KING RICHARD THE THIRD.

THERE are two manuscript copies of the Latin play in the British Museum, both among the Harleian manuscripts, namely, No. 2412 and 6926. The author is said in one of them to be Henry Lacy, of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the date 1586. It has little or no resemblance to Shakespeare's play. The directions for playing at the end of one of the copies might be found to contain hints respecting the representations at the theatres. "Actio" is here used for "Acts," and "Actus" for "Scenes."

Mr. Malone speaks of a poem in a very rare poetical miscellany in his possession, entitled, "Licia, or Poems of Love, &c.," with this title, "The Rising to the Crown of Richard the Third, written by himself," meaning in his own character. It is a poem of three hundred verses in six-line stanzas. Mr. Caldecott has also a copy of this very rare anonymous volume. I know not that these poems have ever been traced to their authors; but there can be no doubt that the Licia, or at least the poem on the reign of Richard the Third, is the work of the elder Giles Fletcher, of that eminently poetical family. The proof is this:-In the First Piscatory Eclogue of his son Phineas Fletcher, he is the person represented by Thelgon. There is such an exact correspondency between the facts of Dr. Giles Fletcher's life, as collected from other sources of information, with the facts related of himself by Thelgon, that there can be no

doubt about the matter. Thelgon there speaks of poems written by himself, thus:

I

sang sad Telesutha's frustrate plaint,

And rustic Daphne's wrong, and Magia's vain restraint.

10.

And then appeared young Myrtillus, repining

At general contempt of shepherd's life;

And raised my rime to sing of Richard's climbing,
And taught old Chame to end the old-bred strife,
Mythicus claim to Nicias resigning.

The while his goodly nymph with song delighted

My note with choicest flowers and garlands sweet requited.

"Richard's Climbing" must be the "Rising to the Throne" appended to Licia. The dedication to the Lady Molineux, wife of Sir Richard Molineux, is dated September 4, 1593, which fixes the date of the publication of this poem on Richard the Third. The author was evidently a scholar of one of the Universities, and probably of Cambridge, to which Dr. Giles Fletcher belonged. He was the father of Phineas and the younger Giles, both eminent poetical names, and uncle to Fletcher the dramatic poet.

Shakespeare's living about the time when he wrote this play within the sight of Crosby Place may perhaps have led to the mention of it, as before suggested. It was in his time the residence of the wealthy citizen, Sir John Spencer, who kept his mayoralty in it in 1594-5. We have no proof of the existence of the play before October 1597, when it was entered for publication on the books of the Stationers' Company.

I. 1. GLOSter.

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this SUN of York.

In the old copies it is son, and few changes could be less judicious. The intention of the dramatist was to connect this with the preceding play, and to shew at once that the

son of that York with whom the audience had been familiar was now on a prosperous throne.

Of course the word son would also be regarded as appropriate to the metaphor. This may not have been in the best taste, but it suited the taste of the audience. There is a similar instance in Hamlet, and another in the third scene of this very act,

GLOSTER.-Our aiery buildeth in the cedar's top,

And dallies with the wind and scorns the sun.

Q. MARGARET.-And turns the sun to shade ;-alas! alas!
Witness my son now in the shade of death,

Whose bright-outshining beams thy cloudy wrath
Hath in eternal darkness folded up.

Your aiery buildeth in our aiery's nest.

This long soliloquy is a kind of prologue to the ensuing tragedy; and it seems as if Shakespeare had formed the intention of making Richard a theatrical character, without being very solicitous whether he caught the real features of the real Richard. Without pretending to enter into an examination of the evidence respecting the character and conduct of this worst of the princes of the house of York, it is manifest that when the Poet introduces him as saying,

I am determined to prove a villain,

the audience must have been prepossessed, and the subsequent events must be made to correspond with the image the Poet had thus at the outset presented before them. A man who, owing to personal defects, has no pleasure in the gentle arts of peace, with a capacity for business and enterprise, able and eloquent, with no limits to his ambition, wading through slaughter to a throne, uneasy there, and dying at last in battle, is a fine character for a dramatic writer, preparing not a tragedy but a history.

I. 1. CLARENCE.

But as I can learn

He hearkens after prophecies and dreams;
And from the cross-row plucks the letter G ;
And says, a wizard told him, that "by G
His issue disinherited should be."

Edward had the reputation of being much addicted to this kind of prognostication. Thus in that remarkable contemporary poem, entitled by its author The most pleasant Song of Lady Bessy, Lady Bessy being the Lady Elizabeth of this play, eldest daughter of King Edward, speaking of her father says,

King Edward, that was my father dear,

On whose estate God have mercy,

In Westminster as he did stand

On a certain day in a study,

A Book of Reason he had in his hand,
And so sore his study he did apply
That his tender tears fell on the ground,

All men might see that stood him by :

She represents him as having afterwards in private given her the book,

It appears that other of the children of Richard Duke of York had the same propensity. For Mr. Heywood, to whom we are indebted for having first printed this very curious poem, which has an historical value, containing one or two facts peculiar to itself, and having every claim to be

received as authentic, observes in a note that Margaret Duchess of Burgundy dealt, like her mother, in the forbidden art.

I. 1. GLOSter.

That good man of worship

Anthony Woodevile.

This is said in the same spirit in which just before Gloster had spoken of the Queen as "My Lady Grey, his wife;" "man of worship" being a phrase used of persons of the middle class of gentry. Woodvile was at that time Earl Rivers and a knight of the garter.

In judging of the propriety of the Poet having represented the princes of the house of Plantagenet speaking thus of the Woodviles, we should consider whether there is historical evidence that they were accustomed to do so. Perhaps there is. If not, it ought to be remembered that, whatever his father may have been, the mother of Woodvile was of the house of Luxemburgh, Jaquetta, Duchess of Bedford.

I. 2. ANNE.

Vouchsafe, diffused infection of a man.

This is one of the passages on which nothing that can be regarded as at all satisfactory has been said by the commentators; it is therefore of some importance to observe that in the first folio the line stands thus:

Vouchsafe (defus'd infection of man)

which is not remarked in the notes. "Thou, that diffusest infection wherever thou mixest with thy kind," is perhaps as good an explanation as has yet been offered.

VOL. II.

I. 3. GREY.

Here come the lords of Buckingham and STANLEY.

G