The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume Ii Part 18

There is scarcely anything in Shakspeare in its degree, more admirably drawn than York's character;--his religious loyalty struggling with a deep grief and indignation at the king's follies; his adherence to his word and faith, once given in spite of all, even the most natural, feelings. You see in him the weakness of old age, and the overwhelmingness of circ.u.mstances, for a time surmounting his sense of duty,--the junction of both exhibited in his boldness in words and feebleness in immediate act; and then again his effort to retrieve himself in abstract loyalty, even at the heavy price of the loss of his son. This species of accidental and advent.i.tious weakness is brought into parallel with Richard's continually increasing energy of thought, and as constantly diminishing power of acting;--and thus it is Richard that breathes a harmony and a relation into all the characters of the play.

'Ib.' sc. 2.

'Queen'. To please the king I did; to please myself I cannot do it; yet I know no cause Why I should welcome such a guest as grief, Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest As my sweet Richard: yet again, methinks, Some unborn sorrow, ripe in sorrow's womb, Is coming toward me; and my inward soul With nothing trembles: at something it grieves, More than with parting from my lord the king.

It is clear that Shakspeare never meant to represent Richard as a vulgar debauchee, but a man with a wantonness of spirit in external show, a feminine _friendism_, an intensity of woman-like love of those immediately about him, and a mistaking of the delight of being loved by him for a love of him. And mark in this scene Shakspeare's gentleness in touching the tender superst.i.tions, the 'terrae incognitae' of presentiments, in the human mind; and how sharp a line of distinction he commonly draws between these obscure forecastings of general experience in each individual, and the vulgar errors of mere tradition. Indeed, it may be taken once for all as the truth, that Shakspeare, in the absolute universality of his genius, always reverences whatever arises out of our moral nature; he never profanes his muse with a contemptuous reasoning away of the genuine and general, however unaccountable, feelings of mankind.

The amiable part of Richard's character is brought full upon us by his queen's few words--

... so sweet a guest As my sweet Richard;--

and Shakspeare has carefully shown in him an intense love of his country, well-knowing how that feeling would, in a pure historic drama, redeem him in the hearts of the audience. Yet even in this love there is something feminine and personal:--

Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand, --As a long parted mother with her child Plays fondly with her tears, and smiles in meeting; So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth, And do thee favour with my royal hands.

With this is combined a constant overflow of emotions from a total incapability of controlling them, and thence a waste of that energy, which should have been reserved for actions, in the pa.s.sion and effort of mere resolves and menaces. The consequence is moral exhaustion, and rapid alternations of unmanly despair and ungrounded hope,--every feeling being abandoned for its direct opposite upon the pressure of external accident. And yet when Richard's inward weakness appears to seek refuge in his despair, and his exhaustion counterfeits repose, the old habit of kingliness, the effect of flatterers from his infancy, is ever and anon producing in him a sort of wordy courage which only serves to betray more clearly his internal impotence. The second and third scenes of the third act combine and ill.u.s.trate all this:--

'Aumerle'. He means, my lord, that we are too remiss; Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security, Grows strong and great, in substance, and in friends.

'K. Rich'. Discomfortable cousin! know'st thou not, That when the searching eye of heaven is hid Behind the globe, and lights the lower world, Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen, In murders and in outrage, b.l.o.o.d.y here; But when, from under this terrestrial ball, He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines, And darts his light through every guilty hole, Then murders, treasons, and detested sins, The cloke of night being pluckt from off their backs, Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves?

So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke, &c. ...

'Aumerle'. Where is the Duke my father with his power?

'K. Rich'. No matter where; of comfort no man speak: Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs, Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth, &c.

'Aumerle'. My father hath a power, enquire of him; And learn to make a body of a limb.

'K. Rich'. Thou chid'st me well: proud Bolingbroke, I come To change blows with thee for our day of doom.

This ague-fit of fear is over-blown; An easy task it is to win our own.

'Scroop'. Your uncle York hath join'd with Bolingbroke.--

'K. Rich'. Thou hast said enough, Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth Of that sweet way I was in to despair!

What say you now? what comfort have we now?

By heaven, I'll hate him everlastingly, That bids me be of comfort any more. ...

Act iii. sc. 3. Bolingbroke's speech:--

n.o.ble lord, Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle, &c.

Observe the fine struggle of a haughty sense of power and ambition in Bolingbroke with the necessity for dissimulation.

'Ib.' sc. 4. See here the skill and judgment of our poet in giving reality and individual life, by the introduction of accidents in his historic plays, and thereby making them dramas, and not histories. How beautiful an islet of repose--a melancholy repose, indeed--is this scene with the Gardener and his Servant. And how truly affecting and realizing is the incident of the very horse Barbary, in the scene with the Groom in the last act!--

'Groom'. I was a poor groom of thy stable, King, When thou wert King; who, travelling towards York, With much ado, at length have gotten leave To look upon my sometime master's face.

O, how it yearn'd my heart, when I beheld, In London streets, that coronation day, When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary!

That horse, that thou so often hast bestrid; That horse, that I so carefully have dress'd!

'K. Rich'. Rode he on Barbary?

Bolingbroke's character, in general, is an instance how Shakspeare makes one play introductory to another; for it is evidently a preparation for Henry IV., as Gloster in the third part of Henry VI. is for Richard III.

I would once more remark upon the exalted idea of the only true loyalty developed in this n.o.ble and impressive play. We have neither the rants of Beaumont and Fletcher, nor the sneers of Ma.s.singer;--the vast importance of the personal character of the sovereign is distinctly enounced, whilst, at the same time, the genuine sanct.i.ty which surrounds him is attributed to, and grounded on, the position in which he stands as the convergence and exponent of the life and power of the state.

The great end of the body politic appears to be to humanize, and a.s.sist in the progressiveness of, the animal man;--but the problem is so complicated with contingencies as to render it nearly impossible to lay down rules for the formation of a state. And should we be able to form a system of government, which should so balance its different powers as to form a check upon each, and so continually remedy and correct itself, it would, nevertheless, defeat its own aim;--for man is destined to be guided by higher principles, by universal views, which can never be fulfilled in this state of existence,--by a spirit of progressiveness which can never be accomplished, for then it would cease to be. Plato's Republic is like Bunyan's Town of Man-Soul,--a description of an individual, all of whose faculties are in their proper subordination and inter-dependence; and this it is a.s.sumed may be the prototype of the state as one great individual. But there is this sophism in it, that it is forgotten that the human faculties, indeed, are parts and not separate things; but that you could never get chiefs who were wholly reason, ministers who were wholly understanding, soldiers all wrath, labourers all concupiscence, and so on through the rest. Each of these partakes of, and interferes with, all the others.

HENRY IV. PART I.

Act I. sc. 1. King Henry's speech:

No more the thirsty entrance of this soil Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood.

A most obscure pa.s.sage: but I think Theobalds' interpretation right, namely, that 'thirsty entrance' means the dry penetrability, or bibulous drought, of the soil. The obscurity of this pa.s.sage is of the Shakspearian sort.

'Ib.' sc. 2. In this, the first introduction of Falstaff, observe the consciousness and the intentionality of his wit, so that when it does not flow of its own accord, its absence is felt, and an effort visibly made to recall it. Note also throughout how Falstaff's pride is gratified in the power of influencing a prince of the blood, the heir apparent, by means of it. Hence his dislike to Prince John of Lancaster, and his mortification when he finds his wit fail on him:--

'P. John.' Fare you well, Falstaff: I, in my condition, Shall better speak of you than you deserve.

'Fal.' I would you had but the wit; 'twere better than your dukedom.--Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me;--nor a man cannot make him laugh.