same time give utterance to his teeming brain, and satisfy his dramatic intuition. He wrote Histories because they suited the taste of the day; and in their composition, no less, and no he used, as more, than in that of Comedies and Tragedies, the basis of his work, the materials nearest at hand and best suited to his purpose. He would have written a play upon the life and death of King Lud, had any incidents in the reign of that monarch susceptible of dramatic treatment been known to him; and, above all, had some dramatist of the preceding generation produced a successful play founded upon them which he could have used as foundation or as scaffolding. The Wars of the Roses and the events which led to them offered him a succession of stirring scenes filled with famous actors, which could be worked into dramatico-historical pictures of the reigns of the monarchs under whom they took place, and which would appeal directly to the love of knowledge, the chivalric sympathies, and the patriotism that animated the audiences for which he wrote. The bloody struggle that began with the deposition of one Richard at Westminster, and ended with the death of another at Bosworth Field, its long succession of internecine horrors relieved only by the glorious episode of Agincourt, had for our ancestors in Shakespeare's time the charms of fable united to the sober interest of history. The nearest events were so remote that their harsh features were mellowing by distance, and their sharp outlines crumbling into the picturesqueness of antiquity, while those of earliest occurrence were yet sufficiently near to be familiar objects of contemplation, preserved from oblivion as they were in the traditions of men removed only by a few generations from the actors who took part in them. To this interest in the subject, - an interest to the audience intrinsic, to the dramatist extrinsic, and not to historical plan or instructive purpose of any kind, we owe the series of plays beginning with Richard the Second and ending with Richard the Third. The epic of our race became a drama : our Homer sang upon the stage; our Virgil recited to the people. The Historical Plays having been produced in this spirit, with this motive, and, as we shall see when we consider them in detail, without system or order,* no examination of them as *There is, in my opinion, no room for doubt that they appeared in the following order: Henry VI., Richard II., King John, Richard III., Henry IV., Henry V., Henry VIII. a series can consistently be made, and no essay upon them as a whole can be written, except in a literal, chronological spirit wholly at variance with that in which they were conceived. Dramatically they differ from the other plays, not because of a different purpose on the part of their author, -a purpose peculiar to him, but on account of conditions imposed by the materials upon which he worked, and to which all writers of dramatic histories must needs conform. Poetically they are distinguished only by the same indications of mental development and change of moral tone which are discernible in the Comedies and Tragedies. The appearance of the same personages in more than one of them, and the connection of the incidents of one with those of another, are dependent entirely upon the chronological relations of the events on which they are based. Had each History been the work of a particular author, the Bolingbroke of Richard II. must no less have become the King of Henry IV., the Prince Henry of Henry IV. the King of Henry V., and so on through the series, even down to the least prominent of the historical characters; and as to the characters not historical-Falstaff and his satellites - who appear in three of these plays, what audience, having seen them attendant upon Prince Hal in the First Part of Henry IV., would have pardoned Shakespeare for depriving him of their company in the Second Part, or have found even the glory of Henry V. complete without their mellowing ray of humor! If the presence of these characters in three plays is to be accepted as evidence that a plan had been formed for a historical series, of which those plays were a part, then we must enlarge the plan and make room for an eleventh historical play — The Merry Wives of Windsor. But Henry IV. and the story of Falstaff's hapless amours must both be regarded from the same point of view, as plays only; there being only these differences between them, - that one is more serious than the other, and that in one the incidents, being historical, determined for the poet the dramatic progress of the play, while in the other the incidents, and consequently the dramatic progress, were entirely within his control. In accordance with these views, our Introductory Remarks upon the Historical Plays have no bearing upon the conformity of those plays to the facts of History; and such historical remarks as are made in the Notes, whether upon events or personages, have merely an illustrative purpose the gratification of a reason able desire to know out of what material Shakespeare built the Walhalla of our race, and who were the heroes with whom he peopled it.* Two of Shakespeare's Histories — King John and Henry VIII. are entirely isolated. The latter was written as a show piece; the former because its main incidents appealed to the patriotic and protestant feeling of the Elizabethan era, and because the subject was one already familiar to the public and there was an old play at hand to work upon. The events of King John's reign had twice been made the subject of dramatic treatment before Shakespeare produced his History: once by Bishop Bale, the zealous reformer, whose Kynge Johan † is a singular cross between the Moral play with its allegorical characters, and the Historical play with its real personages, and distinctly marks a transition period in our early drama; and again by certain unknown authors who produced The Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England,‡ the play on which Shakespeare founded his Life and Death of King John. Of the prelate's play, Shakespeare probably knew nothing; yet it is certain that his own was in some measure affected by it. Kynge Johan was written to make proselytes to the reformed church; and the events of that monarch's reign which the author selected as the basis of his work were those only which could be used to the prejudice of the Church of Rome; - the dictatorial assumption of the Pope, the King's resistance, the consequent interdict and the suffering caused by it, the final submission of John, and his alleged death by poison administered by a fanati The reader who wishes to read Shakespeare as a historical exercise should consult the Variorum edition of 1821, or, better, the Right Honorable Thomas Peregrine Courtenay's Commentaries on the Historical Plays of Shakespeare, in which he will find the question "whether these plays may be given to our youth as properly historical," gravely and elaborately discussed, and Shakespeare duly censured for the "bad language" which he puts into the mouths of some of the characters. † Printed by the Camden Society from the original MS. edited by Mr. Collier. "The First and Second Part of the Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England. With the discovery of King Richard Cordelion's base sonne (vulgarly named the Bastard Fawconbridge:) Also the Death of King John at Swinestead Abbey. As they were (sundry times) lately acted by the Queenes Majestyes Players. Written by W. Sh. Imprinted at London by Valentine Simmes for John Helme, and are to be sold at his shop in St. Dunstan's Churchyard, in Fleet Street." 1611. Reprinted in Nichol's Six Old Plays, &c., and in Steevens Twenty of the Plays of Shakespeare, &c. cal monk of Swinstead Abbey. The play is without interest of any kind: no ray of poetry or wit, no gleam even of keen malice, lights up the uncouth structure of its antiquated verse; its allegorical and historical personages are alike in their tameness and want of character; story or plan it has none; and the ribaldry and grossness of its language are entirely at variance with our notions of decency, not to say of clerical dignity. Yet it determined, in a measure, the form of Shakespeare's King John, because it created a precedent which was followed by the intermediate play, which Shakespeare followed in his turn. The great dramatist modified the structure of a play which itself was but a modification of another; and thus, like some abbey or minster, the noble fabric rose from additions to and alterations of an original mean and rude, yet not without an inherent strength and vitality of purpose. As Bishop Bale's play was quite surely written after the accession of Edward VI., and could not have been produced after Mary had ascended the throne with any hope that it would be performed, the year 1550 may safely be assumed as about the date of its appearance. It seems more than probable that after the five years' gloom of Mary's bloody and bigoted despotism had passed away, Kynge Johan emerged again into genial light, to be welcomed with enthusiasm; and that it was to take advantage of the favor which its subject had acquired, that The Troublesome Reign of King John was written about thirty years afterward. In the rapidly advancing state of our drama at that time, Kynge Johan had become obsolete in its very form and elements ere the generation that first received it as a novelty had passed away. The play which took its place was entirely different from its predecessor in motive as well as in structure. In The Troublesome Reign no allegorical personages appear; and ecclesiastical protestantism is not taught in dull didactics or scurrilous polemics. The characters are all copied from real life or taken from history; and they appear upon the stage only in connection with the incidents upon which the interest of the play depends. It is in spirit and form absolutely dramatic, though not highly so, and is as purely a historical play as that which succeeded and eclipsed it. It only fails to be as good, because among all its authors there was not a ray of the genius which blazed, sun-like, in the all-illuminating mind of Shakespeare. Yet it is interesting to observe in The Troublesome Reign the introduction of Faulconbridge as a compensation for the loss of Sedition, an allegorical character that supplied the comic element of the elder piece. He is no more like Shakespeare's Faulconbridge than a practical joke is like wit; but in his scenes with the monks he fulfilled the jester's function, and made the sport needful for the people.* For in The Troublesome Reign the * The following extracts from the old play will give the reader a notion of its general style, as well as of the Bastard as he there appears, both in his jocose and in his sober moods. "Essex. Philip, who was thy father? Phil. Mas my lord, and that's a question: and you had not taken some paines with her before, I should have desired you to aske my mother. John. Say, who was thy father? Phil. Faith (my lord) to answere you, sure hee is my father who was neerest my mother when I was begotten, and him I thinke to be Sir Robert Fauconbridge. John. Essex, for fashions sake demand agen, And so an end to this contention. Robert. Was ever man thus wrongd as Robert is? Essex. Philip speak I say, who was thy father? John. Young man, how now, what art thou in a trance? Phil. Phillipus atavis ædite Regibus. What saist thou Philip, sprung of auncient kings? What winde of honour blowes this furie forth? Or whence proceede these fumes of majestie? Me thinkes I heare a hollow eccho sound, That Phillip is the sonne unto a king: The whistling leaves upon the trembling trees The bubling murmur of the waters fall, Records, Phillipus Regius Filius. Birds in their flight make musicke with their wings, Filling the aire with glorie of my birth: Birds, bubbles, leaves, and mountaines, eccho, all Ring in mine eares, that I am Richards sonne." The following passage is from the scene in the Abbey: "Philip. Come on you fat Franciscan, dallie no longer, but shew me where the abbots treasure lies, or die. Frier. Benedicamus Domine, was ever such an injurie? Sweet S. Withold of thy lenitie, defend us from extremitie. And heare us for S. Charitie, oppressed with austeritie. In nomine domini make I my homily, Gentle gentilitie grieve not the cleargie. Philip. Gray gown'd good face, conjure ye, Nere trust me for a groat |