Edward his assent, which would have appointed that butcherly office to some other rather than to his own brother. Some wise men also wen that his drift lacked not in helping forth his own brother of Clarence to his death, which thing to all appearance he resisted, although he inwardly minded it." The tragic story of the murder of Richard's nephews is thus recorded by the Chronicler, on the authority of Sir Thomas More : "And forasmuch as his mind gave him that, his nephews living, men would not reckon that he could have right to the realm, he thought therefore without delay to rid them, as though the killing of his kinsmen might end his cause and make him kindly king. Whereupon he sent John Green, whom he specially trusted, unto Sir Robert Brackenbury, constable of the Tower, with a letter and credence also, that the same Sir Robert in anywise should put the two children to death. This John Green did his errand to Brackenbury, kneeling before Our Lady in the Tower; who plainly answered that he would never put them to death to die therefore. With the which answer Green returned, recounting the same to king Richard at Warwick, yet on his journey; wherewith he took such displeasure and thought, that the same night he said to a secret page of his, 'Ah, whom shall a man trust? they that I have brought up myself, they that I weened would have most surely served me, even those fail me, and at my commandment will do nothing for me.' 'Sir,' quoth the page, 'there lieth one in the pallet chamber without, that I dare well say, to do your grace pleasure, the thing were right hard that he would refuse:' meaning by this James Tyrrel. "James Tyrrel devised that they should be murthered in their beds, and no blood shed: to the execution whereof he appointed Miles Forest, one of the four that before kept them, a fellow flesh bred in murther beforetime; and to him he joined one John Dighton, his own horsekeeper, a big, broad, square, and strong knave." Then, all the other being removed from them, this Miles Forest and John Dighton about midnight, the sely children lying in their beds, came into the chamber, and suddenly lapped them up amongst the clothes, and so bewrapped them and entangled them, keeping down by force the feather-bed and pillows hard unto their mouths, that within a while they smothered and stifled them; and their breaths failing, they gave up to God their innocent souls into the joys of heaven, leaving to the tormentors their bodies dead in the bed; which after the wretches perceived, first by the struggling with the pangs of death, and after long lying still, to be thoroughly dead, they laid the bodies out upon the bed, and fetched James Tyrrel to see them; which, when he saw them perfectly dead, he caused the murtherers to bury them at the stair foot, meetly deep in the ground, under a great heap of stones. Then rode James Tyrrel in great haste to King Richard, and showed him all the manner of the murther; who gave him great thanks, and, as men say, there made him knight.” KING HENRY VIII. THE date of the original production of this drama has been a subject of much discussion. The opinions in favour of its having been produced in the reign of Elizabeth are far more numerous than those which hold it to be a later production. But the accomplished Sir Henry Wotton, writing to his nephew on the 6th of July, 1613, gives a minute and graphic account of the fire at the Globe in that year:-" Now to let matters of state sleep, I will entertain you at the present with what happened this week at the Bankside. The king's players had a new play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the knights of the order, with their Georges and Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats and the like; sufficient, in truth, within a while to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King Henry, making a mask at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper, or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where, being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes being more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming, within less than an hour, the whole house to the very ground. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabric, wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks: only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broiled him, if he had not, by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with bottle ale." Here, then, is a new play described, "representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry VIII.," and further, the passage of Shakspere's play in which the "chambers" are discharged, being the "entry of the king to the "mask at the cardinal's house." is the same to the letter. But the title which Sir Henry Wotton gives the new play is 'All is True. Other persons call the play so re presented Henry VIII.' Howes, in his continuation of Stow's Chronicle, so calls it. He writes some time after the destruction of the Globe, for he adds to his account of the fire, “and the next spring it was new builded in far fairer manner than before." He speaks of the title of the play as a familiar thing:-"the house being filled with people to behold the play, viz. of Henry the Eighth." When Howes wrote, was the title All is True' merged in the more obvious title derived from the subject of the play, and following the character of the titles of Shakspere's other historical plays? The commentators also hold that the Prologue was written by Ben Jonson, to allow him an occasion of sneering at Shakspere's fools and battle-scenes. But we hold that the Prologue is a complete exposition of the idea of this drama. The Prologue is fastened upon Jonson, upon the theory that he wrote it after Shakspere's retirement from the stage, when the old play was revived in his absence. We believe in the one piece of external evidence,-that a 'Henry VIII.' was produced in 1613, when the Globe was burned; that it was a new play; that it was then called 'All is True;'-and that this title agrees with the idea upon which Shakspere wrote the 'Henry VIII.' Those who believe that it was written in the time of Elizabeth have to reject this one piece of external evidence. We further believe, from the internal evidence, that the play, as it stands, was written in the time of James I., and that we have received it in its original form. Those who assert the contrary have to resort to the hypothesis of interpolation; and, further, have to explain how many things which are, to a plain understanding, inconsistent with their theory, may be interpreted, by great ingenuity, to be consistent. We believe that Shakspere, amongst his latest dramas, constructed an historical drama to complete his great series,-one that was agreeable to the tone of his mind after his fiftieth year:— "Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe." Those who take the opposite view hold that the chief object of the poet was to produce something which might be acceptable to Queen Elizabeth. Our belief is the obvious one; the contrary belief may be the more ingenious. Shakspere has in this play closed his great series of 'Chronicle Histories.' This last of them was to be "sad, high, and working." It has laid bare the hollowness of worldly glory; it has shown the heavy "load" of "too much honour." It has given us a picture of the times which succeeded the feudal strifes of the other Histories.' Were they better times? To the mind of the poet the age of corruption was as "sad" as the age of force. The one tyrant rides over the obligations of justice, wielding a power more terrible than that of the sword. The poet's consolation is to be found in the prophetic views of the future. We have a few words to add on the style of this drama. It is remarkable for the elliptical construction of many of the sentences, and for an occasional peculiarity in the versification, which is not found in any other of Shakspere's works. A theory has been set up that Jonson "tampered" with the versification. We hold this notion to be utterly untenable; for there is no play of Shakspere's which has a more decided character of unity, no one from which any passage could be less easily struck out. We believe that Shakspere worked in this particular upon a principle of art which he had proposed to himself to adhere to, wherever the nature of the scene would allow. The elliptical construction, and the licence of versification, brought the dialogue, whenever the speaker was not necessarily rhetorical, closer to the language of common life. Of all his historical plays, the 'Henry VIII.' is the nearest in its story to his own times. It professed to be a "truth." It belongs to his own country. It has no poetical indistinctness about it, either of time or place: all is defined. If the diction and the versification had been more artificial, it would have been less a reality. MACBETH. IN Coleridge's early sonnet 'To the Author of the Robbers,' his imagination is enchained to the most terrible scene of that play; disregarding, as it were, all the accessaries by which its horrors are mitigated and rendered endurable : "Schiller! that hour I would have wish'd to die, Diminish'd shrunk from the more withering scene! " It was in a somewhat similar manner that Shakspere's representation of the murder of Duncan affected the imagination of Mrs. Siddons:- "It was my custom to study my characters at night, when all the domestic cares and business of the day were over. On the night preceding that on which I was to appear in this part for the first time, I shut myself up, as usual, when all the family were retired, and commenced my study of Lady Macbeth. As the character is very short, I thought I should soon accomplish it. Being then only twenty years of age, I believed, as many others do believe, that little more was necessary than to get the words into my head; for the necessity of discrimination, and the development of character, at that time of my life, had scarcely entered into my imagination. But, to proceed. I went on with tolerable composure, in the silence of the night, (a night I can never forget,) till I came to the assassination scene, when the horrors of the scene rose to a degree that made it impossible for me to get farther. I snatched up my candle, and hurried out of the room in a paroxysm of terror. My dress was of silk, and the rustling of it, as I ascended the stairs to go to bed, seemed to my panic-struck fancy like the movement of a spectre pursuing me. At last I reached my chamber, where I found my husband fast asleep. I clapped my candlestick down upon the table, without the power of putting it out; and I threw myself on my bed, without daring to stay even to take off my clothes." If the drama of Macbeth' were to produce the same effect upon the mind of an imaginative reader as that described by Mrs. Siddons, it would not be the great work of art which it really is. If our poet had resolved, using the words of his own "Othello,' to "abandon all remorse, On horror's head horrors accumulate," the midnight terrors, such as Mrs. Siddons has described, would have indeed been a tribute to power, but not to the power which has produced 'Macbeth.' The paroxysm of fear, the panic-struck fancy, the prostrated senses, so beautifully described by this impassioned actress, were the result of the intensity with which she had fixed her mind upon that part of the play which she was herself to act. In the endeavour to get the words into her head, her own fine genius was naturally kindled to behold a complete vision of the wonderful scene. Again, and again, were the words repeated, on that night which she could never forget,-in the silence of that night, when all about her were sleeping. And then she heard the owl shriek, • Memoranda by Mrs. Siddons, inserted in her 'Life' by Mr. Campbell. |