Part 14 (1/2)

CHAPTER VI SHAKESPEARE'S MEN OF ACTION (_concluded_): KING HENRY VI AND RICHARD III

I think it hardly necessary to extend this review of Shakespeare's historical plays by subjecting the Three Parts of ”King Henry VI” and ”Richard III” to a detailed and minute criticism Yet if I passed them over without ainst my theory, or at least that I had so them than their relative uniu tedious I shall deal with thee doubted whether Shakespeare had had anything to do with the ”First Part of Henry VI,” but his fellow-actors, He Henry VI” in the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, and our latest criticisement Mr Swinburne writes: ”The last battle of Talbot seems to me as undeniably the master's work as the scene in the Tearet by Suffolk”; and it would be easy to prove thatMortimer says is just as certainly Shakespeare's work as any of the passages referred to by Mr Swinburne

Like hts, Shakespeare seeht or thirty years of age his grasp of character was so uncertain, his style so little formed, so apt to waver from blank verse to rhyme, that it is difficult to determine exactly what he did write We may take it, I think, as certain that he wrote more than ho have his mature work in mind are inclined to ascribe to hi Henry VI” is a poetic revision of the old play entitled ”The First Part of the Contention betwixt the Two Faenerally agreed that Shakespeare's hand can be traced in the old drama, and with especial certainty in the comic scenes wherein Cade and his followers play the chief parts Notwithstanding this, the revision was h Half the lines in the ”Second Part of Henry VI” are new, and by far the greater nurounds

But soument does not stand in need of corroboration, I prefer to assu out that whoever revised ”The Contention” did it, in the main, as we should have expected our youthful Shakespeare to do it For exae torments for offenders,” he answers in the old play:

”Why, 'tis well known that whilst I was Protector, Pitie was all the fault that was in entle reviser adds to this:

”For I should melt at an offender's tears, And loords were ransoreat deal to the part of the weak King with the evident object of ives Henry, too, his sweetest phrases, and when heGloster's case ”with sad unhelpful tears” we catch the very cadence of Shakespeare's voice But he does not confine his ee: the sorrows of the lovers interest him as their affection interested him in the ”First Part of Henry VI,” and the fareords of Queen Margaret to Suffolk are especially characteristic of our gentle poet:

”Oh, go not yet; even thus two friends condemned Embrace and kiss and take ten thousand leaves, Leather a hundred times to part than die

Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee”

This re with Rohout the play Henry is the poet's favourite, and in the gentle King's lament for Gloster's death we find a peculiarity of Shakespeare's art It was a part of the cunning of his exquisite sensibility to invent a nehenever he was deeplyitself aptly in a novel epithet or iiven, such as ”The multitudinous seas incarnadine”; and so we find here ”paly lips” The passage is:

”Fain would I go to chafe his paly lips With twenty thousand kisses and to drain Upon his face an ocean of salt tears, To tell er feel his hand unfeeling”

It must be noticed, too, that in this ”Second Part” the reviser begins to show hi more than the sweet lyric poet He transposes scenes in order to intensify the interest, and where ene theenerous aderms of that dramatic talent which was so soon to bear such rowth in dramatic power and humour could be found than the way he revises the scenes with Cade It is very probable, as I have said, that the first sketch was his; when one of Cade's followers declares that Cade's ”breath stinks,” we are reminded that Coriolanus spoke in the sah it is his oork, Shakespeare evidently takes it up again with the keenest interest, for he adds inimitable touches For instance, in the first scene, where the two rebels, George Bevis and John Holland, talk of Cade's rising and his intention to set a ”new nap upon the coe! virtue is not regarded in handicraftsmen”--

an addition, and may be compared with Falstaff's:

”there is no virtue extant”

John answers:

”The nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons,”

which is in the first sketch

But George's reply--

”Nay, ood workmen”--

is only to be found in the revised version The heightened huarded in handicraftsmen,”

assures us that the reviser was Shakespeare

What is true of the ”Second Part” is true in theHenry VI” Shakespeare's revisions are chiefly the revisions of a lyric poet, and he scatters his eard for character In the Third Part, as in the Second, however, he transposes scenes, gives deeper life to the marionettes, and in various ways quickens the dra John” in some respects and a si John” we have the sharply contrasted figures of the bastard and Arthur, so in this ”Third Part” there are two contrasted characters, Richard Duke of Gloster and King Henry VI, the one a wild beast whose life is action, and who knows neither fear, love, pity, nor touch of any scruple; the other, a saint-like King whose worst fault is gentle weakness In ”The True Tragedie of Richard,” the old play on which this ”Third Part” was founded, the character of Richard is powerfully sketched, even though the hunity Shakespeare takes this character frohtly Indeed, thein his Richard is to be found in the old play:

”I had no father, I am like no father, I have no brother, I areybeards call divine, Be resident in men like one another, And not in y of this outburst proclaims its author, Marlowe

[Footnote: Mr Swinburne was the first, I believe, to attribute this passage to Marlowe; he praises the verses, too, as they deserve; but as I had written the above before reading his work, I let it stand]

Shakespeare copies it word for word, only oh he alters the speeches of Richard and i more; he adds no new quality; his Richard is the Richard of ”The True Tragedie” But King Henry arded as Shakespeare's creation In the old play the outlines of Henry's character are so feebly, faintly sketched that he is scarcely recognizable, but with two or three touches Shakespeareis happier in prison than in his palace; this is how he speaks to his keeper, the Lieutenant of the Tower: