The whole tetralogy closing with King Richard forms a study of Machiavellism on a large scale, a dramatic comment on the theory "Might is Right." Hardly is the breath out of the body of the valiant Henry V. when the tragedy of fortune begins. An infant succeeds to English throne: selfish factions at once contend for government of the kingdom, and at the same time th imperial power of England begins to wane: it is : vathat the forces of patriotism, represented by Taba fight to maintain the conquests that have beer wor power of selfish craft and intrigue, masked mor guise of patriotism, emerges in the person Tm, = claim to the throne; on the other hand the ambition of Suffolk precipitates the fall of this Lancaster by a treaty of marriage degra nation. In the Second Part the interest a centred with rare skill in the fortunes a the good Duke of Gloucester, ruined part tion of his wife, partly by the associatec Suffolk, and the Queen. In his meros the powers of Evil seem to culminate be said that the doctrines of the have been fully vindicated.

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The Trouble

wick to the throne, is unable to resist his own sensual nature, so that the possibility of reigning discovers itself, though through many obstacles, to Gloucester, his brother.

King Richard III. is a continued illustration of the results of Machiavellian philosophy. After the death of Edward, Gloucester by secret craft removes out of his road first his brother and then his nephews; he destroys by force Rivers, Grey, Vaughan, Hastings, and Buckingham; he prevails by subtle flattery and persuasions over the weak wills of women like the Lady Anne and Elizabeth the Queen, whose compliance is necessary to promote his ends. Yet his wickedness is in vain. His tyranny overreaches itself; when Richmond invades the country all hearts are against Richard; and on the eve of battle Conscience—the protagonist of the old Moralities -discloses to him the realities of things. Waking from his dream he cries:

Give me another horse: bind up my wounds.
Have mercy, Jesu !-Soft! I did but dream.

O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!
The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight.
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear? myself? there's none else by:
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.

Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am :
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack! I love myself. Wherefore? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself?

O, no! alas! I rather hate myself

For hateful deeds committed by myself!

I am a villain: yet I lie, I am not.

Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree;
Murder, stern murder, in the dir'st degree;
All several sins, all used in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, Guilty! guilty!
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me ;
And if I die, no soul shall pity me:

Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?

Methought the souls of all that I had murdered
Came to my tent; and every one did threat

To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard,

Thus the powers of Evil are seen to defeat themselves, and the poet puts into the concluding speech of Richmond the moral of the whole tetralogy, which he doubtless intended the audience to apply to themselves and their own times

Proclaim a pardon to the soldiers fled
That in submission will return to us:
And then, as we have ta'en the sacrament,
We will unite the white rose and the red:
Smile heaven upon this fair conjunction,
That long have frowned upon their enmity!
What traitor hears me, and says not amen?
England hath long been mad, and scarred herself:
The brother blindly shed the brother's blood,
The father rashly slaughtered his own son,
The son, compelled, been butcher to the sire:
All this divided York and Lancaster,
Divided in their dire division.

O, now, let Richmond and Elizabeth,
The true succeeders of each royal house,
By God's fair ordinance conjoin together!
And let their heirs, God, if thy will be so,

Enrich the time to come with smooth-faced peace
With smiling plenty and fair prosperous days!
Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord,
That would reduce these bloody days again,

And make poor England weep in streams of blood!

Let them not live to taste this land's increase

That would with treason wound this fair land's peace!
Now civil wounds are stopped, peace lives again;

That she may long live here, God say amen!

If the foregoing account of the design of King Henry VI. and King Richard III. be just, not only ought all question as to the authorship of these great plays (for in spite of many structural defects, great they are) to cease, but a strong light is thrown on the gradual development of Shakespeare's dramatic genius. There is a vast interval between the mode of conception and execution in Titus Andronicus and the mode of conception and execution in King Henry VI.: the half-way stage is found in The Trouble

some Raigne of King John. In the latter play the poet is first seen to be abandoning the abstract ways of thinking which he had followed in Titus Andronicus. Though traces of the old influence of the "Scythian Tamburlaine" may be observed in the character of the king, and though the principle of virtù is still exalted in the person of the Bastard, there is no attempt to introduce into the play any equivalent to Aaron, the villainous Moor, who rejoices in the perpetration of evil for its own sake. The poet is on English ground, limited by the definite facts of English history, inspired by the interest and sympathy of an English audience. Finding, perhaps almost by chance, in The Troublesome Raigne, that he possessed the key to this sympathy and interest, he seems to have prepared his imagination for a higher flight, and, as he dwelt in thought upon the ancient life of his country, something of the solemn spirit that had moved the rude old epic poets of The Mirror of Magistrates descended upon the greatest of dramatists. In the naïve and simple narratives of Fabian, Hall, and Holinshed, a hundred dramatic scenes and situations suggested themselves to his mind, and his study of the chronicles may have revealed to him the profounder sense animating the arid personifications of Conscience and Justice in the old Moralities. Certain it is that the idea of the drama of life presented in King Henry VI. and King Richard III. is far more varied, more emotional, more religious, more philosophical, than in Titus Andronicus, or even The Troublesome Raigne of King John. Marlowe's favourite type of character is still prominent, but York, Suffolk, and Richard are not, like Guise and Mortimer, mere selfish resolute villains, who have mounted the wheel of fortune only to be precipitated from a greater height: they are moral agents who, like Gloucester in King Lear, suffer the consequences of their own actions

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Do make us plagues to scourge us.

In the scene of Cardinal Beaufort's deathbed, in Clarence's

dream, and in the last dream of Richard III., the poet first showed (in a somewhat melodramatic form) how deeply he shared the sentiment he afterwards put into the mouth of Hamlet, that "Conscience doth make cowards of us all."

Germs of other dramatic contrasts, developed in later dramas, also discover themselves in King Henry VI., particularly the influence of resolute women on weak or hesitating men. The aspiring and relentless Margaret is the natural antithesis to her poor-spirited husband in the first scene between the ambitious Duchess of Gloucester and her husband we have a faint forecast of the relations between Macbeth and his wife. Indicative above all of Shakespeare's wonderful growth in imaginative power are the admirable scenes representing Cade's insurrection. Here, for the first time, the dramatist manifests his unequalled insight into the character of the crowd. With something of the resolute force of Tamburlaine, Cade combines the absurd self-sufficiency and ignorance of Dogberry and Bottom, and, like those masterful personages, he is able to impose his will on his still more ignorant followers, some of whom are quite capable of measuring his pretensions. Nowhere perhaps has the mixture of comic and tragic elements in the crowd - its blind ferocity, its rude humour, its hopeless incapacity of reasoning, its rooted prejudice-been so vividly displayed as in the scene representing the murder of Lord Say. Scarcely less admirable, as a rendering of the fickleness of the crowd, is the episode in which the ready and resolute Clifford persuades the rioters to desert their leader in the very height of his success: the brief and trenchant argument between him and Cade is no unworthy anticipation of the elaborate debates between Menenius and the tribunes in Coriolanus, or even of the rival speeches of Brutus and Antony in Julius Cæsar.