His face still combating with tears and smiles,
The badges of his grief and patience,—
That had not God, for some strong purpose, steel'd
The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted,
And barbarism itself have pitied him."[378:A]
In representing Richard as falling by the hand of Sir Piers of Exton, Shakspeare has followed the Chronicle of Holinshed; but there can be no doubt but this unhappy monarch either starved himself under the influence of despair, or was starved by the cruelty of his enemies. If in the account which Speed has given us of this tragedy, the most complete that we possess, the relation of Polydore Virgil be correct, nothing can be conceived more diabolical than the conduct of Henry and his agents. "His diet being served in," says that historian, "and set before him in the wonted Princely manner, hee was not suffered either to taste, or touch thereof." "Surely," adds Speed, in a manner which reflects credit on his sensibility, "hee is not a man who at the report of so exquisite a barbarisme, as Richard's enfamishment, feeles not chilling horror and detestation; what if but for a justly condemned galley-slave so dying? but how for an annointed King whose character (like that of holy orders) is indeleble?"[378:B]
Of the secondary characters of this play, "Old John of Gaunt, time-honour'd Lancaster," and his son Henry Bolingbroke, are brought forward with strict attention to the evidence of history; the chivalric spirit, and zealous integrity of the first, and the cold, artificial features of the second, being struck off with great sharpness of outline, and strength of discrimination.
12. Henry the Fourth; Part the First: 1596;
13. Henry the Fourth; Part the Second: 1596:
That both these plays were written in the year 1596, will, we think, appear from consulting the arguments and quotations adduced by Mr. Malone to prove them the compositions of 1597 and 1598, and by Mr. Chalmers with the view of assigning them to the years 1596 and 1597; for while the latter gentleman has rendered it most probable, from the allusions which he has noticed in the play itself, that the First Part was written in 1596, the authorities and citations produced by the former, for the assignment of the Second Part to the year 1598, almost necessarily refer it, strange as it may appear, with only one exception[379:A], and that totally indecisive, to the very same year which witnessed the composition of its predecessor, namely 1596! Influenced by this result, and by the observation of Dr. Johnson, that these dramas appear "to be two, only because they are too long to be one[379:B]," we have placed them under the same year, convinced, with Mr. Malone, that they could not be written before 1596; and induced, from the arguments to which he, and his immediate successor in chronological research have advanced, though with a different object, to consider them as not written after that period.[379:C]