character of Margaret of Anjou has not been adduced, and yet to those
who have studied Shakspeare in his own spirit, it will appear the most
conclusive of all. When we compare her with his other female characters,
we are struck at once by the want of family likeness; Shakspeare was not
always equal, but he had not two _manners_, as they say of painters. I
discern his hand in particular parts, but I cannot recognize his spirit
in the conception of the whole: he may have laid on some of the colors,
but the original design has a certain hardness and heaviness, very
unlike his usual style. Margaret of Anjou, as exhibited in these
tragedies, is a dramatic portrait of considerable truth, and vigor, and
consistency--but she is not one of Shakspeare's women. He who knew so
well in what true greatness of spirit consisted--who could excite our
respect and sympathy even for a Lady Macbeth, would never have given us
a heroine without a touch of heroism; he would not have portrayed a
high-hearted woman, struggling unsubdued against the strangest
vicissitudes of fortune, meeting reverses and disasters, such as would
have broken the most masculine spirit, with unshaken constancy, yet left
her without a single personal quality which would excite our interest in
her bravely-endured misfortunes; and this too in the very face of
history. He would not have given us, in lieu of the magnanimous queen,
the subtle and accomplished French woman, a mere "Amazonian trull," with
every coarser feature of depravity and ferocity; he would have redeemed
her from unmingled detestation; he would have breathed into her some of
his own sweet spirit--he would have given the woman a soul.
The old chronicler Hall informs us, that Queen Margaret "excelled all
other as well in beauty and favor, as in wit and policy, and was in
stomach and courage more like to a man than to a woman." He adds, that
after the espousals of Henry and Margaret, "the king's friends fell from
him; the lords of the realm fell in division among themselves; the
Commons rebelled against their natural prince; fields were foughten;
many thousands slain; and, finally, the king was deposed, and his son
slain, and his queen sent home again with as much misery and sorrow as
she was received with pomp and triumph."
This passage seems to have furnished the groundwork of the character as
it is developed in these plays with no great depth or skill. Margaret is
portrayed with all the exterior graces of her sex; as bold and artful,
with spirit to dare, resolution to act, and fortitude to endure; but
treacherous, haughty, dissembling, vindictive, and fierce. The bloody
struggle for power in which she was engaged, and the companionship of
the ruthless iron men around her, seem to have left her nothing of
womanhood but the heart of a mother--that last stronghold of our
feminine nature! So far the character is consistently drawn: it has
something of the power, but none of the flowing ease of Shakspeare's
manner. There are fine materials not well applied; there is poetry in
some of the scenes and speeches; the situations are often exceedingly
poetical; but in the character of Margaret herself, there is not an atom
of poetry. In her artificial dignity, her plausible wit, and her endless
volubility, she would remind us of some of the most admired heroines of
French tragedy, but for that unlucky box on the ear which she gives the
Duchess of Gloster,--a violation of tragic decorum, which of course
destroys all parallel.
Having said thus much, I shall point out some of the finest and most
characteristic scenes in which Margaret appears. The speech in which she
expresses her scorn of her meek husband, and her impatience of the power
exercised by those fierce overbearing barons, York, Salisbury, Warwick,
Buckingham, is very fine, and conveys as faithful an idea of those
feudal times as of the woman who speaks. The burst of female spite with
which she concludes, is admirable--
Not all these lords do vex me half so much
As that proud dame, the Lord Protector's wife.
She sweeps it through the court with troops of ladies,
More like an empress than Duke Humphrey's wife.
Strangers in court do take her for the queen:
She bears a duke's revenues on her back,
And in her heart she scorns our poverty.
Shall I not live to be avenged on her?
Contemptuous base-born callet as she is!
She vaunted 'mongst her minions t'other day,
The very train of her worst wearing gown
Was better worth than all my father's lands,
Till Suffolk gave two dukedoms for his daughter.
Her intriguing spirit, the facility with which she enters into the
murderous confederacy against the good Duke Humphrey, the artful
plausibility with which she endeavours to turn suspicion from
herself--confounding her gentle consort by mere dint of words--are
exceedingly characteristic, but not the less revolting.
Her criminal love for Suffolk (which is a dramatic incident, not an
historic fact) gives rise to the beautiful parting scene in the third
act; a scene which it is impossible to read without a thrill of emotion,
hurried away by that power and pathos which forces us to sympathize with
the eloquence of grief, yet excites not a momentary interest either for
Margaret or her lover. The ungoverned fury of Margaret in the first
instance, the manner in which she calls on Suffolk to curse his enemies,
and then shrinks back overcome by the violence of the spirit she had
herself evoked, and terrified by the vehemence of his imprecations; the
transition in her mind from the extremity of rage to tears and melting
fondness, have been pronounced, and justly, to be in Shakspeare's own
manner.
Go, speak not to me--even now begone.
O go not yet! Even thus two friends condemn'd
Embrace, and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves,
Loather a hundred times to part than die:
Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee!
which is followed by that beautiful and intense burst of passion from
Suffolk--
'Tis not the hand I care for, wert thou hence;
A wilderness is populous enough,
So Suffolk had thy heavenly company:
For where thou art, there is the world itself,
With every several pleasure in the world;
And where thou art not, desolation!
In the third part of Henry the Sixth, Margaret, engaged in the terrible
struggle for her husband's throne, appears to rather more advantage. The
indignation against Henry, who had pitifully yielded his son's
birthright for the privilege of reigning unmolested during his own life,
is worthy of her, and gives rise to a beautiful speech. We are here
inclined to sympathize with her; but soon after follows the murder of
the Duke of York; and the base revengeful spirit and atrocious cruelty
with which she insults over him, unarmed and a prisoner,--the bitterness
of her mockery, and the unwomanly malignity with which she presents him
with the napkin stained with the blood of his youngest son, and "bids
the father wipe his eyes withal," turn all our sympathy into aversion
and horror. York replies in the celebrated speech, beginning--
She-wolf of France, and worse than wolves of France,
Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth--
and taunts her with the poverty of her father, the most irritating topic
he could have chosen.
Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult?
It needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen,
Unless the adage must be verified,
That beggars, mounted, ride their horse to death.
'Tis beauty, that doth oft make women proud;
But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small.
'Tis virtue that doth make them most admired;
The contrary doth make thee wondered at.
'Tis government that makes them seem divine,
The want thereof makes thee abominable.
* * * *
O tiger's heart, wrapped in a woman's hide!
How could'st thou drain the life-blood of the child
To bid the father wipe his face withal,
And yet be seen to bear a woman's face?
Women are soft, mild, pitiful and flexible,
Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless!
By such a woman as Margaret is here depicted such a speech could be
answered only in one way--with her dagger's point--and thus she answers
it.
It is some comfort to reflect that this trait of ferocity is not
historical: the body of the Duke of York was found, after the battle,
among the heaps of slain, and his head struck off: but even this was not
done by the command of Margaret.
In another passage, the truth and consistency of the character of
Margaret are sacrificed to the march of the dramatic action, with a very
ill effect. When her fortunes were at the very lowest ebb, and she had
sought refuge in the court of the French king, Warwick, her most
formidable enemy, upon some disgust he had taken against Edward the
Fourth, offered to espouse her cause; and proposed a match between the
prince her son and his daughter Anne of Warwick--the "gentle Lady Anne,"
who figures in Richard the Third. In the play, Margaret embraces the
offer without a moment's hesitation:[95] we are disgusted by her
versatile policy, and a meanness of spirit in no way allied to the
magnanimous forgiveness of her terrible adversary. The Margaret of
history sternly resisted this degrading expedient. She could not, she
said, pardon from her heart the man who had been the primary cause of
all her misfortunes. She mistrusted Warwick, despised him for the
motives of his revolt from Edward, and considered that to match her son
into the family of her enemy from mere policy was a species of
degradation. It took Louis the Eleventh, with all his art and
eloquence, fifteen days to wring a reluctant consent, accompanied with
tears, from this high-hearted woman.
The speech of Margaret to her council of generals before the battle of
Tewksbury, (Act v. scene 5,) is as remarkable a specimen of false
rhetoric, as her address to the soldiers, on the eve of the fight, is of
true and passionate eloquence.
She witnesses the final defeat of her army, the massacre of her
adherents, and the murder of her son; and though the savage Richard
would willingly have put an end to her misery, and exclaims very
pertinently--
Why should she live to fill the world with words?
she is dragged forth unharmed, a woful spectacle of extremest
wretchedness, to which death would have been an undeserved relief. If we
compare the clamorous and loud exclaims of Margaret after the slaughter
of her son, to the ravings of Constance, we shall perceive where
Shakspeare's genius did _not_ preside, and where it _did_. Margaret, in
bold defiance of history, but with fine dramatic effect, is introduced
again in the gorgeous and polluted court of Edward the Fourth. There she
stalks around the seat of her former greatness, like a terrible phantom
of departed majesty, uncrowned, unsceptered, desolate, powerless--or
like a vampire thirsting for blood--or like a grim prophetess of evil,
imprecating that ruin on the head of her enemies, which she lived to see
realized. The scene following the murder of the princes in the Tower,
in which Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York sit down on the ground
bewailing their desolation, and Margaret suddenly appears from behind
them, like the very personification of woe, and seats herself beside
them revelling in their despair, is, in the general conception and
effect grand and appalling.
THE DUCHESS.
O, Harry's wife, triumph not in my woes;
God witness with me, I have wept for thine!
QUEEN MARGARET.
Bear with me, I am hungry for revenge,
And now I cloy me with beholding it.
Thy Edward he is dead, that kill'd my Edward;
Thy other Edward dead, to quit my Edward:
Young York he is but boot, because both they
Match not the high perfection of my loss.
Thy Clarence he is dead, that stabb'd my Edward;
And the beholders of this tragic play,
The adulterate Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey,
Untimely smother'd in their dusky graves.
Richard yet lives, hell's black intelligencer,
Only reserv'd their factor, to buy souls
And send them thither. But at hand, at hand,
Ensues his piteous and unpitied end;
Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar for him: saints pray
To have him suddenly convey'd from hence.
Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray,
That I may live to say, The dog is dead.[96]
She should have stopped here; but the effect thus powerfully excited is
marred and weakened by so much superfluous rhetoric, that we are tempted
to exclaim with the old Duchess of York--
Why should calamity be full of words?
QUEEN KATHERINE OF ARRAGON.
To have a just idea of the accuracy and beauty of this historical
portrait, we ought to bring immediately before us those circumstances of
Katherine's life and times, and those parts of her character, which
belong to a period previous to the opening of the play. We shall then be
better able to appreciate the skill with which Shakspeare has applied
the materials before him.
Katherine of Arragon, the fourth and youngest daughter of Ferdinand,
King of Arragon, and Isabella of Castile, was born at Alcala, whither
her mother had retired to winter after one of the most terrible
campaigns of the Moorish war--that of 1485.
Katherine had derived from nature no dazzling qualities of mind, and no
striking advantages of person. She inherited a tincture of Queen
Isabella's haughtiness and obstinacy of temper, but neither her beauty
nor her splendid talents. Her education under the direction of that
extraordinary mother, had implanted in her mind the most austere
principles of virtue, the highest ideas of female decorum, the most
narrow and bigoted attachment to the forms of religion, and that
excessive pride of birth and rank, which distinguished so particularly
her family and her nation. In other respects, her understanding was
strong, and her judgment clear. The natural turn of her mind was simple,
serious, and domestic, and all the impulses of her heart kindly and
benevolent. Such was Katherine; such, at least, she appears on a
reference to the chronicles of her times, and particularly from her own
letters, and the papers written or dictated by herself which relate to
her divorce; all of which are distinguished by the same artless
simplicity of style, the same quiet good sense, the same resolute, yet
gentle spirit and fervent piety.
When five years old, Katherine was solemnly affianced to Arthur, Prince
of Wales, the eldest son of Henry VII.; and in the year 1501, she landed
in England, after narrowly escaping shipwreck on the southern coast,
from which every adverse wind conspired to drive her. She was received
in London with great honor, and immediately on her arrival united to the
young prince. He was then fifteen and Katherine in her seventeenth
year.
Arthur, as it is well known, survived his marriage only five months; and
the reluctance of Henry VII. to refund the splendid dowry of the
Infanta, and forego the advantages of an alliance with the most powerful
prince of Europe, suggested the idea of uniting Katherine to his second
son Henry; after some hesitation, a dispensation was procured from the
Pope, and she was betrothed to Henry in her eighteenth year. The prince,
who was then only twelve years old, resisted as far as he was able to do
so, and appears to have really felt a degree of horror at the idea of
marrying his brother's widow. Nor was the mind of King Henry at rest; as
his health declined, his conscience reproached him with the equivocal
nature of the union into which he had forced his son; and the vile
motives of avarice and expediency which had governed him on this
occasion. A short time previous to his death, he dissolved the
engagement, and even caused Henry to sign a paper in which he solemnly
renounced all idea of a future union with the Infanta. It is observable,
that Henry signed this paper with reluctance, and that Katherine,
instead of being sent back to her own country, still remained in
England.
It appears that Henry, who was now about seventeen, had become
interested for Katherine, who was gentle and amiable. The difference of
years was rather a circumstance in her favor; for Henry was just at that
age, when a youth is most likely to be captivated by a woman older than
himself: and no sooner was he required to renounce her, than the
interest she had gradually gained in his affections, became, by
opposition, a strong passion. Immediately after his father's death, he
declared his resolution to take for his wife the Lady Katherine of
Spain, and none other; and when the matter was discussed in council, it
was urged that, besides the many advantages of the match in a political
point of view, she had given so "much proof of virtue, and sweetness of
condition, as they knew not where to parallel her." About six weeks
after his accession, June 3, 1509, the marriage was celebrated with
truly royal splendor, Henry being then eighteen, and Katherine in her
twenty-fourth year.
It has been said with truth, that if Henry had died while Katherine was
yet his wife, and Wolsey his minister, he would have left behind him the
character of a magnificent, popular, and accomplished prince, instead of
that of the most hateful ruffian and tyrant who ever swayed these
realms. Notwithstanding his occasional infidelities, and his impatience
at her midnight vigils, her long prayers, and her religious austerities,
Katherine and Henry lived in harmony together. He was fond of openly
displaying his respect and love for her; and she exercised a strong and
salutary influence over his turbulent and despotic spirit. When Henry
set out on his expedition to France, in 1513, he left Katherine regent
of the kingdom during his absence, with full powers to carry on the war
against the Scots; and the Earl of Surrey at the head of the army, as
her lieutenant-general. It is curious to find Katherine--the pacific,
domestic, and unpretending Katherine--describing herself as having "her
heart set to war," and "horrible busy" with making "standards, banners,
badges, scarfs, and the like."[97] Nor was this mere silken
preparation--mere dalliance with the pomp and circumstance of war; for
within a few weeks afterwards, her general defeated the Scots in the
famous battle of Floddenfield, where James IV. and most of his nobility
were slain.[98]
Katherine's letter to Henry, announcing this event, so strikingly
displays the piety and tenderness, the quiet simplicity, and real
magnanimity of her character, that there cannot be a more apt and
beautiful illustration of the exquisite truth and keeping of
Shakspeare's portrait.
SIR,
My Lord Howard hath sent me a letter, open to your Grace,
within one of mine, by the which ye shall see at length the
great victory that our Lord hath sent your subjects in your
absence: and for this cause, it is no need herein to trouble
your Grace with long writing; but to my thinking this battle
hath been to your Grace, and all your realm, the greatest
honor that could be, and more than ye should win all the
crown of France, thanked be God for it! And I am sure your
Grace forgetteth not to do this, which shall be cause to
send you many more such great victories, as I trust he shall
do. My husband, for haste, with Rougecross, I could not send
your Grace the piece of the king of Scots' coat, which John
Glyn now bringeth. In this your Grace shall see how I can
keep my promise, sending you for your banners a king's coat.
I thought to send himself unto you, but our Englishmen's
hearts would not suffer it. It should have been better for
him to have been in peace than have this reward, but all
that God sendeth is for the best. My Lord of Surrey, my
Henry, would fain know your pleasure in the burying of the
king of Scots' body, for he hath written to me so. With the
next messenger, your Grace's pleasure may be herein known.
And with this I make an end, praying God to send you home
shortly; for without this, no joy here can be
accomplished--and for the same I pray. And now go to our
Lady at Walsyngham, that I promised so long ago to see.
At Woburn, the 16th day of September, (1513.)
I send your Grace herein a bill, found in a Scottishman's
purse, of such things as the French king sent to the said
king of Scots, to make war against you, beseeching you to
send Mathew hither as soon as this messenger cometh with
tidings of your Grace.
Your humble wife and true servant,
KATHERINE.[99]
The legality of the king's marriage with Katherine remained undisputed
till 1527. In the course of that year, Anna Bullen first appeared at
court, and was appointed maid of honor to the queen; and then, and not
till then, did Henry's union with his brother's wife "creep too near his
conscience." In the following year, he sent special messengers to Rome,
with secret instructions: they were required to discover (among other
"hard questions") whether, if the queen entered a religious life, the
king might have the Pope's dispensation to marry again; and whether if
the king (for the better inducing the queen thereto) would enter himself
into a religious life, the Pope would dispense with the king's vow, and
leave her there?
Poor Katherine! we are not surprised to read that when she understood
what was intended against her, "she labored with all those passions
which jealousy of the king's affection, sense of her own honor, and the
legitimation of her daughter, could produce, laying in conclusion the
whole fault on the Cardinal." It is elsewhere said, that Wolsey bore the
queen ill-will, in consequence of her reflecting with some severity on
his haughty temper, and very unclerical life.
The proceedings were pending for nearly six years, and one of the causes
of this long delay, in spite of Henry's impatient and despotic
character, is worth noting. The old Chronicle tells us, that though the
men generally, and more particularly the priests and the nobles sided
with Henry in this matter, yet all the ladies of England were against
it. They justly felt that the honor and welfare of no woman was secure
if, after twenty years of union, she might be thus deprived of all her
rights as a wife; the clamor became so loud and general, that the king
was obliged to yield to it for a time, to stop the proceedings, and to
banish Anna Bullen from the court.
Cardinal Campeggio, called by Shakspeare Campeius, arrived in England in
October, 1528. He at first endeavored to persuade Katherine to avoid the
disgrace and danger of contesting her marriage, by entering a religious
house; but she rejected his advice with strong expressions of disdain.
"I am," said she, "the king's true wife, and to him married; and if all
doctors were dead, or law or learning far out of men's minds at the time
of our marriage, yet I cannot think that the court of Rome, and the
whole church of England, would have consented to a thing unlawful and
detestable as you call it. Still I say I am his wife, and for him will I
pray."
About two years afterwards, Wolsey died, (in November, 1530;)--the king
and queen met for the last time on the 14th of July, 1531. Until that
period, some outward show of respect and kindness had been maintained
between them; but the king then ordered her to repair to a private
residence, and no longer to consider herself as his lawful wife. "To
which the virtuous and mourning queen replied no more than this, that to
whatever place she removed, nothing could remove her from being the
king's wife. And so they bid each other farewell; and from this time the
king never saw her more."[100] He married Anna Bullen in 1532, while the
decision relating to his former marriage was still pending. The sentence
of divorce to which Katherine never would submit, was finally pronounced
by Cranmer in 1533; and the unhappy queen, whose health had been
gradually declining through these troubles of heart, died January 29,
1536, in the fiftieth year of her age.
Thus the action of the play of Henry VIII. includes events which
occurred from the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham in 1521, to the
death of Katherine in 1536. In making the death of Katherine precede the
birth of Queen Elizabeth, Shakspeare has committed an anachronism, not
only pardonable, but necessary. We must remember that the construction
of the play required a happy termination; and that the birth of
Elizabeth, before or after the death of Katherine, involved the question
of her legitimacy. By this slight deviation from the real course of
events, Shakspeare has not perverted historic facts, but merely
sacrificed them to a higher principle; and in doing so has not only
preserved dramatic propriety, and heightened the poetical interest, but
has given a strong proof both of his delicacy and his judgment.
If we also call to mind that in this play Katherine is properly the
heroine, and exhibited from first to last as the very "queen of earthly
queens;" that the whole interest is thrown round her and Wolsey--the one
the injured rival, the other the enemy of Anna Bullen--and that it was
written in the reign and for the court of Elizabeth, we shall yet
farther appreciate the moral greatness of the poet's mind, which
disdained to sacrifice justice and the truth of nature to any
time-serving expediency.