The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story Part 8

Very similar inferences are to be drawn from a study of Shakespeare's "King Richard II.," which in some respects is his most important historical creation. Coleridge says: "I know of no character drawn by our great poet with such unequalled skill as that of Richard II." Such praise is extravagant; but it would have been true to say that up to 1593 or 1594, when Shakespeare wrote "King Richard II.," he had given us no character so complex and so interesting as this Richard. Coleridge overpraised the character-drawing probably because the study of Richard's weakness and irresolution, and the pathos resulting from such helplessness, must have seemed very like an a.n.a.lysis of his own nature.

Let us now examine "Richard II.," and see what light it casts on Shakespeare's qualities. There was an old play of the same t.i.tle, a play which is now lost, but we can form some idea of what it was like from the description in Forman's Diary. Like most of the old history-plays it ranged over twenty years of Richard's reign, whereas Shakespeare's tragedy is confined to the last year of Richard's life. It is probable that the old play presented King Richard as more wicked and more deceitful than Shakespeare imagines him. We know that in the "Confessio Amantis," Gower, the poet, cast off his allegiance to Richard: for he cancelled the dedication of the poem to Richard, and dedicated it instead to Henry. William Langland, too, the author of the "Vision of Piers Plowman," turned from Richard at the last, and used his deposition as a warning to ill-advised youth. It may be a.s.sumed, then, that tradition pictured Richard as a vile creature in whom weakness nourished crime. Shakespeare took his story partly from Holinshed's narrative, and partly either from the old play or from the traditional view of Richard's character. When he began to write the play he evidently intended to portray Richard as even more detestable than history and tradition had presented him. In Holinshed Richard is not accused of the murder of Gloster, whereas Shakespeare directly charges him with it, or rather makes Gaunt do so, and the accusation is not denied, much less disproved. At the close of the first act we are astonished by the revelation of Richard's devilish heartlessness. The King hearing that his uncle, John of Gaunt, is "grievous sick," cries out:

"Now put it, G.o.d, in his physician's mind, To help him to his grave immediately!

The lining of his coffers shall make coats To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars.

Come, gentlemen, let's all go visit him: Pray G.o.d we may make haste and come too late."

This mixture of greed and cold cruelty decked out with blasphemous phrase is viler, I think, than anything attributed by Shakespeare to the worst of his villains. But surely some hint of Richard's incredible vileness should have come earlier in the play, should have preceded at least his banishment of Bolingbroke, if Shakespeare had really meant to present him to us in this light.

In the first scene of the second act, when Gaunt reproves him, Richard turns on him in a rage, threatening. In the very same scene York reproves Richard for seizing Gaunt's money and land, and Richard retorts:

"Think what you will: we seize into our hands His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands."

But when York blames him to his face and predicts that evil will befall him and leaves him, Richard in spite of this at once creates:

"Our uncle York, Lord Governor of England; For he is just, and always loved us well."

This Richard of Shakespeare is so far, I submit, almost incomprehensible. When reproved by Gaunt and warned, Richard rages and threatens; when blamed by York much more severely, Richard rewards York: the two scenes contradict each other. Moreover, though his callous selfishness, greed and cruelty are apparently established, in the very next scene of this act our sympathy with Richard is called forth by the praise his queen gives him. She says:

"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."

And from this scene to the end of the play Shakespeare enlists all our sympathy for Richard. Now, what is the reason of this right-about-face on the part of the poet?

It appears to me that Shakespeare began the play intending to present the vile and cruel Richard of tradition. But midway in the play he saw that there was no emotion, no pathos, to be got out of the traditional view. If Richard were a vile, scheming, heartless murderer, the loss of his crown and life would merely satisfy our sense of justice, but this outcome did not satisfy Shakespeare's desire for emotion, and particularly his desire for pathos, [Footnote: In the last scene of the last act of "Lear," Albany says: "This judgement of the heavens, that makes us tremble Touches us not with pity."]

and accordingly he veers round, says nothing more of Richard's vileness, lays stress upon his weakness and sufferings, discovers, too, all manner of amiable qualities in him, and so draws pity from us for his dethronement and murder.

The curious thing is that while Shakespeare is depicting Richard's heartlessness, he does his work badly; the traits, as I have shown, are crudely extravagant and even contradictory; but when he paints Richard's gentleness and amiability, he works like a master, every touch is infallible: he is painting himself.

It was natural for Shakespeare to sympathize deeply with Richard; he was still young when he wrote the play, young enough to remember vividly how he himself had been led astray by loose companions, and this formed a bond between them. At this time of his life this was Shakespeare's favourite subject: he treated it again in "Henry IV.," which is at once the epilogue to "Richard II." and a companion picture to it; for the theme of both plays is the same--youth yielding to unworthy companions--though the treatment in the earlier play is incomparably feebler than it became in "King Henry IV." Bushy, Bagot, and Green, the favourites of Richard, are not painted as Shakespeare afterwards painted Falstaff and his followers. But partly because he had not yet attained to such objective treatment of character, Shakespeare identified himself peculiarly with Richard; and his painting of Richard is more intimate, more subtle, more self-revealing and pathetic than anything in "Henry IV."

As I have already said, from the time when Richard appoints York as Regent, and leaves England, Shakespeare begins to think of himself as Richard, and from this moment to the end no one can help sympathizing with the unhappy King. At this point, too, the character-drawing becomes, of a sudden, excellent. When Richard lands in England, he is given speech after speech, and all he says and does afterwards throws light, it seems to me, on Shakespeare's own nature. Let us mark each trait First of all Richard is intensely, frankly emotional: he "weeps for joy" to be in England again; "weeping, smiling," he greets the earth of England, and is full of hope. "The thief, the traitor," Bolingbroke, will not dare to face the light of the sun; for "every man that Bolingbroke has in his pay," he cries exultantly, G.o.d hath given Richard a "glorious angel; ... Heaven still guards the right." A moment later he hears from Salisbury that the Welshmen whom he had relied upon as allies are dispersed and fled. At once he becomes "pale and dead." From the height of pride and confidence he falls to utter hopelessness.

"All souls that will be safe fly from my side; For time hath set a blot upon my pride."

Aumerle asks him to remember who he is, and at once he springs from dejection to confidence again. He cries:

"Awake, thou sluggard majesty! thou sleepest.

Is not the king's name forty thousand names?"

The next moment Scroop speaks of cares, and forthwith fitful Richard is in the dumps once more. But this time his weakness is turned to resignation and sadness, and the pathos of this is brought out by the poet:

"Strives Bolingbroke to be as great as we?

Greater he shall not be; if he serve G.o.d We'll serve him, too, and be his fellow so.

Revolt our subjects? that we cannot mend; They break their faith to G.o.d, as well as us.

Cry woe, destruction, ruin, loss, decay; The worst is death, and death will have his day."

Who does not hear Hamlet speaking in this memorable last line? Like Hamlet, too, this Richard is quick to suspect even his friends' loyalty.

He guesses that Bagot, Bushy, and Green have made peace with Bolingbroke, and when Scroop seems to admit this, Richard is as quick as Hamlet to unpack his heart with words:

"O villains, vipers, d.a.m.ned without redemption!

Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man!

Snakes,"

and so forth.

But as soon as he learns that his friends are dead he breaks out in a long lament for them which ranges over everything from worms to kings, and in its melancholy pessimism is the prototype of those meditations which Shakespeare has put in the mouth of nearly all his favourite characters. Who is not reminded of Hamlet's great monologue when he reads:

"For within the hollow crown, That rounds the mortal temples of a king, Keeps Death his court: and there the antic sits Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp; Allowing him a breath, a little scene To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks; Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh, which walls about our life, Were bra.s.s impregnable; and, humour'd thus, Comes at the last, and with a little pin[1]

Bores through his castle wall, and--farewell, King!"

[Footnote 1: In Hamlet's famous soliloquy the pin is a "bodkin."]

Let us take another two lines of this soliloquy:

"For G.o.d's sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings."

In the second scene of the third act of "t.i.tus Andronicus" we find t.i.tus saying to his daughter:

"I'll to thy closet; and go read with thee Sad stories chanced in the times of old."

Again, in the "Comedy of Errors," aegeon tells us that his life was prolonged:

"To tell sad stories of my own mishaps."

The similarity of these pa.s.sages shows that in the very spring of life and heyday of the blood Shakespeare had in him a certain romantic melancholy which was developed later by the disappointments of life into the despairing of Macbeth and Lear.

When the Bishop calls upon Richard to act, the King's weatherc.o.c.k mind veers round again, and he cries:

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

But when Scroop tells him that York has joined with Bolingbroke, he believes him at once, gives up hope finally, and turns as if for comfort to his own melancholy fate:

"Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth Of that sweet way I was in to despair!"

That "sweet way" of despair is Romeo's way, Hamlet's, Macbeth's and Shakespeare's way.

In the next scene Richard meets his foes, and at first plays the king.

Shakespeare tells us that he looks like a king, that his eyes are as "bright as an eagle's"; and this poetic admiration of state and place seems to have got into Richard's blood, for at first he declares that Bolingbroke is guilty of treason, and a.s.serts that:

"My master, G.o.d omnipotent, Is mustering in his clouds, on our behalf, Armies of pestilence."

Of course, he gives in with fair words the next moment, and the next rages against Bolingbroke; and then comes the great speech in which the poet reveals himself so ingenuously that at the end of it the King he pretends to be, has to admit that he has talked but idly. I cannot help transcribing the whole of the pa.s.sage, for it shows how easily Shakespeare falls out of this King's character into his own:

"What must the King do now? Must he submit?

The King shall do it. Must he be depos'd?

The King shall be contented: must he lose The name of king? O! G.o.d's name, let it go: I'll give my jewels for a set of beads; My gorgeous palace for a hermitage; My gay apparel for an alms-man's gown; My figur'd goblets for a dish of wood; My sceptre for a palmer's walking staff; My subjects for a pair of carved saints; And my large kingdom for a little grave, A little, little grave, an obscure grave:-- Or I'll be buried in the King's highway, Some way of common trade, where subjects' feet May hourly trample on their sovereign's head: For on my heart they tread, now whilst I live; And, buried once, why not upon my head?-- Aumerle, thou weep'st; my tender-hearted cousin!-- We'll make foul weather with despised tears; Our sighs, and they, shall lodge the summer corn, And make a dearth in this revolting land.

Or shall we play the wantons with our woes, And make some pretty match with shedding tears?

As thus:--To drop them still upon one place, Till they have fretted us a pair of graves Within the earth; and, therein laid,--There lies Two kinsmen digg'd their graves with weeping eyes.

Would not this ill do well?--Well, well, I see I talk but idly, and you mock at me.-- Most mighty prince, my lord Northumberland, What says King Bolingbroke? will his majesty Give Richard leave to live till Richard die?