seen, that the piece bespoken by the conspirators was the same which Forman witnessed ten years later. It is indeed possible that the play so bespoke may have been a third one on the same subject, that has not elsewhere been heard of; but this, to say the least, appears highly improbable. To be sure, the play engaged for that occasion is spoken of as being "so old, and so long out of use," that it was not likely to draw an audience; which circumstance has been rather strongly urged against supposing it to have been Shakespeare's. But these words need not infer any more than that the play had lost the charm of novelty; a thing which, considering the marvellous fertility of the time in dramatic production, might well enough have come about in the course of five or six years.

My own judgment, therefore, is, that Shakespeare's King Richard the Second was written as early as 1594; that it is the play referred to in the trial of Essex and his accomplices; and that for reasons of State the deposition-scene was withheld from the press till some time after the accession of James the First, when such reasons were no longer held to be of any force.

The leading events of King Richard the Second, and all the persons except the Queen, the whole substance, action, and interest, are purely historical, with only such heightening of effect, such vividness of colouring, and such vital invigoration, as poetry can add without marring or displacing the truth of history; the Poet having entirely forborne that freedom of art in representative character which elsewhere issued in such delectations as Falconbridge and Falstaff. For the materials of the drama, Shakespeare need not have gone beyond the pages of Holinshed; and it is certain that he drew directly from that source; though there are several passages which show traces of his reading in the older work of Hall. In the current of Holinshed's narrative, the quarrel of Bolingbroke and Norfolk strikes in so abruptly, is so inexplicable in its origin, and so teem

ing with great results, as to form, naturally and of itself, the beginning of the manifold national tragedy which ends only with the catastrophe of King Richard the Third. The cause indeed of that quarrel is hardly less obscure in the history than in the play: it stands out almost as something uncaused, so that there was no need of going behind it; while at the same time it proves the germ of such a vast and varied procession of historical events as to acquire the highest importance.

It may throw some light on the action of the play to revert briefly to a few antecedent points of history. — At the death of his grandfather, Edward the Third, in June, 1377, Richard was only in his eleventh year; a very handsome boy, with fair gifts of mind, and not without amiable dispositions, but of just about the right age to be spoiled by the influences of his position. Of course he was too young to be capable of rule, while the English had not yet learned how to bridge over the nonage of their king by a settled regency. The youth was fond of pleasure, careless of expense, and apt to love those who humoured his fancies; and in effect the State soon became a prey to rapacious and unprincipled sycophants. Of his three uncles, the Dukes of Lancaster, York, and Gloster, the latter was much the ablest; but, in an age of fierceness and turbulence, was chiefly distinguished for his fierce, turbulent, and despotic temper. Gloster undertook to root out "the caterpillars of the commonwealth"; and his doings in this behalf so strengthened his influence, that in 1387 he drew into his own hands nearly the whole power of the State, and reduced the King to a mere cipher. In this career he proved such a remorseless and sanguinary tyrant, that some year and a half later Richard succeeded, by a well-timed stroke of vigour, in shaking off the tyranny, and becoming his own master. The government then went on in a smooth and tranquil course for several years; during which time a fresh batch of greedy and reckless favorites got warmed into life; Gloster used means to regain his broken

influence, and took advantage of his seat in the Council to baffle and irritate the King, was the chief mover of every intrigue, the soul of every faction that opposed Richard's wishes; the King's first wife, "the good Queen Anne," having died, he espoused the Princess Isabella of France, then in her eighth year.

Emboldened by this alliance, the King in 1397 resolved to execute his long-cherished but deeply-dissembled scheme of vengeance against the Duke of Gloster. The matter was carried with great secrecy and despatch, Richard himself leading the party that went to apprehend the Duke at his own castle. When Gloster, not dreaming what was on foot, came out to meet the King, he was forthwith delivered into the hands of Norfolk, who was then governor of Calais, and who, while pretending to conduct Gloster to the Tower, spirited him away down the river, and across to Calais, and there lodged him in the castle. Richard's fury, so long repressed, now broke loose. The Duke, in his absence, was impeached of treason for what he had done. ten years before. Bolingbroke concurred in this impeachment. When Norfolk was ordered to bring his prisoner before the House, he replied that he could not do so, as the Duke had suddenly died. Gloster was now out of the way, and, as it was generally thought, by means the most foul; and his former partisans, notwithstanding they had been pardoned and taken into seeming favour, were made to taste the full measure of Richard's vengeance. In these doings the King's real character was fairly disclosed. The smiles and affability in which he had so long cloaked his revenge, his perfidious favours towards his destined victims, and his contempt of law and justice as soon as he felt secure in his power, appalled not only Gloster's former adherents, but all who had ever incurred the royal displeasure. Bolingbroke, as we have seen, had of late sided with Richard in the impeachment of his uncle. But he had been himself more or less implicated as a partisan of Gloster's in those very doings which were now drawing the King's vengeance

on so many others: though now seeming to stand firm in Richard's good-will, and though lately advanced by him from Earl of Derby to Duke of Hereford, he might well distrust a hand that had approved itself so false and treacherous in its favours.

Here, most likely, we have the true secret of Bolingbroke's sudden and otherwise inexplicable rupture with the Duke of Norfolk. The two had lately ridden together in a friendly manner, and during the ride had opened their minds to each other with apparent freedom and sincerity touching the King's doings and purposes. But the imputed murder of his uncle Gloster might well put Bolingbroke upon apprehending that Norfolk's seeming confidence was all feigned for the purpose of drawing him into some act or speech that might be turned to his destruction. It is true, Norfolk himself also, along with Bolingbroke and others, had borne a part in those same treasonable proceedings for which Gloster was impeached; but he now stood high, apparently, in the King's favour; and in his possession of the whole secret touching Gloster's death he had a strong pledge of the King's fidelity to him. Richard was bound to Norfolk as his instrument, Norfolk was bound to Richard as his principal, in that dark transaction; neither could betray the other without exposing himself. But this was a very perilous combination. Bolingbroke's astute, penetrating, determined spirit saw how to be master of the situation. He could not attack the principal directly, but he could attack him through the instrument. Thus Gloster's death became Bolingbroke's opportunity.

The play fitly opens with Bolingbroke's accusation and challenge of Norfolk; the forecited points of history not forming any part of the action, nor being stated directly, but only implied, sometimes not very clearly, in various notes of dramatic retrospection. Richard tries his utmost to reconcile the parties; for he knows full well that himself is the real mark aimed at in the appellant's charges

and defiance; but he is forced alike by his position and his conscience to dissemble that knowledge, and to take Bolingbroke at his word. On the other side, Bolingbroke's behaviour throughout is also a piece of profound and wellacted dissimulation: he understands the King's predicament perfectly; knows that he dare not avow his thoughts, lest he stand self-convicted in the matter charged. So he has both Richard and Norfolk penned up in a dilemma from which they can nowise escape but by letting out the whole truth, and thus giving him a clear victory. He knows they are completely in his toils; his keen sagacity pierces the heart of their situation: nor does his energy lag behind his insight; naturally bold and resolute, his boldness and resolution now spring at the game in conscious strength: he is ambitious of power, he resents his uncle's death, he loves his country; and his ambition, his resentment, his patriotism, all combine to string him up for decisive action: he has got a firm twist on the wrongdoers, and is fully determined either to twist them off their legs or to perish in the attempt. And observe what a note of terror he strikes into Richard when, referring to the spilling of Gloster's blood, he declares,

"Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries,
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth,
To me for justice and rough chastisement;
And, by the glorious worth of my descent,
This arm shall do it, or this life be spent."

The little words to me, falling in here with such quiet emphasis, are a stern warning to the guilty parties, that the speaker has assumed the office of avenger, and will not falter in the work. How well the sense of them is taken, appears in the King's exclamation, "How high a pitch his resolution soars!" It is to be understood withal, that Norfolk has now come to be the King's main supporter in his career of misrule. Bolingbroke forecasts that, Norfolk once hewn out of the way, Richard will then have to cast in his lot with those who have neither wasted the land with