The poet also knew that the sight of Arthur's death, although less cruel, would be intolerable if accompanied, in the minds of the spectators, by the anguish which the thought of Constance would add to it; and he is, therefore, careful to inform us of the death of the mother before making us witness the death of the child; just as if, when his genius had conceived, to a certain degree, the painfulness of any particular feeling or passion, his tender heart became alarmed at it, and sought to modify it for its own sake. Whatever misfortune Shakspeare may depict, he almost invariably leads us to anticipate a still greater misfortune, before which his mind recoils, and which he spares us the unhappiness of beholding.

The character of the bastard Faulconbridge was suggested to Shakspeare by a drama of Rowley's, entitled "The Troublesome Reign of King John," which appeared in 1591, that is, five years before Shakspeare's play, which was composed, it is believed, in 1596. Rowley's play was reprinted in 1611, with Shakspeare's name attached to it—rather a common trick of the booksellers and publishers of that time. This circumstance, and the extent to which Shakspeare has borrowed from this work, has led several critics to believe that he had had a hand in it, and that "The Life and Death of King John" was only a recast of the first work; but it does not appear that this supposition has any foundation in fact.

According to his custom, while borrowing whatever he pleased from Rowley, Shakspeare has added great beauties to his original, and has retained nearly all its errors. Thus, Rowley supposed that it was the Duke of Austria who killed Richard Cœur-de-Lion, and at the same time he makes the Duke of Austria perish by the hand of Faulconbridge, an historical personage whom Matthew Paris mentions under the name of Falcasius de Breaute, the natural son of King Richard, and who, according to Holinshed, slew the Viscount of Limoges, in revenge for the death of his father, who, it is well known, was killed at the siege of Chaluz, a fortress belonging to that nobleman. In order to reconcile Holinshed's version with his own, Rowley has made Limoges the family name of the Duke of Austria, whom he designates as "Limoges, duke of Austria." Shakspeare has copied him exactly in this part of his story. He also attributes the murder of Richard to the Duke of Austria; in his play, also, the Duke of Austria falls by the hand of Faulconbridge; and, as regards the confusion of the two personages, it would appear that Shakspeare was as unscrupulous about it as Rowley, if we may judge from Constance's speech to the Duke of Austria in the first scene of the third act, in which she addresses him as "O Lymoges! O Austria!" The character of Faulconbridge is one of those creations of Shakspeare's genius in which we discover the nature of all times and of all countries. Faulconbridge is the true soldier, the soldier of fortune, personally recognizing no inflexible duty but that which he owes to the chief to whom he has devoted his life, and from whom he has received the rewards of his valor; and yet a stranger to none of those feelings upon which other duties are founded, and even obeying the instincts of natural rectitude whenever they do not come into contradiction with the vow of implicit fidelity and submission to which his existence, and even his conscience, is devoted. He will be humane, generous, and just, whenever this vow does not ordain him to practice inhumanity, injustice, and bad faith; he forms a correct judgment of the things to which he is subject, and is in error only regarding the necessity of subjecting himself to them. He is as skillful as he is brave, and does not alienate his judgment while renouncing its guidance: he is a man of powerful nature, whom circumstances, and the necessity of employing his activity in some way or other, have reduced to a moral inferiority, from which a calmer disposition, and profounder reflections upon the true destination of man, would most probably have preserved him. But, with the fault of not having sought the objects of his fidelity and devotion in a sufficiently lofty sphere, Faulconbridge possesses the eminent merit of unchangeable fidelity and devotion, two singularly lofty virtues, both as regards the feeling from which they emanate and the great actions of which they may be the source. His language is, like his conduct, the result of a mixture of good sense and ardor of imagination, which frequently involves his reason in a jumble of words very natural to men of Faulconbridge's profession and character; being incessantly exposed to the shock of the most violent scenes and actions, they can not find in ordinary language the means of conveying the impressions which compose the habit of their life.

The general style of the play is less firm and decided in color than that of several other tragedies by the same poet; the contexture of the work is also rather vague and feeble, but this is the result of the absence of one leading idea, which should continually direct all the parts of the drama toward the same centre. The only idea of this kind which can be discerned in "King John" is the hatred of foreign dominion gaining the victory over the hatred of tyrannical usurpation. In order for this idea to be salient, and constantly to occupy the mind of the spectator, it would be necessary for it to be reproduced in every direction, and for every thing to contribute to give conspicuity to the misfortune of a conflict between the two feelings. But this plan, which would be rather vast for a dramatic work, was, moreover, irreconcilable with the reserve which Shakspeare had imposed upon himself with regard to the character of the king; and thus a great part of the play is passed in discussions of but little interest, and in the remainder the events are not well arranged; the lords change sides too lightly, first on account of the death of Arthur, and afterward from motives of personal alarm, which does not present their return to the cause of England under a sufficiently honorable point of view. The poisoning of King John, moreover, is not prepared with that care which Shakspeare usually bestows upon the foundation and justification of the slightest circumstances in his dramas; and there is nothing to indicate the motive which could have led the monk to commit so desperate an action, as at that moment John was reconciled to Rome. The tradition from which Shakspeare has borrowed this apocryphal anecdote ascribes the monk's conduct to a desire to revenge an offensive epithet which the king had used regarding him. We can not tell what could have induced Shakspeare to adopt this story, which he has turned to so little account; perhaps he desired to mingle with John's last moments something of infernal suffering, without having recourse to remorse, which, in fact, would not have been in more accordance with the real character of this contemptible prince than with the modified delineation of it which the poet has supplied.

[Transcriber's note: Guizot presents a history of Richard II in "A Popular History of England, From the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria", Volume I, Chapter XII. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61647/61647-h/61647-h.htm#Page_335. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_monarchs.]

King Richard II.
(1597.)

In proportion as Shakspeare advances toward the more modern times of the history of his country, the chronicles upon which he relies for information coincide more exactly with historical truth; and already, in "The Life and Death of King Richard III.," the details furnished him by Holinshed differ only in a slight degree from the historical data which have been handed down to us as authentic. With the exception of the queen, who is a pure invention of the poet's imagination, and passing over the chronological disorder occasioned by Shakspeare's negligence in keeping events at a proper distance from each other, the facts contained in this tragedy differ in no respect from historical narratives of the same period, except with regard to the kind of death which Richard suffered. Holinshed, who copied other chroniclers, supplied Shakspeare with the story which he has followed; but the most probable opinion, and that which is in most accordance with the care taken publicly to expose Richard's body after his death, is, that he was left to die of hunger. This attention to evade, at least, the material appearances of crime, while caring little to avoid suspicion, was beginning to be introduced into the ferocious politics of these times; and Richard himself had stifled, beneath a mattress, the Duke of Gloucester, whom he held prisoner in Calais, and had afterward announced that he had died of an attack of apoplexy. Besides Shakspeare's tendency to follow implicitly the historical guide whom he had once adopted, this version allowed him to preserve to the character of Bolingbroke that interest with which he has invested it, both in this drama and in the two parts of "King Henry IV." The choice between different versions of the same story, is, moreover, the least contested and the least contestable privilege of dramatic authors.

The tragedy of "Richard II." is then, generally speaking, sufficiently conformable to history; and the manner in which the poet has described the deposition of Richard, and the accession to the throne of Henry of Lancaster, appears singularly in accordance with what Hume says on the subject: "Henry IV. became king, nobody could tell how or wherefore." But it would be necessary to be like Hume, entirely unacquainted with the sight of revolutions, to be puzzled to say how and why the Duke of Lancaster, after having acted for some time in the name of the king, whom he kept prisoner, finally established himself without difficulty in his place. Shakspeare did not think it necessary to explain this; Richard left Flint Castle with the title of king, in the retinue of Bolingbroke; and we next see him signing his own deposition. The poet does not in any way indicate to us what has passed; but in order not to guess how the fall of Richard was accomplished it would be necessary for us to have very ill understood the picture presented to us of his first degradation; and the conversation of the gardener with his servants completes the description by revealing to us its effects upon public opinion. It was a characteristic of Shakspeare's art to make us present at every part of the event; and he always transports us to the scene in which he strikes his most decisive blows, while at a distance from our view the action pursues its course, and contents itself with meeting us again when it has reached its consummation.