find the prejudices of the Yorkist or the Lancastrian manifesting the intensity of the old factious hatred. Who can say to which faction Shakspere belongs? He has comprehended the whole, whilst others knew only a part.

After the first two or three pages of Hall's Chronicle,' we are plunged into the midst of a scene, gorgeous in all the pomp of chivalry; a combat for life or death, made the occasion of a display of regal magnificence such as had been seldom presented in England. The old chronicler of the two Houses puts forth all his strength in the description of such scenes. He slightly passes over the original quarrel between Hereford and Norfolk: the pride, and the passion, and the kingly craft, are left for others to delineate; but the "sumptuous theatre and lists royal" at the city of Coventry are set forth with wondrous exactness. We behold the High Constable and the High Marshal of England enter the lists with a great company of men in silk sendall, embroidered with silver, to keep the field. The Duke of Hereford appears at the barriers, on his white courser barbed with blue and green velvet, embroidered with swans and antelopes of goldsmith's work; and there he swears upon the Holy Evangelists that his quarrel is true and just; and he enters the lists, and sits down in a chair of green velvet. Then comes the King, with ten thousand men in harness; and he takes his seat upon a stage, richly hanged and pleasantly adorned. The Duke of Norfolk hovers at the entry of the lists, his horse being barbed with crimson velvet, embroidered with lions of silver and mulberry-trees; and he, having also made oath, enters the field manfully, and sits down in his chair of crimson velvet. One reader of Hall's pompous description of the lists at Coventry will invest that scene with something richer than velvet and goldsmith's work. He will make the champions speak something more than the formal words of the chivalric defiance; and yet the scene shall still be painted with the minutest ceremonial observance. We in vain look, at the present day, within the streets once enclosed by the walls of Coventry, for the lists where, if Richard had not thrown down his warder, the story of the wars of the Roses might not have been written. Probably in the days of the young Shakspere the precise scene of that event might have been pointed out. The manor of Cheylesmore, which was granted by Edward III. to the Black Prince for the better support of his honour as Duke of Cornwall, descended to his son Richard; and in the eighth year of his reign, "the walls on the south part of this city being not built, the mayor, bailiffs, and commonalty thereof humbly besought the King to give them leave that they might go forward with that work, who thereupon granted licence to them so to do, on condition that they should include within their walls his said manor-place standing within the park of Cheylesmore, as the record expresseth, which park was a woody ground in those times."* Encroached upon, no doubt, was this park in the age of Elizabeth. But Coventry would then have abundant memorials of its ancient magnificence which have now perished. He who wrote the glorious scene of the lists upon St. Lambert's day in all probability derived some inspiration from the genius loci.

The challenger and the challenged are each banished. John of Gaunt dies,

Then begins
Hall and

and the King seizes upon the possessions of his dangerous son. that vengeance which is to harass England with a century of blood. Froissart make the Duke of Lancaster, after his landing, march direct to London, and afterwards proceed to the west of England. There can be no doubt that they were wrong; that the Duke, having brought with him a very small force, marched as quickly as possible into the midland counties, where he had many castles and possessions, and in which he might raise a numerous army among his own friends and retainers. The local knowledge of the poet, founded upon traditionary information, would have enabled him to decide upon the correctness of the statement which shows Bolingbroke marching direct from Ravenspurg to Berkeley Castle. The natural and easy dialogue between Bolingbroke and Northumberland exhibits as much local accuracy in a single line as if the poet had given us a laboured description of the Cotswolds:

"I am a stranger here in Glostershire.

These high wild hills, and rough uneven ways,
Draw out our miles, and make them wearisome.” *

In a few weeks England sustains a revolution. The King is deposed; the great Duke is on the throne. Two or three years of discontent and intrigue, and then insurrection. Shrewsbury can scarcely be called one of Shakspere's native localities, yet it is clear that he was familiar with the place. In Falstaff's march from London to Shrewsbury the poet glances, lovingly as it were, at the old well-known scenes. "The red-nosed innkeeper at Daventry" had assuredly filled a glass of sack for him. The distance from Coventry to Sutton-Coldfield was accurately known by him, when he makes the burly commander say—" Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry; fill me a bottle of sack our soldiers shall march through: we 'll to Sutton Cophill to-night." ↑ Shakspere, it seems to us, could scarcely resist the temptation of showing the Prince in Warwickshire :-" What, Hal? How now, mad wag? What a devil dost thou in Warwickshire?" A word or two tells us that the poet had seen

:

the field of Shrewsbury :—

"How bloodily the sun begins to peer

Above yon busky hill!"

The Chronicle informs us that Henry had marched with a great army towards Wales to encounter Percy and Douglas, who were coming from the north to join with Glendower; and then, "The King, hearing of the Earls' approaching, thought it policy to encounter with them before that the Welshman should join with their army, and so include him on both parts, and therefore returned suddenly to the town of Shrewsbury. He was scantly entered into the town,

Richard II., Act II., Seene 1.

All the old copies of The First Part of Henry IV. have Cop-hill. There is no doubt that Sutton Coldfield, as it is now spelt, was meant by Cop-hill; but the old printers, we believe, improperly introduced the hyphen; for Dugdale, in his map, spells the word Cofeild; and it is easy to see how the common pronunciation would be Cophill, or Cofill.

but he was by his posts advertised that the Earls, with banners displayed and battles ranged, were coming toward him, and were so hot and so courageous that they with light horses began to skirmish with his host. The King, perceiving their doings, issued out, and encamped himself without the east gate of the town. The Earls, nothing abashed although their succours them deceived, embattled themselves not far from the King's army." There was a night of watchfulness; and then, "the next day in the morning early, which was the vigil of Mary Magdalen, the King, perceiving that the battle was nearer than he either thought or looked for, lest that long tarrying might be a minishing of his strength, set his battles in good order." The scene of this great contest is well defined; the King has encamped himself without the east gate of Shrewsbury. The poet, by one of his magical touches, shows us the sun rising upon the hostile armies; but he is more minute than the chronicler. The King is looking eastward, and he sees the sun rising over a wooded hill. This is not only poetical, but it is true. He who stands upon the plain on the east side of Shrewsbury, the Battle Field as it is now called, waiting, not "a long hour by Shrewsbury clock," but waiting till the minute

will see that sun rise over a "busky hill," Haughmond Hill. We may well

Henry VI., Part III., Act Iv., Scene VII.

believe therefore, from this accuracy, that Shrewsbury had lent a local interest in the mind of Shakspere to the dramatic conception of the death-scene of the gallant Percy. Insurrection was not crushed at Shrewsbury; but the course of its action does not lie in the native district of the poet. Yet his Falstaff has an especial affection for these familiar scenes, and perhaps through him the poet described some of the "old familiar faces." Shallow and Silence assuredly they were his good neighbours. We think there was a tear in his eye when he wrote, "And is old Double dead?" Mouldy, and Shadow, and Wart, and Feeble-were they not the representatives of the valiant men of Stratford, upon whom the Corporation annually expended large sums for harness? After the treacherous putting down of rebellion at Gualtree Forest, Falstaff casts a longing look towards the fair seat of " Master Robert Shallow, Esquire." "My lord, I beseech you give me leave to go through Gloucestershire." We are not now far out of the range of Shakspere's youthful journeys around Stratford. Shallow will make the poor carter answer it in his wages "about the sack he lost the other day at Hinckley Fair." "William Visor of Wincot," that arrant knave who, according to honest and charitable Davy, "should have some countenance at his friend's request," was he a neighbour of Christopher Sly's "fat ale-wife of Wincot ;" and did they dwell together in the Wincot of the parish of Aston-Clifford, or the Wilmecote of the parish of Aston-Cantlow? The chroniclers are silent upon this point; and they tell us nothing of the history of " Clement Perkes of the Hill." The chroniclers deal with less happy and less useful sojourners on the earth. Even "goodman Puff of Barson," one of "the greatest men in the realm," has no fame beyond the immortality which Master Silence has bestowed upon him.

The four great historical dramas which exhibit the fall of Richard II., the triumph of Bolingbroke, the inquietudes of Henry IV., the wild career of his son ending in a reign of chivalrous daring and victory, were undoubtedly written after the four other plays of which the great theme was the war of the Roses. The local associations which might have influenced the young poet in the choice of the latter subject would be concentrated, in a great degree, upon Warwick Castle. The hero of these wars was unquestionably Richard Neville. It was a Beauchamp who fought at Agincourt in that goodly company who were to be remembered "to the ending of the world,”—

"Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester."

He ordained in his will that in his chapel at Warwick "three masses every day should be sung as long as the world might endure." The masses have long since ceased; but his tomb still stands, and he has a memorial that will last longer than his tomb. The chronicler passes over his fame at Agincourt, but the dramatist records it. Did the poet's familiarity with those noble towers in which the Beauchamp had lived suggest this honour to his memory? But here, at any rate, was the stronghold of the Neville. Here, when the land was at peace in the dead sleep of weak government, which was to be succeeded by

fearful action, the great Earl dwelt with more than a monarch's pomp, having his own officer-at-arms called Warwick herald, with hundreds of friends and dependants bearing about his badge of the ragged staff; for whose boundless hospitality there was daily provision made as for the wants of an army; whose manors and castles and houses were to be numbered in almost every county; and who not only had pre-eminence over every Earl in the land, but, as Great Captain of the Sea, received to his own use the King's tonnage and poundage. When William Shakspere looked upon this castle in his youth, a peaceful Earl dwelt within it, the brother of the proud Leicester-the son of the ambitious Northumberland who had suffered death in the attempt to make Lady Jane Grey queen, but whose heir had been restored in blood by Mary. Warwick Castle, in the reign of Elizabeth, was peaceful as the river which glided by it, the most beautiful of fortress palaces. No prisoners lingered in its donjon keep; the beacon blazed not upon its battlements, the warder looked not anxiously out to see if all was quiet on the road from Kenilworth; the drawbridge was let down for the curious stranger, and he might refresh himself in the buttery without suspicion. Here, then, might the young poet gather from the old servants of the house some of the traditions of a century previous, when the followers of the great Earl were ever in fortress or in camp, and for a while there seemed to be no king in England, but the name of Warwick was greater than that of king. Here, in the quiet woods and launds of this castle, or stretched