striking and impressive are the individuality and life of the character that it has been suggested that the poet had the aid of traditionary knowledge to fill up the meagre outline of the chroniclers. It may be so; but I rather think that he drew the young baron from his personal observation of some of the more conspicuous men of that class, and has thus given us, if not the precise historical portrait of the very Harry Percy, a very true and living portrait of the higher minds of his class and order, under the influence of feudal manners and ideas, individualized by some personal peculiarities (such as the "speaking thick" and many others), to aid in the dramatic illusion. Indeed, I have been recently struck with the strong resemblance of the dramatic Hotspur to the character of one of the poet's own con mporaries, Charles Gontaut-Biron, as it is given by the contemporary French writers. (See Capefigue's Hist. de la Réf., “Henri IV.”) They describe him as the very counterpart of Hotspur in impetuous bluntness, unwearied activity of mind and body, courage, ambition, generosity, and even in horsemanship. Like his English counterpart, he had helped to elevate to the throne his own Henry the Fourth, who repaid him with ingratitude and death. The parallel is so perfect that I had almost thought that the poet had these contemporary circumstances in his mind; for, though occurring in another kingdom, they must have been well known as the familiar news of the times. Had this play been written a few years later, it would not be easy to refute the conjecture. But the judicial murder of Marshal Biron occurred in 1602, and this play had been printed four years before. I therefore mention this parallel, not only as a curious coincidence, but as confirming the wonderful general truth of this strongly individualized character. Glendower and the other personages are also historic names embodied in forms of the poet's creation, and most true to the spirit of their age. Of all the strictly historical personages of this first part, Henry the Fourth himself alone seems drawn entirely and scrupulously from historical authority; and his is a portrait rivalling, in truth and discrimination, the happiest delineations of Plutarch or of Tacitus. He is contrasted alike to the frailties and to the virtues of his son; his talent, and the dignity with which it invests his cold and crafty policy, the absence of all nobler sentiment from the sagacious worldly wisdom of his counsels and opinions, his gloom, melancholy, and anxiety—all combine to form a portrait of a great and unhappy statesman, as true and as characteristic, though not as dark, as Tacitus has left us of Tiberius. Thus has been produced a drama historical in the highest sense of the term, as being imbued throughout, penetrated, with the spirit of the times, and of the men and scenes it represents; while in a more popular sense of the epithet historical, it is so chiefly in its subjects and main incidents. Though boldly deviating from chronological exactness, and freely blending pure invention with recorded facts, yet in all this the author neither designs nor effects any real distortion of history; but, while he impresses upon the bare succession of events the unity of feeling and purpose required for dramatic interest, he converts the dead, cold record of past occurrences into the very tragi-comedy which those occurrences must have exhibited as they arose, and thus reflects "the very age and body of those times, their form and pressure." [From Dowden's "Shakspere."*] Bolingbroke utters few words in the play of Richard II.; yet we feel that from the first the chief force centres in him. He possesses every element of power except those which are spontaneous and unconscious. He is dauntless, but his courage is under the control of his judgment; it never be*Shakspere: a Critical Study of his Mind and Art, by Edward Dowden (2d ed. London, 1876), p. 204 fol. comes a glorious martial rage like that of the Greek Achilles, or like that of the English Henry, Bolingbroke's son. He is ambitious, but his ambition is not an inordinate desire to wreak his will upon the world, and expend a fiery energy like that of Richard the Third; it is an ambition which aims at definite ends, and can be held in reserve till these are attainable. He is studious to obtain the good graces of nobles and of people, and he succeeds because, wedded to his end, he does not become impatient of the means; but he is wholly lacking in genius of the heart, and therefore he obtains the love of no man. He is indeed formidable; his enemies describe England as "A bleeding land Gasping for life under great Bolingbroke;" Be and he is aware of his strength; but there is in his nature no fund of incalculable strength of which he cannot be aware. All his faculties are well organized, and help one another; he is embarrassed by no throng of conflicting desires or sympathies. He is resolved to win the throne, and has no personal hostility to the king to divide or waste his energies; only a little of contempt. In the deposition scene he gives as little pain as may be to Richard; he controls and checks Northumberland, who irritates and excites the king by requiring him to read the articles of his accusation. cause Bolingbroke is strong, he is not cruel. He decides when to augment his power by clemency, and when by severity. Aumerle he can pardon, who will live to fight and fall gallantly for Henry's son at Agincourt. He can dismiss to a dignified retreat the Bishop, who, loyal to the hereditary principle, had pleaded against Henry's title to the throne. But Bushy, Green, and such like caterpillars of the Commonwealth, Henry has sworn to weed and pluck away. And when he pardons Aumerle he sternly decrees to death his own brother-in-law. The honor of England he cherished not with passionate devotion, but with a strong, considerate care, as though it were his own honour. There is nothing infinite in the character of Henry, but his is a strong finite character. When he has attained the object of his ambition he is still aspiring, but he does not aspire towards anything higher and further than that which he had set before him; his ambition is now to hold firmly that which he has energetically grasped. He tries to control England as he controlled roan Barbary: "Great Bolingbroke, Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed, Which his aspiring rider seem'd to know, With slow but stately pace kept on his course." "Even in his policy," Mr. Hudson has truly said, "there was much of the breadth and largeness which distinguished the statesman from the politician." He can conceive beforehand with practical imaginative faculty the exigencies of a case, and provide for them. . . . Yet the success of Bolingbroke-although he succeeded to the full measure of his powers and lost no opportunity by laxness or self-indulgence was not a complete achieveWhen a little before his death his heart was at last set right with his son's heart, he could confess : ment. "God knows, my son, By what by-paths and indirect crook'd ways I met this crown, and I myself know well How troublesome it sat upon my head. By caution and by boldness he had won the crown, and held it resolutely. But his followers fell away; the truculent nobles of the North were in revolt; and there was a profound suspicion of the policy of the king. One son had reproduced the character of his father without the larger and finer features of that character. The other he could not understand, failing to discern, almost up to the last, the steadfast hidden loyalty and love of that son. (It is hard for the free, spontaneous heart to disclose itself to the deliberate and cautious heart, which yet yearns pathetically for a child's affection. There is something piteously undiscerning in the wish of the father of a Henry the Fifth that he might have been the father of a Hotspur. . . . Shakspere has judged Henry the Fourth and pronounced that his life was not a failure; still it was at best a partial success. Shakspere saw, and he proceeded to show to others, that all which Bolingbroke had attained, and almost incalculably greater possession of good things, could be attained. more joyously by nobler means. (The unmistakable enthusiasm of the poet about his Henry the Fifth has induced critics to believe that in him we find Shakspere's ideal of manhood.) He must certainly be regarded as Shakspere's ideal of manhood in the sphere of practical achievementthe hero, and central figure therefore of the historical plays. The fact has been noticed that with respect to Henry's youthful follies, Shakspere deviated from all authorities. known to have been accessible to him. "An extraordinary conversion was generally thought to have fallen upon the prince on coming to the crown insomuch that the old chroniclers could only account for the change by some miracle of grace or touch of supernatural benediction" (Hudson). Shakspere, it would seem, engaged now upon historical matter and not the fantastic substance of a comedy, found something incredible in the sudden transformation. of a reckless libertine (the Henry described by Caxton, by Fabyan, and others) into a character of majestic force and large practical wisdom. Rather than reproduce this incredible popular tradition concerning Henry, Shakspere preferred to attempt the difficult task of exhibiting the prince as a sharer in the wild frolic of youth, while at the same time he was holding himself prepared for the splendid en |