one, wholly or in part, by Ben Jonson (vide Henslowe's Diary, 22nd June, 1602), called Richard Crookback, and another, now lost, perhaps more intimately connected with Shakespeare's.

Duration of Action. The time of Richard III., as analysed by Mr. Daniel (New Shakespeare Society Trans., 1877-79), covers eleven days represented on the stage; with intervals. The total dramatic time is probably within one month.

Day 1, Act I. Sc. i., ii. Interval. Day 2, Act I. Sc. iii., iv.; Act II. Sc. i., ii. Day 3, Act II. Sc. iii. Interval; for the journey to Ludlow. Day 4, Act II. Sc. iv. Day 5, Act III. Sc. i. Day 6, Act. III. Sc. ii.-vii. Day 7, Act IV. Sc. i. Day 8, Act. IV. Sc. ii.-v. Interval; Richard's march to Salisbury. Day 9, Act V. Sc. i. Interval; Richard's march from Salisbury to Leicester. Day 10, Act V. Sc. ii., and first half of Sc. iii. Day 11, Act V., second half of Sc. iii., and Sc. iv., v.

The historic time is from about the date of Henry VI.'s obsequies, May 1471, to the Battle of Bosworth Field, 22nd August, 1485.

Critical Comments.

I.

Argument.

I. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, resolves to obtain the crown of England, notwithstanding the fact that he is not in the direct line of succession. He aims a secret blow against his brother Clarence, who is involved by him in a quarrel with their brother, King Edward IV., and immured in the Tower, where he is shortly afterwards murdered. Gloucester next seeks to strengthen his cause by suing for the hand of Lady Anne, which he wins in the very presence of the corpse of her father-inlaw, Henry VI., dead at his hands, and despite the fact that her husband had also been slain by him.

II. King Edward, in declining health, seeks to foster peace in his realm. He dies, and his young son Edward, Prince of Wales, is summoned to London to be crowned. Before he arrives, Gloucester, who is made lord protector, finds means to weaken the prince by imprisoning and afterwards executing three noblemen of the latter's party.

III. Richard meets the prince and his younger brother in London, and under pretext of assigning them a lodging imprisons them in the Tower. Lord Hastings, a powerful nobleman, faithful to the royal line, is beheaded, also by Richard's orders. The Duke of Buckingham upholds Gloucester, and is largely instrumental in obtaining for him the coveted crown.

IV. Buckingham, however, hesitates when the new King Richard III. desires at his hands the lives of the two princes; and he is further disaffected by the king's

refusal to grant him a certain earldom previously promised as a reward for his support. He accordingly forsakes Richard and seeks to unite his strength with that of Henry, Earl of Richmond, who is taking up arms against the usurping monarch. Buckingham is taken. prisoner and soon afterwards put to death. The two boy princes are assassinated in the Tower; and Queen Anne is secretly put to death in order to leave Richard free for an alliance with the heiress of York, Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., for whose hand he sues to her mother.

V. In the meantime Richmond has invaded England and encounters Richard's forces at Bosworth Field in Leicestershire. The king, though disquieted on the preceding night by visions of his many slain victims, fights desperately; but his forces are defeated and he himself is slain by Richmond. The victor is recognized as King Henry VII., and by marriage with Elizabeth of York brings to a close the long contention between the rival houses of York and Lancaster.

MCSPADDEN: Shakespearian Synopses.

II.

'Character of Richard.

The character of Richard the Third, which had been opened in so masterly a manner in the Concluding Part of Henry the Sixth, is, in this play, developed in all its horrible grandeur. It is, in fact, the picture of a demoniacal incarnation, moulding the passions and foibles of mankind, with superhuman precision, to its own iniquitous purposes. Of this isolated and peculiar state of being Richard himself seems sensible when he declares"I have no brother, I am like no brother:

And this word love, which greybeards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another,

And not in me; I am myself alone."

From a delineation like this Milton must have caught many of the most striking features of his Satanic portrait. The same union of unmitigated depravity and consummate intellectual energy characterizes both, and renders what would otherwise be loathsome and disgusting an object of sublimity and shuddering admiration.

The task, however, which Shakespeare undertook was, in one instance, more arduous than that which Milton subsequently attempted; for, in addition to the hateful constitution of Richard's moral character, he had to contend also against the prejudices arising from personal deformity, from a figure

"curtail'd of its fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before its time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up."

And yet, in spite of these striking personal defects, which were considered, also, as indicatory of the depravity and wickedness of his nature, the Poet has contrived, through the medium of high mental endowments, not only to obviate disgust, but to excite extraordinary admiration.

One of the most prominent and detestable vices, indeed, in Richard's character, his hypocrisy, connected, as it always is, in his person, with the most profound skill and dissimulation, has, owing to the various parts which it induces him to assume, most materially contributed to the popularity of this play, both on the stage and in the closet. He is one who can

"frame his face to all occasions,"

and accordingly appears, during the course of his career, under the contrasted forms of a subject and a monarch, a politician and a wit, a soldier and a suitor, a sinner and a saint; and in all with such apparent ease and fidelity to nature, that while to the explorer of the human mind he affords, by his penetration and address, a subject of peculiar interest and delight, he offers to the practised

performer a study well calculated to call forth his fullest and finest exertions.

DRAKE: Shakespeare and his Times.

Richard is the very personation of confidence in selfconduct and self-control, in his absolute command of every form of dissimulation, and still more difficult, of simulation. He is arrogant no less, on the strength of his superiority to any natural stirrings of love or pity, of terror or remorse. Like Iago he believes in the absolute sway of will-wielded intellect to subject and mould passion to its own determinations, while both are, unconsciously to themselves, overmastered and enslaved by a tyrannous passion that ever keeps out of their own sight as if lurking and shifting place behind them. Richard's true fall and punishment is his humiliation on his point of reliance and pride; he comes to require friends when friends fail in heart or in heartiness, he regrets affection, would fain be pitied, admits terror, and believes in the power of conscience if he endeavours to defy it. The involuntary forces of his being rise in insurrection against the oppression of the voluntary. His human nature vindicates the tendencies of humanity, when the organism which was strained to sustain itself on the principle of renunciation of sympathy falters and breaks down. The power of the strongest will has its limitations; mere defiance will not free the mind from superstition, and mere brutality cannot absolutely close up the welling springs of tenderness.

LLOYD: Critical Essays on the Plays of Shakespeare.

III.

Shakespeare Self-Projected in Richard.

Into this character Shakespeare transforms himself in imagination. It is the mark of the dramatic poet to be always able to get out of his own skin and into another's.