no asserters of adverse principles made to play at see-saw, with reverence be it spoken, like the Moloch and Belial of Milton. But, after some reflection upon what we have read, we feel that he who leapt into Coeur-de-lion's throne, and he who hath " a trick of Coeur-de-lion's face," are as opposite as if they were the formal personifications of subtlety and candour, cowardice and courage, cruelty and kindliness. The fox and the lion are not more strongly contrasted than John and Faulconbridge; and the poet did not make the contrast by accident. And yet with what incomparable management are John and the Bastard held together as allies throughout these scenes. In the onset the Bastard receives honour from the hands of John,—and he is grateful. In the conclusion he sees his old patron, weak indeed and guilty, but surrounded with enemies,—and he will not be faithless. When John quails before the power of a spiritual tyrant, the Bastard stands by him in the place of a higher and a better nature. He knows the dangers that surround his king:

"All Kent hath yielded; nothing there holds out

But Dover castle: London hath receiv'd,
Like a kind host, the dauphin and his powers:
Your nobles will not hear you, but are gone

To offer service to your enemy."

But no dangers can daunt his resolution :

"Let not the world see fear, and sad distrust,
Govern the motion of a kingly eye:

Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire;
Threaten the threat'ner, and outface the brow
Of bragging horror: so shall inferior eyes,
That borrow their behaviours from the great,
Grow great by your example, and put on
The dauntless spirit of resolution."

The very necessity for these stirring words would show us that from henceforth John is but a puppet without a will. The blight of Arthur's death is upon him; and he moves on to his own destiny, whilst Faulconbridge defies or fights with his enemies; and his revolted lords, even while they swear

"A voluntary zeal, and unurg'd faith,"

to the invader, bewail their revolt, and lament

"That, for the health and physic of our right,
We cannot deal but with the very hand
Of stern injustice and confused wrong."

But the great retribution still moves onward.

The cause of Eng

land is triumphant ; "the lords are all come back;"—but the king is "poisoned by a monk :”

"Poison'd,-ill fare;-dead, forsook, cast off:

And none of you will bid the winter come,
To thrust his icy fingers in my maw;

Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course
Through my burn'd bosom; nor entreat the north
To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips,
And comfort me with cold :-I do not ask you much,
I beg cold comfort; and you are so strait,
And so ingrateful, you deny me that."

The interval of fourteen years
death of John is annihilated.
in the proper history by long digressions and tedious episodes, are
brought together. The attributed murder of Arthur lost John all
the inheritances of the house of Anjou, and allowed the house of
Capet to triumph in his overthrow. Out of this grew a larger
ambition, and England was invaded. The death of Arthur and the
events which marked the last days of John were separated in their
cause and effect by time only, over which the poet leaps. It is said
that a man who was on the point of drowning saw, in an instant, all
the events of his life in connexion with his approaching end. So
sees the poet. It is his to bring the beginnings and the ends of
events into that real union and dependence which even the philoso-
phical historian may overlook in tracing their course. It is the
poet's office to preserve a unity of action; it is the historian's to
show a consistency of progress. In the chroniclers we have mani-
fold changes of fortune in the life of John after Arthur of Brittany
has fallen. In Shakspere Arthur of Brittany is at once revenged.
The heartbroken mother and her boy are not the only sufferers
from double courses. The spirit of Constance is appeased by the
fall of John. The Niobe of a Gothic age, who vainly sought to
shield her child from as stern a destiny as that with which Apollo
and Artemis pursued the daughter of Tantalus, may rest in peace!

between the death of Arthur and the Causes and consequences, separated

KING RICHARD II.

VOL. IV.

KING RICHARD II.

EDMUND OF LANGLEY, Duke of York;

JOHN OF GAUNT, Duke of Lancaster ;

uncles to the King.

HENRY, surnamed BOLINGBROKE, Duke of Hereford, son to
John of Gaunt; afterwards King Henry IV.

DUKE OF AUMERLE, son to the Duke of York.
MOWBRAY, Duke of Norfolk.

Lords, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, Two Gardeners, Keeper, Messenger, Groom, and other Attendants.

SCENE,-dispersedly in ENGLAND and WALES.

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.

STATE OF THE TEXT, AND CHRONOLOGY, OF RICHARD II.

THE 'Richard II.' of Shakspere was entered at Stationers' Hall August 29, 1597, by Andrew Wise; by whom the first edition was published in the same year, under the title of 'The Tragedie of King Richard the Second. As it hath been publikely acted by the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his servants.' It is one of the plays enumerated as Shakspere's by Francis Meres in 1598. A second edition was printed by Wise in 1598, which bears the name of "William Shake-speare" as the author. In 1608 an edition was printed for Matthew Law, of which the copies in general bear this title: The Tragedie of King Richard the Second, with new additions of the Parliament Sceane, and the deposing of King Richard. As it hath been lately acted by the kinges servantes, at the Globe, by William Shake-speare.' A fourth edition, from the same publisher, appeared in 1615. The division of the acts and scenes was first made in the folio of 1623, and not, as Steevens has stated, in a quarto of 1634.

We thus see that one of the most prominent scenes of the play, "The Parliament Scene and the deposing of King Richard," received " new additions in 1608. In point of fact, all that part of the fourth act in which Richard is introduced to make the surrender of his crown, comprising one hundred and fifty-four lines, was never printed in the age of Elizabeth. The quarto of 1608 first gives this scene. That quarto is, with very few exceptions, the text of the play as it now stands; for it is remarkable that in the folio there are, here and there, lines which are in themselves beautiful and unexceptionable, amounting in the whole to about fifty, which are omitted. It is difficult to account for this; for the omissions are not so important in quantity that the lines should be left out to make room for the deposition scene. The last stage

copy was, probably, here used; for one of the passages omitted is a speech of a lord" without a name, in the parliament scene; and the players were, perhaps, desirous to save the introduction of a