Richard might have "judgment decreed against him, so as the realm were not troubled by him." There is considerable doubt whether this speech was delivered at all. It does not appear that Richard made his resignation in Parliament, but that Northumberland and other peers, prelates, and knights, with justices and notaries, attended the captive on the 29th September, 1399, in the chief chamber of the king's lodging in the Tower, where he read aloud and subscribed the scroll of resignation, saying that, if it were in his power, he would that the Duke of Lancaster there present should be his successor. These instruments were read to the Parliament the day following. So Holinshed relates the story. Froissart, however, details the ceremonies of the surrender with more minuteness: "On a day the Duke of Lancaster, accompanied with lords, dukes, prelates, earls, barons, and knights, and of the notablest men of London, and of other good towns, rode to the Tower, and there alighted. Then King Richard was brought into the hall, appareled like a king in his robes of state, his sceptre in his hand, and his crown on his head; then he stood up alone, not holden nor stayed by no man, and said aloud: 'I have been King of England, Duke of Aquitaine, and Lord of Ireland, about twenty-two years, which signiory, royalty, sceptre, crown, and heritage I clearly resign here to my cousin Henry of Lancaster; and I desire him here, in this open presence, in entering of the same possession, to take this sceptre :' and so delivered it to the duke, who took it." There can be no doubt that this apparently willing resignation, which his enemies said was made even with a merry countenance, was extorted from Richard by the fear of death. Northumberland openly proclaimed this when he rebelled against Henry. In a very curious manuscript in the library of the king of France, from which copious extracts are given in Mr. Webb's notes to the 'Metrical History,' there is a detailed account of a meeting between Richard and Bolingbroke in the Tower, at which York and Aumerle were present, where the king, in a most violent rage, says, "I am king, and will still continue king, in spite of all my enemies." Shakspere has most skilfully portrayed this natural struggle of the will of the unhappy man, against the necessity by which he was overwhelmed. The deposition scene shows us, as faithfully as the glass which the poet introduces exhibits the person of the king,-the vacillations of a nature irresolute and yielding, but clinging to the phantom of power when the substance had passed away. There can be no doubt that Shakspere's portrait of Richard II. is as historically true as it is poetically just.

But with this surpassing dramatic truth in the 'Richard II,' perhaps, after all, the most wonderful thing in the whole play -that which makes it so exclusively and entirely Shaksperian-is the evolvement of the truth under the poetical form. The character of Richard, especially, is entirely subordinated to the poetical conception of it-to something higher than the historical propriety, yet including all that historical propriety, and calling it forth under the most striking aspects. All the vacillations and weaknesses of the king, in the hands of an artist like Shakspere, are reproduced with the most natural and vivid colours; so as to display their own characteristic effects, in combination with the principle of poetical beauty, which carries them into a higher region than the perfect command over the elements of strong individualisation could alone produce.

The death of Richard II. is one of those historical mysteries which, perhaps, will never be cleared up. The story which Shakspere has adopted, of his assassination by Sir Piers of Exton and his followers, was related by Caxton in his addition to Hygden's Polychronicon:' was copied by Fabian, and, of course, found its way into Holinshed. The honest old compiler, however, notices the other stories-that he died either by compulsory famine or by voluntary pining. It is a remarkable confirmation of the belief that Richard did not die by the wounds of a battle-axe, that when his tomb was opened in Westminster Abbey, some years since, his skull was found uninjured. Thomas of Walsingham, who was living at the time of Richard's death, relates that the unnappy captive voluntarily starved himself. His body was removed to the Tower, where it was publicly exhibited. The story of his voluntary starvation is, however, doubtful; that of his violent assassination seems altogether apocryphal. In an important document, whose publication we owe to Sir Henry Ellis-the manifesto of the Percies against Henry IV., issued just before the battle of Shrewsbury-Henry is distinctly charged with having caused Richard to perish from hunger, thirst, and cold, after fifteen days and nights of sufferings unheard of among Christians. There is one other story which has formed the subject of a very curious controversy, but which it would be out of place here to detail that espoused by Mr. Tytler-that Richard escaped, and lived nineteen years in Scotland. The prison-scene in Shakspere will, perhaps, more than any accredited relation, continue to influence the popular belief; and yet, on the other hand, we have the beautiful passage in Gray's Bard, to support the less dramatic story :

"Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm,

In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes ;

Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm ;
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's spray,
That, hush'd in grim repose, expects his evening prey.
Fill high the sparkling bowl,

The rich repast prepare ;

Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast:

Close by the regal chair

Fell thirst and famine scowl

A baleful smile upon their baffled guest."

KING HENRY IV.

PARTS I. AND II.

Shakspere found the stage in possession of a rude drama, The Famous Victories of Henry V.,' upon the foundation of which he constructed not only his two Parts of 'Henry IV.,' but his 'Henry V. That old play was acted prior to 1588; Tarleton, a celebrated comic actor, who played the clown in it, having died in that year. It is, in many respects, satisfactory that this very extraordinary performance has been preserved. None of the old dramas exhibit in a more striking light the marvellous reformation which Shakspere, more than all his contemporaries, produced in the dramatic amusements of the age of Elizabeth. Of The Famous Victories of Henry V., the comic parts are low buffoonery, without the slightest wit, and the tragic monotonous stupidity, without a particle of poetry. And yet Shakspere built upon this thing, and for a very satisfactory reason the people were familiar with it.

In 'The Famous Victories' we are introduced to the "young prince" in the opening scene. His companions are "Ned," "Tom," and "Sir John Oldcastle," who bears the familiar name of "Jockey." They have been committing a robbery upon the king's receivers; and Jockey informs the prince that his (the prince's) man hath robbed a poor carrier. The plunder of the receivers amounts to a thousand pounds; and the prince worthily says, "As I am a true gentleman, I will have the half of this spent to-night." He shows his gentility by calling the receivers villains and rascals. The prince is sent to the "counter" by the Lord Mayor. Gadshill," the prince's man, who robbed the carrier, is taken before the Lord Chief Justice; and the young prince, who seems to have got out of the

counter as suddenly as he got in, rescues the thief. The scene ends with the Chief Justice committing Henry to the Fleet. He is, of course, released. "But whither are ye going now?" quoth Ned. "To the court," answers the true gentleman of a prince, "for I hear say my father lies very sick. . . breath shall be no sooner out of his mouth but I will clap the crown on my head." To the court he goes, and there the bully becomes a hypocrite. The great scene in The Second Part of Henry IV.,'

"I never thought to hear you speak again,”—

The

is founded, probably, upon a passage in Holinshed; but there is a similar scene in 'The Famous Victories.' It is, perhaps, the highest attempt in the whole play.

And now that we have seen what the popular notion of the conqueror of Agincourt was at the period when Shakspere began to write, and, perhaps, indeed, up to the time when he gave us his own idea of Henry of Monmouth,-and when we know that nearly all the historians up to the time of Shakspere, took pretty much the same view of Henry's character,we may, perhaps, be astonished to be told that Shakspere's fas cinating representation of Henry of Monmouth, "as an historical portrait, is not only unlike the original, but misleading and unjust in essential points of character."* Shakspere was, in truth, the only man of his age who rejected the imperfect evidence of all the historians as to the character of Henry of Monmouth, and nobly vindicated him even from his own biographers, and, what was of more importance, from the coarser traditions embodied in a popular drama of Shakspere's own day.

In the play of 'The Famous Victories of Henry V.' we have, as already mentioned, the character of "Sir John Oldcastle." This personage, like all the other companions of the prince in that play, is a low, worthless fellow, without a single spark of wit or humour to relieve his grovelling profligacy. But he is also a very insignificant character, with less stage business than even "Ned" and "Tom." Dericke, the clown, is, indeed, the leading character throughout this play. Altogether Oldcastle has only thirty lines put in his mouth in the whole piece. We have no allusion to his being fat; we hear nothing of his gluttony. Malone, however, calls this Sir John Oldcastle "a pampered glutton." It is a question whether this Oldcastle, or Jockey, suggested to Shakspere his Falstaff. We cannot discover the very slightest similarity; although Malone

'Henry of Monmouth,' by J. Endell Tyler, B.D., vol. i.

P. 356.

decidedly says, "Shakspere appears evidently to have caught the idea of the character of Falstaff from a wretched play entitled 'The Famous Victories of King Henry V." But Malone is arguing for the support of a favourite theory. Rowe has noticed a tradition that Falstaff was written originally under the name of Oldcastle. This opinion would receive some confirmation from the fact that Shakspere has transferred other names from the old play, Ned, Gadshill,—and why not, then, Oldcastle? The prince in one place calls Falstaff "my old lad of the castle;" but this may be otherwise explained. The Sir John Oldcastle of history, Lord Cobham, was, as is well known, one of the most strenuous supporters of the Reformation of Wickliffe; and hence it has been argued that the original name of Shakspere's fat knight was offensive to zealous Protestants in the time of Elizabeth, and was accordingly changed to that of Falstaff. Whether or not Shakspere's Falstaff was originally called Oldcastle, he was, after the character was fairly established as Falstaff, anxious to vindicate himself from the charge that he had attempted to represent the Oldcastle of history. In the epilogue to 'The Second Part of Henry IV.' we find this passage:-" For anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man."

The historical portions of these two plays are, in the principal scenes, founded, without much deviation, upon the narratives of the Chroniclers.

The historical action of the First Part of Henry IV.' is the first insurrection of the Percies, which was put down by the battle of Shrewsbury. These events are the inevitable consequence of the circumstances which attended the deposition of Richard II. Bolingbroke mounted the throne by the treachery of Richard's friends; his partisans were too great to remain merely partisans :

"King Richard might create a perfect guess,

That great Northumberland, then false to him,
Would of that seed, grow to a greater falseness."

The struggles for power which followed the destruction of the legitimate power, have been here painted by Shakspere with that marvellous impartiality of which we have already spoken, in the notice upon Richard II. Our sympathies would be almost wholly with Hotspur and his friends, had not the poet raised up a new interest in the chivalrous bearing of Henry of Monmouth, to balance the noble character of the young Percy. The prudence and moderation of the king, accompa