which, however, as a sign of its healthy mind, recoils with horror from an unequivocal crime, such as we have in Hubert de Burgh; he even required a representative of medieval superstition (a caricature of the powerful ecclesiastical faith), such as the prophet Peter of Pomfret. History does not everywhere, and at every period, offer such representative men; where they do not exist, the poet has to create them, not, however, according to his own fancy, he has, as it were, to form them out of given historical features. Only as such, as, likenesses of the spirit of the age, can they claim historical authority, and it is only the greatest masters in historicodramatic composition that will succeed in drawing such likenesses.

As regards the question as to when 'King John' first appeared on the stage, our only external evidence is the fact that the play is mentioned by Meres. If, as Tieck thinks, Meres did not refer to the older play of 'Kynge Johan,' which appeared in print in 1591, because, as 1 think, the piece was not written by Shakspeare, then all that is certain is that Shakspeare's play must have appeared before 1597. Most critics do not place it earlier than 1596-97. I, for my part, believe that it may have appeared some years earlier. It is true that it contains but few passages in rhyme (as the subject offered no occasion either for lyrical effusions or for the expression of calm contemplative reflection), but these rhymes are often just those very alternate rhymes which are always less frequently met with in Shakspeare's later works. The drama is also written wholly in verse, to the exclusion of all prose; but this circumstance, to which Gervinus draws attention, I do not consider of any great importance, for in Shakspeare's tragedies and historical dramas (except in the comic scenes introduced) it is invariably only persons from the lower ranks who speak in prose, and such persons and such scenes do not occur in ‘King John.' Of greater weight, in my opinion, is the generally clear and regular flow of the language, which is still free from complicated similes and constructions, and also the regular, almost monotonous versification with its usually masculine endings-a circumstance pointed out

by K. Elze. I am therefore inclined to assume that 'King John' may have appeared in 1593-94, that is, in the interval after the completion of the earlier tetralogy of English histories, which comprises the three parts of 'Henry VI.' and 'Richard III.,' but before the commencement of the later one, which includes Richard II.,' 'Henry IV.' (1st and 2nd Parts), and Henry V.

CHAPTER VI

RICHARD II.

THE character of Richard II. is in many respects the counterpart of King John, for while he tries in vain to maintain his usurped sovereignty by bad means, Richard forfeits his good right to the royal power by making bad use of it. History, inasmuch as it is life, will tolerate nc abstract or dead ideas. The fixed formula of an external, legal right established by man, it regards as nothing but a formula; it values a right which is truly just only in so far as it is founded upon morality. This right Richard has forfeited, because he has himself trampled upon it. Even the highest earthly power is not independent of the external laws of history; and even the right of majesty by the grace of God loses its title as soon as it breaks away from its foundation, the grace of God, whose justice acknowledges no legal claims, no hereditary or family right in contradiction to the sole right of truth and reason. Richard boasts in vain of his legal title, in vain of the divine right of majesty, he calls in vain to its angels who set him on the throne; his right and his name do not produce the slightest effect, because they are devoid of the creative power of inward justice. His people forsake him because he first forsook them. The wrong of rebellion prevails; Richard's nature, which in itself is noble, and has merely become degenerate, succumbs to the shrewdness and prudence of a Bolingbroke. Small as is the truly moral spirit exhibited by the man afterwards king Henry IV., he seems a hero of virtue compared with the unworthy, most unkingly Richard; at all events he possesses the necessary and essential attributes of princes, wisdom, self-control and strength of will and

energy.

Under so unkingly a sovereign the country could not

While

but be plunged in misery and dissension. At the very beginning of the play, therefore, we find the nobility engaged in angry feuds, the people in Ireland in open rebellion, and the royal family itself distracted. The Duchess of Gloster complains of her husbands fate; Richard's arbitrary decision of the dispute between Norfolk and Bolingbroke, and the banishment of the latter, throws the old Duke of Gaunt in sorrow upon his deathbed. It is in vain that he attempts to warn the King; truth cannot force its way into ears that are stuffed and deafened with flattery. Caprice is followed by caprice, infamy by infamy. Richard mortgages his kingdom, and rapaciously draws in all the properties belonging to the duchy of Lancaster in order to quell the Irish rebellion. This is the turning-point of his fate. vaunting of his hereditary right, of his royal prerogative by the grace of God, he himself tramples upon all these very hereditary and family rights, sells his divine inheritance, and thus falls into a ruinous state of contradiction with himself; he, the first rebel, himself sows the seeds of the revolution which robs him of his throne and of his life. And by defying the right of the historical past (which is the true substance of the so-called right of inheritance), he himself takes his stand on a bottomless future. It is only the older men among his subjectsthose living in the remembrance of a better past and fancy they still see the noble, heroic father in the son— who remain faithful to him; among these are the good and honest, but weak and indolent, Duke of York with his very different son, and the strict impartial Bishop of Carlisle, who weighs right and wrong in the same scales, and, for this very reason, is an inactive man. All the vigorous youth and manhood, however, waver and hesitate, and ultimately go over to the rebel party; they, in accordance with their nature, look to the present and to the future which, being undermined by Richard's actions, is tottering and threatening to collapse. God's guidance and dispensation of things, which Richard had implicitly trusted, decides against him; had he returned but one day earlier from Ireland, he would have found an army ready equipped for battle, but, by an accidental delay,

and deceived by a report of the king's death, it had dis‹ persed, or gone over to Henry Bolingbroke.

Thus deprived of all means of support, and finally breaking down helplessly within himself, Richard delivers himself up into the hands of his enemies. His life, like the rotten trunk of a tree, is broken by the storm which he himself had raised; his creatures, Bushy, Bagot, Green, and the Earl of Wiltshire, who had been the servants of a bad master, and had abetted him in his caprice and injustice, fall, like the branches, before the trunk. The queen, even in the time of prosperity, was oppressed by a 'nameless woe,' and looked towards the future with a foreboding dread, i.e. with a conviction that Richard's unholy actions could lead only to misery; yet she has neither the energy nor the will to prevent that which was in her power. She is the partner of her husband's unkingly extravagance, and, at the death-bed of old Gaunt, listens tacitly to his fruitless warnings, to Richard's insulting speeches, and to his command to seize the revenues and property of the duchy of Lancaster, therefore, she justly shares her consort's fate. Misfortune, however, raises both above their fate, and shows us the sparks of light which slumbered in Richard's originally noble nature. For he is not merely a weakly, shallow, and dissolute voluptuary, he is intelligent, rich in imagination, of strong but too excitable feelings, and of acute judgment (as is proved by his remarks upon young Bolingbroke, who had been banished); but his lively imagination blinds his judgment, the exuberance of his feelings overpowers his will Richard is not without power and courage, but his unbridled courage turns into haughtiness and arrogance; he imagines that it would be doing himself and his royal majesty an injustice to sacrifice his own desires to law, to duty or to the welfare of the state. He becomes a reckless spendthrift, less from natural inclination than because he fancies that unlimited munificence, splendour, pomp and parade are requisito for the maintenance of the royal dignity (this is proved by the manner of his extravagance); he is devotedly fond of his wife, his friends and favourites, but his wife is like a weak and pliant reed, incapable of affording him support,

VOL. II.