A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
it is no doubt inconsistent to see him both before and afterwards
constantly fighting on foot. It is however better, perhaps, that the poet
and player should by overpowering impressions dispose us to forget this,
than by literal exactness to expose themselves to external interruptions.
With all the disadvantages which I have mentioned, Shakspeare and several
Spanish poets have contrived to derive such great beauties from the
immediate representation of war, that I cannot bring myself to wish they
had abstained from it. A theatrical manager of the present day will have a
middle course to follow: his art must, in an especial manner, be directed
to make what he shows us appear only as separate groups of an immense
picture, which cannot be taken in at once by the eye; he must convince the
spectators that the main action takes place behind the stage; and for this
purpose he has easy means at his command in the nearer or more remote
sound of warlike music and the din of arms.
However much Shakspeare celebrates the French conquest of Henry, still he
has not omitted to hint, after his way, the secret springs of this
undertaking. Henry was in want of foreign war to secure himself on the
throne; the clergy also wished to keep him employed abroad, and made an
offer of rich contributions to prevent the passing of a law which would
have deprived them of the half of their revenues. His learned bishops
consequently are as ready to prove to him his indisputable right to the
crown of France, as he is to allow his conscience to be tranquillized by
them. They prove that the Salic law is not, and never was, applicable to
France; and the matter is treated in a more succinct and convincing manner
than such subjects usually are in manifestoes. After his renowned battles,
Henry wished to secure his conquests by marriage with a French princess;
all that has reference to this is intended for irony in the play. The
fruit of this union, from which two nations promised to themselves such
happiness in future, was the weak and feeble Henry VI., under whom every
thing was so miserably lost. It must not, therefore, be imagined that it
was without the knowledge and will of the poet that a heroic drama turns
out a comedy in his hands, and ends in the manner of Comedy with a
marriage of convenience.
The three parts of _Henry the Sixth_, as I have already remarked,
were composed much earlier than the preceding pieces. Shakspeare's choice
fell first on this period of English history, so full of misery and
horrors of every kind, because the pathetic is naturally more suitable
than the characteristic to a young poet's mind. We do not yet find here
the whole maturity of his genius, yet certainly its whole strength.
Careless as to the apparent unconnectedness of contemporary events, he
bestows little attention on preparation and development: all the figures
follow in rapid succession, and announce themselves emphatically for what
we ought to take them; from scenes where the effect is sufficiently
agitating to form the catastrophe of a less extensive plan, the poet
perpetually hurries us on to catastrophes still more dreadful. The First
Part contains only the first forming of the parties of the White and Red
Rose, under which blooming ensigns such bloody deeds were afterwards
perpetrated; the varying results of the war in France principally fill the
stage. The wonderful saviour of her country, Joan of Arc, is portrayed by
Shakspeare with an Englishman's prejudices: yet he at first leaves it
doubtful whether she has not in reality a heavenly mission; she appears in
the pure glory of virgin heroism; by her supernatural eloquence (and this
circumstance is of the poet's invention) she wins over the Duke of
Burgundy to the French cause; afterwards, corrupted by vanity and luxury,
she has recourse to hellish fiends, and comes to a miserable end. To her
is opposed Talbot, a rough iron warrior, who moves us the more powerfully,
as, in the moment when he is threatened with inevitable death, all his
care is tenderly directed to save his son, who performs his first deeds of
arms under his eye. After Talbot has in vain sacrificed himself, and the
Maid of Orleans has fallen into the hands of the English, the French
provinces are completely lost by an impolitic marriage; and with this the
piece ends. The conversation between the aged Mortimer in prison, and
Richard Plantagenet, afterwards Duke of York, contains an exposition of
the claims of the latter to the throne: considered by itself it is a
beautiful tragic elegy.
In the Second Part, the events more particularly prominent are the murder
of the honest Protector, Gloster, and its consequences; the death of
Cardinal Beaufort; the parting of the Queen from her favourite Suffolk,
and his death by the hand of savage pirates; then the insurrection of Jack
Cade under an assumed name, and at the instigation of the Duke of York.
The short scene where Cardinal Beaufort, who is tormented by his
conscience on account of the murder of Gloster, is visited on his death-
bed by Henry VI. is sublime beyond all praise. Can any other poet be named
who has drawn aside the curtain of eternity at the close of this life with
such overpowering and awful effect? And yet it is not mere horror with
which the mind is filled, but solemn emotion; a blessing and a curse stand
side by side; the pious King is an image of the heavenly mercy which, even
in the sinner's last moments, labours to enter into his soul. The
adulterous passion of Queen Margaret and Suffolk is invested with tragical
dignity and all low and ignoble ideas carefully kept out of sight. Without
attempting to gloss over the crime of which both are guilty, without
seeking to remove our disapprobation of this criminal love, he still, by
the magic force of expression, contrives to excite in us a sympathy with
their sorrow. In the insurrection of Cade he has delineated the conduct of
a popular demagogue, the fearful ludicrousness of the anarchical tumult of
the people, with such convincing truth, that one would believe he was an
eye-witness of many of the events of our age, which, from ignorance of
history, have been considered as without example.
The civil war only begins in the Second Part; in the Third it is unfolded
in its full destructive fury. The picture becomes gloomier and gloomier;
and seems at last to be painted rather with blood than with colours. With
horror we behold fury giving birth to fury, vengeance to vengeance, and
see that when all the bonds of human society are violently torn asunder,
even noble matrons became hardened to cruelty. The most bitter contempt is
the portion of the unfortunate; no one affords to his enemy that pity
which he will himself shortly stand in need of. With all party is family,
country, and religion, the only spring of action. As York, whose ambition
is coupled with noble qualities, prematurely perishes, the object of the
whole contest is now either to support an imbecile king, or to place on
the throne a luxurious monarch, who shortens the dear-bought possession by
the gratification of an insatiable voluptuousness. For this the celebrated
and magnanimous Warwick spends his chivalrous life; Clifford revenges the
death of his father with blood-thirsty filial love; and Richard, for the
elevation of his brother, practises those dark deeds by which he is soon
after to pave the way to his own greatness. In the midst of the general
misery, of which he has been the innocent cause, King Henry appears like
the powerless image of a saint, in whose wonder-working influence no man
any longer believes: he can but sigh and weep over the enormities which he
witnesses. In his simplicity, however, the gift of prophecy is lent to
this pious king: in the moment of his death, at the close of this great
tragedy, he prophesies a still more dreadful tragedy with which futurity
is pregnant, as much distinguished for the poisonous wiles of cold-blooded
wickedness as the former for deeds of savage fury.
The part of Richard III. has become highly celebrated in England from its
having been filled by excellent performers, and this has naturally had an
influence on the admiration of the piece itself, for many readers of
Shakspeare stand in want of good interpreters of the poet to understand
him properly. This admiration is certainly in every respect well founded,
though I cannot help thinking there is an injustice in considering the
three parts of _Henry the Sixth_ as of little value compared with
_Richard the Third_. These four plays were undoubtedly composed in
succession, as is proved by the style and the spirit in the handling of
the subject: the last is definitely announced in the one which precedes
it, and is also full of references to it: the same views run through the
series; in a word, the whole make together only one single work. Even the
deep characterization of Richard is by no means the exclusive property of
the piece which bears his name: his character is very distinctly drawn in
the two last parts of _Henry the Sixth_; nay, even his first speeches
lead us already to form the most unfavourable anticipations of his future
conduct. He lowers obliquely like a dark thundercloud on the horizon,
which gradually approaches nearer and nearer, and first pours out the
devastating elements with which it is charged when it hangs over the heads
of mortals. Two of Richard's most significant soliloquies which enable us
to draw the most important conclusions with regard to his mental
temperament, are to be found in _The Last Part of Henry the Sixth_.
As to the value and the justice of the actions to which passion impels us,
we may be blind, but wickedness cannot mistake its own nature; Richard, as
well as Iago, is a villain with full consciousness. That they should say
this in so many words, is not perhaps in human nature: but the poet has
the right in soliloquies to lend a voice to the most hidden thoughts,
otherwise the form of the monologue would, generally speaking, be
censurable. [Footnote: What, however, happens in so many tragedies, where
a person is made to avow himself a villain to his confidants, is most
decidedly unnatural. He will, indeed, announce his way of thinking, not,
however, under damning names, but as something that is understood of
itself, and is equally approved of by others.] Richard's deformity is the
expression of his internal malice, and perhaps in part the effect of it:
for where is the ugliness that would not be softened by benevolence and
openness? He, however, considers it as an iniquitous neglect of nature,
which justifies him in taking his revenge on that human society from which
it is the means of excluding him. Hence these sublime lines:
And this word love, which graybeards call divine.
Be resident in men like one another,
And not in me. I am myself alone.
Wickedness is nothing but selfishness designedly unconscientious; however
it can never do altogether without the form at least of morality, as this
is the law of all thinking beings,--it must seek to found its depraved way
of acting on something like principles. Although Richard is thoroughly
acquainted with the blackness of his mind and his hellish mission, he yet
endeavours to justify this to himself by a sophism: the happiness of being
beloved is denied to him; what then remains to him but the happiness of
ruling? All that stands in the way of this must be removed. This envy of
the enjoyment of love is so much the more natural in Richard, as his
brother Edward, who besides preceded him in the possession of the crown,
was distinguished by the nobleness and beauty of his figure, and was an
almost irresistible conqueror of female hearts. Notwithstanding his
pretended renunciation, Richard places his chief vanity in being able to
please and win over the women, if not by his figure at least by his
insinuating discourse. Shakspeare here shows us, with his accustomed
acuteness of observation, that human nature, even when it is altogether
decided in goodness or wickedness, is still subject to petty infirmities.
Richard's favourite amusement is to ridicule others, and he possesses an
eminent satirical wit. He entertains at bottom a contempt for all mankind:
for he is confident of his ability to deceive them, whether as his
instruments or his adversaries. In hypocrisy he is particularly fond of
using religious forms, as if actuated by a desire of profaning in the
service of hell the religion whose blessings he had inwardly abjured.
So much for the main features of Richard's character. The play named after
him embraces also the latter part of the reign of Edward IV., in the whole
a period of eight years. It exhibits all the machinations by which Richard
obtained the throne, and the deeds which he perpetrated to secure himself
in its possession, which lasted however but two years. Shakspeare intended
that terror rather than compassion should prevail throughout this tragedy:
he has rather avoided than sought the pathetic scenes which he had at
command. Of all the sacrifices to Richard's lust of power, Clarence alone
is put to death on the stage: his dream excites a deep horror, and proves
the omnipotence of the poet's fancy: his conversation with the murderers
is powerfully agitating; but the earlier crimes of Clarence merited death,
although not from his brother's hand. The most innocent and unspotted
sacrifices are the two princes: we see but little of them, and their
murder is merely related. Anne disappears without our learning any thing
farther respecting her: in marrying the murderer of her husband, she had
shown a weakness almost incredible. The parts of Lord Rivers, and other
friends of the queen, are of too secondary a nature to excite a powerful
sympathy; Hastings, from his triumph at the fall of his friend, forfeits
all title to compassion; Buckingham is the satellite of the tyrant, who is
afterwards consigned by him to the axe of the executioner. In the
background the widowed Queen Margaret appears as the fury of the past, who
invokes a curse on the future: every calamity, which her enemies draw down
on each other, is a cordial to her revengeful heart. Other female voices
join, from time to time, in the lamentations and imprecations. But Richard
is the soul or rather the daemon, of the whole tragedy. He fulfils the
promise which he formerly made of leading the murderous Macchiavel to
school. Notwithstanding the uniform aversion with which he inspires us, he
still engages us in the greatest variety of ways by his profound skill in
dissimulation, his wit, his prudence, his presence of mind, his quick
activity, and his valour. He fights at last against Richmond like a
desperado, and dies the honourable death of a hero on the field of battle.
Shakspeare could not change this historical issue, and yet it is by no
means satisfactory to our moral feelings, as Lessing, when speaking of a
German play on the same subject, has very judiciously remarked. How has
Shakspeare solved this difficulty? By a wonderful invention he opens a
prospect into the other world, and shows us Richard in his last moments
already branded with the stamp of reprobation. We see Richard and Richmond
in the night before the battle sleeping in their tents; the spirits of the
murdered victims of the tyrant ascend in succession, and pour out their
curses against him, and their blessings on his adversary. These
apparitions are properly but the dreams of the two generals represented
visibly. It is no doubt contrary to probability that their tents should
only be separated by so small a space; but Shakspeare could reckon on
poetical spectators who were ready to take the breadth of the stage for
the distance between two hostile camps, if for such indulgence they were
to be recompensed by beauties of so sublime a nature as this series of
spectres and Richard's awakening soliloquy. The catastrophe of _Richard
the Third_ is, in respect of the external events, very like that of
_Macbeth_: we have only to compare the thorough difference of handling
them to be convinced that Shakspeare has most accurately observed poetical
justice in the genuine sense of the word, that is, as signifying the
revelation of an invisible blessing or curse which hangs over human
sentiments and actions.
Although the last four pieces of the historical series paint later events,
yet the plays of _Henry the Fourth and Fifth_ have, in tone and
costume, a much more modern appearance. This is partly owing to the number
of comic scenes; for the comic must always be founded not only in
national, but also in contemporary manners. Shakspeare, however, seems
also to have had the same design in the serious part. Bloody revolutions
and devastations of civil war appear to posterity as a relapse into an
earlier and more uncultivated condition of society, or they are in reality
accompanied by such a relapse into unbridled savageness. If therefore the
propensity of a young poetical mind to remove its object to a wonderful
distance has had an influence on the style in which _Henry the Sixth_
and _Richard the Third_ are conceived, Shakspeare has been rightly
guided by his instinct. As it is peculiar to the heroic poem to paint the
races of men in times past as colossal in strength of body and resolution,
so in these plays, the voices of a Talbot, a Warwick, a Clifford, and
others, so ring on our ear that we imagine we hear the clanging trumpets
of foreign or of civil war. The contest of the Houses of York and
Lancaster was the last outbreak of feudal independence; it was the cause
of the great and not of the people, who were only dragged into the
struggle by the former. Afterwards the part was swallowed up in the whole,
and no longer could any one be, like Warwick, a maker of kings. Shakspeare
was as profound a historian as a poet; when we compare his _Henry the
Eighth_ with the preceding pieces, we see distinctly that the English
nation during the long, peaceable, and economical reign of Henry VII.,
whether from the exhaustion which was the fruit of the civil wars, or from
more general European influences, had made a sudden transition from the
powerful confusion of the middle age, to the regular tameness of modern
times. _Henry the Eighth_ has, therefore, somewhat of a prosaic
appearance; for Shakspeare, artist-like, adapted himself always to the
quality of his materials. If others of his works, both in elevation of
fancy and in energy of pathos and character, tower far above this, we have
here on the other hand occasion to admire his nice powers of
discrimination and his perfect knowledge of courts and the world. What
tact was requisite to represent before the eyes of the queen [Footnote: It
is quite clear that _Henry the Eighth_ was written while Elizabeth
was still alive. We know that Ben Jonson, in the reign of King James,
brought the piece again on the stage with additional pomp, and took the
liberty of making several changes and additions. Without doubt, the
prophecy respecting James the First is due to Ben Jonson: it would only
have displeased Elizabeth, and is so ill introduced that we at once
recognize in it a foreign interpolation.] subjects of such a delicate
nature, and in which she was personally so nearly concerned, without doing
violence to the truth! He has unmasked the tyrannical king, and to the
intelligent observer exhibited him such as he was actually: haughty and
obstinate, voluptuous and unfeeling, extravagant in conferring favours,
and revengeful under the pretext of justice; and yet the picture is so
dexterously handled that a daughter might take it for favourable. The
legitimacy of Elizabeth's birth depended on the invalidity of Henry's
first marriage, and Shakspeare has placed the proceedings respecting his
separation from Catharine of Arragon in a very doubtful light. We see
clearly that Henry's scruples of conscience are no other than the beauty
of Anne Boleyn. Catharine is, properly speaking, the heroine of the piece;
she excites the warmest sympathy by her virtues, her defenceless misery,
her mild but firm opposition, and her dignified resignation. After her,
the fall of Cardinal Wolsey constitutes the principal part of the
business. Henry's whole reign was not adapted for dramatic poetry. It
would have merely been a repetition of the same scenes: the repudiation,
or the execution of his wives, and the disgrace of his most estimable
ministers, which was usually soon followed by death. Of all that
distinguished Henry's life Shakspeare has given us sufficient specimens.
But as, properly speaking, there is no division in the history where he
breaks off, we must excuse him if he gives us a flattering compliment of
the great Elizabeth for a fortunate catastrophe. The piece ends with the
general joy at the birth of that princess, and with prophecies of the
happiness which she was afterwards to enjoy or to diffuse. It was only by
such a turn that the hazardous freedom of thought in the rest of the
composition could have passed with impunity: Shakspeare was not certainly
himself deceived respecting this theatrical delusion. The true conclusion
is the death of Catharine, which under a feeling of this kind, he has
placed earlier than was conformable to history. I have now gone through
all the unquestionably genuine works of Shakspeare. I have carefully
abstained from all indefinite eulogies, which merely serve to prove a
disproportion betwixt the feeling and the capability of expressing it. To
many the above observations will appear too diffuse for the object and
plan of these Lectures; to others they will perhaps seem unsatisfactory. I
shall be satisfied if they place those readers who are not yet familiar
with the poet in the right point of view, and pave the way for a solid
knowledge, and if they recall to the minds of intelligent critics some of
those thoughts which have occurred to themselves.