parallel extract; but the passages furnish a key to the principle upon which a dull character is made brilliant. Our poet has let in the sunlight of prodigious animal spirits, without any great intellectual refinement, (how different from Mercutio!) upon the heavy clod that he found ready to his hand:

6
THE KING JOHN' OF 1591.

"Lym. Methinks that Richard's pride and Richard's fall

Should be a precedent t' affright you all.

Bast. What words are these? how do my sinews shake?

My father's foc clad in my father's spoil!
A thousand furies kindle with revenge
This heart that choler keeps a consistory,
Searing my inwards with a brand of hate:
How doth Alecto whisper in mine ears,-
Delay not, Philip, kill the villain straight;
Disrobe him of the matchless monument
Thy father's triumph o'er the savages!
Base herdgroom, coward, peasant, worse than
a threshing slave,

What mak'st thou with the trophy of a king?"

Bast.

Aust.

Hear the crier.

What the devil art thou? Bast. One that will play the devil, sir, with you,

An 'a may catch your hide and you alone. You are the hare of whom the proverb goes, Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard. I'll smoke your skin-coat, an I catch you right; Sirrah, look to 't; i' faith, I will, i' faith.

Blanch. Oh, well did he become that lion's robe,

That did disrobe the lion of that robe!

Bast. It lies as sightly on the back of him As great Alcides' shoes upon an ass :--But, ass, I'll take that burthen from your back,

Or lay on that shall make your shoulders crack."

The second extract we shall make is for the purpose of exhibiting the modes in which the same passion is dealt with under the same circumstances. The situation in each play is where Arthur exhorts his mother to

be content, after the marriage between Lewis and Blanch, and the consequent peace between John and Philip:

THE KING JOHN' OF 1591.

"Art. Madam, good cheer, these drooping
languishments

Add no redress to salve our awkward haps:
If Heaven have concluded these events,
To small avail is bitter pensiveness:
Scasons will change, and so our present grief
May change with them, and all to our relief.
Const. Ah, boy, thy years I see are far too

green

To look into the bottom of these cares :
But I, who see the poise that weigheth down
Thy weal, my wish, and all the willing means
Wherewith thy fortune and thy fame should
mount,-

What joy, what ease, what rest can lodge in me,

With whom all hope and hap do disagree?

Art. Yet ladies' tears, and cares, and solemn shows,

Rather than helps, heap up more work for

woes.

Const. If any power will hear a widow's plaint,

That from a wounded soul implores revenge,
Send fell contagion to infect this clime,
This cursed country, where the traitor's breath,
Whose perjury (as proud Briareus)
Beleaguers all the sky with misbelief.
He promised, Arthur, and he sware it too,
To fence thy right, and check thy foeman's
pride;

But now, black-spotted perjure as he is,
He takes a truce with Elinor's damn'd brat,
And marries Lewis to her lovely niece,
Sharing thy fortune, and thy birth-day's gift,
Between these lovers: ill betide the match !
And as they shoulder thee from out thine

own,

And triumph in a widow's tearful cares,
So Heavens cross them with a thriftless course!
Is all the blood spilt on either part,
Closing the crannies of the thirsty earth,
Grown to a love-game and a bridal feast?"

SHAKSPERE'S KING JOHN.'

"Art. I do beseech you, madam, be content. Const. If thou, that bidd'st me be content, wert grim,

Ugly, and sland'rous to thy mother's womb,

Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains, Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious, Patch'd with foul moles and eye-offending marks,

I would not care, I then would be content; For then I should not love thee; no, nor thou Become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown. But thou art fair; and at thy birth, dear boy, Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great: Of Nature's gifts thou mayst with lilies boast, And with the half-blown rose: but Fortune, O! She is corrupted, changed, and won from thee; She adulterates hourly with thy uncle John; And with her golden hand hath pluck'd on France

To tread down fair respect of sovereignty, And made his majesty the bawd to theirs. France is a bawd to Fortune, and king John; That strumpet Fortune, that usurping John:Tell me, thou fellow, is not France forsworn? Envenom him with words; or get thee gone, And leave those woes alone, which I alone Am bound to under-bear.

Sal.

Pardon me, madam,
I may not go without you to the kings.
Const. Thou mayst, thou shalt; I will not
go with thee:

I will instruct my sorrows to be proud:
For grief is proud, and makes his owner stoop.
To me, and to the state of my great grief,
Let kings assemble; for my grief's so great,
That no supporter but the huge firm earth
Can hold it up: here I and sorrows sit;

characters consistent, natural, and distinct. No other unity is intended, and, therefore, none is to be sought. In his other works he has well enough preserved the unity of action." Taking these observations together, as a general definition of the character of Shakspere's histories, we are constrained to say that no opinion can be farther removed from the truth. So far from the "unity of action" not being regarded in Shakspere's histories, and being subservient to the "chronological succession," it rides over that succession whenever the demands of the scene require "a unity of a higher order, which connects the events by reference to the workers, gives a reason for them in the motives, and presents men in their causative character."* It

is this principle which in Shakspere has given offence to those who have not formed a higher notion of an historical play than that the series of actions should be the transcript of a chronicle, somewhat elevated, and somewhat modified, by the poetical form, but "without any tendency to introduce and regulate the conclusion."

The great connecting link of the chain in the King John' of Shakspere, is the fate that binds together all the series of actions of Arthur. In this series of actions we find no events that arise out of other causes. From the first to the last scene, the hard

Dr. Johnson, in his preface to Shakspere, speaking of the division, by the players, of our author's works into comedies, histories, and tragedies, thus defines what, he says, was the notion of a dramatic history in those times: "History was a series of actions, with no other than chronological succession, independent on each other, and without any tendency to introduce and regulate the conclusion." Again, speaking of the unities of the critics, he says of Shakspere-" His histories, being neither tragedies nor comedies, are not subject to any of their laws; nothing more is necessary to all the praise which they expect than that the changes of action be so prepared as to be understood, that the incidents be various and affecting, and the

Duke of Brittany either led to the action, or form a portion of it, or are the direct causes of an ulterior consequence. We must entreat the indulgence of our readers whilst we endeavour to establish this principle somewhat in detail.

In the whole range of the Shaksperean drama there is no opening scene which more perfectly exhibits the effect which is produced by coming at once, and without the slightest preparation, to the main business of the piece:

"Now say, Chatillon, what would France with us?"

John; and immediately afterwards we come to the formal assertion by France of the "most lawful claim" of "Arthur Plantagenet""To this fair island, and the territories;

To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine." As rapid as the lightning of which John speaks is a defiance given and returned. The ambassador is commanded to "depart in peace;" the king's mother makes an important reference to the "ambitious Constance;" and John takes up the position for which he struggles to the end,

"Our strong possession, and our right, for us." The scene of the Bastard is not an episode entirely cut off from the main action of the piece; his loss of "lands," and his "new-made honour," were necessary to attach him to the cause of John. The Bastard is the one partisan who never deserts him.

The second act brings us into the very heart of the conflict on the claim of Arthur. What a Gothic grandeur runs through the whole of these scenes! We see the men of six centuries ago, as they played the game of their personal ambition-now swearing hollow friendships, now breathing stern denunciations;—now affecting compassion for the weak and the suffering, now breaking faith with the orphan and the mother;-now "Gone to be married, gone to swear a peace;" now keeping the feast "with slaughtered men;"-now trembling at, and now braving, the denunciations of spiritual power;-and agreeing in nothing but to bend "their sharpest deeds of malice" on unoffending and peaceful citizens, unless the citizens have some "commodity" to offer which shall draw them

"To a most base and vile-concluded peace." With what skill has Shakspere, whilst he thus painted the spirit of the chivalrous times, lofty in words, but sordid in acts, given us a running commentary which interprets the whole in the sarcasms of the Bastard! But amidst all the clatter of conventional dignity which we find in the speeches of John, and Philip, and Lewis, and

Austria, the real dignity of strong natural affections rises over the pomp and circumstance of regal ambition with a force of contrast which is little less than sublime. In the second act Constance is almost too much mixed up with the dispute to let us quite feel that she is something very much higher than the "ambitious Constance." Yet, even here, how sweetly does the nature of Arthur rise up amongst these fierce broils,-conducted at the sword's point with words that are as sharp as swords,-to assert the supremacy of gentleness and moderation:

"Good my mother, peace!

I would that I were low laid in my grave;
I am not worth this coil that's made for me."

This is the key-note to the great scene of Arthur and Hubert in the fourth act. But in the mean time the maternal terror and anguish of Constance become the prominent objects; and the rival kings, the haughty prelate, the fierce knights, the yielding citizens, appear but as puppets moved by destiny to force on the most bitter sorrows of that broken-hearted mother. We have here the true characteristic of the drama as described by the philosophical critic,-" fate and will in opposition to each other." Mrs. Jameson, in her very delightful work, 'The Characteristics of Women,' has formed a most just and beautiful conception of the character of Constance :

"That which strikes us as the principal attribute of Constance is power-power of | imagination, of will, of passion, of affection, of pride: the moral energy, that faculty which is principally exercised in self-control, and gives consistency to the rest, is deficient; or rather, to speak more correctly, the extraordinary development of sensibility and imagination, which lends to the character its rich poetical colouring, leaves the other qualities comparatively subordinate. Hence it is that the whole complexion of the character, notwithstanding its amazing grandeur, is so exquisitely feminine. The weakness of the woman, who by the very consciousness of that weakness is worked up to desperation and defiance, the fluctuations of temper and the bursts of sublime passion, the terrors,

the impatience, and the tears, are all most true to feminine nature. The energy of Constance, not being based upon strength of character, rises and falls with the tide of passion. Her haughty spirit swells against resistance, and is excited into frenzy by sorrow and disappointment; while neither from her towering pride nor her strength of intellect can she borrow patience to submit, or fortitude to endure."

How exquisitely is this feminine nature exhibited when Constance affects to disbelieve

the tale of Salisbury that the kings are "gone to swear a peace;" or rather makes her words struggle with her half-belief, in very weakness and desperation!

"Thou shalt be punish'd for thus frighting me, For I am sick, and capable of fears;

through the medium of her own personal wrongs:

"Good father cardinal, cry thou, amen,

To my keen curses: for, without my wrong, There is no tongue hath power to curse him right."

Reckless of what may follow, she, who formerly exhorted Philip,

"Stay for an answer to your embassy,

Lest unadvised you stain your swords with blood,"

is now ready to encounter all the perilous chances of another war, and to exhort France to fall off from England, even upon her knee "made hard with kneeling." This would appear like the intensity of selfishness, did we not see the passion of the mother in every

fears;

A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;
A woman, naturally born to fears;

And, though thou now confess thou didst but jest

With my vex'd spirits, I cannot take a truce, But they will quake and tremble all this day."

Here is the timid helpless woman, sick even at the shadows of coming events; but, when the shadows become realities, the haughty will,

“Like a proud river peering o'er his bounds,” asserts its supremacy in little matters which are yet within its control :

"Sal.

Pardon me, madam, I may not go without you to the kings. Const. Thou mayst, thou shalt, I will not go with thee:

* here I and sorrows sit; Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it."

The pride of grief for a while triumphs over the grief itself:

"Arm, arm, you heavens, against these perjured kings!"

She casts away all fear of consequences, and defies her false friends with words that appear as irrepressible as her tears. When Pandulph arrives upon the scene, she sees the change which his mission is to work, only

ness of Constance the impotent rage, the deceiving hope-become clothed with the dignity that in ordinary cases belongs to patient suffering and reasonable expectations. Soon, however, this conflict of feeling-almost as terrible as the "hysterica passio" of Lear

is swallowed up in the mother's sense of her final bereavement :

"Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief.
Fare you well: had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do,

O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son! My life, my joy, my food, my all the world! My widow-comfort, and my sorrows' cure!"

Matchless as is the art of the poet in these scenes;-matchless as an exhibition of maternal sorrow only, apart from the whirlwind of conflicting passions that are mixed up with that sorrow;-matchless in this single point of view when compared with the

Hecuba' which antiquity has left us*, and with the 'Merope' which the imitators of the Greek drama have attempted to revive;

*In the Troades' of Euripides.