in the morn they found
The prints of horses' feet remaining on the ground;
Which came but as a show, the time to entertain
Till th' angry armies join'd, to act the bloody scene.
Shrill shouts, and deadly cries, each way the air do fill,
And not a word was heard from either side, but kill:
The father 'gainst the son, the brother 'gainst the brother,
With gleaves, swords, bills, and pikes, were murthering one another.

* Nashe.

The full luxurious earth seems surfeited with blood,
Whilst in his uncle's gore th' unnatural nephew stood;
Whilst with their charged staves the desperate horsemen meet,
They hear their kinsmen groan under their horses' feet.
Dead men, and weapons broke, do on the earth abound;
The drums, bedash'd with brains, do give a dismal sound.
Great Le'ster there expir'd, with Henry his brave son,
When many a high exploit they in that day had done.
Scarce was there noble house of which those times could tell,
But that some one thereof on this or that side fell;
Amongst the slaughter'd men that there lay heap'd on piles,
Bohuns and Beauchamps were, Bassets and Mandeviles :
Segraves and Saint Johns seek, upon the end of all,
To give those of their names their Christian burial.
Ten thousand on both sides were ta'en and slain that day:
Prince Edward gets the goal, and bears the palm away.'

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, would William Shakspere ponder upon the fate of Gaveston. In that 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

[Ancient Statue of Guy at Guy's Cliff.)

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 is, indeed, a story fit for tragedy; and that the young Shakspere had essayed to dramatize it, or at any rate had formed a dramatic picture of so remarkable an event, one so fitted for the display of character and passion, may be easily conjectured. But it was a story, also, which in some particulars his 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 this prince. He 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:-"The prince's battalion at one period was very hard pressed; and they with the prince sent a messenger to the king, who was on a little windmill hill; then the knight said to the king, Sir, the Earl of Warwick, and the Earl of Oxford, Sir Regnold Cobham, and others, such as be about the prince your son, are fiercely fought withal, and are sore handled; wherefore they desire you that you and your battle will come and aid them; for if the Frenchmen increase, as they doubt they will, your son and they shall have much ado.' Then the king said, Is my son dead or hurt, or on the earth felled?' No, Sir,' quoth the knight, but he is hardly matched, wherefore he hath need of your aid.' Well,' said the king, return to him and to them that sent you hither, and say to them that they send no more to me for any adventure that falleth, as long as my son is alive; and also say to them that they suffer him this day to win his spurs, for,

6

* 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?"

if God be pleased, I will this journey be his, and the honour thereof, and to them that be about him.' Then the knight returned again to them, and showed the king's words, the which greatly encouraged them, and they repined in that they had sent to the king as they did." 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