To slay the innocent? What is my offence? To threaten me with death is most unlawful. 1 Murd. What we will do we do upon command. 2 Murd. And he that hath commanded is our king. Clar. Erroneous vassal! the great King of kings Hath in the table of his law commanded, 2 Murd. And that same vengeance doth he hurl on thee, For false forswearing, and for murther too: 1 Murd. And, like a traitor to the name of God, Didst break that vow; and with thy treacherous blade Unripp'dst the bowels of thy sovereign's son. 2 Murd. Whom thou wast sworn to cherish and defend. 1 Murd. How canst thou urge God's dreadful law to us, When thou hast broke it in such dear degree? Clar. Alas! for whose sake did I that ill deed? For Edward, for my brother, for his sake: 1 Murd. Who made thee then a bloody minister, When gallant-springing, brave Plantagenet, Clar. My brother's love, the devil, and my rage. 1 Murd. Thy brother's love, our duty, and thy faults, Provoke us hither now to slaughter thee. Clar. If you do love my brother, hate not me; I am his brother, and I love him well. If you are hir'd for meed, go back again, And I will send you to my brother Gloster; Who shall reward you better for my life Than Edward will for tidings of my death. 2 Murd. You are deceiv'd, your brother Gloster hates you. Clar. O, no; he loves me, and he holds me dear; Clar. Relent, and save your Which of you, if you were a prince's son, Being pent from liberty, as I am now, If two such murtherers as yourselves came to you, a This line is not in the folio. b Clarence's speech, in the folio, is addressed to both murderers; and we give the pronoun accordingly. Would not entreat for life,- -as you would beg Were you in my distress? a 1 Murd. Relent! No. 'Tis cowardly and womanish. Clar. Not to relent, is beastly, savage, devilish. My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks; 1 Murd. Take that, and that; if all this will a The arrangement here, in the folio, is different from some of the ordinary texts. We prefer to follow the folio. The text of the quartos is as follows: "Clar. Relent, and save your souls. 1 M. Relent 't is cowardly and womanish. Clar. Not to relent, is beastly, savage, and devilish. My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks; O, if thine eye be not a flatterer, Come thou on my side and entreat for me: A begging prince what beggar pities not?" I'll drown you in the malmsey-butt within. [Exit, with the body. 2 Murd. A bloody deed, and desperately despatch'd! How fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands Of this most grievous murder! Re-enter first Murderer. 1 Murd. How now? what mean'st thou, that thou help'st me not? By heaven, the duke shall know how slack you have been. 2 Murd. I would he knew that I had sav'd his brother! Take thou the fee, and tell him what I say; For I repent me that the duke is slain. [Exit 1 Murd. So do not I; go, coward as thou art. Well, I'll go hide the body in some hole, Till that the duke give order for his burial; And when I have my meed, I will away; For this will out, and then I must not stay. [Exit. as late as 1688, that the crown counsel, Sir George Mackenzie, in the remarkable trial of Philip Standsfield, thus alludes to a fact sworn to by several witnesses on that trial:-" God Almighty himself was pleased to bear a share in the testimonies which we produce. That Divine Power which makes the blood circulate during life has ofttimes, in all nations, opened a passage to it after death upon such occasions, but most in this case; for after all the wounds had been sewed up, and the body designedly shaken up and down, and, which is most wonderful, after the body had been buried for several days, which naturally occasions the blood to congeal, upon Philip's touching it the blood darted and sprung out, to the great astonishment of the chirurgeons themselves, who were desired to watch this event; whereupon Philip, astonished more than they, threw down the body, crying, O God! O God! and, cleansing his hand, grew so faint that they were forced to give him a cordial." It has not been our design, in these Illustrations, to advance the knowledge of the real facts of history, and to show the proper dependence of one fact upon another, for the purpose of correcting the poetical view of any series of events; far less have we endeavoured to enter upon disputed points, and to place conflicting evidence, for the most part derived from the more accurate researches of modern times, in opposition to the details of the old historical authorities. It is our business simply to show the foundations upon which our poet built; to trace the relations between his dramatic situations and the narratives with which he was evidently familiar. In the great drama before us Shakspere fell in with the popular view of the character of Richard III. ;preserving all the strong lineaments of his guilty ambition, as represented by Sir Thomas More, and the Chroniclers who followed the narrative of that illustrious man, with marvellous subservience to his own wonderful conception of the high inHISTORIES.-VOL. II. S tellectual supremacy of this usurper. We are not about to inquire whether the Richard of history has had justice done to him, but whether the Richard of Shakspere accords with the Richard of the old annalists. We shall quote invariably from Hall, because his narrative is more literally copied from More and the contemporary writers than that of Holinshed, who is never so quaint and vigorous; and further, because we wish to show that the nonsense which has been uttered by Malone and others, that Shakspere knew no other historian than Holinshed, is disproved in the clearest manner by the accuracy with which in some scenes he follows the older Chronicler. We first give Hall's description (from More) of Richard's 's person and character: "Richard duke of Gloster was in wit and courage equal with the others (his brothers Edward and George), but in beauty and lineaments of nature far underneath both; for he was little of stature, evil-featured of limbs, crook-backed, the left 257 shoulder much higher than the right, hard favoured of visage, such as in estates is called a warlike visage and among common persons a crabbed face. He was malicious, wrathful, and envious, and, as it is reported, his mother the duchess had much ado in her travail, and that he came into the world the feet forward, as men be borne outward, and, as the fame ran, not untoothed: whether that men of hatred reported above the truth, or that nature changed his course in his beginning which in his life many things unnaturally committed, this I leave to God his judgment. He was none evil captain in war, as to the which his disposition was more inclined to than to peace. Sundry victories he had, and some overthrows, but never for default of his own person, either for lack of hardiness or politic order. Free he was of his dispenses, and somewhat above his power liberal; with large gifts he got him unsteadfast friendship, for which cause he was fain to borrow, pill, and extort in other places, which got him steadfast hatred. He was close and secret, a deep dissimuler, lowly of countenance, arrogant of heart, outwardly familiar where he inwardly hated, not letting to kiss whom he thought to kill; despiteous and cruel, not alway for evil will, but often for ambition and to serve his purpose; friend and foe were all indifferent where his advantage grew; he spared no man's death whose life withstood his purpose. He slew in the Tower King Henry the Sixth, saying, Now is there no heir male of King Edward the Third but we of the house of York: which murder was done without King Edward his assent, which would have appointed that butcherly office to some other rather than to his own brother. Some wise men also wen that his drift lacked not in helping forth his own brother of Clarence to his death, which thing to all appearance he resisted, although he inwardly minded it. And the cause thereof was, as men noting his doings and proceedings did mark, because that he long in King Edward his time thought to obtain the crown in case that the king his brother, whose life he looked that evil diet would soon shorten, should happen to decease, as he did indeed, his children being young. And then, if the Duke of Clarence had lived, his pretended purpose had been far hindered; for if the Duke of Clarence had kept himself true to his nephew the young king, or would have taken upon him to be king, every one of these casts had been a trump in the Duke of Gloster's way: but when he was sure that his brother of Clarence was dead, then he knew he might work without that jeopardy. But of these points there is no certainty, and whosoever divineth or conjectureth may as well shoot too far as too short; but this conjecture afterward took place (as few do), as you shall perceive hereafter." The "taking off" of Clarence is not imputed by the old historians to Richard. At the time when Shakspere wrote, little more than a century after these events, it was probably usual to ascribe crimes which we have not even heard of to the usurper who had perished, and from whose trium- . phant rival the reigning family had sprung. The history of the murder of Clarence is thus related : "In the xvii year of King Edward there fell a sparkle of privy malice between the king and his brother the Duke of Clarence, whether it rose of old grudges before time passed, or were it newly kindled and set afire by the queen or her blood, which were ever mistrusting and privily barking at the king's lineage, or were he desirous to reign after his brother: to men that have thereof made large inquisition, of such as were of no small authority in those days, the certainty thereof was hid, and could not truly be disclosed but by conjectures, which as often deceive the imaginations of fantastical folk, as declare truth to them in conclusion. The fame was that the king or the queen, or both, sore troubled with a foolish prophecy, and by reason thereof began to stomach and grievously to grudge against the duke: the effect of which was, after King Edward should reign one whose first letter of his name should be a G; and because the devil is wont with such witchcrafts to wrap and illaqueate the minds of men, which delight in such devilish fantasies, they said afterward that that prophecy lost not his effect, when after King Edward Gloster usurped his kingdom. "Other allege this to be the cause of his death: -That of late the old rancour between them being newly revived (the which between no creatures can be more vehement than between brethren, especially when it is firmly radicate), the duke, being destitute of a wife, by the means of Lady Margaret Duchess of Bourgoyne, his sister, procured to have the Lady Mary, daughter and heir to Duke Charles her husband, to be given to him in matrimony; which marriage King Edward (envying the felicity of his brother) both gainsaid and disturbed. This privy displeasure was openly appeased, but not inwardly forgotten nor outwardly forgiven; for that notwithstanding a servant of the duke's was suddenly accused (I cannot say of truth or untruly suspected by the duke's enemies) of poisoning, sorcery, or enchantment, and thereof condemned, and put to taste the pains of death. The duke, which might not suffer the wrongful condemnation of his man (as he in his conscience adjudged), nor yet forbear, nor patiently suffer the unjust handling of his trusty servant, daily did oppugn and with ill words murmur at the doing thereof. The king, much grieved and troubled with his brother's daily querimony and continual exclamation, caused him to be apprehended and cast into the Tower, |