Chapter 43

“_K. Rich._ Can sick men play so nicely with their names?”

Yes! on a death-bed there is a feeling which may make all things appear but as puns and equivocations. And a passion there is that carries off its own excess by plays on words as naturally, and, therefore, as appropriately to drama, as by gesticulations, looks, or tones. This belongs to human nature as such, independently of associations and habits from any particular rank of life or mode of employment; and in this consists Shakespeare’s vulgarisms, as in Macbeth’s—

“The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac’d loon!” &c.

This is (to equivocate on Dante’s words) in truth the _nobile volgare eloquenza_. Indeed it is profoundly true that there is a natural, an almost irresistible, tendency in the mind, when immersed in one strong feeling, to connect that feeling with every sight and object around it; especially if there be opposition, and the words addressed to it are in any way repugnant to the feeling itself, as here in the instance of Richard’s unkind language:—

“Misery makes sport to mock itself.”

No doubt, something of Shakespeare’s punning must be attributed to his age, in which direct and formal combats of wit were a favourite pastime of the courtly and accomplished. It was an age more favourable, upon the whole, to vigour of intellect than the present, in which a dread of being thought pedantic dispirits and flattens the energies of original minds. But independently of this, I have no hesitation in saying that a pun, if it be congruous with the feeling of the scene, is not only allowable in the dramatic dialogue, but oftentimes one of the most effectual intensives of passion.

_Ib._—

“_K. Rich._ Right; you say true, as Hereford’s love, so his; As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.”

The depth of this compared with the first scene:—

“How high a pitch,” &c.

There is scarcely anything in Shakespeare in its degree, more admirably drawn than York’s character; his religious loyalty struggling with a deep grief and indignation at the king’s follies; his adherence to his word and faith, once given in spite of all, even the most natural, feelings. You see in him the weakness of old age, and the overwhelmingness of circumstances, for a time surmounting his sense of duty,—the junction of both exhibited in his boldness in words and feebleness in immediate act; and then again his effort to retrieve himself in abstract loyalty, even at the heavy price of the loss of his son. This species of accidental and adventitious weakness is brought into parallel with Richard’s continually increasing energy of thought, and as constantly diminishing power of acting;—and thus it is Richard that breathes a harmony and a relation into all the characters of the play.

_Ib._ sc. 2.—

“_Queen._ To please the king I did; to please myself I cannot do it; yet I know no cause Why I should welcome such a guest as grief, Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest As my sweet Richard: yet again, methinks, Some unborn sorrow, ripe in sorrow’s womb, Is coming toward me; and my inward soul With nothing trembles: at something it grieves, More than with parting from my lord the king.”

It is clear that Shakespeare never meant to represent Richard as a vulgar debauchee, but a man with a wantonness of spirit in external show, a feminine _friendism_, an intensity of woman-like love of those immediately about him, and a mistaking of the delight of being loved by him for a love of him. And mark in this scene Shakespeare’s gentleness in touching the tender superstitions, the _terræ incognitæ_ of presentiments, in the human mind; and how sharp a line of distinction he commonly draws between these obscure forecastings of general experience in each individual, and the vulgar errors of mere tradition. Indeed, it may be taken once for all as the truth, that Shakespeare, in the absolute universality of his genius, always reverences whatever arises out of our moral nature; he never profanes his muse with a contemptuous reasoning away of the genuine and general, however unaccountable, feelings of mankind.

The amiable part of Richard’s character is brought full upon us by his queen’s few words—

... “So sweet a guest As my sweet Richard:”—

and Shakespeare has carefully shown in him an intense love of his country, well-knowing how that feeling would, in a pure historic drama, redeem him in the hearts of the audience. Yet even in this love there is something feminine and personal:—

“Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand,— As a long parted mother with her child Plays fondly with her tears, and smiles in meeting; So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth, And do thee favour with my royal hands.”

With this is combined a constant overflow of emotions from a total incapability of controlling them, and thence a waste of that energy, which should have been reserved for actions, in the passion and effort of mere resolves and menaces. The consequence is moral exhaustion, and rapid alternations of unmanly despair and ungrounded hope,—every feeling being abandoned for its direct opposite upon the pressure of external accident. And yet when Richard’s inward weakness appears to seek refuge in his despair, and his exhaustion counterfeits repose, the old habit of kingliness, the effect of flatterers from his infancy, is ever and anon producing in him a sort of wordy courage which only serves to betray more clearly his internal impotence. The second and third scenes of the third act combine and illustrate all this:—

“_Aumerle._ He means, my lord, that we are too remiss; Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security, Grows strong and great, in substance, and in friends.

_K. Rich._ Discomfortable cousin! know’st thou not, That when the searching eye of heaven is hid Behind the globe, that lights the lower world, Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen, In murders and in outrage, bloody here; But when, from under this terrestrial ball, He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines, And darts his light through every guilty hole, Then murders, treasons, and detested sins, The cloke of night being pluckt from off their backs, Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves? So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke, &c.

_Aumerle._ Where is the Duke my father with his power?

_K. Rich._ No matter where; of comfort no man speak: Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs, Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth, &c.

_Aumerle._ My father hath a power, enquire of him; And learn to make a body of a limb.

_K. Rich._ Thou chid’st me well: proud Bolingbroke, I come To change blows with thee for our day of doom. This ague-fit of fear is over-blown; An easy task it is to win our own.

_Scroop._ Your uncle York hath join’d with Bolingbroke.—

_K. Rich._ Thou hast said enough, Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth Of that sweet way I was in to despair! What say you now? what comfort have we now? By heaven, I’ll hate him everlastingly, That bids me be of comfort any more.”