constitutional forms, knows how to bide his time, uses violence only to vindicate justice, and controls while appearing to obey. The historical Bolingbroke was not averse from ruder methods. Shakespeare tells us nothing of the plot laid by him in June 1397, in concert with Mowbray and Gloucester, to seize and imprison Richard, and his uncles York and Lancaster, and to put the rest of the council to death. His first step towards bringing Gloucester's murder home to the king is the cautious 'indirection' of accusing his accomplice Mowbray. His return from banishment has an excuse as well as a pretext in Richard's flagrant confiscation of his inheritance. Once landed, he finds himself at the head of a national uprising which bears him by its own momentum to the throne; and he is already a king in power before he has put off the obeisances of the subject. In all this we are far removed from the Marlowesque tragedy of Force (virtù), displayed in Titanic violations of the laws of man and God. Richard II.'s crimes are as heinous as those of Richard III., but they are so closely inwoven with the psychical texture of a pitifully weak and vicious nature that crime-interest is absorbed in the subtler interest of character. Richard III. is a tragedy of Guilt and Nemesis. Richard II. contains traces of the framework of such a tragedy in the murder of Gloucester, which Bolingbroke makes it his mission to avenge. But as the drama proceeds these traces fade, and Richard the aggressive despot discloses himself as a fantastic dreamer tragically thrust upon a world of laws and limits, whose rudest buffetings, instead of bringing him to his senses, only generate some new and brilliant variation of his dream. Thus out of the stirring political drama is evolved a tragedy of individual soul, conceived in a spirit more akin to that of Hamlet and Julius Cæsar than to anything found elsewhere in the English Histories. In Richard II. we have almost the first note of that profound Shakespearean pity which the Titanism of the earlier Histories and the joyous exultation of the later alike exclude:-the pity which penetrates beyond the doom of an individual to the social milieu by which the doom was provoked; and reflects a sad recognition of what Pater called 'the unkindness of things themselves,'-the tragedy of the world itself. THE TRAGEDY OF KING RICHARD THE SECOND ACT I. SCENE I. London. KING RICHARD's palace. Enter KING RICHARD, JOHN OF GAUNT, with K. Rich. Old John of Gaunt, time-honour'd Hast thou, according to thy oath and band, 1. Old John of Gaunt. Gaunt is throughout represented as in extreme old age.* He was in reality fifty-eight. 2. band, bond. 3. Hereford (always disyllabic; in Qq and Ff written 'Herford'). 4. appeal; a formal accusa tion which the accuser bound himself to make good, commonly by the judicial method of combat. It was thus equivalent to a challenge. Hereford's actual appeal' had been made at the Parliament of Shrewsbury, Jan. 30, 1398. K. Rich. Tell me, moreover, hast thou sounded him, If he appeal the duke on ancient malice; Or worthily, as a good subject should, On some known ground of treachery in him? Gaunt. As near as I could sift him on that argument, On some apparent danger seen in him Aim'd at your highness, no inveterate malice. K. Rich. Then call them to our presence; face to face, And frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear Enter BOLINGBROKE and MOWBRAY. K. Rich. We thank you both: yet one but flatters us, As well appeareth by the cause you come; Namely, to appeal each other of high treason. Cousin of Hereford, what dost thou object Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?) Boling. First, heaven be the record to my speech! In the devotion of a subject's love, 9. on, on the ground of. V. 13. 13. apparent, evident. So 18. High-stomach'd, full of warlike temper. 10 20 30 An 20. Many . . . befal. The first foot lacks a syllable. incomplete line often follows a marked pause or break. 26. the cause you come, i.e. come for. |