y be taken once for all as
the truth, that Shakespeare, in the absolute universality of his genius,
always reverences whatever arises out of our moral nature; he never
profanes his muse with a contemptuous reasoning away of the genuine and
general, however unaccountable, feelings of mankind.

The amiable part of Richard's character is brought full upon us by his
queen's few words--

... "So sweet a guest
As my sweet Richard:"--

and Shakespeare has carefully shown in him an intense love of his country,
well-knowing how that feeling would, in a pure historic drama, redeem him
in the hearts of the audience. Yet even in this love there is something
feminine and personal:--

"Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand,--
As a long parted mother with her child
Plays fondly with her tears, and smiles in meeting;
So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth,
And do thee favour with my royal hands."

With this is combined a constant overflow of emotions from a total
incapability of controlling them, and thence a waste of that energy, which
should have been reserved for actions, in the passion and effort of mere
resolves and menaces. The consequence is moral exhaustion, and rapid
alternations of unmanly despair and ungrounded hope,--every feeling being
abandoned for its direct opposite upon the pressure of external accident.
And yet when Richard's inward weakness appears to seek refuge in his
despair, and his exhaustion counterfeits repose, the old habit of
kingliness, the effect of flatterers from his infancy, is ever and anon
producing in him a sort of wordy courage which only serves to betray more
clearly his internal impotence. The second and third scenes of the third
act combine and illustrate all this:--

"_Aumerle._ He means, my lord, that we are too remiss;
Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security,
Grows strong and great, in substance, and in friends.

_K. Rich._ Discomfortable cousin! know'st thou not,
That when the searching eye of heaven is hid
Behind the globe, that lights the lower world,
Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen,
In murders and in outrage, bloody here;
But when, from under this terrestrial ball,
He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines,
And darts his light through every guilty hole,
Then murders, treasons, and detested sins,
The cloke of night being pluckt from off their backs,
Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves?
So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke, &c.