Shakespeare's studies of English history are animated by a patriotism which boldly seeks and faces the truth. His dramatic presentations of English history have been often described as fragments of a national epic, as detached books of an English Iliad. But they embody no epic or heroic glorification of the nation. Taking the great series which begins chronologically with King John and ends with Richard III. (Henry VIII. stands apart), we find that Shakespeare makes the central features of the national history the persons of the kings. Only in the case of Henry V. does he clothe an English king with any genuine heroism. Shakespeare's kings are as a rule but men as we are. The violet smells to them as it does to us; all their senses have but human conditions; and though their affections be higher mounted than ours, yet when they stoop they stoop with like wing. Excepting Henry V., the history plays are tragedies. They "tell sad stories of the death of kings." But they do not merely illustrate the crushing burdens of kingship or point the moral of the hollowness of kingly pageantry; they explain why kingly glory is in its essence brittle rather than brilliant. And since Shakespeare's rulers reflect rather than inspire the character of the nation, we are brought to a study of the causes of the brittleness of national glory.
The glory of a nation, as of a king, is only stable, we learn, when the nation, as the king, lives soberly, virtuously, and wisely, and is courageous, magnanimous, and zealous after knowledge. Cowardice, meanness, ignorance, and cruelty ruin nations as surely as they ruin kings. This is the lesson specifically taught in the most eloquent of all the direct avowals of patriotism which are to be found in Shakespeare's plays—in the dying speech of John of Gaunt.
That speech is no ebullition of the undisciplined patriotic instinct. It is a solemn announcement of the truth that the greatness and glory, with which nature and history have endowed a nation, may be dissipated when, on the one hand, the rulers prove selfish, frivolous, and unequal to the responsibilities which a great past places on their shoulders, and when, on the other hand, the nation acquiesces in the depravity of its governors. In his opening lines the speaker lays emphasis on the possibilities of greatness with which the natural physical conditions of the country and its political and military traditions have invested his countrymen. Thereby he brings into lurid relief the sin and the shame of paltering with, of putting to ignoble uses, the national character and influence. The dying patriot apostrophises England in the familiar phrases, as:—
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle....
This fortress, built by nature for herself,
Against infection and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands:
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world.
(Richard II., II., i., 40-58.)
The last line identifies with the patriotic instinct the aspiration of a people to deserve well of foreign opinion. Subsequently the speaker turns from his survey of the ideal which he would have his country seek. He exposes with ruthless frankness the ugly realities of her present degradation.
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of wat'ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds,—
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
(Richard II., II., i., 61-6.)
At the moment the speaker's warning is scorned, but ultimately it takes effect. At the end of the play of Richard II., England casts off the ruler and his allies, who by their self-indulgence and moral weakness play false with the traditions of the country.
In Henry V., the only one of Shakespeare's historical plays in which an English king quits the stage in the full enjoyment of prosperity, his good fortune is more than once explained as the reward of his endeavour to abide by the highest ideals of his race, and of his resolve to exhibit in his own conduct its noblest mettle. His strongest appeals to his fellow-countrymen are:—
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you;