taken prisoner. Being placed in the custody of Archbishop Neville [Warwick's brother], at Middleham in Yorkshire, he is liberated while hunting by Gloucester, with Sir John Stanley and others. These improbable events are taken from Holinshed. Some historians disbelieve them, but Lingard, on the authority of one contemporary, and an ambiguous record, gives credence to the statement of the captivity of Edward. There is in the whole transaction a mystery which I cannot solve. When released, Edward did not, as in the play (see 21), fly to Lynn, and thence to Flanders; that flight was in 1470."-COURTENAY, vol. ii. p. 36. (b) Nothing can be made of the line there omitted,— "Glo. Well guess'd, believe me; for that was my meaning." Walker remarks: "What does this refer to? Something must be lost." Scene 6. (a) Catharine, widow of King Henry V., married for her second husband (see King Henry V., Chor. (6), last note), Owen Tudor, by whom she had, as her eldest son, Edmund, made Earl of Richmond, who was, therefore, half-brother to King Henry VI. He married Margaret, daughter to John Beaufort, first Duke of Somerset, and so became father of the youth Henry, second Earl of Richmond, here introduced; who, at the death of Richard III., succeeded to the throne as Henry VII., and by marrying Elizabeth (daughter of King Edward IV. and Elizabeth Woodville, Lady Grey) united the houses of York and Lancaster. Queen Elizabeth would of course be much gratified by this description of the "pretty lad," whose grand-daughter she was. Scene 7. (a) "I apprehend that this is the first scene in which Gloster, who was now only 19 years old, ought to have been mentioned. Until this time he was a boy at the Court of Burgundy."-CoURTENAY, vol. ii. p. 39. ACT V.-Scene 1. (a) "This is wrong. Henry was now at large, and in possession of the Government; but had this scene been put before that which precedes it, the history (with this exception) would have been tolerably accurate."-COURTENAY, vol. ii. p. 42. Scene 2. (a) We have now the battle of Barnet [April 14, 1471], in which the Nevilles-Warwick and Montague-were both slain. Queen Margaret landed on the same day, as the play correctly relates [see 3. 8], and Somerset and Oxford, escaping from Barnet, joined her before the battle of Tewkesbury [May 3, 1471], in which, as the play also tells us correctly, the queen was defeated and taken prisoner, with Oxford and Somerset, who were afterwards beheaded." -COURTENAY, vol. ii. p. 44. Scene 4. (a) "This scene is ill-contrived, in which the king [Edward] and the queen [Margaret] appear at once on the stage at the head of opposite armies. It had been easy to make the one retire before the other entered."-JOHNSON. Scene 5. (a) It is quite clear there is nothing like evidence either of Prince Edward's smart reply to the king, or of his assassination by anybody [what evidence there is points to his being "slain in the field "]; and that there is not even the report of one who lived near to the time, of the participation of either of the king's brothers in the assassination, if it occurred. There is little in reason for believing any part of the story, though there is not-as there seldom can be -any proof of the negative. At line 27 the prince is called 'brat' by Gloucester; but the fact is he was only one year younger than himself-being then about 18, and Gloucester about 19. The presence of Margaret at her son's examination and death is a dramatic incident, as is Gloucester's attempt to murder her. She was taken, kept prisoner for five years, and then ransomed [see sc. 7. 40] by Louis IX."-COURTENAY, vol. ii. p. 49, sq. Comp. Stubbs, vol. iii. p. 211; and below, King Richard III., 1. 3, note (b). (b) This was in May 1471. The son had been born in April of the preceding year. Scene 6. (a) "As to this murder, Shakspeare is justified by Holinshed. But I quite agree with Walpole [in Historic Doubts'] as to the improbability of Richard's becoming the murderer of the captive and childless king. On the other hand, it is sufficiently clear that from the very first it was suspected that Henry was murdered, and that the perpetrator was in a station so high as to be called a tyrant; and that a rumour was prevalent at an early period, but perhaps not till after Richard's death, that he was the murderer."-COURTENAY, vol. ii. p. 54. "Edward, with 30,000 men under his command, re-entered London on May 21 [1471] in triumph. The same night King Henry died [æt. 51] in the Tower, where he had been replaced after the battle of Barnet. Both at the time and after, the Duke of Gloster was regarded as his murderer; and although nothing certain is known of the circumstances of his death, it is most probable that he was slain secretly."—STUBBS, vol. iii. p. 210, sq. "We regard with just abhorrence the death of Henry VI., and the advocates of Richard III. labour to show that their hero was not the murderer. There can, however, be no doubt that both Edward and his brother, after the battle of Barnet, had determined to put away the poor king, as an act of policy. So long as he lived, he would be the rallying-point of the discontented. It was so completely an act of policy, that the suspicion that King Henry had come to his death by foul means did not militate against the popularity of Edward. The king was imbecile; he might be used to disturb the peace of the country; he was put out of the way; the people asked no questions. Whether the blow was dealt by the hand of Richard, or of Edward, or by some hired assassin, the murder took place under their sanction, and qui facit per alium, facit per se."-Dean Hook's 'Lives, vol. v. p. 354, note. INTRODUCTION TO KING RICHARD III. 1. SOURCES OF THE PLAY.-In writing this tragedy, Shakspeare cannot be said to have been under any obligations to an earlier play on the same subject, by an unknown author-The True Tragedy of Richard III., wherein is shewn the Death of Edward IV., with the Smothering of the two young Princes in the Tower, &c. &c.-which appeared in 1594, quarto, and is still extant (see Hazlitt's 'Shakspeare's Library,' Part 2, vol i. pp. 43-129); or to the earlier Latin play, by Dr Thomas Legge-entitled, Richardus Tertius, and performed at Cambridge, previous to 1583 (see ibid., pp. 131-220); though the former, at least, must have been known to him. It is remarked, however, by Mr Halliwell-Phillipps, 'Outlines,' p. 94 (and comp. p. 233), that "there are slight traces of an older play to be observed [in Shakspeare's]-passages which belong to an inferior hand, and incidents, such as that of the rising of the ghosts, suggested probably by similar ones in a more ancient composition. That the play of Richard III., as we now have it, is essentially Shakspeare's cannot admit of a doubt; but as little can it be questioned that to the circumstance of an anterior work on the subject having been used, do we owe some of its weakness and excessively turbulent character. No copy of this older play is known to exist; but one brief speech, and the two following lines, have been accidentally preserved [see ibid., ' Illustrative Notes,' p. 234]— 'My liege, the Duke of Buckingham is ta'en, from which it is clear that Shakspeare did not hesitate to adopt an occasional line from his predecessor, although he entirely omitted the character of Banister." See iv. 4. 546, and comp. King Henry 8, ii. 1. 127. In regard to the historical basis of the play, the main, perhaps the only, sources from which our poet drew, were the Chronicles of Holinshed and Hall, which contain the life of Richard, taken, for the most part, from the biography of the king, by Sir Thomas More, in Latin and English (see 'Mori Opera,' Lovanii, 1566, pp. 44-57, and 'The Works of Sir Thomas More,' London, 1557, pp. 35-71), who had his information probably from Archbishop Morton, a contemporary, the same person who appears in our play as Bishop of Ely. See Gervinus, p. 263. "The received history is pretty closely followed; but when this play was written, the belief, which it was the aim of the Tudors to encourage, had not been disturbed by the 'historic doubts ' of a later age."-COURTENAY, vol. ii. p. 117. "In his knowledge of the historical facts, Shakspeare is here more exact and certain than his predecessor [?] in King Henry VI.. the conformity to the Chronicle, in all the actions taken from it, comprising a period of 14 years, is extraordinarily true."-GERVINUS, p. 260. 2. GENERAL MERITS OF THE PLAY.-" This is one of the most celebrated of our author's performances; yet I know not whether it has not happened to him, as to others, to be praised most when praise is not most deserved. That this play has scenes noble in themselves, and very well contrived to strike in the exhibition, cannot be denied. But some parts are trifling, others shocking, and some impossible."-JOHNSON. In Gervinus's judgment, the play shows extraordinary progress as compared with King Henry VI.— p. 260. On the other hand, Mr Hudson remarks that, certain scenes and passages excepted, the workmanship, in all its parts-in language, structure of the verse, and quality of tone-is greatly below what we find in the poet's later plays-see vol. ii. p. 167. At p. 137 he had pointed out the demerits more at length, and with his usual discernment. "The play, as a whole, evinces somewhat less maturity of power than King Richard II.; in several cases there is great insubordination of the details to the general plan; the points of tragic stress are more frequent, and the dramatic motives more on the surface, and more obvious, not to say obtrusive, than may well consist with the reason and law of Art; there is also too much piling up of curses, or too much ringing of changes in imprecation ; and in Richard's wooing of Lady Anne, and of Queen Elizabeth, there is an excess of dialogical epigram and antiphrastic point, with challenge and retort alternating through a prolonged series of sticho |