"In KING RICHARD II. the Poet exhibits to us a noble kingly nature, at first obscured by levity and the errors of unbridled youth, and afterwards purified by misfortune, and rendered more highly splendid and illustrious. When he has lost the love and reverence of his subjects, and is on the point of losing his throne, he then feels, with painful inspiration, the elevated vocation of the kingly dignity, and its prerogatives over personal merit and changeable institutions. When the earthly crown has fallen from off his head, he first appears as a king whose innate nobility no humiliation can annihilate. This is felt by a groom: he is shocked that his master's favourite horse should have carried the proud Bolingbroke at his coronation: he visits the captive King in his prison, and shames the desertion of the great. "The political history of the deposition is represented with extraordinary knowledge of the world :-the ebb of fortune on the one hand, and the swelling tide on the other, which carries every thing along with it. While Bolingbroke acts as a king, and his adherents behave towards him as if he really was so, he still continues to give out that he comes with an armed band merely for the sake of demanding his birthright, and the removal of abuses. The usurpation has been long completed before the word is pronounced and the thing publicly avowed. "John of Gaunt is a model of chivalrous birth: he stands there like a pillar of the olden time which he had outlived."-SCHLEGEL. "The action of the present play commences in 1398, when Richard had attained his thirty-second year; and 56 closes with his death in 1400. Hollingshed furnished the facts which the Poet dramatised; and, with the exception of a few minor points, Shakespeare adhered to his authority. *** "To avoid all mention of the bad features of his hero's character was impossible; but the dramatist touched them with a lenient hand. He found Richard a voluptuary, a tyrant, and a desponding coward; but by commencing his play within two years of Richard's deposition, he sunk twenty of violence, rapacity, and tyranny. "Shakespeare judiciously selected the banishment of Hereford, and the seizure of Gaunt's wealth, as instances of Richard's despotism and rapacity; for both those events are intimately connected with the subsequent action of the play. This inadequate tribute having been paid to truth, the reverse of the picture is heightened by the most strenuous exertion of the Poet's skill. Bold and various imagery, pious, philosophical, and sublime reflection, and all the graces of impassioned eloquence. are lavished on Richard. If he had manfully braved the buffets of calamity, and become a prey to sorrows, subdued only by the might of their accumulation, the struggle might have been awful; but as he pusillanimously yielded to despair, our sympathy is but slight, and Richard is upbraided and forgotten. "Hollingshed relates, that, under his misfortunes. Richard was almost consumed with sorrow, and in a manner half dead.' Such is the historian's slight mention of the King's character in the hour of adversity; and this brief notice has been expanded by the magic of Shakespeare into a perfect picture of intellectual cowardice."-SKOTTOWE. What yesternight our council did decree, West. My liege, this haste was hot in question, Upon whose dead corpse there was such misuse, K. Hen. It seems, then, that the tidings of this Brake off our business for the Holy Land. West. This, match'd with other, did, my gracious lord; For more uneven and unwelcome news Where they did spend a sad and bloody hour, And shape of likelihood, the news was told; K. Hen. Here is a dear, a true-industrious friend, Ten thousand bold Scots, two-and-twenty knights, To beaten Douglas, and the earl of Athol, Of Murray, Angus, and Menteith; And is not this an honourable spoil? A gallant prize? ha! cousin, is it not? It is a conquest for a prince to boast of. K. Hen. Yea, there thou mak'st me sad, and mak'st me sin, In envy that my lord Northumberland Should be the father to so blest a son: A son, who is the theme of honour's tongue; Of this young Percy's pride? the prisoners, Malevolent to you in all aspects; SCENE II.-The Same. Another Apartment in the Palace. Enter HENRY, Prince of Wales, and FALSTAFF. Fal. Now, Hal; what time of day is it, lad? P. Hen. Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly, which thou would'st truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flamecolour'd taffeta, I see no reason why thou should'st be so superfluous to demand the time of the day. Fal. Indeed, you come near me, now, Hal; for we, that take purses, go by the moon and the seven stars, and not by Phoebus,-he, "that wandering knight so fair." And, I pr'ythee, sweet wag, when thou art king,-as, God save thy grace,-majesty, I should say, for grace thou wilt have none,— P. Hen. What! none? Fal. No, by my troth; not so much as will serve to be prologue to an egg and butter. P. Hen. Well, how then? come, roundly, roundly. Fal. Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us, that are squires of the night's body, be called thieves of the day's beauty: let us be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon; and let men say, we be men of good government, being governed as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal. P. Hen. Thou say'st well, and it holds well, too; for the fortune of us, that are the moon's men, doth ebb and flow like the sea, being governed as the sea is, by the moon. As for proof. Now, a purse of gold most resolutely snatched on Monday night, and most dissolutely spent on Tuesday morning; got with swearing-"lay by ;" and spent with crying"bring in" now, in as low an ebb as the foot of the ladder, and, by and by, in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows. Fal. By the Lord, thou say'st true, lad. And is not my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench? P. Hen. As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle. And is not a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance? Fal. How now, how now, mad wag! what, in thy quips, and thy quiddities? what a plague have I to do with a buff jerkin? P. Hen. Why, what a pox have I to do with my hostess of the tavern? Fal. Well, thou hast called her to a reckoning many a time and oft. P. Hen. Did I ever call for thee to pay thy part? |