I'll go with thee,
And find the inheritance of this poor child,
His little kingdom of a forced grave.
And when Shakespeare comes to Henry the Eighth, it is not the
superficial though very English splendour of the king himself, but the
really potent and ascendant nature of the butcher's son on the one
hand, and Katharine's subdued reproduction of the sad fortunes of
Richard the Second on the other, that define his central interest.*
With a prescience of the Wars of the Roses, of which his errors were
the original cause, it is Richard who best exposes Shakespeare's own
constant sentiment concerning war, and especially that sort of civil
war which was then recent in English memories. The soul of
Shakespeare, certainly, was not wanting in a sense of the magnanimity
of warriors. The grandiose aspects of war, its magnificent
apparelling, he records [192] monumentally enough--the "dressing of the
lists," the lion's heart, its unfaltering haste thither in all the
freshness of youth and morning.--
Not sick although I have to do with death--
The sun doth gild our armour: Up, my Lords!--
I saw young Harry with his beaver on,
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm'd,
Rise from the ground like feather'd Mercury.