During the time of the civil wars of York and Lancaster, England was
a perfect bear-garden, and Shakespeare has given us a very lively
picture of the scene. The three parts of HENRY VI convey a picture
of very little else; and are inferior to the other historical plays.
They have brilliant passages; but the general ground-work is
comparatively poor and meagre, the style 'flat and unraised'. There
are few lines like the following:
Glory is like a circle in the water;
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till by broad spreading it disperse to naught.
The first part relates to the wars in France after the death of
Henry V and the story of the Maid of Orleans. She is here almost as
scurvily treated as in Voltaire's Pucelle. Talbot is a very
magnificent sketch: there is something as formidable in this
portrait of him, as there would be in a monumental figure of him or
in the sight of the armour which he wore. The scene in which he
visits the Countess of Auvergne, who seeks to entrap him, is a very
spirited one, and his description of his own treatment while a
prisoner to the French not less remarkable.
Salisbury. Yet tell'st thou not how thou wert entertain'd.
Talbot. With scoffs and scorns, and contumelious taunts,
In open market-place produced they me,
To be a public spectacle to all.
Here, said they, is the terror of the French,
The scarecrow that affrights our children so.
Then broke I from the officers that led me,
And with my nails digg'd stones out of the ground,
To hurl at the beholders of my shame.
My grisly countenance made others fly,
None durst come near for fear of sudden death.
In iron walls they deem'd me not secure:
So great a fear my name amongst them spread,
That they suppos'd I could rend bars of steel,
And spurn in pieces posts of adamant.
Wherefore a guard of chosen shot I had:
They walk'd about me every minute-while;
And if I did but stir out of my bed,
Ready they were to shoot me to the heart.
The second part relates chiefly to the contests between the nobles
during the minority of Henry and the death of Gloucester, the good
Duke Humphrey. The character of Cardinal Beaufort is the most
prominent in the group: the account of his death is one of our
author's masterpieces. So is the speech of Gloucester to the nobles
on the loss of the provinces of France by the king's marriage with
Margaret of Anjou. The pretensions and growing ambition of the Duke
of York, the father of Richard III, are also very ably developed.
Among the episodes, the tragi-comedy of Jack Cade, and the detection
of the impostor Simcox are truly edifying.
The third part describes Henry's loss of his crown: his death takes
place in the last act, which is usually thrust into the common
acting play of RICHARD III. The character of Gloucester, afterwards
King Richard, is here very powerfully commenced, and his dangerous
designs and long-reaching ambition are fully described in his
soliloquy in the third act, beginning, 'Aye, Edward will use women
honourably.' Henry VI is drawn as distinctly as his high-spirited
Queen, and notwithstanding the very mean figure which Henry makes as
a king, we still feel more respect for him than for his wife.
We have already observed that Shakespeare was scarcely more
remarkable for the force and marked contrasts of his characters than
for the truth and subtlety with which he has distinguished those
which approached the nearest to each other. For instance, the soul
of Othello is hardly more distinct from that of Iago than that of
Desdemona is shown to be from Aemilia's; the ambition of Macbeth is
as distinct from the ambition of Richard III as it is from the
meekness of Duncan; the real madness of Lear is as different from
the feigned madness of Edgar [Footnote: There is another instance of
the name distinction in Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet's pretended
madness would make a very good real madness in any other author.] as
from the babbling of the fool; the contrast between wit and folly in
Falstaff and Shallow is not more characteristic though more obvious
than the gradations of folly, loquacious or reserved, in Shallow and
Silence; and again, the gallantry of Prince Henry is as little
confounded with that of Hotspur as with the cowardice of Falstaff,
or as the sensual and philosophic cowardice of the Knight is with
the pitiful and cringing cowardice of Parolles. All these several
personages were as different in Shakespeare as they would have been
in themselves: his imagination borrowed from the life, and every
circumstance, object, motive, passion, operated there as it would in
reality, and produced a world of men and women as distinct, as true
and as various as those that exist in nature. The peculiar property
of Shakespeare's imagination was this truth, accompanied with the
unconsciousness of nature: indeed, imagination to be perfect must be
unconscious, at least in production; for nature is so. We shall
attempt one example more in the characters of Richard II and Henry
VI.
The characters and situations of both these persons were so nearly
alike, that they would have been completely confounded by a
commonplace poet. Yet they are kept quite distinct in Shakespeare.
Both were kings, and both unfortunate. Both lost their crowns owing
to their mismanagement and imbecility; the one from a thoughtless,
wilful abuse of power, the other from an indifference to it. The
manner in which they bear their misfortunes corresponds exactly to
the causes which led to them. The one is always lamenting the loss
of his power which he has not the spirit to regain; the other seems
only to regret that he had ever been king, and is glad to be rid of
the power, with the trouble; the effeminacy of the one is that of a
voluptuary, proud, revengeful, impatient of contradiction, and
inconsolable in his misfortunes; the effeminacy of the other is that
of an indolent, good-natured mind, naturally averse to the turmoils
of ambition and the cares of greatness, and who wishes to pass his
time in monkish indolence and contemplation.--Richard bewails the
loss of the kingly power only as it was the means of gratifying his
pride and luxury; Henry regards it only as a means of doing right,
and is less desirous of the advantages to be derived from possessing
it than afraid of exercising it wrong. In knighting a young soldier,
he gives him ghostly advice--
Edward Plantagenet, arise a knight,
And learn this lesson, draw thy sword in right.
Richard II in the first speeches of the play betrays his real
character. In the first alarm of his pride, on hearing of
Bolingbroke's rebellion, before his presumption has met with any
check, he exclaims:
Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords:
This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones
Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king
Shall falter under proud rebellious arms.
. . . . .
Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm from an anointed king;
The breath of worldly man cannot depose
The Deputy elected by the Lord.
For every man that Bolingbroke hath prest,
To lift sharp steel against our golden crown,
Heaven for his Richard hath in heavenly pay
A glorious angel; then if angels fight,
Weak men must fall; for Heaven still guards the right.
Yet, notwithstanding this royal confession of faith, on the very
first news of actual disaster, all his conceit of himself as the
peculiar favourite of Providence vanishes into air.
But now the blood of twenty thousand men
Did triumph in my face, and they are fled.
All souls that will be safe fly from my side;
For time hath set a blot upon my pride.
Immediately after, however, recollecting that 'cheap defence' of the
divinity of kings which is to be found in opinion, he is for arming
his name against his enemies.
Awake, thou coward Majesty, thou sleep'st;
Is not the King's name forty thousand names?
Arm, arm, my name: a puny subject strikes
At thy great glory.
King Henry does not make any such vapouring resistance to the loss of
his crown, but lets it slip from off his head as a weight which he is
neither able nor willing to bear; stands quietly by to see the issue of
the contest for his kingdom, as if it were a game at push-pin, and is
pleased when the odds prove against him.
When Richard first hears of the death of his favourites, Bushy,
Bagot, and the rest, he indignantly rejects all idea of any further
efforts, and only indulges in the extravagant impatience of his
grief and his despair, in that fine speech which has been so often
quoted:
Aumerle. Where is the duke my father, with his power?
K. Richard. No matter where: of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow in the bosom of the earth!
Let's choose executors, and talk of wills:
And yet not so--for what can we bequeath,
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death,
And that small model of the barren earth,
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For heaven's sake let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of Kings:
How some have been depos'd, some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they dispossess'd;
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kili'd;
All murder'd:--for within the hollow crown,
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps death his court: and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp!
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit--
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus,
Comes at the last, and, with a little pin,
Bores through his castle wall, and--farewell king!
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence; throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live on bread like you, feel want, taste grief,
Need friends, like you; subjected thus,
How can you say to me I am a king?
There is as little sincerity afterwards in his affected resignation
to his fate, as there is fortitude in this exaggerated picture of
his misfortunes before they have happened.
When Northumberland comes back with the message from Bolingbroke, he
exclaims, anticipating the result,--
What must the king do now? Must he submit?
The king shall do it: must he be depos'd?
The king shall be contented: must he lose
The name of king? O' God's name let it go.
I'll give my jewels for a set of beads,
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,
My gay apparel for an almsman's gown,
My figur'd goblets for a dish of wood,
My sceptre for a palmer's walking staff,
My subjects for a pair of carved saints,
And my large kingdom for a little grave--
A little, little grave, an obscure grave.
How differently is all this expressed in King Henry's soliloquy,
during the battle with Edward's party:
This battle fares like to the morning's war,
When dying clouds contend with growing light,
What time the shepherd blowing of his nails,
Can neither call it perfect day or night.
Here on this mole-hill will I sit me down;
To whom God will, there be the victory!
For Margaret my Queen, and Clifford too,
Have chid me from the battle; swearing both
They prosper best of all when I am thence.
Would I were dead, if God's good will were so.
For what is in this world but grief and woe?
O God! methinks it were a happy life
To be no better than a homely swain,
To sit upon a hill as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run:
How many make the hour full complete,
How many hours bring about the day,
How many days will finish up the year,
How many years a mortal man may live.
When this is known, then to divide the times:
So many hours must I tend my flock,
So many hours must I take my rest,
So many hours must I contemplate,
So many hours must I sport myself;
So many days my ewes have been with young,
So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean,
So many months ere I shall shear the fleece:
So many minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years
Past over, to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
Ah! what a life were this! how sweet, how lovely!
Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds looking on their silly sheep,
Than doth a rich embroidered canopy
To kings that fear their subjects' treachery?
O yes it doth, a thousand-fold it doth.
And to conclude, the shepherds' homely curds,
His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade,
All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,
Is far beyond a prince's delicates,
His viands sparkling in a golden cup,
His body couched in a curious bed,
When care, mistrust, and treasons wait on him.
This is a true and beautiful description of a naturally quiet and
contented disposition, and not, like the former, the splenetic
effusion of disappointed ambition.
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.