“Noble lord,
Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle,” &c.
Observe the fine struggle of a haughty sense of power and ambition in
Bolingbroke with the necessity for dissimulation.
_Ib._ sc. 4. See here the skill and judgment of our poet in giving reality
and individual life, by the introduction of accidents in his historic
plays, and thereby making them dramas, and not histories. How beautiful an
islet of repose—a melancholy repose, indeed—is this scene with the
Gardener and his Servant. And how truly affecting and realising is the
incident of the very horse Barbary, in the scene with the Groom in the
last act!—
“_Groom._ I was a poor groom of thy stable, King,
When thou wert King; who, travelling towards York,
With much ado, at length have gotten leave
To look upon my sometimes master’s face.
O, how it yearn’d my heart, when I beheld,
In London streets, that coronation day,
When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary!
That horse, that thou so often hast bestrid;
That horse, that I so carefully have dress’d!
_K. Rich._ Rode he on Barbary?”
Bolingbroke’s character, in general, is an instance how Shakespeare makes
one play introductory to another; for it is evidently a preparation for
Henry IV., as Gloster in the third part of _Henry VI._ is for Richard III.
I would once more remark upon the exalted idea of the only true loyalty
developed in this noble and impressive play. We have neither the rants of
Beaumont and Fletcher, nor the sneers of Massinger;—the vast importance of
the personal character of the sovereign is distinctly enounced, whilst, at
the same time, the genuine sanctity which surrounds him is attributed to,
and grounded on, the position in which he stands as the convergence and
exponent of the life and power of the state.
The great end of the body politic appears to be to humanise, and assist in
the progressiveness of, the animal man;—but the problem is so complicated
with contingencies as to render it nearly impossible to lay down rules for
the formation of a state. And should we be able to form a system of
government, which should so balance its different powers as to form a
check upon each, and so continually remedy and correct itself, it would,
nevertheless, defeat its own aim;—for man is destined to be guided by
higher principles, by universal views, which can never be fulfilled in
this state of existence,—by a spirit of progressiveness which can never be
accomplished, for then it would cease to be. Plato’s Republic is like
Bunyan’s Town of Man-Soul,—a description of an individual, all of whose
faculties are in their proper subordination and inter-dependence; and this
it is assumed may be the prototype of the state as one great individual.
But there is this sophism in it, that it is forgotten that the human
faculties, indeed, are parts and not separate things; but that you could
never get chiefs who were wholly reason, ministers who were wholly
understanding, soldiers all wrath, labourers all concupiscence, and so on
through the rest. Each of these partakes of, and interferes with, all the
others.
“Henry IV.—Part I.”