Page images
PDF
EPUB

subject upon which the "dead Shepherd" had put forth his strength was not to be touched by his greater rival.*

[ocr errors]

A reign of power succeeds to one of weakness. Edward III. is upon the throne. William Shakspere is familiar with the great events of this reign; for the Chronicles' of Froissart, translated by Lord Berners, have more than the charm of the romance-writers; they present realities in colours more brilliant than those of fiction. The clerk of the chamber to Queen Philippa is overflowing with that genial spirit which was to be a great characteristic of Shakspere himself. Froissart looks upon nothing with indifference. He enters most heartily into the spirit of every scene into which he is thrown. The luxuries of courts unfit him not for a relish of the charms of nature. The fatigues of camps only prepare him for the enjoyment of banquets and dances. He throws himself into the boisterous sports of the field at one moment, and is proud to produce a virclay of his own composition at another. The early violets and white and red roses are sweet to his sense; and so is a night draught of claret or Rochelle wine. He can meditate and write as he travels alone upon his palfrey, with his portmanteau, having no follower but his faithful greyhound; he can observe and store up in his memory when he is in the court of David II. of Scotland, or of Gaston de Foix, or in the retinue of the Black Prince. The hero of Froissart is Edward Prince of Wales, the glorious son of a glorious father. William Shakspere was in the presence of local associations connected with this prince. He was especially Prince of Coventry; it was his own city ; and he gave licence to build its walls and gates, and cherished its citizens, and dwelt among them. As the young poet walked in the courts of the old hall of St. Mary's, itself a part of an extensive palace, he would believe that the prince had sojourned there after he had won his spurs at Cressy; and he would picture the boy-hero, as Froissart had described him, left by his confiding father in the midst of danger to struggle alone, and alone to triumph :-" The prince's battalion at one period was very hard pressed; and they with the prince sent a messenger to the king, who was on a little windmill hill; then the knight said to the king, Sir, the Earl of Warwick, and the Earl of Oxford, Sir Regnold Cobham, and others, such as be about the prince your son, are fiercely fought withal, and are sore handled; wherefore they desire you that you and battle will come and aid them; for if the Frenchmen increase, as they doubt they will, your son and they shall have much ado.' Then the king said, Is my son dead or hurt, or on the earth felled?' No, Sir,' quoth the knight, but he is hardly matched, wherefore he hath need of your aid.' Well,' said the king, return to him and to them that sent you hither, and say to them that they send no more to me for any adventure that falleth, as long as my son is alive; and also say to them that they suffer him this day to win his spurs, for,

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

your

The notice by Shakspere of Marlowe, in As You Like It, is one of the few examples we have of any mention by the great poet of his contemporaries. This is a kind notice conveyed in the introduction of a line from Marlowe's 'Hero and Leander :'

"Dead Shepherd! now I find thy saw of might,
Who ever lov'd that lov'd not at first sight?"

[graphic][merged small]

if God be pleased, I will this journey be his, and the honour thereof, and to them that be about him.' Then the knight returned again to them, and showed the king's words, the which greatly encouraged them, and they repined in that they had sent to the king as they did." And then, it may be, the whole epopee of that great war for the conquest of France might be shaped out in the young man's imagination, and amidst its chivalrous daring, its fields of slaughter, its perils overcome by almost superhuman strength, kings and princes for prisoners, and the conqueror lowly and humble in his triumph, would there be touching domestic scenes,-Sir Eustace de Pierre, the rich burgher of Calais, putting his life in jeopardy for the safety of the good town, and the vengeance of the stern conqueror averted by his gentle queen, all arranging themselves into something like a great drama. But even here the dramatic interest was not sustained. There was a succession of stirring events, but no one great action to which all other actions tended and were subservient. Cressy is fought, Calais is taken, Poictiers is to come, after the hero has marched through the country, burning

and wasting, regardless of the people, thinking only of his father's disputed rights; and then a mercenary war in Spain in a bad cause, and the hero dies in his bed, and the war for conquest is to generate other wars. These are events that belong to the chronicler, and not to the dramatist. Romance has come in to lend them a human interest. The future conqueror of France is to be a weak lover at the feet of a Countess of Salisbury; to be rejected; to cast off his weakThe drama may mix the romance and the chronicle together; it has done so; but we believe not that he who had a struggle with his judgment to unite the epic and the dramatic in the history of Henry V. ever attempted to dramatize the story of Edward III.*

ness.

Warwick-it is full of historical associations, but its early history is not dramatic according to the notions that William Shakspere will subsequently work out. Let the ballad-makers and the heroic poets that are to follow sing the legend of Guy the Saxon, and his combat with Colbrand the Dane. The stern power of the later Guy is for another to dramatize. Thomas Earl of Warwick, who led the van at Cressy, shall have his fame with the Cobhams and the Chan*See our Notice of the play entitled 'The Reign of Edward III.' in the Analysis of Plays ascribed to Shakspere.

[graphic][merged small][merged small]

doses, and posterity shall look upon his tomb in the midst of the choir of the collegiate church at Warwick. The Earl who was cast aside by Richard II. (he also was named Thomas) shall be merged in the eventful history of that time; but it shall be recollected that he built "that strong and stately tower standing at the north-east corner of the Castle here at Warwick."* His strong and stately tower could not stead him in his necessity, for he was made prisoner by the King at a feast to which he was treacherously invited, banished, subsequently imprisoned in the Tower, and his possessions seized upon. The fall of Richard restored him to his honours and possessions; and he was enabled to appoint by his will "that the sword and coat of mail sometime belonging to the famous Guy" should remain to his son and his heirs after him. This sword and coat of mail would have been a more appropriate, though perhaps not a more authentic, relic for the young Shakspere to look upon than the famous porridge-pot of our own day. In the reign of Henry IV. there came Earl Richard, who took the banner of Owen Glendower, and fought against the Percies at Shrewsbury; who voyaged to the Holy Land, and hung up his offerings at the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem, and was royally feasted by the Soldan's lieutenant, "hearing that he was descended from the famous Sir Guy of Warwick, whose story they had in books of their own language." And it was he who was sent to France to treat for the marriage of Henry V. with the Lady Katherine; and it was he who, after the death of the Conqueror of Agincourt, had tutelage of the young Henry his son; and was lieutenant-general and governor of the realm of France. The remainder of his history might be read by William Shakspere, inscribed upon that splendid monument which he erected in the chapel called after his name, and ordered by his will to be built adjoining the collegiate church. Visited by long sickness, he died in the Castle at Rouen. His monument is still a glorious specimen of the arts of the middle ages, and so is the chapel under whose roof it is erected. Another lord of Warwick succeeded, who, having been created Duke of Warwick, moved the envy of other great ones in that time of faction: but he died young, and without issue; and his sister, the wife of Richard Neville, succeeded to her brother's lands and castles, and by patent her husband became Earl of Warwick. This was indeed a mighty man, the stout Earl of Warwick, the king-maker, he who first fought at St. Albans in the great cause of York, and after many changes of opinion and of fortune fell at Barnet in the cause of Lancaster. The history of this, the greatest of the lords of the ragged staff, is in itself a wonderful drama, in a series of dramas that are held together by a strong poetical chain. The first scene of this great series of dramas begins when the Duke of Hereford and the Duke of Norfolk meet in the lists

"At Coventry upon St. Lambert's day."

The last scene is at Bosworth, when he who is held to have wanted every virtue but courage left the world exclaiming

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

The family traditions of William Shakspere; the Chronicle "of the two noble and illustre Families of Lancaster and York," his household book; the localities amidst which he dwelt; must have concurred early in fixing his imagination upon the dramatic capabilities of that magnificent story which has given us a series of eight poetical Chronicle Histories,' of which a German critic has said, "The historian who cannot learn from them is not yet perfect in his own art.' * Tieck. Dramaturgische Blätter.'

6

[graphic][merged small]
« PreviousContinue »