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But the fine speech of the Archbishop, beginning: Therefore doth heaven divide," is purely original, a glorious illustration of Shakespeare's superb embroidery. Another equally striking example of the poet's power of illumining and vivifying his original follows not long afterwards in the account of the conspiracy at Southampton (ii. 2). Holinshed gives no hint of the king luring the traitors to pass judgment on themselves by their merciless protest against his intention of extending pardon to the drunken soldier who had slandered him. To Shakespeare, too, belongs, with the exception of the lines referring to Scroop, the fine speech of the king, "The mercy that was quick in us of late," etc., but how closely he follows Holinshed in his final address will be evident from the following passage :

Having thus conspired the death and destruction of me, which am the head of the realm and governour of the people, it maie be no doubt but that you likewise have sworne the confusion of all that are here with me, and also the desolation of your own countrie . . . Revenge herein

touching my person though I seeke not yet for the safeguard of you, my deere friends, and for due preservation of all sorts I am, by office, to cause example to be shewed. Get you hence, therefore, ye poore miserable wretches, to the receiving of your just reward: wherein Gods majestie give you grace, of his mercie, and repentance of your heinous execution.1

God quite you in his mercy! Hear your sentence.
You have conspired against our royal person,

Join'd with an enemy proclaim'd, and from his coffers
1 Chronicles, iii. 548.

Receiv'd the golden earnest of our death;

Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,
His princes and his peers to servitude,

His subjects to oppression and contempt,
And his whole kingdom into desolation.
Touching our person seek we no revenge.
But we our kingdom's safety must so tender,
Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws
We do deliver you. Get you, therefore, hence,
Poor miserable wretches, to your death:
The taste whereof, God, of his mercy, give you
Patience to endure, and true repentance
Of all your dear offences.

(ii. 2.)

To the fourth scene of this Act there is nothing exactly corresponding in Holinshed, but it dramatizes Henry's despatch to Charles VI and the account of the council which, Holinshed tells us, was called by the Dauphin. The noble speech of Henry cheering his men up the breach at Harfleur, which opens the third Act, is wholly Shakespeare's, evolved simply from the words: "And dailie was the toune assaulted"; nor is there anything which corresponds to his appeal to the citizens of Harfleur, which opens the third scene. In the fifth scene of the third Act we have an illustration of the way in which Shakespeare sometimes adopts the very language of Holinshed. It is in Henry's speech to Mountjoy.

Turn thee back

And tell thy king I do not seek him now.

Go bid thy master well advise himself.

If we may pass, we will; if we be hinder'd,

We shall your tawny ground with your red blood
Discolour.

Holinshed writes:

Mine intent is to doo as it pleaseth God. I will not seeke your master at this time, but if he, or his, seeke me I will meet with them, God willing. If anie of your nation attempt once to stop me in my journie towards Calis, at their jeopardie be it; and yet wish I not anie of you so unadvised, as to be the occasion that I dye your tawnie ground with your red bloud.1

The whole of the fourth Act, including the Chorus, follows Holinshed closely, but some of the most impressive passages have been interpolated by Shakespeare, such as the scene on the eve of the battle between the King, Bates, Court and Williams, evolved from this single sentence in Holinshed: "It is said that as he heard one of his host utter his wish to another thus: I would to God there were with us now so manie good soldiers as are at this houre within England! the king answered, I would not wish a man more than I have." The king's soliloquy, one of the noblest passages even in Shakespeare, is, as has been already noted, purely original; the pathetic prayer of the king before the battle is also original, but may have been suggested to the poet by the incident he refers to, namely, the transference of King Richard's body from Langley to Westminster and its honourable burial there, recorded by Holinshed in another place.3 The rest of the drama closely follows the Chronicles, with the exceptions already noticed. 1 Chronicles, vol. iii. p. 552. 2 Ibid., p. 553.

3 Ibid., p. 543.

Here, then, Shakespeare's debt is a considerable one, but it extends no further than framework, outline and suggestion. Here, as elsewhere, the informing soul is his own, his own the splendid embroidery: his own the wit, the wisdom, the glory.

It would be tedious to follow him, as Mr. Boswell-Stone has duly and fully done, through the three parts of Henry VI. Such a review would again illustrate with what scrupulous care he had studied Holinshed, even to the refinement of comparing him with Hall, whom he sometimes prefers. One point, however, it may be well to notice. Many of Shakespeare's admirers, notably Mr. Swinburne, have expressed surprise and disgust at the revolting picture he presents of Joan of Arc. But he was simply reproducing what he found in Holinshed,' who was, of course, as ignorant as himself of the turns which have since been given to the legend.

We now come to Richard III. If Shakespeare owes to Holinshed the prototype of his ideal man, he also owed to him the prototype of that character who stands with Aaron, Edmund and Iago at the head of his villains. Lessing has pointed out how, in making Richard III. the protagonist of a tragedy, Shakespeare has violated that Aristotelian canon which he has elsewhere, consciously or instinctively, observed. But he took the character exactly as he found it in the Chron1 Chronicles, vol. iii. p. 604.

icles. As by careful preliminary study he realized Holinshed's hero, so by equally careful preliminary study he realized Holinshed's devil. In his account of Richard, Holinshed incorporates the accounts given of him by More and Hall, and out of a comparative study of these accounts Shakespeare constructed his monster.

...

Little of stature, ill-featured of limmes, crooke backed, his left shoulder higher than his right, hard-favoured of visage . . . malicious, wrathfull, envious, and from afore his birth ever froward... He came into the world with his feet forward . . . and, as the fame runneth, not untoothed... With large gifts he gat him unsteadfast friendship, for which he was faine to pill and spoile in other places, and got him steadfast hatred. He was close and secret, a deepe dissembler, lowlie of countenance, arrogant of heart, outwardlie companiable where he inwardly hated, not letting to kisse whom he meant to kill... Friend and foe was much what indifferent where his advantage grew ... his face was small but his countenance cruell, that, at first aspect, a man would judge it to savour and smell of malice, fraud and deceit... When he stood musing he would bite and chaw busilie his nether lip: . . . He was of a readie, pregnant, quicke wit.

So runs Holinshed's account, compiled from More and Hall.

If we compare this with Shakespeare's picture of Richard in the sixth scene of the fifth Act of 3 Henry VI.; with the soliloquies placed in his mouth in Richard III., Act i. scene 1 and scene 2; with the scenes with Clarence, Anne, and with Elizabeth and the Grey faction in the first Act; with the scenes with the Princes, with Hastings on the Tower walls, and in Baynard's Castle in