fire-drops which fell from his pen. Though we consider them, therefore, as possessing much attraction, and as disclosing Shakspeare in their outbreaks of fine writing, and in their strong characteristic portraiture, we shall now pass them by to proceed without delay to their dramatic successor, "Richard III." Of" Richard II.," fine as it occasionally is in poetry, and rich in sentiment and pathos, we have remarked that, with reference to the other productions of its great author, it was low in the scale of merit. In " Richard II." he found an insufficient and an unawakening subject for his genius, and it acted drowsily and as if it were half asleep: but in the third Richard there was abundant excitement for all its powers; and the victim of Tudor malignity and calumny rushes from the scene of our mighty dramatist in all the black efficiency of the demoniac tyrant. Besides Sir Thomas More's history of Richard of Gloster, our Poet had the assistance, as it seems, of a play upon the same subject, which had been popular before he began his career upon the stage. Adhering servilely neither to the historian nor to the old dramatist, Shakspeare contented himself with selecting from each of them such parts as were suited to his purpose; and with the materials thus obtained, compounded with others supplied by his own invention, he has produced a drama, which cannot be read in the closet, or seen in its representation on the stage without the strongest agitation of the mind. The character of Richard is drawn with inimitable effect; and in the minor parts of the execution of the drama, there is nothing among all the creations of poetry more splendid and terrific than the dream of Clarence. But this noble effort of the tragic power is not altogether faultless. Some of its scenes, as not promoting the action of the drama, are superfluous and even tedious; and the violation of history, for the purpose of introducing the deposed queen, Margaret, upon the stage, may reasonably be censured. I am not certain, however, that I should be satisfied to resign her on the requisition of truth. Her curses are thrilling, and their fulfilment is awful. Shakspeare, as

it may be remarked, has accumulated uncommitted crimes on the head of the devoted Richard. By the historian, this monarch is cleared of the deaths of Clarence and of Anne, his wife: to the latter of whom he is said to have approved himself an affectionate husband; whilst the murther of Clarence is imputed to the intrigues of the relations of his sister-in-law, the queen. His hand certainly did not shed the blood of the pious Henry; and even his assassination of the two illegitimate sons of his brother, Edward, is supported by very questionable evidence, for there is reason to think that the eldest of these young princes walked at his uncle's coronation; and that the youngest escaped to meet his death, under the name of Perkin Warbeck, from the band of the first Tudor. But the scene of Shakspeare has stampt deeper and more indelible deformity on the memory of the last sovereign of the house of York, than all the sycophants of the Tudors had been able to impress; or than all that the impartiality, and the acute research of the modern historian have ever had the power to erase. We are certain that Richard possessed a lawful title to the throne which he filled: that he was a wise and patriotic sovereign: that his death was a calamity to his country, which it surrendered to a race of usurpers and tyrants, who trampled on its liberties, and stained its soil with much innocent and rich blood:-to that cold-blooded murtherer and extortioner, Henry VII.-to that monster of cruelty and lust, his ferocious son: to the sanguinary and ruthless bigot, Mary: to the despotic and unamiable Elizabeth ; the murderess of a suppliant queen, of kindred blood, who had fled to her for protection. Such was the result of Bosworth's field, preceded, as it was on the stage of Shakspeare, by visions of bliss to Richmond, and by visions of terror to Richard. But Shakspeare wrote with all the prejudices of a partizan of the Tudors; and at a time also when it was still expedient to flatter that detestable family.

His next task was one of yet greater difficulty:-to smooth down the rugged features of the eighth Henry,

VOL. I.

h

and to plant a wreath on the brutal and blood-stained brow of the odious father of Elizabeth. This task he has admirably executed, and without offering much violation to the truth of history. He has judiciously limited his scene to that period of the tyrant's reign in which the more disgusting deformities of his character had not yet been revealed-to the death of Catharine, the fall of Wolsey, and the birth of Elizabeth: and the crowned savage appears to us only as the generous, the munificent, the magnanimous monarch, striking down the proud, and supporting with a strong arm the humble and the oppressed. But the whole pathos and power of the scene are devoted to Catharine and Wolsey. On these two characters the dramatist has expended all his force; and our pity is inseparably attached to them to the last moment of their lives. They expire, indeed, bedewed with our tears. Of this, the last of Shakspeare's dramatic histories, it may be remarked that it is written in a style different from that of its predecessors: that it is less interspersed with comic scenes; that in its serious parts its diction is more stately and formal; more elevated and figurative: that its figures are longer and more consistently sustained: that it is more rich in theatric exhibition, or in the spectacle, as Aristotle calls it, and by whom it is regarded as a component part of the drama. To any attentive reader these distinguishing characters of the dramatic history of Henry VIII. must be sufficiently obvious; and we can only wonder that the same mind should produce such fine pieces as those of "Henry IV.,"" Richard III.," and " Henry VIII.," each written with a pen appropriate to itself, and the last with a pen not employed in any other instance.

If we were to pause in this stage of our progress, we might confidently affirm that we had suggested to the minds of our readers such a mass of poetic and dramatic genius as would be sufficient to excite the general interest of an intellectual and literary people. But we are yet only in the vestibule which opens into the magnificence of the palace, where Shakspeare is seated on the throne of his greatness. The plays, which we have

hitherto been considering, are constructed, for the most part, with materials not his own, supplied either by the ancient chronicler, or by some preceding dramatist; and are wrought up without any reference to that essential portion of a drama, a plot or fable. But when he is disengaged from the incumbrances to which he had submitted in his histories, he assumes the full character of the more perfect dramatist; and discovers that art, for which, equally with the powers of his imagination, he was celebrated by Ben Jonson. In some of his plays, indeed, we acknowledge the looseness with which his fable is combined, and the careless hurry with which he accelerates its close: but in the greater triumphs of his genius, we find the fable artificially planned and solidly constructed. In "The Merchant of Venice," in "Romeo and Juliet," in " Lear," in " Othello," and, above all, in that intellectual wonder, "The Tempest," we may observe the fable managed with the hand of a master, and contributing its effect, with the characters and the dialogue, to amuse, to agitate, or to surprise. In that beautiful pastoral drama," As You Like It," the sudden disappearance of old Adam from the scene has been a subject of regret to more than one of the commentators and Samuel Johnson wishes that the dialogue between the hermit, as he calls him, and the usurping duke, the result of which was the conversion of the latter, had not been omitted on the stage. But old Adam had fulfilled the purposes of his dramatic existence, and it was therefore properly closed. He had discovered his honest attachment to his young master, and had experienced his young master's gratitude. He was brought into a place of safety; and his fortunes were now blended with those of the princely exiles of the forest. There was no further part for him to act; and he passed naturally from the stage, no longer the object of our hopes or our fears. On the subject of S. Johnson's wish respecting the dialogue between the old religious man and the guilty duke, we may shortly remark, that nothing could have been more undramatic than the intervention of such a scene of dry and didactic

morality, at such a crisis of the drama, when the minds of the audience were heated, and hurrying to its approaching close. Like Felix in the sacred history, the royal criminal might have trembled at the lecture of the holy man: but the audience, probably, would have been irritated or asleep. No! Shakspeare was not so ignorant of his art as to require to be instructed in it by the author of Irene.

But it was in the portraiture of the human mind: in the specific delineation of intellectual and moral man, that the genius of Shakspeare was preeminently conspicuous. The curious inquisition of his eye into the characters, which were passing beneath its glance, cannot be made too much the subject of our admiration and wonder. He saw them not only under their broad distinctions, when they became obvious to the common observer; but he beheld them in their nicer tints and shadings, by which they are diversified, though the tone of their general colouring may be the same.

"facies non omnibus una;

Nec diversa tamen."

To illustrate what I mean, let us contemplate Portia, Desdemona, Imogen, Rosalind, Beatrice, Cordelia, and Ophelia. They are equally amiable and affectionate women; equally faithful and attached as wives, as friends, as daughters: two of them, also, are noted for the poignancy and sparkle of their wit: and yet can it be said that any one of them can be mistaken for the other; or that a single speech can with propriety be transferred from the lips of her to whom it has been assigned by her dramatic creator? They are all known to us as the children of one family, with a general resemblance, and an individual discrimination. Benedict and Mercutio are both young men of high birth; of known valour; of playful wit, delighting itself in pleasantry and frolic: yet are they not distinguished beyond the possibility of their being confounded? So intimately conversant is our great dramatist with the varieties of human nature, that he scatters character, as a king on his