It is he, the "blunt-witted lord," that defies Suffolk, and sets the men of Bury upon him to demand his banishment. It is he who stands by the bed of the dying Beaufort, judging that "So bad a death argues a monstrous life." All this is skilfully managed by the dramatist, to keep Warwick constantly before the eyes of his audience, before he is embarked in the great contest for the crown. The poet has given Warwick an early importance, which the chroniclers of the age do not assign to him. He is dramatically correct in so doing; but, at the same time, his judgment might in some degree have been governed by the strength of local associations. Once embarked in the great quarrel, Warwick is the presiding genius of the scene: "Now, by my father's badge, old Nevil's crest, The rampant bear chain'd to the ragged staff, This day I'll wear aloft my burgonet, As on a mountain-top the cedar shows That keeps his leaves in spite of any storm."* The sword is first unsheathed in that battle-field of St. Albans. After three or four years of forced quiet it is again drawn. The "she-wolf of France " plunges her fangs into the blood of York at Wakefield, after Warwick has won the great battle of Northampton. The crown is achieved by the son of York at the field of Towton, where "Warwick rages like a chafed bull." The poet necessarily hurries over events which occupy a large space in the narratives of the historian. The rash marriage of Edward provokes the resentment of Warwick, and his power is now devoted to set up the fallen house of Lancaster. Shakspere is then again in his native localities. After the battle of Banbury, according to the chronicler, "the northern men resorted toward Warwick, where the Earl had gathered a great multitude of people. The King likewise, sore thirsting to recover his loss late sustained, and desirous to be revenged of the death and murders of his lords and friends, marched toward Warwick with a great army. . . . All the King's doings were by espials declared to the Earl of Warwick, which, like a wise and politic captain, intending not to lose so great an advantage to him given, but trusting to bring all his purposes to a final end and determination, by only obtaining this enterprise, in the dead of the night, with an elect company of men of war, as secretly as was possible set on the King's field, killing them that kept the watch, and erc the King was ware (for he thought of nothing less than of that chance that happened), at a place called Wolney (Wolvey), four mile from Warwick, he was taken prisoner, and brought to the Castle of Warwick." The statement that Wolvey is four miles from Warwick is one of many examples of the inaccuracy of the old annalists in matters of distance. It is upon the borders of Leicester shire, Coventry lying equidistant between Wolvey and Warwick. Shakspere has dramatized the scene of Edward's capture. Edward escapes from Middleham Castle, and, after a short banishment, lands again with a few followers in England, to place himself again upon the throne, by a movement which has only one parallel in history.* Shakspere describes his countrymen, in the speech which the great Earl delivers for the encouragement of Henry:— "In Warwickshire I have true-hearted friends, Not mutinous in peace, yet bold in war; Those will I muster up." Henry is again seized by the Yorkists. Warwick, "the great-grown traitor," is at the head of his native forces. The local knowledge of the poet is now rapidly put forth in the scene upon the walls of Coventry : The chronicler tells the great event of the encounter of the two leaders at Coventry, which the poet has so spiritedly dramatized :-"In the mean season King Edward came to Warwick, where he found all the people departed, and from thence with all diligence advanced his power toward Coventry, and in a plain by the city he pitched his field. And the next day after that he came thither his men were set forward and marshalled in array, and he valiantly bade the Earl battle: which, mistrusting that he should be deceived by the Duke of Clarence, as he was indeed, kept himself close within the walls. And yet he had perfect word that the Duke of Clarence came forward toward him with a great army. King Edward, being also thereof informed, raised his camp, and made toward the Duke. And lest that there might be thought some fraud to be cloaked between them, the King set his battles in an order, as though he would fight without any longer delay; the Duke did likewise." ‡ Then "a * The landing of Bonaparte from Elba, and Edward at Ravenspurg, are remarkably similar in their rapidity and their boldness, though very different in their final consequences. Henry VI., Part III., Act v., Scene I. + Hall. fraternal amity was concluded and proclaimed," which was the ruin of War wick, and of the House of Lancaster. Ten years before these events, in the Parliament held in this same city of Coventry-a city which had received great benefits from Henry VI.-York, and Salisbury, and Warwick had been attainted. And now Warwick held the city for him who had in that same city denounced him as a traitor. With store of ordnance, and warlike equipments, had the great Captain lain in this city for a few weeks; and he was honoured as one greater than either of the rival Kings-one who could bestow a crown and who could take a crown away; and he sate in state in the old halls of Coventry, and prayers went up for his cause in its many churches, and the proud city's municipal officers were as his servants. He marched out of the city with his forces, after Palm Sunday; and on Easter-day the quarrel between him and the perjured Clarence and the luxurious Edward was settled for ever upon Barnet Field : : "Thus yields the cedar to the axe's edge, Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle; Whose top-branch overpeer'd Jove's spreading tree, And kept low shrubs from winter's powerful wind." * The Battle of Barnet was fought on the 14th of April, 1471. Sir John Paston, a stout Lancastrian, writes to his mother from London on the 18th of April:-"As for other tidings, it is understood here that the Queen Margaret is verily landed, and her son, in the west country, and I trow that as to-morrow, or else the next day, the King Edward will depart from hence to her ward to drive her out again." Sir John Paston, himself in danger of his head, seems to hint that the landing of Queen Margaret will again change the aspect of things. In sixteen days the Battle of Tewksbury was fought. This is the great crowning event of the terrible struggle of sixteen years; and the scenes at Tewksbury are amongst the most spirited of these dramatic pictures. We may readily believe that Shakspere had looked upon the "fair park adjoining to the town," where the Duke of Somerset "pitched his field, against the will and consent of many other captains which would that he should have drawn aside;" and that he had also thought of the unhappy end of the gallant Prince Edward, as he stood in "the church of the Monastery of Black Monks in Tewksbury," where "his body was homely interred with the other simple corses." There were twelve years of peace between the Battle of Tewksbury and the death of Edward IV. Then came the history which Hall entitles, The Pitiful Life of King Edward the Fifth,' and The Tragical Doings of King Richard the Third.' The last play of the series which belongs to the wars of the Roses is unquestionably written altogether with a more matured power than those which preceded it; yet the links which connect it with the other three plays of the series are so unbroken, the treatment of character is so consistent, and the poetical conception of the whole so uniform, that, whatever amount of criticism may be yet in store to show that our view is incorrect, we now confidently speak of them all as the plays of Shakspere, and of Shakspere alone.* Matured, especially in its wonderful exhibition of character, as the Richard III. is, we cannot doubt that the subject was very early familiar to the young poet's mind. The Battle of Bosworth Field was the great event of his own locality, which for a century had fixed the government of England. The course of the Reformation, and especially the dissolution of the Monasteries, had produced great social changes, which were in operation at the time in which William Shakspere was born; whose effects, for good and for evil, he must have seen working around him, as he grew from year to year in knowledge and experience. But those events were too recent, and indeed of too delicate a nature, to assume the poetical aspect in his mind. They abided still in the region of prejudice and controversy. It was dangerous to speak of the great religious divisions of the kingdom with a tolerant impartiality. History could scarcely deal with these opinions in a spirit of justice. Poetry, thus, which has regard to what is permanent and universal, has passed by these matters, important as they are. But the great event which placed the Tudor family on the throne, and gave England a stable government, however occasionally distracted by civil and religious division, was an event which would seize fast upon such a mind as that of William Shakspere. His ancestor, there can be little doubt, had been an adherent of the Earl of Richmond. For his faithful services to the conqueror at Bosworth he was rewarded, as we are assured, by lands in Warwickshire. That field of Bosworth would therefore have to him a family as well as a local interest. Burton, the historian of Leicestershire, who was born about ten years after William Shakspere, tells us "that his great-great-grandfather, John Hardwick, of Lindley, near Bosworth, a man of very short stature, but active and courageous, tendered his service to Henry, with some troops of horse, the night he lay at Atherston, became his guide to the field, advised him in the attack, and how to profit by the sun and by the wind."+ Burton further says, writing in 1622, that the inhabitants living around the plain called Bosworth Field, more properly the plain of Sutton, "have many occurrences and passages yet fresh in memory, by reason that some persons thereabout, which saw the battle fought, were living within less than forty years, of which persons myself have seen some, and have * See our 'Essay on the Three Parts of King Henry VI., and King Richard III.' |