surrender!--

And Richard more than concurs: he throws himself into the part,
realises a type, falls gracefully as on the world's stage.--Why is he
sent for?

To do that office of thine own good will
Which tired majesty did make thee offer.--

Now mark me! how I will undo myself.

[199] "Hath Bolingbroke deposed thine intellect?" the Queen asks him,
on his way to the Tower:--

Hath Bolingbroke
Deposed thine intellect? hath he been in thy heart?

And in truth, but for that adventitious poetic gold, it would be only
"plume-plucked Richard."--

I find myself a traitor with the rest,
For I have given here my soul's consent
To undeck the pompous body of a king.

He is duly reminded, indeed, how

That which in mean men we entitle patience
Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.

Yet at least within the poetic bounds of Shakespeare's play, through
Shakespeare's bountiful gifts, his desire seems fulfilled.--

O! that I were as great
As is my grief.

And his grief becomes nothing less than a central expression of all
that in the revolutions of Fortune's wheel goes down in the world.

No! Shakespeare's kings are not, nor are meant to be, great men:
rather, little or quite ordinary humanity, thrust upon greatness, with
those pathetic results, the natural self-pity of the weak heightened in
them into irresistible appeal to others as the net result of their
royal prerogative. One after another, they seem to lie composed in
Shakespeare's embalming pages, with just that touch of nature about
them, [200] making the whole world akin, which has infused into their
tombs at Westminster a rare poetic grace. It is that irony of
kingship, the sense that it is in its happiness child's play, in its
sorrows, after all, but children's grief, which gives its finer accent
to all the changeful feeling of these wonderful speeches:--the great
meekness of the graceful, wild creature, tamed at last.--

Give Richard leave to live till Richard die!

his somewhat abject fear of death, turning to acquiescence at moments
of extreme weariness:--

My large kingdom for a little grave!
A little little grave, an obscure grave!--

his religious appeal in the last reserve, with its bold reference to
the judgment of Pilate, as he thinks once more of his "anointing."

And as happens with children he attains contentment finally in the
merely passive recognition of superior strength, in the naturalness of
th