his father, with well-meaning but feeble amiability, would have sacrificed his boy's just rights in the cause of peace. We have not seen her rallying with invincible courage the shatterel remnant of a defeated army, or opposing to the insolent brutality of crowds of men the quenchless courage of a true woman's heart. We only see this wild, half-maniacal, old woman impotently cursing, or triumphing in the just retribution of a too-patient Providence, but playing no active part, as far as we can see, in bringing about that retribution. To the reader Margaret is an impressive figure enough; but, to the spectator of the acted play, she is only a gloomy kind of chorus, prophesying, with tediously elaborated indignation, events that we are on tenter-hooks to see actually happen. Of the second and third parts of Henry VI. Margaret is indeed the heroine; but of this play she can never be.

There are few even of Shakespeare's earlier plays so unequal as Richard III. The poet's art, as a dramatist, is nowhere shown in a more remarkable degree than in the skill, with which he has managed to make a character, so inherently repulsive as that of Richard, interesting, and even, to a certain degree, sympathetic to his audience. His first appearance in this play is most artfully contrived. The action commences at once with his entranceand here is the great mistake, we may remark, in Cibber's abominable version. Shakespeare commences his play with Richard's soliloquy, in which he at once enchains our attention. At the very outset, he brings into prominence the humour of the character, as well as the intellectual isolation, in which Richard's phy⚫sical deformity, coupled with a strong and justifiable consciousness of his own mental superiority over all around him, has placed him. Cibber, on the contrary, commences with a lot of tiresome stuff spoken by characters in whom we take no interest; and he destroys the sympathy, which Richard's soliloquy might create for him, by exhibiting the brutal murder of King Henry. Shakespeare, far wiser, after a short scene of studied hypocrisy, first between Richard and Clarence, and then with Hastings, brings us at once to the audacious love scene with Anne;

in which the amazing powers of simulation, and the almost supernatural strength of will that distinguish Richard, are brought into the strongest prominence, illumined by the dazzling flashes of that bitter ironical humour which, spite of ourselves, we cannot help enjoying. Of course, if one stops, but for a few moments, to measure Richard by the moral standard of the decalogue, we have nothing but horror and grave condemnation for him; but, like Goethe's Mephistopheles, there is such a reckless audacity about his wickedness, such a brilliant force in his sarcasm, that, as long as he is not ordering us to execution, or scathing us with his irony, we can only admire instead of reprobating his utter immorality. A hypocrite to everyone else, he is at least sincere to himself. He makes no show-when he bares what there is left to him of a soul-of pretending to any of the gentler virtues; selfreliance, courage, and iron will are all there; devoted, indeed, to the worst of ends, but devoted with such fearless determination that we forget, for a moment, the monstrousness of his aim. Whether he is making love to the pretty widow over the body of her late husband, or affecting sympathy with the brother whom he has betrayed to death; whether smiling the basilisk's smile over his unhappy nephews, or cajoling Hastings, or pouring out his confidences into the tickled ears of Buckingham; whether he is playing a religious farce, supported by two bishops, for the benefit of the thick-skulled citizens, or standing a triple fire of curses from three angry women; whether giving directions, with marvellous promptitude, for the defeat of the rebellious Buckingham, or at bay before the advancing forces of Richmond; even in the planning and execution of his most atrocious crimes, Richard is always a man. One cannot help feeling what a brave scoundrel he is. There is nothing of the pettifogger, nothing of the midnight assassin, or the secret poisoner, about him. His crimes are daringly

defiant alike of man and of God. One cannot help thinking that, if once he were secure in the position which he had gained by such audacious criminality, he would make a splendid ruler of men, and, perhaps, in some senses, a

great king. This glamour which encircles Richard is created by Shakespeare's magic touch. While he apparently adopts the extremest hostility of the most densely bigoted of the old chroniclers in his views of Richard's character, yet so humorous and so dramatic is Shakespeare's creation that, paradoxical as it may seem, we have more sympathy with his Richard than with the martyr to malignity and slander, which such a devoted admirer as Buck would make of the successful usurper. When young Richmond, the representative of outraged humanity, the avenger of women done to death by the slow torture of cruelty and of children basely murdered in their sleep, comes on the scene, with his small body of devoted but rather timid followers, quaking in their shoes at the very thought of the wild boar whose forces they are going to attack, our sympathies are naturally with him. This heroic champion of the House of Lancaster gives no sign, however slight, of developing into the monster of avarice that Henry VII. subsequently became; his character is as admirable as modesty and courage can make it; yet, somehow, we feel that, when Richard 14

awakes from that fearful dream, with the prophetic death-sweat of agony on his brow, as he nerves himself for the last struggle; when he utters that final defiance of the Great To-Be:

Conscience is but a word that cowards use,

we feel, indeed, blood-stained murderer though he be, that "a thousand hearts are great within his bosom." We are conscious that the curtain is about to descend on the last act of his short and feverish reign; we know that it is time Heaven's long-delayed vengeance overtook this Titanic sinner: yet there is a kind of doubtful feeling in our hearts whether, after all, we should not have thrown in our lot by the side of this wild beast brought to bay, instead of with his more fortunate enemies who are hunting him to death. Shakespeare rightly forbore to show us the naked body flung like the carcass of a sheep across a horse and cast by the roadside unburied: for he has done enough to make us feel, while we cry "God bless King Henry!", that Bosworth Field had been fatal to one who, with all his vices, showed himself, to the last, a brave man.

SCENE I. London. A street.

Enter GLOSTER.

Glo. Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York;1 And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;2 Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;3

And now instead of mounting barbed1 steeds,

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries-
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

10

But I, that am not shap'd for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's
majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am cúrtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time 20
Into this breathing world, scarce half made
up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable,
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;-
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight 10 to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,
And déscant on mine own deformity:
And therefore--since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain" these fair well-spoken days-
I am determined to prove a villain,
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

30

But what's the matter, Clarence? may I know?

Clar. Yea, Richard, when I know; for I protest

As yet I do not: but, as I can learn,
He hearkens after prophecies and dreams;
And from the cross-row plucks the letter G,
And says a wizard told him that by G
His issue disinherited should be;
And for my name of George begins with G,
It follows in his thought that I am he.
[These, as I learn, and such like toys as these,
Have mov'd his highness to commit me now. ]
Glo. Why, this it is, when men are rul❜d by

women:

59

But the queen's kindred, and night-walking heralds

That trudge betwixt the king and Mistress Shore.

[Heard ye not what an humble suppliant Lord Hastings was to her for his delivery? Glo. Humbly complaining to her deity Got my lord chamberlain his liberty.] I'll tell you what,-I think it is our way,10 If we will keep in favour with the king, To be her men, and wear her livery: [The jealous o'erworn widow and herself, Since that our brother dubb'd them gentlewomen,

Are mighty gossips" in this monarchy.]

80

Brak. Beseech your graces both to pardon me; His majesty hath straitly given in charge That no man shall have private conference, Of what degree soever, with his brother.

Glo. Even so; an please your worship.
Brakenbury,

You may partake of 12 any thing we say:
We speak no treason, man;--we say the king
Is wise and virtuous; and his noble queen 91
Well struck in years, fair, and not jealous;-
We say that Shore's wife hath a pretty foot,
A cherry lip, a bonny eye, a passing pleasing
tongue;

And that the queen's kin are made gentlefolks:

How say you, sir? can you deny all this?

Brak. With this, my lord, myself have nought to do.

Glo. Naught to do with Mistress Shore! I tell thee, fellow,

7 Tempers him to this extremity, moulds him, persuades him to this severity. 8 Worship, worth

9 Woodvile, pronounced as a trisyllable, Woode vile. 10 It is our way, our course is.

11 Gossips, godmothers, i.e. patrons.

12 Partake of, i.e. hear.