Right in thine eye.-Away, my friends! New flight; And happy newness, that intends old right.

[Exeunt, leading off MELUN.

SCENE V.-The same. The French Camp.

Enter LEWIS and his Train.

Lew. The sun of heaven, methought, was loth to set
Bat stay'd, and made the western welkin blush,
When the English measur'd backward their own
ground,

In faint retire: O, bravely came we off
When with a volley of our needless shot,
After such bloody toil, we bid good night;
And wound our tottering colours clearly up,
Last in the field, and almost lords of it!

Enter a Messenger.

Mess. Where is my prince, the dauphin?
Lew.

Here:-What news? Mess. The count Melun is slain; the English lords,

By his persuasion, are again fallen off:

And your supply, which you have wish'd so long,
Are cast away, and sunk, on Goodwin sands.

Lew. Ah, foul shrewd news!-Beshrew thy very heart!

I did not think to be so sad to-night

As this hath made me.-Who was he that said,
King John did fly an hour or two before

The stumbling night did part our weary powers?
Mess. Whoever spoke it, it is true, my lord.

Lew. Well; keep good quarter and good care to

night;

The day shall not be up so soon as I,

To try the fair adventure of to-morrow.

[Exeunt.

Hub. The king, I fear, is poison'd by a monk : left him almost speechless, and broke out To acquaint you with this evil; that you might The better arm you to the sudden time, Than if you had at leisure known of this.

Bast. How did he take it? who did taste to him?
Hub. A monk, I tell you; a resolved villain,
Whose bowels suddenly burst out: the king
Yet speaks, and, peradventure, may recover.
Bast. Who didst thou leave to tend his majesty?
Hub. Why, know you not? the lords are all come
back,

And brought prince Henry in their company;
At whose request the king hath pardon'd them,
And they are all about his majesty.

Bast. Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven,
And tempt us not to bear above our power!
I'll tell thee, Hubert, half my power this night,
Passing these flats, are taken by the tide,
These Lincoln washes have devoured them;
Myself, well mounted, hardly have escap'd.
Away, before! conduct me to the king;
I doubt he will be dead, or e'er I come.

[Exeun!.

SCENE VII.-The Orchard of Swinstead Abbey Enter PRINCE HENRY, SALISBURY, and BIGOT. P. Hen. It is too late; the life of all his blood Is touch'd corruptibly; and his pure brain (Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling-house) Doth, by the idle comments that it makes, Foretell the ending of mortality.

Enter PEMBROKE.

Than when you left him; even now he sung.

P. Hen. O vanity of sickness! fierce extremes,

Bast. A friend.-What art thou?
Hub.

Bast. Whither dost thou go?
Hub.

Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts, Leaves them invisible; and his siege is now

น

What 's that to thee? Way may I not demand of thine affairs,

As well as thou of mine?

Hub. Thou hast a perfect thought:

I will, upon all hazards, well believe

Thou art my friend, that know'st my tongue so well:
Who art thou?

Bast. Who thou wilt: an if thou please,
Thou mayst befriend me so much as to think
I come one way of the Plantagenets.

Hub. Unkind remembrance! thou, and eyeless night,

Have done me shame :-Brave soldier, pardon me,
That any accent, breaking from thy tongue,
Should 'scape the true acquaintance of mine ear.
Bast. Come, come; sans compliment, what news

Bast. O, I am scalded with my violent motion, And spleen of speed to see your majesty.

K. John. O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye: The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burnt; And all the shrouds, wherewith my life should sail, Are turned to one thread, one little hair: My heart hath one poor string to stay it by, Which holds but till thy news be uttered; And then all this thou seest is but a clod, And module of confounded royalty.

Bast. The dauphin is preparing hitherward; Where, Heaven he knows how we shall answer him: For, in a night, the best part of my power, As I upon advantage did remove, Were in the washes, all unwarily, Devoured by the unexpected flood.

[The KING dies.

Sal. You breathe these dead news in as dead an

ear.

My liege my lord!—But now a king,-now thus.

P. Hen. Even so must I run on, and even so stop. What surety of the world, what hope, what stay, When this was now a king, and now is clay!

Bast. Art thou gone so? I do but stay behind
To do the office for thee of revenge:

And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven,
As it cn earth hath been thy servant still.
Now, now, you stars, that move in your right spheres,
Where be your powers? Show now your mended
faiths;

And instantly return with me again,

To push destruction, and perpetual shame,
Out of the weak door of our fainting land:
Straight let us seek, or straight we shall be sought;
The dauphin rages at our very heels.

Sal. It seems you know not then so much as we:
The cardinal Pandulph is within at rest,
Who half an hour since came from the dauphin;
And brings from him such offers of our peace
As we with honour and respect may take,
With purpose presently to leave this war.
Bast. He will the rather do it, when he sees
Ourselves well sinewed to our defence.

Sal. Nay, it is in a manner done already;
For many carriages he hath despatch'd
To the sea-side, and put his cause and quarrel
To the disposing of the cardinal,
With whom yourself, myself, and other lords,
If you think meet, this afternoon will post
To consummate this business happily.

Bast. Let it be so:-And you, my noble prince,
With other princes that may best be spar'd,
Shall wait upon your father's funeral.

P. Hen. At Worcester must his body be interr'd; For so he will'd it.

Bast.

Thither shall it then.
And happily may your sweet self put on
The lineal state and glory of the land!
To whom, with all submission, on my knee,
I do bequeath my faithful services
And true subjection everlastingly.

Sal. And the like tender of our love we make,
To rest without a spot for evermore.

P. Hen. I have a kind soul, that would give y thanks,

And knows not how to do it, but with tears.

Bast. O, let us pay the time but needful woe,
Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.-
This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,

But when it first did help to wound itself.
Now these her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them: Nought shall make us r
If England to itself do rest but true.

THE first edition was published in 1597, under the title of The Tragedy of King Richard the Second.' Four editions in quarto appeared before the folio of 1623. But all that part of the fourth act in which Richard is introduced to make the surrender of his crown, comprising one hundred and fifty-four lines, was never printed in the age of Elizabeth. The quarto of 1608 first gives this scene. That quarto is, with very few exceptions, the text of the play as it now stands.

We scarcely know how to approach this drama, even for the purpose of a few remarks upon its characteristics. We are almost afraid to trust our own admiration when we turn to the cold criticism by which opinion in this country has been wont to be governed. We have been told that it cannot "be said much to affect the passions or enlarge the understanding.": It may be so. And yet, we think, it might somewhat "affect the passions," for " gorgeous tragedy" hath here put on her "scepter'd pall," and if she bring not Terror in her train, Pity, at least, claims the sad story for her own. And yet it may somewhat ". enlarge the understanding,"-for, though it abound not in those sententious moralities which may fitly adorn "a theme at school," it lays bare more than one human bosom with a most searching anatomy; and, in the moral and intellectual strength and weakness of humanity, which it discloses with as much precision as the scalpel reveals to the student of our physical nature the symptoms of health or disease, may we read the proximate and final causes of this world's success or loss, safety or danger, honour or disgrace, elevation or ruin. And then, moreover, the profound truths which, half-hidden to the careless reader, are to be drawn out from this drama, are contained in such a splendid frame-work of the picturesque and the poetical, that the setting of the jewel almost distracts our attention from the jewel itself. We are here plunged into the midst of the fierce passions and the gorgeous pageantries of the antique time. We not only enter the halls and galleries, where is hung

"Armoury of the invincible knights of old," but we see the beaver closed, and the spear in rest :under those cuirasses are hearts knocking against the steel with almost more than mortal rage ;-the banners wave, the trumpet sounds—heralds and marshals are ready to salute the victor-but the absolute king casts down his warder, and the anticipated triumph of one proud champion must end in the unmerited disgrace of both. The transition is easy from the tourney to the battle-field. A nation must bleed that a subject may be avenged. A crown is to be played for, though

"Tumultuous wars

Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound."

The luxurious lord

"That every day under his household roof

his throne, but it is undermined by the hatreds even of those who placed him on it. Here is, indeed, “ a kingdom for a stage." And has the greatest of poets dealt with such a subject without affecting the passions or enlarging the understanding? Away with this. We will trust our own admiration.

It is the wonderful subjection of the poetical power to the higher law of truth-to the poetical truth, which is the highest truth, comprehending and expounding the historical truth-which must furnish the clue to the proper understanding of the drama of 'Richard II.' It appears to us that, when the poet first undertook "to ope

The purple testament of bleeding war,”—

to unfold the roll of the causes and consequences of that usurpation of the house of Lancaster which plunged three or four generations of Englishmen in bloodshed and misery-he approaches the subject with an inflexibility of purpose as totally removed as it was possible to be from the levity of a partisan. There were to be weighed in one scale the follies, the weaknesses, the crimes of Richard-the injuries of Bolingbroke— the insults which the capricious despotism of the king had heaped upon his nobles--the exactions under which the people groaned—the real merits and the popular attributes of him who came to redress and to repair. In the other scale were to be placed the afflictions of fallen greatness-the revenge and treachery by which the fall was produced-the heartburnings and suspicions which accompany every great revolution-the struggles for power which ensue when the established and legitimate authority is thrust from its seat.-All these phases, personal and political, of a deposition and an usurpation, Shakspere has exhibited with marvellous impartiality.

It is in the same lofty spirit of impartiality which governs the general sentiments of this drama that Shakspere has conceived the mixed character of Richard. If we compare every account, we must say that the Richard II. of Shakspere is rigidly the true Richard. The poet is the truest historian in all that belongs to the higher attributes of history. But with this surpassing dramatic truth in the Richard II.,' perhaps, after all, the most wonderful thing in the whole play-that which makes it so exclusively and entirely Shaksperian

is the evolvement of the truth under the poetical form. The character of Richard, especially, is entirely subordinated to the poetical conception of it-to some thing higher than the historical propriety, yet including all that historical propriety, and calling it forth under the most striking aspects. All the vacillations and weaknesses of the king, in the hands of an artist like Shakspere, are reproduced with the most natural and vivid colours; so as to display their own characteristic effects, in combination with the principle of poetical beauty, which carries them into a higher region than the

Did keep ten thousand men,"