to escape from his prison, as if the assassin, as some have represented, rode with him in the dim twilight by the side of a cliff that overhung the sea, and suddenly hurled the victim from his horse into the engulphing wave;--or as if the king tempted him to descend from his prison at Rouen at the midnight hour, and, instead of giving him freedom, stifled his prayers for pity in the waters of the Seine. It is thus that we know the anger of "the distempered lords" is a just anger, when, finding Arthur's body, they kneel before that "ruin of sweet life," and vow to it the "worship of revenge." The short scene between Salisbury, Pembroke, the Bastard, and Hubert, which immediately succeeds, is as spirited and characteristic as anything in the play. Here we see "the invincible knights of old," in their most elevated character-fiery, implacable, arrogant, but still drawing their swords in the cause of right, when that cause was intelligible and undoubted. The character of Faulconbridge here rises far above what we might have expected from the animal courage, and the exuberant spirits of the Faulconbridge of the former Acts. The courage indeed here, beyond all doubt :

"Thou wert better gall the devil, Salisbury:

If thou but frown on me, or stir thy foot,

Or teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame,
I'll strike thee dead."

But we were scarcely prepared for the rush of tenderness and humanity that accompany the courage, as in the speech to Hubert :

"If thou didst but consent

To this most cruel act, do but despair,

And, if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread
That ever spider twisted from her womb

Will serve to strangle thee; a rush will be

A beam to hang thee on; or wouldst thou drown thyself,

Put but a little water in a spoon,

And it shall be, as all the ocean,
Enough to stifle such a villain up."

It is this instinctive justice in Faulconbridge,-this readiness to uplift the strong hand in what he thinks a just quarrel,—this abandonment of consequences in the expression of his opinions,-that commands our sympathies for him whenever he appears upon the scene. The motives upon which he acts are entirely the antagonist motives by which John is moved. We have, indeed, in Shakspere none of the essay-writing contrasts of smaller authors. We have 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 Cœur de Lion's throne, and he who hath "a trick of Cœur 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 hest, 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 threatener, 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 shew 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'à 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 England is triumphaut; "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 between the death of Arthur and the death of John is annihilated. Causes and consequences, separated 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 dependance which even the philosophical 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 shew a consistency of progress. In the chroniclers we have manifold changes of fortune in the life of John after Arthur of Britanny has fallen. In Shakspere Arthur of Britanny is at once revenged. The heart-broken 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!

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 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 154 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 new character. We have indicated these alterations in our foot-notes. The text is, upon the whole, remarkably pure, and presents few difficulties.

Whether this play were written just anterior to the period of its publication, or some three or four years before, we have no distinct evidence. In the last edition of Malone's Shakspere, in his essay on the chronological order of Shakspere's plays, he gives it the date of 1593. In former editions of the same essay, he considered it to be written in 1597. For neither of these conjectural dates does he offer any argument or authority. George Chalmers would fix it in 1596, because the play itself has some dozen lines upon Irish affairs; and Irish affairs much occupied the nation in 1596! This appears to us a somewhat absurd refinement upon the intention of the author; for as the fall of Richard was, in some measure, occasioned by his absence in Ireland, it certainly does appear to us that some mention of Ireland was called for in this play, without any allusion being intended to the period of 1595, "when Tir Owen took the Queen's fort at Blackwater.”

Mr. Grant White holds that the speech of the Abbot, after the deposition scene (page 133),-" A woeful pageant have we here beheld,"-appearing in the quartos of 1597 and 1598, implies that the deposition scene had been previously written though not there printed; for if the Abbot had not witnessed the deposition, he had not " beheld " a "woeful pageant." In that case the line must have been allowed to stand by mistake.

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