his own wonderful conception of the high intellectual supremacy of this usurper. Sir Thomas More's 'Tragical History of Richard III.' (otherwise called 'The History of the pitiful Life and unfortunate Death of King Edward V.') ought to be regarded with veneration, for it has given to Shakspere the materials for some of the most spirited of his scenes. Hall copied More verbatim and in that he showed his good sense. The scenes described by More have a wonderful air of truth,-probably, in great part, from the notice of little incidents that could only have been derived from actual observation. It is supposed that he obtained these minute particulars from Morton, Bishop of Els! —the same bishop who had very good strawberries in his garden at Holborn. However the transactions of the reign d Richard may have been coloured, the colouring must remain i The scenes which More has recorded, and Shakspere rendere. perpetual, must continue to be received as true. They ma not be the literal truth,—but they involve, there can be litt doubt, the higher general truth, with reference to the myste rious events of this turbulent period. Hall's description of Richard's person and character is fr More: "Richard, duke of Gloucester was in wit and courage equi with the others (his brothers Edward and George), but beauty and lineaments of nature far underneath both; for was little of stature, evil-featured of limbs, crook-backed, t left shoulder much higher than the right, hard-favoured visage, such as in estates is called a warlike visage, and am common persons a crabbed face. He was malicious, wrath and envious. He was none evil captain in war, as to the whi his disposition was more inclined to than to peace. Sun victories he had, and some overthrows, but never for default his own person, either for lack of hardiness or politic onie Free he was of his dispenses, and somewhat above his powe liberal; with large gifts he got him unsteadfast friendsh for which cause he was fain to borrow, pill, and extort in oth places, which got him steadfast hatred. He was close secret, a deep dissimuler, lowly of countenance, arrogant heart, outwardly familiar where he inwardly hated, not let to kiss whom he thought to kill; despiteous and cruel. alway for evil will, but often for ambition and to serve purpose; friend and foe were all indifferent where his ads: tage grew; he spared no man's death whose life withstood purpose. He slew in the Tower King Henry VI., say Now is there no heir male of King Edward III. but we of House of York;' which murder was done without K Edward his assent, which would have appointed that butcherly office to some other rather than to his own brother. Some wise men also wen that his drift lacked not in helping forth his own brother of Clarence to his death, which thing to all appearance he resisted, although he inwardly minded it." The tragic story of the murder of Richard's nephews is thus recorded by the Chronicler, on the authority of Sir Thomas More : "And forasmuch as his mind gave him that, his nephews living, men would not reckon that he could have right to the realm, he thought therefore without delay to rid them, as though the killing of his kinsmen might end his cause and make him kindly king. Whereupon he sent John Green, whom he specially trusted, unto Sir Robert Brackenbury, constable of the Tower, with a letter and credence also, that the same Sir Robert in anywise should put the two children to death. This John Green did his errand to Brackenbury, kneeling before Our Lady in the Tower; who plainly answered that he would never put them to death to die therefore. With the which answer Green returned, recounting the same to king Richard at Warwick, yet on his journey; where with he took such displeasure and thought, that the same night he said to a secret page of his, 'Ah, whom shall a man trust? they that I have brought up myself, they that I weened would have most surely served me, even those fail me, and at my commandment will do nothing for me.' 'Sir,' quoth the page, there lieth one in the pallet chamber without, that I dare well say, to do your grace pleasure, the thing were right hard that he would refuse:' meaning by this James Tyrrel. "James Tyrrel devised that they should be murthered in their beds, and no blood shed: to the execution whereof he appointed Miles Forest, one of the four that before kept them, fellow flesh bred in murther beforetime; and to him he joined one John Dighton, his own horsekeeper, a big, broad, square, and strong knave. Then, all the other being removed From them, this Miles Forest and John Dighton about midnight, the sely children lying in their beds, came into the chamber, and suddenly lapped them up amongst the clothes, nd so bewrapped them and entangled them, keeping down by orce the feather-bed and pillows hard unto their mouths, that vithin a while they smothered and stifled them; and their ›reaths failing, they gave up to God their innocent souls into he joys of heaven, leaving to the tormentors their bodies lead in the bed; which after the wretches perceived, first y the struggling with the pangs of death, and after long ying still, to be thoroughly dead, they laid the bodies out upon the bed, and fetched James Tyrrel to see them; which when he saw them perfectly dead, he caused the murtherers to bury them at the stair foot, meetly deep in the ground, under a great heap of stones. Then rode James Tyrrel in great haste to King Richard. and showed him all the manner of the murther; who gave him great thanks, and, as men say, there made him knight.” KING HENRY VIII. THE date of the original production of this drama has beer: subject of much discussion. The opinions in favour of having been produced in the reign of Elizabeth are far m numerous than those which hold it to be a later producti But the accomplished Sir Henry Wotton, writing to his nephe on the 6th of July, 1613, gives a minute and graphic acco of the fire at the Globe in that year:-" Now to let matters state sleep, I will entertain you at the present with what b pened this week at the Bankside. The king's players ha new play, called All is True, representing some principal și of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was set forth many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, er to the matting of the stage; the knights of the order, their Georges and Garter, the guards with their embroide coats and the like; sufficient, in truth, within a while to ma greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King Her making a mask at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and cert cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper. other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did ligh: the thatcn, where, being thought at first but an idle sm and their eyes being more attentive to the show, it kindie wardly, and ran round like a train, consuming, within than an hour, the whole house to the very ground. This the fatal period of that virtuous fabric, wherein yet noth did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cl only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would per have broiled him, if he had not, by the benefit of a provi wit, put it out with bottle ale." Here, then, is a ner described, "representing some principal pieces of the rei Henry VIII. and further, the passage of Shakspere's in which the "chambers are discharged, being the “et" of the king to the "mask at the cardinal's house," is thes to the letter. But the title which Sir Henry Wotton gives new play is 'All is True.' Other persons call the plays 4 presented 'Henry VIII.' Howes, in his continuation of Stow's Chronicle, so calls it. He writes some time after the destruction of the Globe, for he adds to his account of the fire, "and the next spring it was new builded in far fairer manner than before." He speaks of the title of the play as a familiar thing :-"the house being filled with people to behold the play, viz. of Henry the Eighth." When Howes wrote, was the title All is True' merged in the more obvious itle derived from the subject of the play, and following the character of the titles of Shakspere's other historical plays? The commentators also hold that the Prologue was written by Ben Jonson, to allow him an occasion of sneering at Shakpere's fools and battle-scenes. But we hold that the Prologue s a complete exposition of the idea of this drama. The Proogue is fastened upon Jonson, upon the theory that he wrote t after Shakspere's retirement from the stage, when the old lay was revived in his absence. We believe in the one piece of external evidence, that a 'Henry VIII.' was produced in 613, when the Globe was burned; that it was a new play; hat it was then called 'All is True;'-and that this title grees with the idea upon which Shakspere wrote the 'Henry III.' Those who believe that it was written in the time of Elizabeth have to reject this one piece of external evidence. We further believe, from the internal evidence, that the play, Is it stands, was written in the time of James I., and that we Lave received it in its original form. Those who assert the conrary have to resort to the hypothesis of interpolation; and, urther, have to explain how many things which are, to a plain nderstanding, inconsistent with their theory, may be interreted, by great ingenuity, to be consistent. We believe that Chakspere, amongst his latest dramas, constructed an hisorical drama to complete his great series,-one that was greeable to the tone of his mind after his fiftieth year :— "Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe." hose who take the opposite view hold that the chief object f the poet was to produce something which might be acceptble to Queen Elizabeth. Our belief is the obvious one; the ontrary belief may be the more ingenious. Shakspere has in this play closed his great series of 'Chroicle Histories.' This last of them was to be "sad, high, and orking." It has laid bare the hollowness of worldly glory; it as shown the heavy "load" of "too much honour.' It has iven us a picture of the times which succeeded the feudal rifes of the other 'Histories.' Were they better times? To the mind of the poet the age of corruption was as "sad" as the age of force. The one tyrant rides over the obligations of justice, wielding a power more terrible than that of the sword. The poet's consolation is to be found in the propheti: views of the future. We have a few words to add on the style of this drama. ? is remarkable for the elliptical construction of many of the sentences, and for an occasional peculiarity in the versi tion, which is not found in any other of Shakspere's works. A theory has been set up that Jonson "tampered" with th versification. We hold this notion to be utterly untenab for there is no play of Shakspere's which has a more decide character of unity, no one from which any passage could less easily struck out. We believe that Shakspere worked this particular upon a principle of art which he had propos to himself to adhere to, wherever the nature of the se would allow. The elliptical construction, and the licence versification, brought the dialogue, whenever the speaker not necessarily rhetorical, closer to the language of com life. Of all his historical plays, the 'Henry VIII.' is nearest in its story to his own times. It professed to be "truth." It belongs to his own country. It has no poetis indistinctness about it, either of time or place: all is defi If the diction and the versification had been more artificia would have been less a reality. MACBETH. IN Coleridge's early sonnet 'To the Author of the Robbers, imagination is enchained to the most terrible scene of t play; disregarding, as it were, all the accessaries by which horrors are mitigated and rendered endurable : "Schiller! that hour I would have wish'd to die, It was in a somewhat similar manner that Shakspere's r sentation of the murder of Duncan affected the imaginati |