the play popular this and the sure appeal to English domestic feeling in Talbot's death together with a young son worthy of his blood, father and son ringed in by armed battalions, the victims of the feuds and factions in the English force that left them so to perish. But while Talbot is the hero of the play, his adventures are interwoven with signs of the rising force of civil discord, which is at last to leave him helpless in the grasp of death. Thus the play is a right prelude to the fuller story of the miseries of civil war. Though, it says, there is no man stronger than the Englishman, discord may ruin his strength. The period of history covered by this play reaches through twentythree years, from the funeral of King Henry V. in September, 1422, when the young King Henry VI. was an infant, to the arrangement of the king's marriage with Margaret of Anjou in `April, 1445, when he was a man of about five-and-twenty. Talbot's death, which is brought into the play and made its most essential incident, really was thirteen years later; he fell at Castillon in 1458. The first scene of the First Act at once connects the mourning over the body of King Henry V. with the first indication of the feuds between Humphrey, Duke of Gloster, and Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester. Messenger then follows messenger with warning of perils in France; the third messenger, rising to a climax, tells of Talbot prisoner. The historical date of the first scene being September, 1422, the news brought of the crowning of the Dauphin in Rheims slips over the death of Charles VI. on the twenty-first of October, 1422, to the crowning of Charles VII. on the twenty-seventh of July, 1429; while the battle of Patay, of which the third messenger brings news, was fought on the eighteenth of June, 1429. This was a poet's use of history, whereby Shakespeare very boldly, in plays wholly his own, drew afterwards the soul out of the accidents of life. Of the action of the second scene, the raising of the siege of Orleans, the historical date is the eighth of May, 1429. Faction at home is set in the fourth scene -based on an incident of October, 1426-between the third and fifth, which show the revival of French power by Joan of Arc. In the Second Act the establishment of the factions of the Red and White Roses of Lancaster and York is set, in a scene wholly imagined by the poet, between the prowess of Talbot and a scene of the death of old Mortimer, which shows us how the feud began. The Mortimer of history did not die in confinement, and he was not an old man when he died. King Henry VI. does not appear upon the stage till the Third Act, when he is in the Parliament at Leicester, which was held, historically, in the third year of his reign. He was at that time a child not fully five years old. In the play, of course, he is advanced to a stage of boyhood more capable of thought, but still a child, who asks, What, shall a child instruct you what to do?" Discords at home are shown before we turn again to the adventures of Talbot and the growing dangers of the situation in France. The danger last in evidence is the defection of Burgundy, of which the historical date was 1435. Then King Henry, in France, meets Talbot, and creates him Earl of Shrewsbury. The Third Act closes immediately afterwards with words of feud between two Englishmen. The coronation of Henry VI. in Paris opens the Fourth Act. Its historical date is the seventeenth of December, 1430, when the king's age was about ten. Talbot's plucking of the Garter from the knee of Sir John Fastolfe brings courage and cowardice into dramatic contrast. When Shakespeare took the name of Falstaff to replace that of Sir John Oldcastle in his "King Henry IV." he had probably this piece of early work in mind. Sir John Fastolfe really was accused of cowardice shown at the battle of Patay, and really was deprived of his Garter; but it was restored to him after fair hearing of his case. The factious strife between the English is then still further emphasized by claims of right of combat between servants of the rival lords, and the scene ends with the comment of Exeter,— "No simple man that sees This jarring discord of nobility, This shouldering of each other in the court, But that it doth presage some ill event. 'Tis much, when sceptres are in children's hands, But more when envy breeds unkind division; There comes the ruin, there begins confusion." The rest of the Fourth Act shows how the rivalries of those who should have sent troops to Talbot stay their hands. Armies encompass the brave Englishman, and we are shown his end. It may have been Shakespeare who rhymed, as into a distinct idyll, the scene of the last hour between father and son. The Fifth Act closes the play with terms of peace, with the condemnation of Joan of Arc, promise of homage to England by the King of France, and Suffolk's capture of Margaret of Anjou-in 1444, when her age was sixteen-yielding himself to her charms while resolving that she shall be Henry VI.'s queen. Thus there is unity of plan in the construction of the play, and in its close we may find evidence of a design to carry on the tale, of ills that follow upon civil feud. "The Second Part of King Henry VI." "The Second Part of King Henry VI." continues the course of history from the marriage of Henry VI. with Margaret of Anjou, in the year 1445, to the victory of the Duke of York at the first battle of St. Albans, on the twenty-third of May, 1455. It covers, therefore, a period of ten years, and its purpose is to set forth the development of civil war to the first shock of arms, the beginning of bloodshed. In the long war that followed the first battle of St. Albans, at which this play ends, there were twelve pitched battles, with a slaughter of the greater part of the nobility of England, including eighty princes of the blood. "The Second Part of King Henry VI.," ascribed to Shakespeare, is simply a poet's transcript of the play published in 1594 as "The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, with the death of the good Duke Humphrey : And the banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolke, and the Tragicall end of the proud Cardinall of Winchester, with the notable Rebellion of Iacke Cade: And the Duke of Yorke's first claime vnto the Crowne. London: Printed by Thomas Creed, for Thomas Millington, and are to be sold at his shop vnder Saint Peters Church in Cornhill.” Of this edition of 1594 there was a reprint in 1600, with some corrections and some errors of carelessness, including the omission of about two dozen words. Of each of these editions there is a copy in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. There is also in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, an incomplete copy of another edition of 1600, printed, like the two already named, for Thomas Millington, with a few trifling variations. Whether the play known as "The First Part of the Contention " appears in its earliest form in the earliest edition known to us-that of 1594-admits of question. It may be argued that it is a result of Shakespeare's first handling of an original now lost, and that he went over it a second time for fuller development into the play now known as "The Second Part of King Henry VI." We may have, also, in "The Second Part of King Henry VI.," not only occasional correction of misprints in the quarto of 1594, but restorations in some cases of a text which in that quarto had been mutilated by abridgment. Fair allowance may be made for all such side considerations, including the possibility-I do not say the probability -that there may be something of Shakespeare in the old play of "The First Part of the Contention." But to anyone who closely compares that old play with the version of it ascribed to Shakespeare as his "Second Part of King Henry VI.," one fact must become apparent. With the old play before him, Shakespeare copied it, revising as he went. He varied words, restored lost music to many lines, transposed passages-in every case with a distinct gain of dramatic power—and added lines of his own, sometimes long passages, where there are situations worth fuller poetical treatment than they have received. Some shorter additions were, no doubt, mere restorations of the old text where there were errors of omission in the quarto of 1594; but the new elaborations speak for and explain themselves.* Shakespeare was not the only dramatist in Elizabeth's reign who could write vigorous lines of dramatic poetry. It In my edition of the Plays of Shakespeare which forms part of "Cassell's National Library," I have endeavoured to make this clear. The earlier plays on which they were founded are printed in full, together with the Second and Third Parts of "King Henry VI." I have underscored also in each of those Parts the lines added by Shakespeare, so that the plays are read throughout with silent indication of the touch of Shakespeare's hand. does not at all follow that in an old play to which Shakespeare may have contributed, all the best lines were of his writing. It was not by the mere writing of good verses that Shakespeare grew to be the master-poet of the world; and when he revised these plays on the most desolating of our English civil wars he had not reached the fulness of his power. He was simply helping to lay stress upon the miseries of civil war at a time when many Englishmen began to dread that there might be civil war again, arising out of rival claims to the throne after the death of Queen Elizabeth. "The It was in 1595 that Samuel Daniel published First Fowre Books of the Civille Warres betweene the Two Houses of Lancaster and Yorke;" it was in 1596 that Drayton began to describe in heroic verse "The Lamentable Civell Warres of Edward the Second and the Barrons," upon which Marlowe had written a play. Thomas Lodge made also in those days a play upon the Civil Wars of Marius and Sylla; and Shakespeare afterwards maintained an undernote that expressed miseries of civil war throughout his plays of "Richard II." and the two parts of "King Henry IV." "The Second Part of King Henry VI." begins with the king aged twenty-three; Suffolk, who has made truce with France, raised to a dukedom; Margaret of Anjou received as queen in England, and her marriage declared fatal to England by Humphrey Duke of Gloster, the king's uncle and Lord Protector. The Duke of York and his friends, the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, join in strong condemnation of the marriage. The scene then goes on to show the bitter feuds among the English nobles. Cardinal Beaufort hates Humphrey Duke of Gloster. The Dukes of Buckingham and Somerset will join with Beaufort and with Suffolk against Gloster, but each is then shown to be moved by selfish ambition. The scene ends with the ambition of the Duke of York. He-when Henry is in the arms of his "dear-bought queen," and " Humphrey with the peers be fallen at jars"—will "raise aloft the milk-white rose," |