This Duke plays philosopher, too, in and out of season as Hamlet did: he says to Isabella:

generalizing his praise even to a woman.

Again, when Pompey is arrested, he passes from the individual to the general, exclaiming:

Then follows the interesting talk with Lucio, who awakens the slightly pompous Duke to natural life with his contempt. When Lucio tells the Duke, who is disguised as a friar, that he (the Duke) was a notorious loose-liver—“he had some feeling of the sport; he knew the service”—the Duke merely denies the soft impeachment; but when Lucio tells him that the Duke is not wise, but “a very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow,” the Duke bursts out, “either this is envy in you, folly, or mistaking: ... Let him but be testimonied in his own bringings-forth, and he shall appear to the envious a scholar, a statesman, and a soldier,” which recalls Hamlet's “Friends, scholars, and soldiers,” and Ophelia's praise of Hamlet as “courtier, soldier, scholar.” Lucio goes off, and the Duke “moralizes” the incident in Hamlet's very accent:

Hamlet says to Ophelia:

And Laertes says that “virtue itself” cannot escape calumny.

The reflection is manifestly Shakespeare's own, and here the form, too, is characteristic. It may be as well to recall now that Shakespeare himself was calumniated in his lifetime; the fact is admitted in Sonnet 36, where he fears his “guilt” will “shame” his friend.

In his talk with Escalus the Duke's speech becomes almost obscure from excessive condensation of thought—a habit which grew upon Shakespeare.

Escalus asks:

The Duke answers:

Escalus then tells us of the Duke's temperament in words which would fit Hamlet perfectly; for, curiously enough, they furnish us with the best description of Shakespeare's melancholy:

And, lastly, the curious rhymed soliloquy of Vincentio which closes this third act, must be compared with the epilogue to “The Tempest”:

In the fifth act the Duke, freed from making plots and plans, speaks without constraint and reveals his nature ingenuously. He uses words to Angelo that recall the sonnets:

{Footnote 1: Cf. Sonnet 122 with its “full character'd” and “razed oblivion."}

Again, the Duke argues in gentle Shakespeare's fashion for Angelo and against Isabella:

It seems impossible for Shakespeare to believe that the sinner can punish sin. It reminds one of the sacred “he that is without sin among you let him first cast a stone.” The detections and forgivings of the last act follow.

It will be admitted, I think, on all hands that Duke Vincentio speaks throughout the play with Shakespeare's voice. From the point of view of literary art his character is very far from being as complex or as deeply realized as that of Hamlet or Macbeth, or even as that of Romeo or of Jaques, and yet one other trait besides that of sceptical brooding is so over-accentuated that it can never be forgotten. In the last scene the Duke orders Barnardine to the block and the next moment respites him; he condemns

then pardons Angelo, and at once begins to chat with him in kindly intimacy; he asserts that he cannot forgive Lucio, Lucio who has traduced him, shall be whipped and hanged, and in the same breath he remits the heavy penalty. Truly he is “an unhurtful opposite” {Footnote: The critics are at variance over this ending, and, indeed, over the whole play. Coleridge says that “our feelings of justice are grossly wounded in Angelo's escape”; for “cruelty with lust and damnable baseness cannot be forgiven.” Mr. Swinburne, too, regrets the miscarriage of justice; the play to him is a tragedy, and should end tragically with the punishment of the “autotype of the huge national vice of England.” Perhaps, however, Puritan hypocrisy was not so widespread or so powerful in the time of Shakespeare as it is nowadays; perhaps, too, Shakespeare was not so good a hater as Mr. Swinburne, nor so strenuous a moralist as Coleridge was, at least in theory. In any case it is evident that Shakespeare found it harder to forgive Lucio, who had hurt his vanity, than Angelo, who pushed lust to outrage and murder, which strange, yet characteristic, fact I leave to the mercy of future commentators. Mr. Sidney Lee regards “Measure for Measure” as “one of Shakespeare's greatest plays.” Coleridge, however, thought it “a hateful work”; it is also a poor work, badly constructed, and for the most part carelessly written. In essence it is a mere tract against Puritanism, and in form a sort of Arabian Nights' Entertainment in which the hero plays the part of Haroun-al-Raschid.} whose anger has no stead-fastness; but the gentle forgivingness of disposition that is so marked in Vincentio is a trait we found emphasized in Romeo, and again in Hamlet and again in Macbeth. It is, indeed, one of the most permanent characteristics of Shakespeare. From the beginning to the end of the play, Duke Vincentio is weakly-kind in act and swayed by fitful impulses; his assumed austerity of conduct is the thin varnish of vanity that will not take on such soft material. The Hamlet weakness is so exaggerated in him, and so unmotived, that I am inclined to think Shakespeare was even more irresolute and indisposed to action than Hamlet himself.

In the character of Posthumus, the hero of “Cymbeline,” Shakespeare has painted himself with extraordinary care; has, in fact, given us as deliberate and almost as complete a picture of himself as he did in Hamlet. Unluckily his hand had grown weaker in the ten years' interval, and he gave such loose rein to his idealizing habit that the portrait is neither so veracious nor so lifelike. The explanation of all this will be given later; it is enough for the moment to state that as Posthumus is perhaps the completest portrait of him that we have after his mental shipwreck, we must note the traits of it carefully, and see what manner of man Shakespeare took himself to be towards the end of his career.

It is difficult to understand how the commentators have been able to read “Cymbeline” without seeing the likeness between Posthumus and Hamlet. The wager which is the theme of the play may have hindered them a little, but as they found it easy to excuse its coarseness by attributing lewdness to the time, there seems to have been no reason for not recognizing Posthumus. Posthumus is simply a staider Hamlet considerably idealized. I am not at all sure that the subject of the play was void of offence in the time of Elizabeth; all finer spirits must even then have found it puerile and coarse. What would Spenser have said about it? Shakespeare used the wager because of the opportunities it gave him of painting himself and an ideal woman. His view of it is just indicated; Iachimo says:

“I make my wager rather against your confidence than her reputation: and, to bar your offence herein too, I durst attempt it against any lady in the world.” But in spite of the fact that Iachimo makes his insult general, Posthumus warns him that:

From this it appears that the bet was distasteful to Posthumus; it is not so offenceful to him as it should have been according to our modern temper; but this shortcoming, an unconscious shortcoming, is the only fault which Shakespeare will allow in his hero. In the first scene of the first act Posthumus is praised as men never praise the absent without a personal motive; the First Gentleman says of him:

The Second Gentleman replies:

and the First Gentleman continues:

And as if this were not enough, this gentleman-eulogist goes on to tell us that Posthumus has sucked in “all the learnings” of his time “as we do air,” and further:

This gross praise is ridiculously unnatural, and outrages our knowledge of life; men are much more apt to criticize than to praise the absent; but it shows a prepossession on Shakespeare's part in favour of Posthumus which can only be explained by the fact that in Posthumus he was depicting himself. Every word is significant to us, for Shakespeare evidently tells us here what he thought about himself, or rather what he wished to think, towards the end of his life. It is impossible to believe that he was “most praised, most loved”; men do not love or praise their superiors in looks, or intellect.

The first words which Posthumus in this same scene addresses to Imogen, show the gentle Shakespeare nature:

And when Imogen gives him the ring and tells him to wear it till he woos another wife, he talks to her exactly as Romeo would have talked:

And he concludes as self-depreciating Hamlet would have concluded:

In his fight with Cloten he is depicted as a rare swordsman of wonderful magnanimity. Pisanio says:

I call this gentle kindness which Posthumus displays, the birthmark of Shakespeare; he had “no help of anger.” As the play goes on we find Shakespeare's other peculiarities, or Hamlet's. Iachimo represents Posthumus as “merry,” “gamesome,” “the Briton reveller”; but curiously enough Imogen answers as Ophelia might have answered about Hamlet:

This uncaused melancholy that distinguishes Romeo, Jaques, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Vincentio is not more characteristic of the Hamlet-Shakespeare nature than the way Posthumus behaves when Iachimo tries to make him believe that he has won the wager. Posthumus is convinced almost at once; jumps to the conclusion, indeed, with the heedless rapidity of the naïve, sensitive, quick-thinking man who has cultivated his emotions and thoughts by writing in solitude, and not the suspicions and distrust of others which are developed in the market-place. One is reminded of Goethe's famous couplet:

Posthumus is all in fitful extremes; not satisfied with believing the lie, he gives Iachimo Imogen's ring as well, and bursts into a diatribe:

and so forth. Even Philario, who has no stake in the matter, is infinitely harder to convince:

Then this “unstable opposite,” Posthumus, demands his ring back again, but as soon as Iachimo swears that he had the bracelet from her arm, Posthumus swings round again to belief from sheer rapidity of thought. Again Philario will not be convinced. He says:

But Posthumus will not await the proof for which he has asked. He is convinced upon suspicion, as Othello was, and the very nimbleness of his Hamlet-intellect, seeing that probabilities are against him, entangles him in the snare. Even his servant Pisanio will not believe in Imogen's guilt though his master assures him of it. Shakespeare does not notice this peculiar imprudent haste of his hero, as he notices, for example, the hasty speech of Hotspur by letting Harry of England imitate it, simply because the quick-thinking was his own; while the hurried stuttering speech was foreign to him. Posthumus goes on to rave against women as Hamlet did; as all men do who do not understand them:

And Posthumus betrays as clearly as ever Hamlet did that he is merely Shakespeare masquerading:

“Write against them” indeed! This is the same threat which Shakespeare uses against his dark mistress in Sonnet 140, and every one will admit that it is more in the character of the poet and man of letters than in that of the warrior son-in-law of a half-barbarous king. The last line here, because it is a little superfluous, a little emphatic, seems to me likely to have a personal application. When Shakespeare's mistress had her will, did she fall to misery, I wonder?

I may be allowed to notice here how intensely characteristic all this play is of Shakespeare. In the third scene of the third act, life in the country is contrasted to its advantage with life at Court; and then gold is treated as dirt by the princely brothers—both these, the love of country life, and the contempt of gold, are, as we shall see later, abiding peculiarities of Shakespeare.

When we come to Posthumus again almost at the end of the play we find that his anger with Imogen has burned itself out. He is angry now with Pisanio for having executed his order and murdered her; he should have “saved the noble Imogen to repent.” Surely the poet Shakespeare and not the outraged lover speaks in this epithet, “noble.”

Posthumus describes the battle in which he took so gallant a part in Shakespeare's usual manner. He falls into rhyme; he shows the cheap modesty of the conventional hero; he tells of what others did, and nothing of his own feats; Belarius and the two striplings, he says:

Unfortunately one is reminded of the exquisite sonnet line:

“Gild” is one of Shakespeare's favourite words; he uses it very often, sometimes indeed as in this case, ineffectively.

But the scene which reveals the character of Posthumus beyond all doubt is the prison scene in the fifth act. His soliloquy which begins:

is all pure Shakespeare. When he determines to give up life, he says:

and Hamlet at his death comes to the self-same word:

The scene with the gaoler is from Hamlet's soul; Posthumus jests with his keeper as Hamlet with the gravedigger:

and the Hamlet melancholy:

and the Hamlet riddle still unsolved:

When the messenger comes to bring him to the king, Posthumus cries:

for there are “no bolts for the dead.”

Those who wish to see how Shakespeare's mind worked will compare Posthumus' speech to Iachimo, when he has learned the truth, with Othello's words when he is convinced of his own fatal error and of Desdemona's chastity. The two speeches are twins; though the persons uttering them should be of totally different characters. The explanation of this astounding similarity will be given when we come to “Othello.”

It is characteristic of Posthumus that he should strike Imogen in her page's dress, not recognizing her; he is ever too quick—a mere creature of impulse. More characteristic still is the way he forgives Iachimo, just as Vincentio forgave Angelo:

In judging his fellow-men this is Shakespeare's harshest word. Posthumus, then, is presented to us in the beginning of the play as perfect, a model to young and old, of irreproachable virtue and of all wonderful qualities. In the course of the play, however, he shows himself very nimble-witted, credulous, and impulsive, quick to anger and quicker still to forgive; with thoughts all turned to sadness and to musing; a poet—ever in extremes; now hating his own rash errors to the point of demanding the heaviest punishment for them; now swearing that he will revenge himself on women by writing against them; a philosopher—he jests with his gaoler and consoles himself with despairing speculation in the very presence of the Arch-Fear. All these are manifestly characteristics of Hamlet, and Posthumus possesses no others.

So far, then, from finding that Shakespeare never revealed himself in his dramas, I have shown that he pictured himself as the hero {Footnote: A hypercritic might contend that Jaques was not the hero of “As You Like It”; but the objection really strengthens my argument. Shakespeare makes of Jaques, who is merely a secondary character without influence on the action, the principal person in the play simply because in Jaques he satisfied his own need of self-revealing.} of six plays written at widely different times; in fact that, like Rembrandt, he painted his own portrait in all the critical periods of life: as a sensuous youth given over to love and poetry in Romeo; a few years later as a melancholy onlooker at life's pageant in Jaques; in middle age as the passionate, melancholy, aesthete-philosopher of kindliest nature in Hamlet and Macbeth; as the fitful Duke incapable of severity in “Measure for Measure,” and finally, when standing within the shadow, as Posthumus, an idealized yet feebler replica of Hamlet.

CHAPTER IV. SHAKESPEARE'S MEN OF ACTION: THE BASTARD, ARTHUR, AND KING RICHARD II.

It is time now, I think, to test my theory by considering the converse of it. In any case, the attempt to see the other side, is pretty sure to make for enlightenment, and may thus justify itself. In the mirror which Shakespeare held up to human nature, we not only see Romeo, and Jaques, Hamlet, Macbeth and Posthumus; but also the leonine, frank face of the Bastard, the fiery, lean, impatient mask of Hotspur, and the cynical, bold eyes of Richard III. Even if it were admitted that Shakespeare preferred the type of the poet-philosopher, he was certainly able, one would say, to depict the man of action with extraordinary vigour and success. He himself then must have possessed a certain strength of character, certain qualities of decision and courage; he must have had, at least, “a good stroke in him,” as Carlyle phrased it. This is the universal belief, a belief sanctioned by Coleridge and Goethe, and founded apparently on plain facts, and yet, I think, it is mistaken, demonstrably untrue. It might even be put more plausibly than any of its defenders has put it. One might point out that Shakespeare's men of action are nearly all to be found in the historical plays which he wrote in early manhood, while the portrait of the philosopher-poet is the favourite study of his riper years. It would then be possible to suggest that Shakespeare grew from a bold roistering youth into a melancholy, thoughtful old age, touching both extremes of manhood in his own development. But even this comforting explanation will not stand: his earliest impersonations are all thinkers.

Let us consider, again, how preference in a writer is established. Everyone feels that Sophocles prefers Antigone to Ismene; Ismene is a mere sketch of gentle feminine weakness; while Antigone is a great portrait of the revoltée, the first appearance indeed in literature of the “new woman,” and the place she fills in the drama, and the ideal qualities attributed to her girlhood—alike betray the personal admiration of the poet. In the same way Shakespeare's men of action are mere sketches in comparison with the intimate detailed portrait of the aesthete-philosopher-poet with his sensuous, gentle, melancholy temperament. Moreover, and this should be decisive, Shakespeare's men of action are all taken from history, or tradition, or story, and not from imagination, and their characteristics were supplied by the chroniclers and not invented by the dramatist. To see how far this is true I must examine Shakespeare's historical plays at some length Such an examination did not form a part of my original purpose. It is very difficult, not to say impossible, to ascertain exactly how far history and verbal tradition helped Shakespeare in his historical portraits of English worthies. Jaques, for instance, is his own creation from top to toe; every word given to him therefore deserves careful study; but how much of Hotspur is Shakespeare's, and how much of the Bastard? Without pretending, however, to define exactly the sources or the limits of the master's inspiration, there are certain indications in the historical plays which throw a flood of light on the poet's nature, and certain plain inferences from his methods which it would be folly not to draw.

Let us begin with “King John,” as one of the easiest and most helpful to us at this stage, and remembering that Shakespeare's drama was evidently founded on the old play entitled “The Troublesome Raigne of King John,” let us from our knowledge of Shakespeare's character forecast what his part in the work must have been. A believer in the theory I have set forth would guess at once that the strong, manly character of the Bastard was vigorously sketched even in the old play, and just as surely one would attribute the gentle, feminine, pathetic character of Arthur to Shakespeare. And this is precisely what we find: Philip Fauconbridge is excellently depicted in the old play; he is called:

and he talks and acts the character to the life. In “The Troublesome Raigne,” as in “King John,” he is proud of his true father, the lion-hearted Richard, and careless of the stain of his illegitimate birth; he cries:

Who does not feel the leaping courage and hardihood of the Bastard in these lines? Shakespeare seizes the spirit of the character and renders it, but his emendations are all by way of emphasis: he does not add a new quality; his Bastard is the Bastard of “The Troublesome Raigne.” But the gentle, pathetic character of Arthur is all Shakespeare's. In the old play Arthur is presented as a prematurely wise youth who now urges the claims of his descent and speaks boldly for his rights, and now begs his vixenish mother to

Again, he consoles her with the same prudence:

This Arthur is certainly nothing like Shakespeare's Arthur. Shakespeare, who had just lost his only son Hamnet, {Footnote: Some months before writing “King John” Shakespeare had visited Stratford for the first time after ten years absence and had then perhaps learned to know and love young Hamnet.} in his twelfth year, turns Arthur from a young man into a child, and draws all the pathos possible from his weakness and suffering; Arthur's first words are of “his powerless hand,” and his advice to his mother reaches the very fount of tears:

When taken prisoner his thought is not of himself:

He is a woman-child in unselfish sympathy.

The whole of the exquisitely pathetic scene between Hubert and Arthur belongs, as one might have guessed, to Shakespeare, that is, the whole pathos of it belongs to him.

In the old play Arthur thanks Hubert for his care, calls him “curteous keeper,” and, in fact, behaves as the conventional prince. He has no words of such affecting appeal as Shakespeare puts into Arthur's mouth:

This love and longing for love is the characteristic of Shakespeare's Arthur; he goes on:

A girl could not be more tender, more anxious for love's assurance. In “The Troublesome Raigne,” when Hubert tells Arthur that he has bad news for him, tidings of “more hate than death,” Arthur faces the unknown with a man's courage; he asks:

It might be the Bastard speaking, so hardy-reckless are the words. When this Arthur pleads for his eyesight, he does it in this way:

Again at the end he says:

And when Hubert relents because his “conscience bids him desist,” Arthur says:

In all this there is neither realization of character nor even sincere emotion. But Shakespeare's Arthur is a masterpiece of soul-revealing, and moves us to pity at every word:

And then the child's imaginative horror of being bound:

When Hubert relents, Shakespeare's Arthur does not promise reward, he simply breathes a sigh of exquisite affection:

And finally, when Hubert promises never to hurt him, his words are:

Arthur's character we owe entirely to Shakespeare, there is no hint of his weakness and tenderness in the original, no hint either of the pathos of his appeal—these are the inventions of gentle Shakespeare, who has manifestly revealed his own exceeding tenderness and sweetness of heart in the person of the child Prince. Of course, there are faults in the work; faults of affectation and word-conceit hardly to be endured. When Hubert says he will burn out his eyes with hot irons, Arthur replies:

“Ah, none, but in this iron age, would do it! The iron of itself, though heat red-hot,”

and so forth. ... Nor does this passage of tinsel stand alone. When the iron cools and Hubert says he can revive it, Arthur replies with pinchbeck conceits:

“An if you do you will but make it blush, And glow with shame at your proceedings,”

and so forth. The faults are bad enough; but the heavenly virtues carry them all off triumphantly. There is no creation like Arthur in the whole realm of poetry; he is all angelic love and gentleness, and yet neither mawkish nor unnatural; his fears make him real to us, and the horror of his situation allows us to accept his exquisite pleading as possible. We need only think of Tennyson's May Queen, or of his unspeakable Arthur, or of Thackeray's prig Esmond, in order to understand how difficult it is in literature to make goodness attractive or even credible. Yet Shakespeare's art triumphs where no one else save Balzac and Tourgenief has achieved even a half-success.

I cannot leave this play without noticing that Shakespeare has shown in it a hatred of murder just as emphatically as he has revealed his love of gentleness and pity in the creation of Arthur. In spite of the loyalty which the English nobles avow in the second scene of the fourth act, which is a quality that always commends itself to Shakespeare, Pembroke is merely their mouthpiece in requesting the King to “enfranchise Arthur.” As soon as John tells them that Arthur is dead they throw off their allegiance and insult the monarch to his face. Even John is startled by their indignation, and brought as near remorse as is possible for him:

—which reads like a reflection of Shakespeare himself. When the Bastard asks the nobles to return to their allegiance, Salisbury finds an astonishing phrase to express their loathing of the crime:

In all literature there is no more terrible image: Shakespeare's horror of bloodshed has more than Aeschylean intensity. When the dead body of Arthur is found each of the nobles in turn expresses his abhorrence of the deed, and all join in vowing instant revenge. Even the Bastard calls it

and a little later the thought of the crime brings even this tough adventurer to weakness:

—a phrase that suits the weakness of Richard II. or Henry VI. or Shakespeare himself better than it suits the hardy Bastard. Even as a young man Shakespeare hated the cruelty of ambition and the savagery of war as much as he loved all the ceremonies of chivalry and observances of gentle courtesy.

Very similar inferences are to be drawn from a study of Shakespeare's “King Richard II.,” which in some respects is his most important historical creation. Coleridge says: “I know of no character drawn by our great poet with such unequalled skill as that of Richard II.” Such praise is extravagant; but it would have been true to say that up to 1593 or 1594, when Shakespeare wrote “King Richard II.,” he had given us no character so complex and so interesting as this Richard. Coleridge overpraised the character-drawing probably because the study of Richard's weakness and irresolution, and the pathos resulting from such helplessness, must have seemed very like an analysis of his own nature.

Let us now examine “Richard II.,” and see what light it casts on Shakespeare's qualities. There was an old play of the same title, a play which is now lost, but we can form some idea of what it was like from the description in Forman's Diary. Like most of the old history-plays it ranged over twenty years of Richard's reign, whereas Shakespeare's tragedy is confined to the last year of Richard's life. It is probable that the old play presented King Richard as more wicked and more deceitful than Shakespeare imagines him. We know that in the “Confessio Amantis,” Gower, the poet, cast off his allegiance to Richard: for he cancelled the dedication of the poem to Richard, and dedicated it instead to Henry. William Langland, too, the author of the “Vision of Piers Plowman,” turned from Richard at the last, and used his deposition as a warning to ill-advised youth. It may be assumed, then, that tradition pictured Richard as a vile creature in whom weakness nourished crime. Shakespeare took his story partly from Holinshed's narrative, and partly either from the old play or from the traditional view of Richard's character. When he began to write the play he evidently intended to portray Richard as even more detestable than history and tradition had presented him. In Holinshed Richard is not accused of the murder of Gloster, whereas Shakespeare directly charges him with it, or rather makes Gaunt do so, and the accusation is not denied, much less disproved. At the close of the first act we are astonished by the revelation of Richard's devilish heartlessness. The King hearing that his uncle, John of Gaunt, is “grievous sick,” cries out:

This mixture of greed and cold cruelty decked out with blasphemous phrase is viler, I think, than anything attributed by Shakespeare to the worst of his villains. But surely some hint of Richard's incredible vileness should have come earlier in the play, should have preceded at least his banishment of Bolingbroke, if Shakespeare had really meant to present him to us in this light.

In the first scene of the second act, when Gaunt reproves him, Richard turns on him in a rage, threatening. In the very same scene York reproves Richard for seizing Gaunt's money and land, and Richard retorts:

But when York blames him to his face and predicts that evil will befall him and leaves him, Richard in spite of this at once creates:

This Richard of Shakespeare is so far, I submit, almost incomprehensible. When reproved by Gaunt and warned, Richard rages and threatens; when blamed by York much more severely, Richard rewards York: the two scenes contradict each other. Moreover, though his callous selfishness, greed and cruelty are apparently established, in the very next scene of this act our sympathy with Richard is called forth by the praise his queen gives him. She says:

And from this scene to the end of the play Shakespeare enlists all our sympathy for Richard. Now, what is the reason of this right-about-face on the part of the poet?

The curious thing is that while Shakespeare is depicting Richard's heartlessness, he does his work badly; the traits, as I have shown, are crudely extravagant and even contradictory; but when he paints Richard's gentleness and amiability, he works like a master, every touch is infallible: he is painting himself.

It was natural for Shakespeare to sympathize deeply with Richard; he was still young when he wrote the play, young enough to remember vividly how he himself had been led astray by loose companions, and this formed a bond between them. At this time of his life this was Shakespeare's favourite subject: he treated it again in “Henry IV.,” which is at once the epilogue to “Richard II.” and a companion picture to it; for the theme of both plays is the same—youth yielding to unworthy companions—though the treatment in the earlier play is incomparably feebler than it became in “King Henry IV.” Bushy, Bagot, and Green, the favourites of Richard, are not painted as Shakespeare afterwards painted Falstaff and his followers. But partly because he had not yet attained to such objective treatment of character, Shakespeare identified himself peculiarly with Richard; and his painting of Richard is more intimate, more subtle, more self-revealing and pathetic than anything in “Henry IV.”

As I have already said, from the time when Richard appoints York as Regent, and leaves England, Shakespeare begins to think of himself as Richard, and from this moment to the end no one can help sympathizing with the unhappy King. At this point, too, the character-drawing becomes, of a sudden, excellent. When Richard lands in England, he is given speech after speech, and all he says and does afterwards throws light, it seems to me, on Shakespeare's own nature. Let us mark each trait First of all Richard is intensely, frankly emotional: he “weeps for joy” to be in England again; “weeping, smiling,” he greets the earth of England, and is full of hope. “The thief, the traitor,” Bolingbroke, will not dare to face the light of the sun; for “every man that Bolingbroke has in his pay,” he cries exultantly, God hath given Richard a “glorious angel; ... Heaven still guards the right.” A moment later he hears from Salisbury that the Welshmen whom he had relied upon as allies are dispersed and fled. At once he becomes “pale and dead.” From the height of pride and confidence he falls to utter hopelessness.