COMMENTS By SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLARS THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY Among the many and diverse forms which the English drama displayed in the latter part of the sixteenth century there is none which was at once so popular in its day and so distinctively English as that which drew its subject-matter from the historical lore of the national chronicles. For years this variety of drama disputed with Romantic comedy and tragedy the supremacy of the stage, and only yielded to defeat with the subsidence of the national spirit of which it was born. The English Chronicle Play began with the tide of patriotism which united all England to repel the threatened invasion of Philip of Spain. It ebbed and lost its national character with the succession of James, an un-English prince, to the throne of Elizabeth.-SCHELLING, The English Chronicle Play. HENRY VI In prison Henry at last is really happy; now he is responsible for nothing; he enjoys for the first time tranquil solitude; he is a bird who sings in his cage. His latter days he will spend, to the rebuke of sin and the praise of his Creator, in devotion. Henry's equanimity is not of the highest kind; he is incapable of commotion. His peace is not that which underlies wholesome agitation, a peace which passes understanding. "Quietness is a grace, not in itself; only when it is grafted on the stem of faith, zeal, selfabasement, and diligence." If Henry had known the nobleness of true kingship, his content in prison might be admirable; as it is, the beauty of that content does not strike us as of a rich or vivid kind. But the end is come, and that is a gain. Henry has yielded to the house of York, and the evil time is growing shorter. The words of the great Duke of York are confirmed by our sense of fact and right: King did I call thee? nay, thou art not king. Give place; by heaven thou shalt rule no more -DOWDEN, Shakspere-His Mind and Art. In the last scene of Richard II his despair lends him courage: he beats the keeper, slays two of his assassins, and dies with imprecations in his mouth against Sir Pierce Exton, who "had staggered his royal person." Henry, when he is seized by the deer-stealers, only reads them a moral lecture on the duty of allegiance and the sanctity of an oath; and when stabbed by Gloucester in the tower, reproaches him with his crimes, but pardons him his own death.-HAZLITT, Characters of Shakespear's Plays. LADY GREY She was a poor widow who came trembling before King Edward, and begged him to restore to her children the small estate which, after the death of her husband, had reverted to the enemy. The licentious king, who could not stir her chastity, was so enchanted by her beauty, that he placed the crown on her head. Her history, known to all the world, announces how much misery to both came from this match.-HEINE, Florentine Nights. THE WARWICKS The magnificent and exceedingly romantic castle of Warwick, was the seat of the powerful Earls of Warwick, a brave and warlike race, which has played a prominent part in the history of England. The founder of the family is said to have been the legendary Guy of Warwick, the subduer of the Danish giant Colbrand, who after his warlike exploits retired to what is now called Guy's Cliff, Where with my hands I hewed a house Out of a craggy rocke of stone; Within that cave myself alone: And daylye came to begg my bread Not knowne unto my loved wiffe Who dayle mourned for her mate, &c. The legends and ballads relating to Sir Guy must undoubtedly have been told or sung to the boy Shakespeare; and no doubt he had also seen the statue of the old hero at Guy's Cliff. Among the famous Norman Earls of Warwick are the Beauchamps, especially Thomas Beauchamp, the fourth Earl, whom parliament appointed guardian of Richard II; and Richard Beauchamp, the fifth Earl, surnamed the Good (1381-1439), who distinguished himself in the struggle with Owen Glendower, and at the battle of Shrewsbury against the Percies; it was he who negotiated the marriage of Henry V with Catherine of France, and was appointed "tutor" to Henry VI up to his fifteenth year. This Richard Beauchamp was likewise one of the heroes of the Wars of the Roses. He died as Regent of France at Rouen, and his body was brought to Warwick and buried in St. Mary's Church in the Beauchamp Chapel, which had been erected there by him; his tomb, which is said to have cost the extravagant sum of nearly £2,500, is still an object of admiration to persons visiting Warwick. His son Henry was not only made Earl of Warwick, by Henry VI, but subsequently even King of the Isle of Wight, of Jersey and Guernsey. With him the male line of the Beauchamps became extinct in 1445, and the lands and possessions passed, through the female line, into the hands of the Nevilles, the first and mightiest of these He being the famous Richard Neville, the "king-maker." 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 |