*

man's Fields in this character. The playbill is as follows: "October 19, 1741, | GOODMAN'S FIELDS. At the Theatre in Goodman's Fields, this day will be performed, | A CONCERT OF VOCAL & INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, | DIVIDED INTO TWO PARTS, * * * | N.B. Between the Two Parts of the Concert will be presented an Historical Play, called the Life and Death of | King RICHARD THE THIRD. Containing the distresses of K. Henry VI. The artful acquisition of the Crown by King Richard, | The Murder of Young King Edward V, and his Brother in the Tower, The landing of the Earl of Richmond, And the Death of King Richard in the memorable Battle of Bosworth Field, being the last that was fought between the Houses of York and Lancaster; with many other true Historical Passages. | The Part of King Richard by A GENTLEMAN, | (who never appeared on any stage)." &c. &c. There is nothing to be astonished at that Garrick should prefer Cibber's deformation to the original play; but we cannot help regretting that Edmund Kean should have fallen into the same error of taste. It may be doubted whether any real Shakespearean part ever suited Garrick so well as the Cibberized Richard III. On 27th May, 1776, at Drury Lane, Mrs. Siddons played Lady Anue for the first time. On 5th June of the same year Garrick acted Richard for the last time; Mrs. Siddons again representing Lady Anne, being her last performance that season. It has been remarked that this great actress, on her first appearance in London, seems to have made no impression whatever on her audience. Garrick himself is said to have thought very little of her talent.

Among the many performances of this play one or two are perhaps worth recording. On 1st April, 1810-11, Richard III. was played with John Kemble as Richard, and Charles Kemble as Richmond. John Kemble had revised Cibber's version; but, unfortunately, he had restored little if any of Shakespeare's text. On 12th June, 1813, Betty made his last appearance on the stage as Richard III. He was no longer a child, and seems to have lost his attraction for the public.

Richard III. was one of Kean's most popular impersonations; but it may be doubted whether his greatest qualities were so forcibly displayed in this character as in Othello, Hamlet, or Lear. Like everything he did, Kean's conception of the character was essentially original and carefully thought out; all the finest portions of it were those in which Shakespeare's poetry had been untouched by the deforming hand of Cibber. It seems that in his first season at Drury Lane, 1813, 1814, Kean acted the part twenty-five times, and in his next season at the same theatre also twenty-five times: the only other play of Shakespeare he played as often in that season being Macbeth.

On 12th March, 1821, at Covent Garden, a memorable attempt was made to restore to the stage Shakespeare's play of Richard III. For this version Macready was probably responsible. Genest says (vol. ix. p. 107) that "the first two acts went off with great applause;" but, on the whole, the piece was received coldly by the audience, and was only repeated once, on the 19th of the same month, and then laid aside. Macready played Richard; Yates, Buckingham; Abbott, Richmond; and Egerton, Clarence, who, with Mrs. Faucit as Queen Margaret, seems to have made the greatest success in the piece. On the 29th January, 1877, fortunately for those, to whom the true interests of dramatic art and the name of Shakespeare are dear, Richard III., “arranged for the Stage exclusively from the author's text," was produced at the Lyceum Theatre. This is not the place to speak of the chorus of approval with which this restoration of Shakespeare's text was received. Even those, who were not in any way admirers of Mr. Irving, had nothing but praise for his Richard; while the audience saw that the text of Shakespeare, properly abbreviated and arranged, formed a much more dramatic play than Cibber's alteration.

CRITICAL REMARKS.

The great popularity of this play in Shakespeare's time is undoubted, and cannot be overlooked by any critic attempting to esti

mate its merits. Whether the number of early editions published of it is a proof that, during the first thirty years of the seventeenth century, Richard III. was held to rank equally high, both as a literary work and as an acting play, is uncertain; but there can be little doubt that no work of Shakespeare's was more generally read, with the exception of the Poems, than Richard III. and those one or two other plays which came nearest to it in popularity. In later times its literary merits cannot have been very highly esteemed, or Cibber's miserable version would not have been allowed to hold the stage so long, and indeed to have been the only form in which this play was known by most of Shakespeare's countrymen.

When one comes to study the play carefully, and to read it through from beginning to end, one sees that the impression it produces upon one, when acted, is, after all, not far from the right one. Richard himself is,

in reality, the play. We have, in passing, a strong sympathy for the young princes; we feel a mild pang of pity for the other numerous victims of Richard's merciless ambition: but it is the many-sided, resolute, and intellectual villain that really absorbs our attention, preoccupies our interest, and, in spite of his crimes, almost takes by storm our sympathies. A very Proteus he is, morally speaking: now an ardent lover, the next moment a plausible statesman, then a generous and doting friend; now a religious hypocrite and next a daring soldier. It is the ever-changing variety of his wickedness that fascinates us. Though he commits every crime which the hero of the coarsest melodrama ever committed, there is nothing vulgar about him. Endowed by nature with the dramatic temperament in its highest degree, he is such a superb actor--and he knows it-that he can simulate the most elevated sentiments, the most passionate emotions, with such wonderful superficial truth, that we feel he might deceive the devil himself; to say nothing of the weak and silly women or the blindly selfseeking men upon whom he practises his wiles.

With the exception of Margaret, Shake

speare has not bestowed much care upon the other characters of the play; yet they are sufficiently well drawn to interest one, did not Richard overshadow them all. Students, who read Shakespeare only, can discourse most eloquently upon the grand idea of Margaret, the impersonation of Nemesis, glorying in the vengeance which falls, in most cases with only too much justice, on those who had been either principles or accomplices in the rebellion against her late royal husband, in the murder of her darling child, and in all the horrible acts of cruelty which the Yorkist party, ultimately triumphant in the long civil wars, had perpetrated. But when the play is brought to the true test of a play,-when it is acted--were Margaret to be represented by one who had inherited all the talent and reputation of a Siddons, added to the prestige of a popular favourite at the present day, no one would take much interest in her, or regard her otherwise than as something of a bore, who interferes with the main action of the drama. Truth to tell, there is no female character in Richard III. that can interest one, dramatically speaking. Shakespeare has subordinated, so ruthlessly, every other one of the Dramatis Personæ to the central figure, Richard, that the wrongs of Elizabeth and of Anne make but little impression upon us, so angry are we at the weakness with which they succumb to the wily arts of Richard. They accept his simulations for realities so blindly, that the audience cannot reproach themselves because they are equally deceived. If those, whose dearest ones he had so treacherously murdered, can forgive him, why should not the spectators do so; for they can have no personal feeling against him, and are, moreover, dazzled by his intellectual brilliancy and by the imposing vigour of his character? Margaret alone resists him, and never flinches in her virulent denunciations of his crimes. Shakespeare throws an unnecessary monotony into her cursing. She is always declaiming, as it were, in the same key; and we should be more than mortal if these reiterated curses, this ever-flowing torrent of imprecation, did not weary us. We forget that she was ever young and handsome. We forget how nobly she stood by her son, when

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 shattere I 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 entrance— and 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 physical 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.