That psychological interest, too, in so far as separated from a supreme end or ideal, towards which actions tend, or rather in so far as it remains uncertain and vague in this respect, limiting itself to questions of loss or gain, of success or failure, of living or dying, is not a qualitative, but a formal interest. It can also be called political, if you will, but political in the sense of Machiavelli and the Renaissance, in so far as politics are considered for themselves, and therefore only formally. Hence the impression caused by the historical plays of Shakespeare, of being now "a gallery of portraits," now "a series of personal experiences," which the poet is supposed to have achieved in imagination.
It is certain that their richness, their brilliancy, their attraction, lie in the emotional representation of practical activity. Bolingbroke ascends the throne, by the adoption of violent and tortuous means, knowing when to withdraw himself and when to dare. Later he recounts to his son how artfully he composed and maintained the attitude, which caused him to be looked upon with sympathy and reverence by the people, affecting humility and humanity, but preserving at the same time the element of the marvellous, so that his presence, like a robe pontifical, was ne'er seen but wondered at. He causes the blood of the deposed king to be shed, while protesting after the deed his great grief that blood should sprinkle me to make me grow, and promising to undertake a voyage of expiation to the Holy Land. Facing him is the falling monarch, Richard II, in whose breast consciousness of his own sacred character as legitimate sovereign and of the inviolable dignity attached to it, the sense of being to blame, of pride humiliated, of resignation to destiny or divine decree, of bitterness, of sarcasm towards himself and towards others, succeed, alternate and combat one another, a swarm of writhing sentiments, an agony of suffocated passions.
"O, that I were as great
As is my grief, or lesser than my name!
Or that I could forget what I have been!
Or not remember what I must be now!
Swell'st thou, proud heart? I'll give thee scope to
beat...."
Elsewhere we find the same inexorable conqueror, Bolingbroke, as Henry IV, triumphant on several occasions against different enemies, now infirm and approaching death, raving from lack of sleep, and envying the meanest of his subjects, blindly groping in the vain shadows of human effort, as once his conquered predecessor, and filled with terror, as he views the whole extent of the universe and the
"Revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea!...
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth,—viewing his progress through
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,—
Would shut the book and sit him down and die."
And hearing of some friends becoming estranged and of others changing into enemies, he is no longer indignant nor astonished:
"Are these things then necessities?
Then let us meet them as necessities."
Henry V meditates upon the singular condition of kings, upon their majesty, which separates them from all other men and by thus elevating, loads them with a weight equal to that which all men together have to carry, while taking from them the joys given to others, and depriving them of hearing the truth or of obtaining justice.
He feels himself to be more than a king in those moments when he tears off his own kingly mask and mirrors himself in his naked reality as man. Facing the enemies who are drawn up on the field of battle and ready to attack him, he murmurs to himself the profound words: