Shakspeare and His Times

by François Guizot

Although this tragedy is entitled "The Life and Death of King Richard II.," it only comprises the last two years of that prince's reign, and contains only a single event, namely, his downfall—the catastrophe toward which every circumstance tends from the very outset of the play. This event has been considered under different aspects, and a rather singular anecdote has revealed to us the existence of another tragedy on the same subject, anterior, as it would appear, to Shakspeare's drama, and treated in an altogether different point of view. Some of the partisans of the Earl of Essex, on the day preceding his extravagant enterprise, procured the performance of a tragedy in which, as in Shakspeare's drama, Richard II. was deposed and put to death on the stage. The actors having represented to them that the play was entirely out of fashion, and would not attract a sufficient audience to cover the expense of the performance, Sir Gilly Merrick, one of the confederates, gave them forty shillings above the receipts. This fact was mentioned at the trial of Sir Gilly, and served to procure his condemnation.

The conspiracy of the Earl of Essex occurred in 1601, and Shakspeare's tragedy appeared, it is believed, in the year 1597. Notwithstanding this precedence, no one will be disposed to suspect that one of Shakspeare's plays could have figured in a factious enterprise against Elizabeth. Besides, the drama in question seems to have been known by the name of "Henry IV.," and not by that of "Richard II.;" and there is reason to believe that the history of Henry IV. was its true subject, and Richard's death only an incident. But in order to remove every kind of doubt, it is sufficient to read Shakspeare's tragedy; the doctrine of divine right is incessantly presented in it, accompanied by that interest which is excited by the aspect of the misfortunes of fallen greatness. If the poet has not given to the usurper that odious physiognomy which produces hatred and the dramatic passions, it is sufficient to read history to understand the cause of this.

This vagueness of the moral aspect under which men and things present themselves, and which does not allow the feelings to attach themselves vigorously to any one object, because they can rest upon nothing with satisfaction, is not a fact peculiar to Richard II. and his destiny, in the history of these disastrous times. Parties ever at conflict with each other for the supreme power, vanquished by turns, and always deserving their defeat, without any one of them having ever deserved victory, do not present a very dramatic spectacle, nor one very well calculated to elevate our feelings and faculties to that degree of exaltation which is one of the noblest objects of art. Pity is, in such a case, often wanting to indignation, and esteem almost always to pity. We have no difficulty in finding out the crimes of the strongest, but we look with anxiety for the virtues of the weakest; and the same effect is produced when the circumstances are changed: follies, depredations, injustice, and violence have led to Richard's downfall, and have even rendered it necessary; and they detach us from him by the two-fold reason that we behold him working out his own ruin, and that we find it impossible to save him. It would, however, be easy to discover at least as many crimes in the party which triumphs over his degradation. Shakspeare might, with little trouble, have amassed against the rebels those treasures of indignation which would animate all hearts in favor of the legitimate sovereign; but one of the principal characteristics of Shakspeare's genius is a truthfulness, I may say a fidelity of observation, which reproduces nature as it is and time as it actually occurs. History supplied him neither with heroes superior to their fortune, nor with innocent victims, nor with instances of heroic devotion or of imposing passion; he merely found the very strength of his characters employed in the service of those interests which degrade them—perfidy considered as a means of conduct, treason almost justified by the dominant principle of personal interest, and desertion almost rendered legitimate by the consideration of the risk that would be run by remaining faithful; and all this he has described. It is, in truth, the Duke of York, a personage of whose incapacity and nullity we are informed by history, whom Shakspeare has selected to represent this ever-ardent devotedness to the man who governs, this facility in transferring his obedience from rightful to actual power, and vice versa, merely allowing himself, for his honor, to shed a few solitary tears on behalf of the monarch whom he has abandoned. To any one who has not witnessed the sport of fortune with empires, this personage would be only comic; but to any one who has beheld such changes, does he not possess alarming truthfulness?

Surrounded by characters of this kind, whence could Shakspeare derive that pathetic element which he would have loved to infuse into the spectacle of fallen greatness? He who had given old Lear, in his misery, so many noble and faithful friends, could not find one for Richard; the king had fallen, stripped and naked, into the hands of the poet, as he fell from his throne; and in himself alone the poet has been obliged to seek all his resources; the character of Richard II. is, therefore, one of the profoundest conceptions of Shakspeare.

The commentators have had a great discussion as to whether it was from the court of James or of Elizabeth that Shakspeare derived the maxims which he so frequently professes in favor of divine right and absolute power. Shakspeare derived them ordinarily from his personages themselves; and it was sufficient for him here to have to describe a king already seated on the throne. Richard never imagined that he ever was, or could be, any thing but a king; his royalty was, in his eyes, a part of his nature, one of the constituent elements of his being, which he brought into the world with him at his birth, subject to no conditions but his life; as he had nothing to do to retain it, it was no more in his power to cease to be worthy of it than to cease to be invested with it; and hence arose his ignorance of his duties to his subjects and to his own safety, and his indolent confidence in the midst of danger. Although this confidence abandons him for a moment at every new reverse, it returns immediately, doubling its force in proportion as he requires more of it to take the place of other props, which successively crumble away. When he has arrived at last at a point at which it is no longer possible for him to hope, the king becomes astonished, looks around, and inquires if he is really himself. Another kind of courage then springs up within him—the courage imparted by such a misfortune that the man who experiences it becomes excited by the surprise into which he is thrown by his own position; it becomes to him an object of such lively attention, that he dares to contemplate it in all its bearings, were it only for the purpose of understanding it; and by this contemplation he escapes from despair, and sometimes rises to truth, the discovery of which always calms a man to a certain degree. But this calmness is barren, and this courage inactive; it sustains the mind, but it is fatal to action; all the actions of Richard are, therefore, deplorably feeble: even his reflections upon his actual condition reveal a consciousness of his own nullity, which descends, at certain moments, almost to baseness; and who could raise a man who, on ceasing to be a king, has lost, in his own opinion, the distinctive quality of his being, the dignity of his nature? He believed himself precious in the sight of God, sustained by His arm, and armed with His power; when fallen from the mysterious rank which he had once occupied, he knows no place for himself upon earth: when stripped of the power which he believed his right, he does not suppose that any strength can remain to him: he, therefore, makes no resistance; to do so would be to try something which he believes impossible: in order to arouse his energy, some sudden and pressing danger must, as it were, provoke, without his knowledge, faculties which he disavows; when his life is attacked, he defends himself, and dies with courage; but in order always to have possessed courage, he needed to know what a man is worth.

We must not expect to find in "Richard II.," any more than in the majority of Shakspeare's historical dramas, a particular character of style. Its diction is not greatly elaborated; though frequently energetic, it is frequently also so vague as to leave the reason to decide as it pleases upon the meaning of the expressions, which can be determined by no rule of syntax.

This play is written entirely in verse, a great part of which is in rhyme. The author appears to have made some changes in it after the first edition, which was published in 1597. The scene of Richard's trial, in particular, is entirely wanting in this edition, and occurs for the first time in that published in 1608.