entered. The same magic ring, which on the opened the doors of the royal mansion, opens once again, when Edward IV. is dead, and h been assassinated in the Tower by the orde She came, the first time, to curse her enemies now to gather the fruits of her malediction. L ing Fury, or the classical Fate, she has annou his doom."*

[From Mr. F. J. Furnivall's Introduction to the Richard the Third is written on the model o great rival, Christopher Marlowe, the Canterb Son, who was stabbed in a tavern brawl on Jun was Marlowe's characteristic to embody in ac realize with terrific force, the workings of a si In Tamburlaine he personified the lust of domin tus the lust of forbidden power and knowledg The Few of Malta) the lust of wealth and blo monds). In Richard III. Shakspere embodi and sacrificed his whole play to this one figur first declaration of his motives shows, of cours dramatist, as the want of relief in the play, and ony of its curses, also do. But Richard's hy exultation in them, his despising and insulting his grim humour and delight in gulling fools, an zillainy, are admirably brought out, and that hirteen times in the play. I. With Clarence. 2

* A. Mézières, Shakespeare, ses Œuvres et ses Critiques † The Leopold Shakspere (London, 1877), p. xxxix. (by

he Fourth on his death-bed, and his queen, to the author of Clarence's death. 6. With ence's son. 7. With Queen Elizabeth and en! And make me die a good old man!" am, "I as a child will go by thy direction." g prince, Edward the Fifth, "God keep you om such false friends." 10. With Hastings f Ely. 11. With the Mayor about Hastings taking the crown (note Richard's utter seness in his insinuation of his mother's With Buckingham about the murder of the th Queen Elizabeth when he repeats the ng with Anne, as the challenge-scene is redII. Villain as he is, he has the villain's e never loses temper, except when he strikes ger. As a general he is as skilful as Henry oks to his sentinels; while, like Henry the and doing at the first notice of danger, and ractical measures. Yet the conscience he

ade to feel

"there is no creature loves me;

I die, no soul shall pity me."

e that this is only when his will is but half yzed by its weight of sleep. As soon as the gain, neither conscience nor care for love or . The weakest part of the play is the scene alk; and the poorness of it, and the monot1's curses, have given rise to the theory that though, considered this genuine repentance, or at ession of it.

onfusion of the Henry VI. plays into the sun of renius.

NOTE BY THE EDITOR. -Mr. James Russell Lowell, in a ngo, February 22, 1887, expressed the opinion that the pl evised by Shakespeare. "It appears to me," he said, “ ation of Richard III. plainly indicates that it is a play Deare adapted to the stage, making additions, sometim Ometimes shorter; and toward the end he either grew we was pressed for time, and left the older author, whoever much to himself."

This does not differ essentially from the decision to w leay has come in his Chronicle History of Shakespeare, pu D. 276):

“Richard III. has always been regarded as entirely nd its likeness to 3 Henry nry VI. has more than anything me untenable belief that this last-named play was also, in ritten by our greatest dramatist. Yet the unlikeness of e other historical plays of Shakespeare, and the impracti ga definite position for it.m it, metrically or æsthetically, gical arrangement, have made themselves felt.... The Dubt that in this, as in John, Shakespeare derived his pl s text from an anterior play, the difference in the two ca Richard III. he adopted much more of his predecesso eve that the anterior play was Marlowe's, partly wr range's company in 1593, but left unfinished at Marlov mpleted and altered by Shakespeare in 1594.... The u andly classical conception of Margaret, the Cassandra elen-Ate of the House of Lancaster, which binds the v he three parts of Henry VI. and Richard III.] into or ently due to Marlowe, and the consummate skill with sed the heterogeneous contributions of his coadjutors in enry VI. plays is no less worthy of admiration. I don ole to separate Marlowe's work from Shakespeare's in orked in with too cunning a hand.... Could any critic, if ere destroyed, tell us which lines had been adopted in th It may be noted incidentally that what Mr. Lowell say less careful revision of the earlier work toward the end curiously in accordance with Mr. Fleay's theory of th

C

ans of camer work m the pray. mms outlines of int

- (6th ed. vol. i. p. 136-where, however, the passage t change from the earlier editions), after referring to es of the plot in More and Holinshed, he adds: slight traces of an older play to be observed, passages to an inferior hand, and incidents, such as that of the s,* suggested probably by similar ones in a more 1. That the play of Richard III., as we now have it, espeare's, cannot admit of a doubt; but as little can it to the circumstance of an anterior work on the subject o we owe some of its weakness and excessively turbucopy of this older play is known to exist, but one he two following lines have been accidentally pre

liege, the Duke of Buckingham is ta'en, d Banister is come for his reward'

III. iv. 4. 529 : ‘My liege, the Duke of Buckingham ich it is clear that the new dramatist did not hesitate onal line from his predecessor, although he entirely er of Banister. Both plays must have been successding the great popularity of Shakespeare's, the more ed its ground on the English stage until the reign of

above (p. 11), the date of the play is probably as early Its peculiarities and imperfections may be partially f earlier work by another hand, but we are inclined to [1-Phillipps that it is "essentially Shakespeare's."

ed that the procession of ghosts in the play always struck him rather than impressive."