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THE first edition was published in 1597, under the title of The Tragedy of King Richard the Second.' Four editions in quarto appeared before the folio of 1623. But all that part of the fourth act in which Richard is introduced to make the surrender of his crown, comprising one hundred and fifty-four lines, was never printed in the age of Elizabeth. The quarto of 1608 first gives this scene. That quarto is, with very few exceptions, the text of the play as it now stands. We scarcely know how to approach this drama, even for the purpose of a few remarks upon its characteristics. We are almost afraid to trust our own admiration when we turn to the cold criticism by which opiniou in this country has been wont to be governed. We have been told that it cannot "be said much to affect the passions or enlarge the understanding." * It may be so. And yet, we think, it might somewhat "affect the passions," for "gorgeous tragedy" hath here put on her "scepter'd pall," and if she bring not Terror in her train, Pity, at least, claims the sad story for her own. And yet it may somewhat "enlarge the understanding,”—for, though it abound not in those sententious moralities which may fitly adorn "a theme at school," it lays bare more than one human bosom with a most searching anatomy; and, in the moral and intellectual strength and weakness of humanity, which it discloses with as much precision as the scalpel reveals to the student of our physical nature the symptoms of health or disease, may we read the proximate and final causes of this world's success or loss, safety or danger, honour or disgrace, elevation or ruin. And then, moreover, the profound truths which, half-hidden to the careless reader, are to be drawn out from this drama, are contained in such a splendid frame-work of the picturesque and the poetical, that the setting of the jewel almost distracts our attention from the jewel itself. We are here plunged into the midst of the fierce passions and the gorgeous pageantries of the antique time. We not uly enter the halls and galleries, where is hung "Armoury of the invincible knights of old," but we see the beaver closed, and the spear in rest: under those cuirasses are hearts knocking against the steel with almost more than mortal rage ;-the banners wave, the trumpet sounds-heralds and marshals are ready to salute the victor-but the absolute king casts down his warder, and the anticipated triumph of one proud champion must end in the unmerited disgrace of both. The transition is easy from the tourney to the battle-field. A nation must bleed that a subject may be avenged. A crown is to be played for, though "Tumultuous wars

Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound."

The luxurious lord

"That every day under his household roof

Did keep ten thousand men,"

• Johnson.

his throne, but it is undermined by the hatreds even of those who placed him on it. Here is, indeed, "a kingdom for a stage." And has the greatest of poets dealt with such a subject without affecting the passions or enlarging the understanding? Away with this. We will trust our own admiration.

It is the wonderful subjection of the poetical power to the higher law of truth-to the poetical truth, which is the highest truth, comprehending and expounding the historical truth-which must furnish the clue to the proper understanding of the drama of 'Richard II.' It appears to us that, when the poet first undertook " to ope

The purple testament of bleeding war,"— to unfold the roll of the causes and consequences of that usurpation of the house of Lancaster which plunged three or four generations of Englishmen in bloodshed and misery-he approaches the subject with an inflexibility of purpose as totally removed as it was possible to be from the levity of a partisan. There were to be weighed in one scale the follies, the weaknesses, the crimes of Richard—the injuries of Bolingbroke— the insults which the capricious despotism of the king had heaped upon his nobles-the exactions under which the people groaned the real merits and the popular attributes of him who came to redress and to repair. In the other scale were to be placed the afflictions of fallen greatness-the revenge and treachery by which the fall was produced-the heartburnings and suspicions which accompany every great revolution-the struggles for power which ensue when the established and legitimate authority is thrust from its seat.-All these phases, personal and political, of a deposition and an usurpation, Shakspere has exhibited with marvellous impartiality.

It is in the same lofty spirit of impartiality which governs the general sentiments of this drama that Shakspere has conceived the mixed character of Richard. If we compare every account, we must say that the Richard II. of Shakspere is rigidly the true Richard. The poet is the truest historian in all that belongs to the higher attributes of history. 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 some thing 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

perishes in a dungeon:—the crafty usurper sits upon perfect command over the elements of strong indivi

dualization could alone produce.

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Appears, Act I. sc. 1; sc. 2; sc. 3. Act II. sc. 1.
HENRY, surnamed BOLINGBROKE, Duke of Hereford,
son to John of Gaunt; afterwards King Henry IV.
Appears, Act I. sc. 1; sc. 3. Act II. se. 3. Act III. sc. 1; sc. 3.
Act IV. sc. 1. Act V. sc. 3; sc. 6.
DUKE OF AUMERLE,
Duke of York.
Appears, Act I. sc. 3; se. 4.
Act IV. sc. 1.

son to the Act II. sc. 1.

Act III. sc. 2; se. 3.
Act V. sc. 2; sc. 3.

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HENRY PERCY, son to the Earl of Northumberland
Appears, Act II. sc. 3. Act III. sc. 1; sc. 3. Act IV. sc. 1
Act V. sc. 3; sc. 6.

LORD ROSS.

Act III. sc. 1.

Appears, Act II. sc. 1; sc. 3.

LORD WILLOUGHBY.

Appears, Act II. sc. 1; sc. 3. Act III. sc. 1.
LORD FITZWATER.

Appears, Act IV. sc. 1. Act V. sc. 6.

BISHOP OF CARLISLE.

Appears, Act III. sc. 2; sc. 3. Act IV. sc. 1. Act V. sc. 5.
ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER.
Appears, Act IV. sc. 1.

LORD MARSHAL; and another Lord.
Appear, Act I. sc. 3.

SIR PIERCE OF EXTON.
Appears, Act V. sc. 4; sc. 5; sc. 6.

SIR STEPHEN SCROOP.
Appears, Act III. sc. 2; sc. 3.
Captain of a band of Welchmen.
Appears, Act II. sc. 4.

QUEEN to King Richard.

Appears, Act II. sc. 1; sc. 2. Act III. sc. 4. Act V. sc. 1.
DUCHESS OF GLOSTER.

Appears, Act I. sc. 2.

DUCHESS OF YORK.
Appears, Act V. sc. 2; sc. 3.

Lady attending on the Queen.

Appears, Act III. sc. 4.

BAGOT, a creature to King Richard.
Appears, Act I. sc. 4. Act II. sc. 1; sc. 2. Act IV. sc. 1.
GREEN, a creature to King Richard.
Appears, Act I. se. 4. Act II. se. 1; sc. 2. Act III. sc. 1.
EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND.
Appears, Act II. sc. 1; sc. 3. Act III. sc. 1; sc. 3. Act IV.
Act V. se. 1; sc. 6.
SCENE, DISPERSEDLY IN ENGLAND AND WALES.

sc. 1.

Lords, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, Two Gardeners,
Keeper, Messenger, Groom, and other attendants.

ACT I.

SCENE I-London. A Room in the Palace.

On some apparent danger seen in him,

Enter KING RICHARD, attended; JOHN OF Gaunt, and other Nobles, with him.

Aim'd at your highness,-no inveterate malice.
K. Rich. Then call them to our presence; face to
face,

K. Rich. Old John of Gaunt, time-honour'd Lan- And frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear

caster,

Hast thou, according to thy oath and band,"
Brought hither Henry Hereford, thy bold son;
Here to make good the boisterous late appeal,
Which then our leisure would not let us hear,
Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?
Gaunt. I have, my liege.

K. Rich. Tell me, moreover, hast thou sounded him,

If he appeal the duke on ancient malice;

Or worthily, as a good subject should,

On some known ground of treachery in him?

The accuser, and the accused, freely speak

:

[Exeunt some Attendants
High-stomach'd are they both, and full of ire,
In rage deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.

Re-enter Attendants, with BOLINGBROKE and
NORFOLK.

Boling. Many years of happy days befal
My gracious sovereign, my most loving liege!
Nor. Each day still better other's happiness;
Until the heavens, envying earth's good hap,

Gaunt. As near as I could sift him on that argu- Add an immortal title to your crown!

ment,

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Boling. First, (Heaven be the record to my speech!) | That ever was survey'd by English eye,—

In the devotion of a subject's love,

Tendering the precious safety of my prince,
And free from other misbegotten hate,
Come I appellant to this princely presence.
Now, Thomas Mowbray, do I turn to thee,
And mark my greeting well; for what I speak
My body shall make good upon this earth,
Or my divine soul answer it in heaven.
Thou art a traitor, and a miscreant ;
Too good to be so, and too bad to live;
Since the more fair and crystal is the sky,
The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.
Once more, the more to aggravate the note,
With a foul traitor's name stuff I thy throat;
And wish (so please my sovereign), ere I move,
What my tongue speaks, my right-drawn sword may
prove.

Nor. Let not my cold words here accuse my zeal: "T is not the trial of a woman's war,

The bitter clamour of two eager tongues,
Can arbitrate this cause betwixt us twain:
The blood is hot that must be cool'd for this.
Yet can I not of such tame patience boast,
As to be hush'd, and nought at all to say:
First, the fair reverence of your highness curbs me
From giving reins and spurs to my free speech;
Which else would post, until it had return'd
These terms of treason doubled down his throat.
Setting aside his high blood's royalty,
And let him be no kinsman to my liege,
I do defy him, and I spit at him;

Call him a slanderous coward, and a villain:
Which to maintain, I would allow him odds;
And meet him, were I tied to run a-foot
Even to the frozen ridges of the Alps,
Or any other ground inhabitable a
Wherever Englishman durst set his foot.
Meantime, let this defend my loyalty,-
By all my hopes, most falsely doth he lie.

That all the treasons, for these eighteen years Complotted and contrived in this land,

Fetch'd from false Mowbray their first head and spring
Further I say--and further will maintain
Upon his bad life, to make all this good,—
That he did plot the duke of Gloster's death;
Suggest his soon-believing adversaries;
And, consequently, like a traitor coward,

Sluic'd out his innocent soul through streams of blood:
Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries,
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth,
To me for justice and rough chastisement;
And, by the glorious worth of my descent,
This arm shall do it, or this life be spent.
K. Rich. How high a pitch his resolution soars!-
Thomas of Norfolk, what say'st thou to this?

Nor. O, let my sovereign turn away his face,
And bid his ears a little while be deaf,
Till I have told this slander of his blood,
How God, and good men, hate so foul a liar.

K. Rich. Mowbray, impartial are our eyes and ears:
Were he my brother, nay, our kingdom's heir,
(As he is but my father's brother's son,)
Now by my sceptre's awe I make a vow,
Such neighbour nearness to our sacred blood
Should nothing privilege him, nor partialize
The unstooping firmness of my upright soul:
He is our subject, Mowbray; so art thou;
Free speech, and fearless, I to thee allow.

Nor. Then, Bolingbroke, as low as to thy heart,
Through the false passage of thy throat, thou liest!
Three parts of that receipt I had for Calais
Disburs'd I duly to his highness' soldiers:
The other part reserv'd I by consent;

For that my sovereign liege was in my debt,
Upon remainder of a dear account,

Since last I went to France to fetch his queen :

Now swallow down that lie.-For Gloster's death,

I slew him not; but to my own disgrace,

Boling. Pale trembling coward, there I throw my Neglected my sworn duty in that case.

gage,

Disclaiming here the kindred of the king;
And lay aside my high blood's royalty,

Which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except:
If guilty dread hath left thee so much strength,
As to take up mine honour's pawn, then stoop;
By that, and all the rites of knighthood else,
Will I make good against thee, arm to arm,
What I have spoke, or thou canst worse devise.

Nor. I take it up; and by that sword I swear,
Which gently laid my knighthood on my shoulder,
I'll answer thee in any fair degree,

Or chivalrous design of knightly trial:
And, when I mount, alive may I not light,

If I be traitor, or unjustly fight!

K. Rich. What doth our cousin lay to Mowbray's charge?

b

It must be great, that can inherit us
So much as of a thought of ill in him.

Boling. Look, what I said my life shall prove it true;-
That Mowbray hath receiv'd eight thousand nobles,
In name of lendings, for your highness' soldiers;
The which he hath detain'd for lewd employments,
Like a false traitor and injurious villain.
Besides I say, and will in battle prove,-
Or here, or elsewhere, to the furthest verge

a Inhabitable-uninhabitable, unhabitable. Jonson also uses the word in this sense, strictly according to its Latin deriva

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For you, my noble lord of Lancaster,
The honourable father to my foe,
Once I did lay an ambush for your life,
A trespass that doth vex my grieved soul:
But, ere I last receiv'd the sacrament,
I did confess it; and exactly begg'd
Your grace's pardon, and, I hope, I had it.
This is my fault: As for the rest appeal'd,
It issues from the rancour of a villain,
A recreant and most degenerate traitor :
Which in myself I boldly will defend;
And interchangeably hurl down my gage
Upon this overweening traitor's foot,

To prove myself a loyal gentleman

Even in the best blood chamber'd in his bosom :
In haste whereof, most heartily I pray
Your highness to assign our trial day.

K. Rich. Wrath-kindled gentlemen, be rul'd by

me;

Let's purge this choler without letting blood:
This we prescribe, though no physician;
Deep malice makes too deep incision :
Forget, forgive; conclude, and be agreed;
Our doctors say, this is no month to bleed.
Good uncle, let this end where it begun;
We'll calm the duke of Norfolk, you your son.
Gaunt. To be a make-peace shall become my age-
Throw down, my son, the duke of Norfolk's gage.
K. Rich. And, Norfolk, throw down his.
Gaunt.
When, Harry? when?*
Obedience bids, I should not bid again.

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K. Rich. Norfolk, throw down, we bid; there is no boot."

Nor. Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot: My life thou shalt command, but not my shame : The one my duty owes; but my fair name, (Despite of death,) that lives upon my grave, To dark dishonour's use thou shalt not have. I am disgrac'd, impeach'd, and baffled here; Pierc'd to the soul with slander's venom'd spear; The which no balm can cure, but his beart-blood Which breath'd this poison.

K. Rich.
Rage must be withstood:
Give me his gage :-Lions make leopards tame.b
Nor. Yea, but not change his spots: take but my
shame,

And I resign my gage. My dear dear lord,
The purest treasure mortal times afford

Is spotless reputation; that away,

Men are but gilded loam, or painted clay,
A jewel in a ten-times-harr'd-up chest

Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.

Mine honour is my life; both grow in one;
Take honour from me, and my life is done:
Then, dear my liege, mine honour let me try;
In that I live, and for that will I die.

K. Rich. Cousin, throw down your gage; do you begin.

Boling. O, heaven defend my soul from such foul sin!

Shall I seem crest-fallen in my father's sight?
Or with pale beggar fear impeach my height
Before this outdar'd dastard? Ere my tongue
Shall wound mine honour with such feeble wrong,
Or sound so base a parle, my teeth shall tear
The slavish motive of recantia g fear;
And spit it bleeding, in his high disgrace,
Where shame doth harbour, even in Mowbray's face.
[Exit GAUNT.

K Rich. We were not born to sue, but to command:

Which since we cannot do to make you friends,
Be ready, as your lives shall answer it,
At Coventry, upon Saint Lambert's day;
There shall your swords and lances arbitrate
The swelling difference of your settled hate;
Since we cannot atone you,d you shall see
Justice design the victor's chivalry.
Lord marshal, command our officers at arms
Be ready to direct these home-alarms.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.-London. A Room in the Duke of
Lancaster's Palace.

Enter GAUNT and DUCHESS of Gloster.
Gaunt. Alas! the part I had in Gloster's blood
Duth more solicit me than your exclaims,
To stir against the butchers of his life.
But since correction lieth in those hands
Which made the fault that we cannot correct,
Put we our quarrel to the will of Heaven;
Who, when he sees the hours ripe on earth,
Will rain hot vengeance on offenders' heads.

Duch. Finds brotherhood in thee no sharper spur? Hath love in thy old blood no living fire?

Boot is here used in its original sense of compensation. There is no boot, no remedy for what is past,-nothing to be added, or substituted.

Lions make le pards tame. The crest of Norfolk was a golden leopard.

His sps. So the old copies. According to the custom in Shakspere's time of changing from the singular to the plural $15, or from the plural to the singular, the alteration to their in modern copies was scarcely called for. But in this case Mowbray quotes the very text of Scripture-Jer. xiii. 23.

• Aume you make you in concord-cause you to be at one. Design designate-point out-exhibit-show by a token. *The part I had, &c. My consanguinity to Gloster.

Edward's seven sons, whereof thyself art one,
Were as seven phials of his sacred blood,
Or seven fair branches springing from one root:
Some of those seven are dried by nature's course,
Some of those branches by the destinies cut:
But Thomas, my dear lord, my life, my Gloster,-
One phial full of Edward's sacred blood,
One flourishing branch of his most royal root,
Is crack'd, and all the precious liquor spilt;
Is hack'd down, and his summer leaves all vaded,"
By envy's hand, and murther's bloody axe.
Ah, Gaunt! his blood was thine; that bed, that womb,
That mettle, that self-mould, that fashion'd thee,
Made him a man; and though thou liv'st and breath'st,
Yet art thou slain in him: thou dost consent
In some large measure to thy father's death,
In that thou seest thy wretched brother die,
Who was the model of thy father's life.
Call it not patience, Gaunt, it is despair:
In suffering thus thy brother to be slaughter'd,
Thou show'st the naked pathway to thy life,
Teaching stern murther how to butcher thee:
That which in mean men we entitle patience
Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.
What shall I say? to safeguard thine own life,
The best way is to 'venge my Gloster's death.
Gaunt. Heaven's the quarrel; for heaven's sub-
stitute,

His deputy anointed in his sight,

Hath caus'd his death: the which if wrongfully,
Let heaven revenge; for I may never lift

An angry arm against his minister.

Duch. Where then, alas! may I complain myself? Gaunt. To heaven, the widow's champion and de fence.

Duch. Why then, I will. Farewell, old Gaunt.
Thou go'st to Coventry, there to behold
Our cousin Hereford and fell Mowbray fight:
O, sit my husband's wrongs on Hereford's spear,
That it may enter butcher Mowbray's breast!
Or, if misfortune miss the first career,
Be Mowbray's sins so heavy in his bosom,
That they may break his foaming courser's back,
And throw the rider headlong in the lists,

A caitiff recreant to my cousin Hereford!
Farewell, old Gaunt; thy sometimes brother's wife
With her companion grief must end her life.
Gaunt. Sister, farewell: I must to Coventry:
As much good stay with thee, as go with me!
Duch. Yet one word more ;-Grief boundeth where
it falls,

Not with the empty hollowness, but weight:
I take my leave before I have begun;
For sorrow ends not when it seemeth done.
Commend me to my brother, Edmund York.
Lo, this is all:-Nay, yet depart not so;
Though this be all, do not so quickly go;
I shall remember more. Bid him-O, what?-
With all good speed at Plashy visit me.
Alack, and what shall good old York there see,
But empty lodgings and unfurnish'd walls,
Unpeopled offices, untrodden stones?

?

And what cheer there for weicome but my groans
Therefore commend me; let him not come there,
To seek out sorrow that dwells everywhere:
Desolate, desolate, will I hence, and die;
The last leave of thee takes my weeping eye. [Exeunt.

Vaded. Vade seems to have a stronger sense than to fade, although fade was often written vade.

b Complain myself. The verb is here the same as the French verb se plaindre.

Caitiff. The original meaning of this word was, a prisoner, As the captive anciently became a siave, the word gradually came to indicate a man in a servile condition-a mean creature -a dishonest person.

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