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III. 7. BUCKINGHAM.

Being the right idea of your father.

Such slight changes as this are perhaps unavoidable when writings two hundred and fifty years old come to be delivered from a modern press; but surely something must be allowed to be lost when we see how the line stands in the original copies.

Being the right Idea of your Father.

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The word "idea appears to have been not fully naturalized. It is here equivalent to image.

IV. 2. KING RICHARD.

Hath he so long held out with me untir'd,

And stops he now for breath?

Here the play begins to be grandly instructive. What a lesson to the young not to lend themselves to any purposes of evil in any wily companion, when we see Buckingham shrinking from the temptation presented to him to commit the most odious of all crimes, and immediately falling under the suspicion of him whom he had served, and about to be cast off and lose rank, fortune, life, everything! It is a lesson also to be careful of incurring the inferior risk of evil by a too close union with a party, religious or political, whose extravagancies and follies must be adopted by the simple and the honest-minded, or he must be content to share in an inferior degree the fate of Buckingham.

We see also a few lines farther the dreadful state into which the chief actor had also brought himself—

Uncertain way of gain! But I am in

So far in blood, that sin will pluck on sin :

and we see him on the facilis descensus, till it ends with "Despair and die."

Whatever evils may attend the theatres, and they are

many, it cannot in justice be denied or doubted, that exhibitions such as these, of the dreadful consequences which attend deviations from the right path, have in some instances occurred at the proper moment, and have saved some mind hesitating between two courses; and that generally, without the effects being obvious, they have aided in saving society from much that would have been evil.

IV. 3. K. RICHARD.

His daughter meanly have I match'd in marriage.

That is Clarence's daughter to Sir Richard Pole; but it should be observed that the marriage was not so mean as the words would lead us to suppose, and as is I believe generally supposed by many persons who do not take their ideas of history from Shakespeare only. The mother of Sir Richard Pole was half-sister to Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of King Henry the Seventh, namely one of the Saint Johns, and her mother a Beauchamp. It has not been sufficiently adverted to how both King Henry the Seventh and King Henry the Eighth advanced those who were related to them on the Lancastrian side. Many of the dignities created in those reigns were in favour of persons who stood in various degrees of demi-sang consanguinity to the king. I do not know whether Shakespeare is right in representing the marriage of the daughter and heir of Clarence with Sir Richard Pole as having taken place during the reign of Richard; but it was in fact a union of the houses of York and Lancaster, similar to that in the marriage of Richmond and the lady Elizabeth, and of Lord Welles, a near kinsman of Richmond, with another daughter of King Edward the Fourth; and, if brought about in the reign of Henry the Seventh, probably a stroke of the same policy which gave to the new Lancastrian sovereign the heiress of the rival house. The putting this

lady to death in her old age is the foulest of the many foul stains on the latter years of the reign of Henry the Eighth.

Shakespeare's lines are remembered; and this line has I have no doubt contributed much to keep out of sight the real quality and condition of the father of Cardinal Pole, whose reputation was European, and who was one of the most illustrious characters of the age, splendid in birth and personal accomplishments, as he was eminent for virtue, wisdom, and learning.

IV. 4. Q. MARGARET.

Here in these confines slily have I lurked,
To watch the waning of mine enemies.

There is, I believe, no historical evidence, and the taste might be questioned which led to the introduction of Queen Margaret in this play. Yet there is something striking in a scene in which three illustrious ladies meet together, each of whom has such a tale to tell of husbands, children, brothers, killed in York and Lancaster's long jars. In the hands of very skilful actors the scene might be made effective. We have no direction for "old Queen Margaret," as she is styled in the old copies, speaking "aside,” but it is plain that her three first speeches are uttered aside, nor does she join the others till they sit upon the ground. Shakespeare was aware of the effect of this. Constance assumes this attitude; and in King Richard the Second we have

For heaven's sake let us sit upon the ground.

I know not what could induce the modern editors to substitute "match" for "match't" the reading of the old copies, in the following lines, and to punctuate them as they have done.

Thy Edward he is dead, that killed my Edward;

Thy other Edward dead, to quit my Edward;

Young York he is but boot, because both they
Match'd not the high perfection of my loss.

It is but a single letter that is withdrawn, but the effect upon the passage is considerable.

The meaning of a clause which soon follows would be more clear were a different punctuation adopted.

Richard yet lives, hell's black intelligencer;

Only reserved, their factor to buy souls

And send them thither.

Richard is first the intelligencer for the fiends below, a character odious and infamous. He is reserved, not yet taken to the place to which Hastings, Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan are gone; and reserved only for this purpose, that he may act for the fiends, (as a factor for a merchant,) buy souls, corrupt those who but for him would be fit for another place, and send them thither.

IV. 4. STANLEY.

Unless for that, my liege, I cannot guess.

These words convey no idea. They are in fact a broken sentence, Richard interrupting him—

Unless for that, my liege, I cannot guess

The name of the character ought to be read here, as before, Derby, and as it is in the scene soon succeeding where the same person visits Richmond in the night.

V. 3. STANLEY (Derby).

Lest being seen, thy brother, tender George

Be executed in his father's sight.

George Stanley was not brother to Richmond, though they might call the same person father. He was son of old Stanley, the Earl of Derby of this play, by a former wife. The Earl had, subsequently to the death of his first wife,

married the Countess of Richmond, mother to the Earl of Richmond of this play.

V. 3.

The ghost of Prince Edward rises.

This mode of making dreams visible was common at the theatres in the time of Shakespeare. Thus in Thomas Heywood's play of The Troubles of Queen Elizabeth, 1608, angels present to her a Bible, which the audience understand to be a dream.

The striking expression "Despair and die" is thus introduced in a sermon preached at Paul's Cross, March 29, 1612, by Thomas Adams, published with the title, The Gallant's Burden :-" At last, when presumption hath left the stage, desperation begins to knit up all with a direful catastrophe, the pulses beating slowly, the head akeing vehemently, body and soul refusing all proffered comfort, then the devil casts the whole load on them, that at once they may despair and die; then that which was lighter than cork or feathers becomes heavier than lead and earth.” This was the eloquence of the English pulpit in the time of Shakespeare.

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