n cannot find or
accept: characters which stand close together in tradition, as they
probably did in fact, are set apart in his pages, each of them in a
separately developed homogeneous existence of its own: natural human
motives, which elsewhere appear only in private life, break the
continuity of the political action, and thus obtain a twofold dramatic
influence. But if deviations from fact are found in individual points,
yet the choice of events to be brought upon the stage shows a deep
sense of what is historically great. These are almost always
situations and entanglements of the most important character: the
interference of the spiritual power in an intestine political quarrel
in King John: the sudden fall of a firmly seated monarchy as soon as
ever it departs from the strict path of right in Richard III: the
opposition which a usurping prince, Henry IV, meets with at the hands
of the great vassals who have placed him on the throne, and which
brings him by incessant anxiety and mental labour to a premature
grave: the happy issue of a successful foreign enterprise, the course
of which we follow from the determination to prepare for it, to the
risk of battle and to final victory; and then again in Henry V and
Henry VI, the unhappy position into which a prince not formed by
nature to be a ruler falls between violent contending parties, until
he envies the homely swain who tends his flocks and lets the years run
by in peace: lastly the path of horrible crime which a king's son not
destined for the throne has to tread in order to ascend it: all these
are great elements in the history of states, and are not only
important for England, but are symbolic for all people and their
sovereigns. The poet touches on parliamentary or religions questions
extremely seldom; and it may be observed that in King John the great
movements which led to Magna Charta are as good as left out of sight;
on the contrary he lives and moves among the personal contrasts
offered by the feudal system, and its mutual rights and duties.
Bolingbroke's feeling that though his cousin is King of England yet he
is Duke of Lancaster reveals the conception of these rights in the
middle ages. The speech which Shakspeare puts into the mouth of the
Bishop of Carlisle is applicable to all times. The crown that secures
the highest independence appears to the poet the most desirable of all
possessions, but the honoured gold consumes him who wears it by the
restles