that variety of pause which we perpetually encounter in these hundred and fifty lines. We cannot, of course, attempt to prove this by any detailed comparison; but to illustrate our meaning we will occupy a little space with three passages from Peele's 'Arraignment of Paris,' Shakspere's First Part of Henry VI.,' and Dryden's 'Aurengzebe:

PEELE.

"Apol. Thrice reverend gods, and thou, immortal Jove,

If Phoebus may, as him doth much
behove,

Be licensed, according to our laws,
To speak uprightly in this doubted

cause,

(Sith women's wits work men's unceasing woes,)

To make them friends, that now bin friendless foes,

And peace to keep with them, with us, and all

That make their title to this golden ball;

(Nor think, ye gods, my speech doth derogate

From sacred power of this immortal senate ;)

Refer this sentence where it doth belong:

In this, say I, fair Phoebe hath the wrong:

Not that I mean her beauty bears the prize,

But that the holy law of heaven de-
nies

One god to meddle in another's
power;
And this befell so
bower,

near Diana's

As for th' appeasing this unpleasant grudge,

In my conceit she hight the fittest judge."

We ask, then, where we shall find an example amongst the dramatic poets who are held to have preceded Shakspere of couplets written for the stage with the freedom and variety of these scenes ? Such qualities, we are ready to acknowledge, are to be found in Marlowe's unfinished Hero and Leander;' but the few couplets that we meet in Marlowe's plays, if they admit at all of a comparison with the sustained scenes before us, will show that this poet had, with reference to the drama, a different theory of heroic verse from the theory of the author of 'The First Part of Henry VI.' He had a different theory, as we have held, of dramatic verse altogether till he reached the period of his latest productions. And why so? Because he had a different theory of the qualities in which the strength

of dramatic poetry consisted; and he kept to his own theory until an opposite model was presented to him.

ance.

§ VIII.

WHEN William Shakspere was about five years of age a grant of arms was made by the College of Heralds to his father. The father was unquestionably engaged in business of some sort in Stratfordupon-Avon; he was an agriculturist, in all likelihood; but he lived. in an age when the pride of ancestry was not lightly regarded, and when a distinction such as this was of real and permanent importThe grant was confirmed in 1599; and the reason for the confirmation of arms is stated with minute particularity in the " exemplification" then granted by Sir William Dethick and the great Camden :-"Know ye that in all nations and kingdoms the record and remembrance of the valiant facts and virtuous dispositions of worthy men have been known and divulged by certain shields of arms and tokens of chivalry; the grant and testimony whereof appertaineth unto us, by virtue of our offices from the queen's most excellent majesty and her highness' most noble and victorious progenitors: wherefore, being solicited, and by credible report informed that John Shakspeare, now of Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick, gent., whose parent and great-grandfather, late antecessor, for his faithful and approved service to the late most prudent prince King Henry VII. of famous memory was advanced and rewarded with lands and tenements, given to him in these parts of Warwickshire, where they have continued by some descents in good reputation and credit," &c. &c. It is not difficult to imagine the youthful Shakspere sitting at his mother's feet, to listen to the tale of his "antecessor's" prowess; or to picture the boy led by his father over the field of Bosworth,—to be shown the great morass which lay between both armies, and Radmoor Plain, where the battle began, and Dickon's Nook, where the tyrant harangued his army,—and the village of Dadlington, where the graves of the slain still indented the ground. Here was the scene of his antecessor's “faithful and approved service." In the humble house of Shakspere's boyhood there was, in all probability, to be found a thick squat folio volume, then some thirty years printed, in which might be read, "what misery, what murder, and what execrable plagues this famous region hath suffered by the division and dissention of the renowned houses of Lancaster and York." This, to the generation of Shakspere's boyhood, was not a tale buried in the dust of

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ages; it was one whose traditions were familiar to the humblest of the land, whilst the memory of its bitter hatreds still ruffled the spirits of the highest. "For what nobleman liveth at this day, or what gentleman of any ancient stock or progeny is clear, whose lineage hath not been infested and plagued with this unnatural division?" In that old volume from which we quote, "the names of the histories contained" are thus set forth :-"I. The Unquiet Time of King Henry the Fourth.' II. The Victorious Acts of King Henry the Fifth.' III. "The Troublous Season of King Henry the Sixth.' IV. "The Prosperous Reign of King Edward the Fourth.' V. The Pitiful Life of King Edward the Fifth.' VI. The Tragical Doings of King Richard the Third.' VII. The Politic Governance of King Henry the Seventh.' VIII. The Triumphant Reign of King Henry the Eighth."" This book was Hall's Chronicle.' How diligently the young man Shakspere had studied the book, and how carefully he has followed it in four of his chronicle histories, we have given abundant example in the Historical Illustrations of these plays. With the local and family associations, then, that must have belonged to his early years, the subject of these four dramas, or rather the subject of this one great drama in four parts, must have irresistibly presented itself to the mind of Shakspere, as one which he was especially qualified to throw into the form of a chronicle history. It was a task peculiarly fitted for the young poet during the first five years of his connexion with the theatre. Historical dramas, in the rudest form, presented unequalled attractions to the audiences who flocked to the rising stage. Without any undue reliance on his own powers, he might believe that he could produce something more worthily attractive than the rude dialogue which ushered in the "four swords and a buckler” of the old stage. He had not here to invent a plot; or to aim at the unity of action, of time, and of place, which the more refined critics of his day held to be essential to tragedy. The form of a chronicle history might appear to require little beyond a poetical exposition of the most attractive facts of the real Chronicles. It is in this spirit, we think, that Shakspere approached the execution of 'The First Part of Henry VI.' It appears to us, also, that in that very early performance he in some degree held his genius in subordination to the necessity of executing his task, rather with reference to the character of his audience and the general nature of his subject than for the fulfilment of his own aspirations as a poet. There was before him one of two courses. He might have chosen, as the greater number of his contemporaries chose, to consider the

dominions of poetry and of common sense to be far sundered; and, unconscious or doubtful of the force of simplicity, he might have resolved, with them, to substitute what would more unquestionably gratify a rude popular taste,—the force of extravagance. On the other hand, it was open to him to transfer to the dramatic shape the spirit-stirring recitals of the old chronicle-writers; in whose narratives, and especially in that portion of them in which they make their characters speak, there is a manly and straightforward earnestness which in itself not seldom becomes poetical. Shakspere chose this latter course. When we begin to study the 'Henry VI.,' we find in the First Part that the action does not appear to progress to a catastrophe; that the author lingers about the details, as one who was called upon to exhibit an entire series of events rather than the most dramatic portions of them;—there are the alternations of success and loss, and loss and success, till we somewhat doubt to which side to assign the victory. The characters are firmly drawn, but without any very subtle distinctions,—and their sentiments and actions appear occasionally inconsistent, or at any rate not guided by a determined purpose in the writer. It is easy to perceive that this mode of dealing with a complicated subject was the most natural and obvious to be adopted by an unpractised poet, who was working without models. But although the effect may be, to a certain extent, undramatic, there is impressed upon the whole performance a wonderful air of truth. Much of this must have resulted from the extraordinary quality of the poet's mind, which could tear off all the flimsy conventional disguises of individual character, and penetrate the real moving principle of events with a rare acuteness, and a rarer impartiality. In our view, that whole portion of The First Part of Henry VI.' which deals with the character and actions of Joan of Arc is a remarkable example of this power in Shakspere. We find her described in the Chronicles under every form of vituperation,—a monstrous woman, a monster, a ramp, a devilish witch and satanical enchantress, an organ of the devil. She was the main instrument through which England had lost France; and thus the people still hated her memory. She claimed to be invested with supernatural powers; and thus her name was not only execrated but feared. Neither the patriotism nor the superstition of Shakspere's age would have endured that the Pucelle should have been dismissed from the scene without vengeance taken upon her imagined crimes; or that confession should not be made by her which would exculpate the authors of her death. Shakspere has conducted her history up to the point when she is handed over to the stake.

Other writers would have burnt her upon the scene, and the audience would have shouted with the same delight that they felt when the Barabas of Marlowe was thrown into the caldron. Shakspere, following the historian, has made her utter a contradictory confession of one of the charges against her honour; but he has taken care to show that the brutality of her English persecutors forced from her an inconsistent avowal, if it did not suggest a false one, for the purpose of averting a cruel and instant death. In the treatment which she receives from York and Warwick, the poet has not exhibited one single circumstance that might excite sympathy for them. They are cold, and cruel, and insolent, because a defenceless creature whom they had dreaded is in their power. Her parting malediction has, as it appears to us, especial reference to the calamities which await the authors of her death :

"May never glorious sun reflex his beams

Upon the country where you make abode !

But darkness and the gloomy shade of death
Environ you."

But in all the previous scenes Shakspere has drawn the character of the Maid with an undisguised sympathy for her courage, her patriotism, her high intellect, and her enthusiasm. If she had been the defender of England, and not of France, the poet could not have invested her with higher attributes. It is in her mouth that he puts his choicest thoughts and his most musical verse. It is she who says

"Glory is like a circle in the water,

Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,

Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to nought."

It is she who solicits the alliance of Burgundy in a strain of impassioned eloquence which belongs to one fighting in a high cause with unconquerable trust, and winning over enemies by the firm resolves of a vigorous understanding and an unshaken will. The lines beginning

"Look on thy country, look on fertile France,"

might have given the tone to everything that has been subsequently written in honour of the Maid. It was his accurate knowledge of the springs of character, which in so young a man appears almost intuitive, that made Shakspere adopt this delineation of Joan of Arc. He knew that, with all the influence of her supernatural pretension, this extraordinary woman could not have swayed the destinies of kingdoms, and moulded princes and warriors to her will, unless she had been a person of very rare natural endowments. She was