Part 26

Nashe, the intimate friend of Greene, would probably not have spoken in such terms of one of Shakspeare's plays, and perhaps the success achieved by this drama may have induced Shakspeare to render the other two parts worthy to share in its triumph; but even with this supposition, it would be difficult not to believe that, either before or afterward, Shakspeare had enhanced, by a few touches, the coloring of a work which had only succeeded in pleasing his contemporaries because Shakspeare had not yet made his appearance. The scenes, therefore, between Talbot and his son must be by him, or else we must believe that before his time there existed in England a dramatic author capable of attaining that touching and noble truthfulness of which very few, even of his successors, have divined the secret. {328} Nothing can be finer than this description of the two heroes--one dying, and the other scarcely initiated into a warrior's life; the first, satiated with glory, and, in his paternal anxiety, desirous rather to save the life than the honor of his son; the other, stern and inflexible, determined to prove his filial affection by seeking death at his father's side, and by his carefulness thus to maintain the honor of his race. This position, varied by all the alternations of fear and hope which can be occasioned by the chances of a battle, in which the father saves his son, and the son is eventually slain at a distance from his father, contains in itself almost the interest of a drama; and there is every reason to believe that Shakspeare added this ornament to a play which his close connection with those parts of it which he had remodeled had, as it were, incorporated into his works. It must also be observed, that the scenes between Talbot and his son are almost entirely in rhyme, as is the case in many of Shakspeare's works, whereas, in the rest of the play, as well as in the two plays which appear to be intended as a continuation of it, there is scarcely a rhyme to be found. The scene which, in the first part of "Henry VI.," contains most rhyme, is that in which we behold Mortimer dying in prison, and we might therefore suppose that it had received at least some additions from the hand of Shakspeare. These additions, and a few others perhaps, in all not very numerous, may have furnished the editors of 1623 with what appeared to them a sufficient reason for including, among the works of a poet who had excelled all competitors, a play which owed entire its merit to what he had added to it, and which was also necessarily connected with two other works which contained too much of his composition to be omitted from the number of his productions.

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As to the insertion of Shakspeare's name in Pavier's edition of the two original plays, it is easy to explain it as a bookseller's trick--a kind of fraud extremely common at that time, and which has been practised in reference to several dramatic works composed upon subjects which Shakspeare had treated, and which the publishers hoped to sell by favor of his name. This conjecture is rendered all the more probable by the fact that this edition is undated, although we know that it appeared in 1619, which might be a petty bookselling scheme to make purchasers believe that it had appeared during the lifetime of the author whose name it had borrowed.

We are ignorant of the precise period of the performance of the first part of "Henry VI.," which, according to Malone, originally bore the name of "The Historical Play of King Henry the Sixth." The style of this play, except so much of it as we may attribute to Shakspeare, bears the same character as that of all the dramatic works of the period which preceded the compositions of our poet: the grammatical construction is very irregular, the tone is simple but undignified, and the versification sufficiently prosaic. The interest, which is somewhat mediocre--although the play is full of movement--is furthermore greatly diminished, in our view, by the ridiculous and uncouth absurdity of the part of Joan of Arc, which may, however, give us a most exact idea of the spirit in which the English chroniclers have written the history of this heroic maiden, and of the aspect under which they have described her. In this sense the play is historical.

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The second part of "Henry VI.," though much more interesting than the first, is not conducted with much greater art: monologues are continually employed to explain the facts, and feelings are expressed in asides. The scenes, separated by considerable intervals (for the whole play comprehends the space of ten years), are connected with each other by no link; we can perceive none of those efforts which Shakspeare made, in most of his other works, to unite them together, sometimes even at the expense of probability; and as, at the same time, we are never informed of the interval which separates them, we are frequently astonished at finding ourselves transferred, without having remarked it, to a distance of several years from the event which we have just seen accomplished. The different parts of the play, moreover, do not depend essentially upon each other, which is a fault very rare in the works that are indisputably acknowledged to be productions of Shakspeare's pen. Thus, for example, the adventure of Simpcox is absolutely superfluous; that of the armorer and his apprentice is but feebly connected with the subject; and the pirates who put Suffolk to death have nothing whatever to do with the rest of the plot. As to the general cast of the characters, it is far from corresponding to Shakspeare's ordinary talent. It can not, however, be denied, that there is some merit in the portraiture of Henry, a prince whose pious sentiments and constant goodness almost always succeed in interesting us, notwithstanding the ridiculousness of his weakness and poverty of mind, which border closely upon imbecility. The part of Margaret, also, is tolerably well sustained; but her excess of falsity to her husband exceeds the limits of probability; and Shakspeare would not, in his good time at least, have ascribed to two such criminals as Margaret and Suffolk such tender feelings as those which mark their last interview. As for Warwick and Salisbury, they arc two characters without any kind of connection, and which it is utterly impossible to explain.

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Whether Shakspeare is or is not the author of the play entitled "The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of York and Lancaster,'" the Second Part of "Henry VI." is entirely based upon that work. Shakspeare has, however, quoted from it verbatim only to a small extent, and particularly in the scenes of rapid dialogue, like that of the adventure of Simpcox, the fight between the two artisans, and the dispute between Gloster and the Cardinal at the hunt; he has made but few alterations in these pieces, as well as in a part of Cade's rebellion. That horribly effective scene, however, in which Lord Say falls into the hands of the populace, is almost entirely by Shakspeare. As for the rather long speeches, he has embellished them all, more or less, and most of them even belong entirely to him, as, for instance, those of Henry on behalf of Gloster, those of Margaret to her husband, a great part of Gloster's defense, some of York's monologues, and nearly the whole of the part of young Clifford. It is not difficult to discern Shakspeare's hand in these, as the poetry is bolder, more brilliant with imagery, and less free, perhaps, from that abuse of wit which Shakspeare does not appear to have borrowed from the dramatic poets of the period. Moreover, with the exception of a certain number of anachronisms common to all Shakspeare's works, this play is tolerably faithful to history; and the perusal of chronicles imparted to the authors of historical dramas, at this period, a character of truthfulness, and means of interest, which superior men alone can derive from subjects of their own invention.

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The third part of "Henry VI." comprises the interval from the spring of the year 1455 until the end of 1471, that is, a space of nearly sixteen years, during which fourteen battles were fought, which, according to a probably much exaggerated calculation, cost more than eighty thousand combatants their lives. Blood and deaths are, therefore, not spared in this drama, although, of these fourteen battles, only four are represented, with which the author has been careful to connect the principal facts of all the fourteen; these facts are, for the most part, assassinations in cold blood, accompanied by the most atrocious circumstances, sometimes borrowed from history, and sometimes added by the author or authors. Thus, the circumstance of the handkerchief steeped in the blood of Rutland, and given to his father, York, to dry his tears, is a pure invention; and the character of Richard, both in this piece and the preceding one, is equally fictitious. Richard was much younger than his brother Rutland, who is here represented as his junior, and he could not possibly have taken any part in the events upon which the two dramas are founded; but his character is, in other respects, well announced and well sustained. That of Margaret does not belie itself; and that of Henry, through the progress of his weakness and imbecility, still affords us casual glimpses of those gentle and pious feelings which made him so interesting in the first part. These portions of his part belong entirely to Shakspeare, as well as most of Henry's meditations during the battle of Towton, his speech to the lieutenant of the Tower, his scene with the keepers, and so forth; and these pieces are either entirely wanting, or merely outlined, in the original play. It is easy to distinguish the passages which were added, for they are characterized by a charm and simplicity of imagery which the style of the original work nowhere presents. {333} Sometimes, also, the passages retouched by Shakspeare, whether of his own work or that of another, are remarkable for that refinement of wit which is familiar to him, and which is not compensated, in this case, by that consistency and coherence of imagery which, in his best works, almost always accompany his subtleties. This may be remarked, for example, in Richard's lamentations over the death of his father; it would be difficult to attribute them to any other than Shakspeare, so clearly do they bear his impress; but it would be equally difficult to ascribe them to his better time, and their imperfection might serve as an additional proof that the three parts of "Henry VI.," as we possess them at the present day, present us, not with Shakspeare corrected by himself, but with Shakspeare employing the first efforts of his genius to correct the works of others. He has, besides, embellished this part much less than the preceding one, which probably appeared to him more worthy of his attention; with the exception of Margaret's speech before the battle of Tewkesbury, a part of the scene between Edward and Lady Grey, and a few other unimportant passages, we can add no more to those which have been quoted already as belonging entirely to the corrected work. The greater part of the original play is reproduced word for word; and we also meet with the same want of connection which is noticeable in the first and second parts. The horrors which are accumulated in this part are painted with a certain amount of energy, but it is far removed from that profound truthfulness which, in his finest works, Shakspeare has extracted, as it were, from the very bowels of nature.

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[Transcriber's note: Guizot presents a history of Richard III in "A Popular History of England, From the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria", Volume II, Chapter XIV. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61828/pg61828-images.html#Page_81. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_monarchs.]

King Richard III.

(1597.)

Richard III. is one of those men who have produced upon the time in which they lived an impression of horror and dread which is always based upon some real cause, although it may afterward lead to an exaggeration of the realities of the case. Holinshed calls him "one of those bad persons who will not live an hour without doing and exercising cruelty, mischief, and an outrageous manner of living." Undoubtedly--and historical criticism has supplied the proof of this--the life of Richard has been charged with several crimes which do not properly belong to him; but these errors and exaggerations, the natural result of the popular feeling, explain, though they do not justify, the whimsical attempt of Horace Walpole to rehabilitate the memory of Richard, by purging him of most of the crimes of which he is accused. This is one of those paradoxical questions upon which the mind of the critic who allows himself to engage in it becomes excited, and in which the most ingenious discussion serves only to prove to what extent the mind may be employed to embarrass the simple and steady progress of truth. Doubtless we must not judge a person who lived in those times of disorder by the gentle and regular habits of our modern ideas, and many things must be laid to the charge of the men and facts in the midst of which historical characters appear. {335} But when, at the epoch at which Richard III. lived, after the horrors of the Red and White Roses, the public hatred chose out one man from among all to present him as a model of cruelty and perfidy, there must assuredly have been something extraordinary in his crimes, were it only the distinction which is added to them by superiority of talents and character, which, when it is employed in the service of crime, renders it at once more dangerous and more insulting.

The generally received opinion regarding Richard may have contributed to the success of the play which bears his name; and, perhaps, not one of Shakspeare's works has attained more abiding popularity in England. The critics have not usually treated it so favorably as the public; some of them, and Johnson among the number, have expressed their astonishment at its prodigious success. We might, on the other hand, feel astonished at their surprise, if we did not know, by experience, that the critic, whose duty it is to introduce order into riches which the public has enjoyed at first confusedly, sometimes becomes so attached to this order, and particularly to the manner in which he has conceived it, that he allows himself easily to be induced to condemn those beauties for which he can not find a convenient place within the limits of his system.

"Richard III.," more than any other of Shakspeare's great works, presents the defects common to the historical dramas which, before his time, held possession of the stage; we find in it that accumulation of facts, that aggregation of catastrophes, that improbability of dramatic progress and theatrical execution, which are the necessary results of all that material movement which Shakspeare has reduced, as much as possible, in those objects which he had more freely at his disposal, but which could not be avoided in national subjects of such recent date, all the details of which were so freshly present to the memory of the spectators. {336} Perhaps we ought, therefore, to admire all the more that genius which could trace out its course through this chaos, and follow up in this labyrinth a thread which is never broken or lost. One idea dominates the whole drama, and that is, the just punishment of the crimes which stained the quarrels of York and Lancaster with blood. At once an example and an organ of the divine wrath, Margaret, by her cries of agony, incessantly invokes vengeance upon those who have committed so many evil deeds, and even upon those who have profited by them; she it is who appears to them when this vengeance has fallen upon them; her name is mingled with the terror of their last moments; and they believe they fall as much beneath her curse as under the blows of Richard--the sacrificial priest of the bloody temple of which Margaret is the sibyl, and who will himself fall, the last victim of the holocaust, carrying with him all the crimes he has avenged, as well as all that he has committed.

That fatality which, in "Macbeth," is revealed in the shape of the witches, and in "Richard III." in the person of Margaret, is nevertheless by no means the same in both dramas. Macbeth, drawn aside from virtue into crime, presents to our imagination a terrible picture of the power of the enemy of man--a power which is, however, subject to the eternal and supreme Master, who prepares its punishment with the same stroke which effects its overthrow. Richard, a much more direct and voluntary agent of the spirit of evil, seems rather to play with him than to obey him; and in this terrible sport of the infernal powers, it is, as it were _en passant_, that the justice of Heaven is exercised, until the final moment when it bursts forth without mitigation upon the guilty and insolent wretch who fancied he was braving it, while he was working out its designs.

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This difference in the progress of the ideas is carried out in all the details of the character and destiny of the personages. Macbeth, when once fallen, sustains himself only by the intoxicating influence of the blood into which he plunges deeper and deeper; and he reaches his term, fatigued by a movement so alien to his nature, disabused with regard to the possessions which have cost him so dear, and deriving from the natural elevation of his character alone the force to defend that which he hardly desires any longer to preserve. Richard, as inferior to Macbeth for depth of feeling as he is superior to him in strength of mind, has sought in crime itself the pleasure of exercising his stifled faculties, and of making others feel a superiority which they had ignored or disdained. He deceives, that he may at once succeed and deceive--that he may subject men to himself, and give himself the pleasure of despising them. He laughs both at his dupes and at the means which he has employed to dupe them; and to the satisfaction which he feels at having conquered them is added that of having acquired a proof of their weakness. His discoveries, however, are not yet sufficient to satisfy the tyranny of his will; baseness never goes quite so far as he intended, and as he found it necessary to suppose. Compelled afterward to sacrifice the means which he had first corrupted, he is incessantly obliged to seduce new agents in order to ruin new victims. {338} But at length the moment arrives when his means of seduction are no longer sufficient to surmount the difficulties which he has created, and when the bait which he can offer to the passions of men is no longer strong enough to overcome the terror with which he has inspired them regarding their most pressing interests; and then those whom he had divided, in order to make them fall by means of one another, unite against himself. He once felt himself too strong for each of them; he is now alone against them all, and he has ceased to hope for himself; he does himself justice, but without abandoning his own cause, and goes to wreck upon the obstacle which he is indignant at being no longer able to overcome.

The portraiture of such a personage, and of the passions which he can bring into play in order to make them subserve his interests, presents a spectacle which is all the more striking because we clearly see that Richard's hypocrisy acts only upon those whose interest it is to allow themselves to be blinded by it. The people remain mute to the cowardly appeals by which they are invited to unite with the men in power, who are about to give their voice in favor of injustice; or, if a few inferior voices be raised, it is to express a general feeling of alienation and disquietude, and to disclose the existence of a discontented nation, side by side with a servile court. The expectations which result from this state of things, the pathos of several scenes, the sombre energy of Margaret's character, and the restless curiosity connected with projects so threatening in their nature and so animated in their conduct, unite to impart to this work an interest which fully explains the constancy of its success.

The style of "Richard III." is tolerably simple, and, with the exception of one or two dialogues, it is marked by few of those subtleties which sometimes fatigue us even in Shakspeare's finest dramas. In the part of Richard, one of the wittiest of the tragic portion of the play, the wit is almost entirely exempt from refinement.

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This drama comprises a space of fourteen years, from 1471 until 1485. It appears to have been performed in 1597; but before its production several other plays had been written on the same subject.

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[Transcriber's note: Guizot presents a history of Henry VIII in "A Popular History of England, From the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria", Volume II, Chapter XVI. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61828/pg61828-images.html#Page_154. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_monarchs.]

King Henry VIII.

(1601.)

Although Johnson places "Henry VIII." in the second rank of Shakspeare's historical dramas, with "Richard III.," "Richard II," and "King John," this work is far from approaching in merit the least of those with which the critic compares it. A desire to please Queen Elizabeth, or perhaps a command from that princess that he should compose a drama of which her birth should in some sort constitute the subject, could not supply the place of that liberty which is the soul of genius. The attempt to introduce Henry VIII. upon the stage in presence of his daughter, and of a daughter whose mother he had put to death, presented a complication of difficulties which the poet did not endeavor to surmount. The character of Henry is completely insignificant; but it is somewhat extraordinary to notice the interest with which the poet of Elizabeth has invested Catharine of Aragon. In the part of Wolsey, especially at the moment of his downfall, we may discern the touch of the great master; but it appears that, in the opinion of the English, the great merit of the work consists in its pomps and splendor, which have led to its being frequently reproduced upon the stage on occasions of great solemnity. "Henry VIII." has for us a literary interest, on account of its style, which the poet has certainly been careful to bring into conformity with the language of the court, as spoken in his own time, or a few years previously. {341} In no other of his works is the style so elliptical; the habits of conversation seem to introduce into the construction of its sentences that economy and abbreviation which, in English pronunciation, deprive words of nearly half their syllables. Moreover, we find in it scarcely any play upon words, and, excepting only in a few passages, very little poetry.

"Henry VIII." was performed, it is believed, in 1601, at the end of the reign of Elizabeth, and revived, as it would appear, after her death, in 1613. There is reason to believe that the panegyric on James I., which is inserted at the end of the prediction concerning Elizabeth, was added at this period, either by Shakspeare himself, or by Ben Jonson, to whom the prologue and epilogue are pretty generally attributed. It was, it is believed, at this revival, in 1613, that the cannon discharged on the arrival of the king at Wolsey's palace set fire to the Globe Theatre, which was burned to the ground.

The play comprises a period of twelve years, from 1521 until 1533. Before the composition of Shakspeare's drama, we are not aware of the existence of any play on the same subject.