“How high a pitch his resolution soars!”
and the affected depreciation afterwards;—
“As he is but my father’s brother’s son.”
_Ib._ Mowbray’s speech:—
“In haste whereof, most heartily I pray
Your highness to assign our trial day.”
The occasional interspersion of rhymes, and the more frequent winding up
of a speech therewith—what purpose was this designed to answer? In the
earnest drama, I mean. Deliberateness? An attempt, as in Mowbray, to
collect himself and be cool at the close?—I can see that in the following
speeches the rhyme answers the end of the Greek chorus, and distinguishes
the general truths from the passions of the dialogue; but this does not
exactly justify the practice, which is unfrequent in proportion to the
excellence of Shakespeare’s plays. One thing, however, is to be
observed,—that the speakers are historical, known, and so far formal
characters, and their reality is already a fact. This should be borne in
mind. The whole of this scene of the quarrel between Mowbray and
Bolingbroke seems introduced for the purpose of showing by anticipation
the characters of Richard and Bolingbroke. In the latter there is
observable a decorous and courtly checking of his anger in subservience to
a predetermined plan, especially in his calm speech after receiving
sentence of banishment compared with Mowbray’s unaffected lamentation. In
the one, all is ambitious hope of something yet to come; in the other it
is desolation and a looking backward of the heart,
_Ib._ sc. 2.—
“_Gaunt._ God’s is the quarrel; for God’s substitute,
His deputy anointed in his right,
Hath caus’d his death: the which, if wrongfully,
Let heaven revenge; for I may never lift
An angry arm against his minister.”
Without the hollow extravagance of Beaumont and Fletcher’s ultra-royalism,
how carefully does Shakespeare acknowledge and reverence the eternal
distinction between the mere individual, and the symbolic or
representative, on which all genial law, no less than patriotism, depends.
The whole of this second scene commences, and is anticipative of, the tone
and character of the play at large.
_Ib._ sc. 3. In none of Shakespeare’s fictitious dramas, or in those
founded on a history as unknown to his auditors generally as fiction, is
this violent rupture of the succession of time found:—a proof, I think,
that the pure historic drama, like _Richard II._ and _King John_, had its
own laws.
_Ib._ Mowbray’s speech:—
“A dearer _merit_
Have I deserved at your highness’ hand.”
O, the instinctive propriety of Shakespeare in the choice of words!
_Ib._ Richard’s speech:—
“Nor never by advised purpose meet,
To plot, contrive, or complot any ill,
’Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.”
Already the selfish weakness of Richard’s character opens. Nothing will
such minds so readily embrace, as indirect ways softened down to their
_quasi_-consciences by policy, expedience, &c.
_Ib._ Mowbray’s speech:—
... “All the world’s my way.”
“The world was all before him.”—_Milt._
_Ib._—
“_Boling._ How long a time lies in one little word!
Four lagging winters, and four wanton springs,
End in a word: such is the breath of kings.”
Admirable anticipation!
_Ib._ sc. 4. This is a striking conclusion of a first act,—letting the
reader into the secret;—having before impressed us with the dignified and
kingly manners of Richard, yet by well managed anticipations leading us on
to the full gratification of pleasure in our own penetration. In this
scene a new light is thrown on Richard’s character. Until now he has
appeared in all the beauty of royalty; but here, as soon as he is left to
himself, the inherent weakness of his character is immediately shown. It
is a weakness, however, of a peculiar kind, not arising from want of
personal courage, or any specific defect of faculty, but rather an
intellectual feminineness, which feels a necessity of ever leaning on the
breasts of others, and of reclining on those who are all the while known
to be inferiors. To this must be attributed as its consequences all
Richard’s vices, his tendency to concealment, and his cunning, the whole
operation of which is directed to the getting rid of present difficulties.
Richard is not meant to be a debauchee; but we see in him that sophistry
which is common to man, by which we can deceive our own hearts, and at one
and the same time apologize for, and yet commit, the error. Shakespeare
has represented this character in a very peculiar manner. He has not made
him amiable with counterbalancing faults; but has openly and broadly drawn
those faults without reserve, relying on Richard’s disproportionate
sufferings and gradually emergent good qualities for our sympathy; and
this was possible, because his faults are not positive vices, but spring
entirely from defect of character.