being the famous Richard Neville, the "king-maker." He was the mainstay of the Yorkists (the White Rose) for whom he gained the victories of St. Albans and Northampton. He was less successful at the battle of Wakefield and at the second battle of St. Albans. In conjunction with the Duke of York, however, he drove the Lancastrian party back northwards, and in March, 1461, proclaimed his cousin king in London, as Edward IV. By his victory at Towton he secured the throne for the newlymade king, who in return, showered honors and rewards upon him and his family. Nevertheless, discords gradually arose between the dependent king and his all-powerful vassal, which ended in the latter having to flee to the Continent in 1470; while there he gave his daughter Anne in marriage to Edward Prince of Wales, the son of Queen Margaret. Thereupon at the head of a considerable force he landed at Plymouth, and proclaimed Henry VI king. Edward IV, meanwhile, fled to Holland, where he likewise raised an army, which he brought over and landed at Ravenspurg, in Yorkshire, in March, 1471. At the battle of Barnet, the Lancastrians were at last thoroughly beaten, but the King-Maker and his brother Lord Montague lost their lives on the field of battle. Richard Neville left two daughters, Isabella, married to the Duke of Clarence, the brother of Edward IV, and Anne (mentioned above), who after the murder of her first husband in 1741, married the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III. These were the great historical characters whom young Shakespeare could not fail to have thought of, when entering Warwick Castle by the passage cut through the solid rock, and gazing at its massive towers built to withstand the wear and tear of hundreds of years, or when visiting the Beauchamp Chapel and looking inquisitively at its monuments and tombstones there. That Shakespeare, even as a boy, wandered to Warwick, which was only some eight miles from Stratford, and became acquainted with all the objects of interest there, will not admit of any reasonable doubt. At Warwick he would at once be transported to the time of the Wars of the Roses, to the scene of his Histories, and would learn the present as well as the past circumstances of the famous race of earls who figure in all of these dramas. Would it be too much to maintain that the youthful impressions which Warwick made upon Shakespeare, were the first inspiration of his Histories?-ELZE, William Shakespeare. RICHARD, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER If we may call the character of Henry VI Shakespeare's own creation, that of Richard of Gloucester, on the contrary, was wholly prepared for his use in the Third Part. The aspiring spirit inherited from his father; the glance of the eagle at the sun; the great ambition, the indifference to the means for an object; the valor, the superstition which represents in him the voice of conscience; the subtle art of dissimulation; the histrionic talent of a "Roscius," the faithless policy of a Catiline; these had been already assigned to him by Greene in this piece. But how excellent even here have been Shakespeare's after-touches is evinced in the soliloquy (Part III Act iii. sc. 2), where the ambitious projects of the duke hold counsel as it were with his means of realizing them; it is the counterpart to the similar soliloquy of his father York (Part II Act iii. sc. 1), and permits us to anticipate how far the son will surpass the father. The principal figure of the two plays, Richard of York, is almost throughout delineated as if the nature of his more fearful son was prefigured in him. Far-fetched policy and the cunning and dissimulation of a prudent and determined man are blended in him-not in the same degree, but in the same apparent contradiction as in Richard with firmness, with a hatred of flattery, with inability to cringe, and with bitter and genuine discontent. With the same assurance and superiority as Richard the son, he is at one time ready to decide at the point of the sword, and at another to shuffle the cards silently and wait "till time do serve;" both alike are animated by the same aspirations and ambitions. Had he been endowed with the same favor of nature as his father, Richard would have developed the same good qualities which the father possessed in addition to his dangerous gifts. Ugly, misshapen, and despised, without a right to the throne and without any near prospect of satisfying his royal projects, his devouring ambition was poisoned; in his father, called as he was the flower of the chivalry of Europe, convinced of his rights and proud of his merits, the aspiring disposition was moderated into a more legitimate form. At the death of his son Rutland his better nature bursts forth forcibly to light. He is honest enough, upon the pretended disgrace of his enemy Somerset, to dismiss his "powers" and to give his sons as pledges; had he not been led away by his sons, he is moderate enough, and is even ready to suspend his claims to the throne until Henry's death, whom, in the course of nature, he was not likely to survive; he labored for his house, and not as his son, for himself. His claims and those of his house, which he asserts in opposition to the helpless and inactive Henry, he grounds not upon the malicious consciousness of personal superiority, as his son Richard does subsequently; but upon a good right, upon his favor with the people, upon his services in France and Ireland. Contrasted with Henry, he feels himself more kingly in birth, nature, and disposition. When he exercises his retaliation on the Lancastrians, he utters those words which Bolingbroke had before more cunningly applied to Richard II: "Let them obey, that know not how to rule."-GERVINUS, Shakespeare Commentaries. THE TRILOGY In all three parts we have a reflection of the same law, of the same conception of history, which again is but a modification of the fundamental theme of the whole trilogy; all the parts gather round one central point and arrange themselves into one great whole. We have history represented in its degeneration into civil war, which is the consequence of the original disturbance of its course and of the general demoralization which increases with it. This is the theme upon which the whole trilogy is based, and which exhibits the two sides of life according to Shakespeare's conception. The three parts then show the principal stages in the development of such a state of things. History, when so degenerate, first of all casts out those that are good and noble but who are nevertheless not wholly unaffected by the spirit of their age, and at the same time shows that the great and pure are not understood and that they cannot keep themselves entirely pure. This is exhibited in the First Part by the events belonging to it (and hence, because appropriate here only, Shakespeare introduces Talbot's death into this first part in violation of the laws of chronology). History then continues falling into a wild state of chaos, where right and wrong flow into one another and can no longer be distinguished, and consequently where the bad and the good, or, to speak more correctly, the bad and those that are less bad are drawn into the general vortex. This is the second stage of which we have a representation in the Second Part. Having arrived at this climax, history demands that man shall not interfere with its course, and refrain from having any determination of his own, and that he shall leave all action to that man whom it has itself chosen to restore order. It therefore punishes every uncalled-for interference as unauthorized presumption, whereas the submissive spirit is inwardly exalted and glorified through suffering and death. This is the thought which connects the events of the Third Part into an organic unity.-ULRICI, Shakespeare's Dramatic Art. CONCLUSION In leaving these plays I would draw attention to the parallel not only of incident but expression, of the slaughter of young Rutland by Clifford, and that of Lycaon by Achilles in the Iliad. The resemblance may be due to the classical knowledge of the original English dramatist, or to the sympathy of poetic minds. The rendering of this passage is one of the worthiest in Pope's translation. Clifford and Achilles are here merciless alike, and yet not utterly pitiless : "Clifford. In vain thou speak'st, poor boy; my father's blood Hath stopp'd the passage where thy words should enter.” And thus the Greek: "Die then, my friend, what boots it to deplore, -LLOYD, Critical Essays. |