“How high a pitch,” &c.
There is scarcely anything in Shakespeare in its degree, more admirably
drawn than York’s character; his religious loyalty struggling with a deep
grief and indignation at the king’s follies; his adherence to his word and
faith, once given in spite of all, even the most natural, feelings. You
see in him the weakness of old age, and the overwhelmingness of
circumstances, for a time surmounting his sense of duty,—the junction of
both exhibited in his boldness in words and feebleness in immediate act;
and then again his effort to retrieve himself in abstract loyalty, even at
the heavy price of the loss of his son. This species of accidental and
adventitious weakness is brought into parallel with Richard’s continually
increasing energy of thought, and as constantly diminishing power of
acting;—and thus it is Richard that breathes a harmony and a relation into
all the characters of the play.
_Ib._ sc. 2.—
“_Queen._ To please the king I did; to please myself
I cannot do it; yet I know no cause
Why I should welcome such a guest as grief,
Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest
As my sweet Richard: yet again, methinks,
Some unborn sorrow, ripe in sorrow’s womb,
Is coming toward me; and my inward soul
With nothing trembles: at something it grieves,
More than with parting from my lord the king.”
It is clear that Shakespeare never meant to represent Richard as a vulgar
debauchee, but a man with a wantonness of spirit in external show, a
feminine _friendism_, an intensity of woman-like love of those immediately
about him, and a mistaking of the delight of being loved by him for a love
of him. And mark in this scene Shakespeare’s gentleness in touching the
tender superstitions, the _terræ incognitæ_ of presentiments, in the human
mind; and how sharp a line of distinction he commonly draws between these
obscure forecastings of general experience in each individual, and the
vulgar errors of mere tradition. Indeed, it may be taken once for all as
the truth, that Shakespeare, in the absolute universality of his genius,
always reverences whatever arises out of our moral nature; he never
profanes his muse with a contemptuous reasoning away of the genuine and
general, however unaccountable, feelings of mankind.
The amiable part of Richard’s character is brought full upon us by his
queen’s few words—
... “So sweet a guest
As my sweet Richard:”—
and Shakespeare has carefully shown in him an intense love of his country,
well-knowing how that feeling would, in a pure historic drama, redeem him
in the hearts of the audience. Yet even in this love there is something
feminine and personal:—
“Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand,—
As a long parted mother with her child
Plays fondly with her tears, and smiles in meeting;
So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth,
And do thee favour with my royal hands.”
With this is combined a constant overflow of emotions from a total
incapability of controlling them, and thence a waste of that energy, which
should have been reserved for actions, in the passion and effort of mere
resolves and menaces. The consequence is moral exhaustion, and rapid
alternations of unmanly despair and ungrounded hope,—every feeling being
abandoned for its direct opposite upon the pressure of external accident.
And yet when Richard’s inward weakness appears to seek refuge in his
despair, and his exhaustion counterfeits repose, the old habit of
kingliness, the effect of flatterers from his infancy, is ever and anon
producing in him a sort of wordy courage which only serves to betray more
clearly his internal impotence. The second and third scenes of the third
act combine and illustrate all this:—
“_Aumerle._ He means, my lord, that we are too remiss;
Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security,
Grows strong and great, in substance, and in friends.
_K. Rich._ Discomfortable cousin! know’st thou not,
That when the searching eye of heaven is hid
Behind the globe, that lights the lower world,
Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen,
In murders and in outrage, bloody here;
But when, from under this terrestrial ball,
He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines,
And darts his light through every guilty hole,
Then murders, treasons, and detested sins,
The cloke of night being pluckt from off their backs,
Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves?
So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke, &c.
_Aumerle._ Where is the Duke my father with his power?
_K. Rich._ 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 on the bosom of the earth, &c.
_Aumerle._ My father hath a power, enquire of him;
And learn to make a body of a limb.
_K. Rich._ Thou chid’st me well: proud Bolingbroke, I come
To change blows with thee for our day of doom.
This ague-fit of fear is over-blown;
An easy task it is to win our own.
_Scroop._ Your uncle York hath join’d with Bolingbroke.—
_K. Rich._ Thou hast said enough,
Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth
Of that sweet way I was in to despair!
What say you now? what comfort have we now?
By heaven, I’ll hate him everlastingly,
That bids me be of comfort any more.”