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.*

Warwick-it is full of historical associations, but its early history is not dramatic according to the notions that William Shakspere will subsequently work out. Let the ballad-makers and the heroic poets that are to follow sing the legend of Guy the Saxon, and his combat with Colbrand the Dane. The stern power of the later Guy is for another to dramatize. Thomas Earl of Warwick, who led the van at Cressy, shall have his fame with the Cobhams and the Chan* See our Notice of the play entitled 'The Reign of Edward III.' in the Analysis of Plays ascribed to Shakspere.

doses, and posterity shall look upon his tomb in the midst of the choir of the collegiate church at Warwick. The Earl who was cast aside by Richard II. (he also was named Thomas) shall be merged in the eventful history of that time; but it shall be recollected that he built "that strong and stately tower standing at the north-east corner of the Castle here at Warwick."* His strong and stately tower could not stead him in his necessity, for he was made prisoner by the King at a feast to which he was treacherously invited, banished, subsequently imprisoned in the Tower, and his possessions seized upon. The fall of Richard restored him to his honours and possessions; and he was enabled to appoint by his will "that the sword and coat of mail sometime belonging to the famous Guy" should remain to his son and his heirs after him. This sword and coat of mail would have been a more appropriate, though perhaps not a more authentic, relic for the young Shakspere to look upon than the famous porridge-pot of our own day. In the reign of Henry IV. there came Earl Richard, who took the banner of Owen Glendower, and fought against the Percies at Shrewsbury; who voyaged to the Holy Land, and hung up his offerings at the holy sepulchrç at Jerusalem, and was royally feasted by the Soldan's lieutenant, "hearing that he was descended from the famous Sir Guy of Warwick, whose story they had in books of their own language." And it was he who was sent to France to treat for the marriage of Henry V. with the Lady Katherine; and it was he who, after the death of the Conqueror of Agincourt, had tutelage of the young Henry his son; and was lieutenant-general and governor of the realm of France. The remainder of his history might be read by William Shakspere, inscribed upon that splendid monument which he erected in the chapel called after his name, and ordered by his will to be built adjoining the collegiate church. Visited by long sickness, he died in the Castle at Rouen. His monument is still a glorious specimen of the arts of the middle ages, and so is the chapel under whose roof it is erected. Another lord of Warwick succeeded, who, having been created Duke of Warwick, moved the envy of other great ones in that time of faction: but he died young, and without issue; and his sister, the wife of Richard Neville, succeeded to her brother's lands and castles, and by patent her husband became Earl of Warwick. This was indeed. a mighty man, the stout Earl of Warwick, the king-maker, he who first fought at St. Albans in the great cause of York, and after many changes of opinion and of fortune fell at Barnet in the cause of Lancaster. The history of this, the greatest of the lords of the ragged staff, is in itself a wonderful drama, in a series of dramas that are held together by a strong poetical chain. The first scene of this great series of dramas begins when the Duke of Hereford and the Duke of Norfolk meet in the lists

"At Coventry upon St. Lambert's day."

The last scene is at Bosworth, when he who is held to have wanted but courage left the world exclaiming

"A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse ! "§

The family traditions of William Shakspere; the Chronicle "of the two noble and illustre Families of Lancaster and York," his household book; the localities amidst which he dwelt; must have concurred early in fixing his imagination upon the dramatic capabilities of that magnificent story which has given us a series of eight poetical Chronicle Histories,' of which a German critic has said, "The historian who cannot learn from them is not yet perfect in his own art."* Tieck. Dramaturgische Blätter.

HALL, the chronicler, writing his history of The Families of Lancaster and York,' about seventy years after the "continual dissension for the crown of this noble realm" was terminated, says,-" What nobleman liveth at this day, or what gentleman of any ancient stock or progeny is clear, whose lineage hath not been infested and plagued with this unnatural division?" During the boyhood of William Shakspere, it cannot be doubted that he would meet with many a gentleman, and many a yeoman, who would tell him how their forefathers had been

thus" infested and plagued." The traditions of the most stirring events of that contest would at this time be about a century old; generally diluted in their interest by passing through the lips of three or four generations, but occasionally presented vividly to the mind of the inquiring boy in the narration of some amongst the hoary-headed eld," whose fathers had fought at Bosworth or Tewksbury. Many of these traditions, too, would be essentially local; extending back even to the period when the banished Duke of Hereford, in his bold

march

"From Ravenspurg to Cotswold,"*

gathered a host of followers in the counties of Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, Warwick, and Worcester. Fields, where battles had been fought; towns, where parliaments had assembled, and treaties had been ratified; castles, where the great leaders had stood at bay, or had sallied forth upon the terrified countrysuch were the objects which the young poet would associate with many an elaborate description of the chroniclers, and many an interesting anecdote of his ancient neighbours. Let us endeavour rapidly to trace such portion of the history of these events as may be placed in association with the localities that were familiar to William Shakspere; for it appears to us that his dramatic power was early directed towards this long and complicated story, by some principle even more exciting than its capabilities for the purposes of the drama. It was the story, we think, which was presented to him in the evening-talk around the hearth of his childhood; it was the story whose written details were most accessible to him, being narrated by Hall with a rare minuteness of picturesque circumstance; but it was a story also of which his own district had been the scene, in many of its most stirring events. Out of ten English Historical Plays which were written by him, and some undoubtedly amongst his first performances, he has devoted eight to circumstances belonging to this memorable story. No other nation ever possessed such a history of the events of a century,-a history in which the agents are not the hard abstractions of warriors and statesmen, but men of flesh and blood like ourselves; men of passion, and crime, and virtue; elevated perhaps by the poetical art, but filled, also through that art, with such a wondrous life, that we dwell amongst them as if they were of our own day, and feel that they must have spoken as he has made them speak, and act as he has made them act. It is in vain that we are told that some events are omitted, and some transposed; that documentary history does not exhibit its evidence here, that a contemporary narrative somewhat militates against the representation there. The general truth of this dramatic history cannot be shaken. It is a philosophical history in the very highest sense of that somewhat abused term. It contains the philosophy that can only be produced by the union of the noblest imagination with the most just and temperate judgIt is the loftiness of the poetical spirit which has enabled Shakspere alone to write this history with impartiality. Open the chroniclers, and we

ment.

* Richard II., Act 11., Scene III.