f the next generation of authors, than to any c Forks. For instance, Bishop Corbet, in his poe his Church History, and Milton, in one of his roversial tracts, all refer to it as familiar to th t has kept perpetual possession of the stage, e rimitive form, or as altered and adapted to the t mes by Colley Cibber or by John Kemble. ther of these forms Richard III. has been th haracter of all the eminent English tragedians age, the original "Crookback," who was ident ay, in the public mind, with the part,* through th ession of the monarchs of the English stage

* Corbet, the witty and poetical Bishop of Oxford, in his. poetical narrative of a journey, in the manner of Horace Prundusium, first printed in 1617-thus incidentally reco arity of the play and of its theatrical hero, in his accoun osworth Field (misquoted by Verplanck and all the other

"Mine host was full of ale and history,

And in the morning when he brought us nigh
Where the two Roses join'd, you would suppose
Chaucer ne'er made the Romaunt of the Rose.
Hear him. See ye yon wood? There Richard lay
With his whole army. Look the other way,
And, lo! where Richmond in a bed of gorse
Encamp'd himself o'er night, and all his force:
Upon this hill they met. Why, he could tell
The inch where Richmond stood, where Richard fell
Besides what of his knowledge he could say,
He had authentic notice from the play;

Which I might guess by 's must'ring up the ghosts,
And policies not incident to hosts;
But chiefly by that one perspicuous thing
Where he mistook a player for a king.

For when he would have said, King Richard died.
And call'd, A horse! a horse! he Burbage cried."

ually and poetically, it must be assigned to ass than Romeo and Juliet or Othello; than than the Tempest or the Merchant of Venice. it that profusion of intellectual wealth which, greater works, overflows in every sentence, logue with thought, and continually evolving ne largest and deepest truth, from the indinaracter, or incident of the scene. Nor does esh-springing and exuberant fancy, that exetually present sense of the beautiful, which ern thoughts and dark contemplations even ear with matchless delicacies of thought and ■nexpected images of sweetness or joy. Clarence's dream, and the description of the ing princes in the Tower-passages such as amlet alone could have written this favourscenes of the deeply pathetic or the awfulple. Its power and its elevation consist in al, and sustained conception of its one prinalmost sublime in its demoniac heroism, in nergy of heroic guilt "without remorse or ling us, in spite of personal and moral deof falsehood, fraud, treachery, and cruelty, to letest. Thus its merit is almost exclusively 3 up a constant and excited attention and uth and spirit of its acted and living narraccession of stirring incidents, and the vivid pressive character - all sustained by aniand occasionally by kindling declamation. lic favour it took at once, and has continued

Henry VI. (and especially with the last) is ve his connection differs altogether from that obs ween the dramas of Henry IV. and Henry V., hich succeed them in chronological order. Bet' Le connection is little more than that which 1 om the plot's being drawn from the same com al source. There is little or no reference, in e ree parts, to the dialogue or invention of the pl gically preceding; nor is there any thing to sh everal pieces were actually written in the order tive, or to contradict the external evidence tha ior in chronological order were last written. P verse holds true as to Henry VI. and Richard 1 here not merely historical agreement, but the evidently the production of one whose mind wa Le characters, dialogue, and subsidiary incidents eding dramas. The tyrant-hero is himself b own, gigantic development of the young Gloste I., as Margaret is but the sequel, in her bitter d age, of the very Margaret, not of dry history, b

amas.

[From Dowden's “ Shakspere."*] Certain qualities which make it unique among Shakspere characterize the play of King Richar anner of conceiving and presenting character in resemblance, not elsewhere to be found in S ritings, to the ideal manner of Marlowe. As i * Shakspere: a Critical Study of his Mind and Art, by Ed d ed. London, 1876), p. 180 fol. (by permission).

at the same moment two or three of the obtaining utterance through them almost rin immediate succession; as a musical ted by an orchestra, or taken up singly by

nents:

beth. Was never widow had so dear a loss!
ere never orphans had so dear a loss!
as never mother had so dear a loss!

e mother of these griefs."

*

*

*

*

*

ntensity which distinguishes the play proaracter of Richard, as from its source and the chief personages of Marlowe's plays, so lay rather occupies the imagination by auChan insinuates himself through some submagic and mystery of art. His character on us; from the first it is complete. We discover what Richard is, as we are curipresence of the soul of Hamlet. We are in ichard; but it yields us a strong sensation various circumstances and situations; we nimated by the presence of almost super1 power, even though that power and that

aid of Richard that pride of intellect is his his is true, but his dominant characteristic ; it is rather a dæmonic energy of will. which produces tempest and shipwreck ; he is a fierce elemental power raging ; but this elemental power is concentrated The need of action is with Richard an ap

osition of co-operative characters, mutually deve eveloped, as the prolonged yet hurried outcome haracter, to which the other persons serve but as nd conductors; as if he were a volume of electric g himself by means of others, and quenching t owers in the very process of doing so."*

Richard with his distorted and withered bod runk like "a blasted sapling," is yet a sublime rtue of his energy of will and tremendous pow ct. All obstacles give way before him - the c en, and the bitter animosity of women. And R passionate scorn of men, because they are w ore obtuse than he, the deformed outcast of na actises hypocrisy not merely for the sake of st ecause his hypocrisy is a cynical jest, or a gros manity. The Mayor of London has a bourgeois piety and established forms of religion. Ri nces to meet him reading a book of prayers, an on each side by a bishop. The grim joke, the us insult to the citizen faith in church and kin 3 malignant sense of power. To cheat a gull pocrisy suffices.†...

Richard's cynicism and insolence have in them im mirth; such a bonhomie as might be met w e humorists of Pandemonium. His brutality is joking with a purpose. When his mother, w * Shakespeare, his Life, Art, and Characters, vol. ii. p. 156. The plan originates with Buckingham, but Richard pl h manifest delight. Shakspere had no historical authe sence of the bishops. See Skottowe's Life of Shaksp 195-96.