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BOOKS.

Richard II, Richard III, and King John are published by the Clarendon Press, edited by ALDIS WRIGHT.

The Temple Shakespeare. Ed. by ISRAEL GOLLANCZ.
HAZLITT. Characters of Shakespeare's Plays.

CHARLES LAMB. Essays on the Tragedies of Shakespeare.
GERVINUS. Shakespeare's Commentaries. SMITH, ELDER.
Dr. SCHMIDT. Shakespeare Lexicon. WILLIAMS & NORGATE.
HALLIWELL PHILLIPS. Materials for a Life of Shakespeare.
F S. BOAS. Shakespeare and his Predecessors. J. MURRAY.
A. BIRRELL. Obiter Dicta [for Falstaff].

J. GAIRDNER. Life of Richard III.

LECTURE I.

KING JOHN.

Introductory. Elizabethan Chronicle plays. They form a series from the earliest times to Queen Elizabeth. The principal authors of them. Aim which characterizes them all, the scenic exposition of our annals to the nation. Motives of instruction and patriotism.

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'Plays have. taught the unlearned the knowledge of many famous histories, instructed such as cannot read in the discovery of all our English chronicles. . . because plays are writ with this aim . . to teach their subjects obedience to their king, to show the people the untimely ends of such as have moved tumults, commotions and insurrections, to present them with the flourishing estate of such as live in obedience, exhorting them to allegiance, dehorting them from all traitorious and felonious stratagems.'-HEYWOOD, Apology for Actors.

The external interest of the play is small. It is in Shakespeare's earlier manner; probably written about 1593, and therefore contemporary with Richard II. It contains no creation of Shakespeare's imagination. It is simply an old play written up. The troublesome reign of King John gave the dramatist his characters (including Faulconbridge), his subject-matter, and his method.

Thus there is no evidence of independent study of the chronicles. The history is confused and inaccurate anachronisms abound-there is little unity of dramatic action.

The interest, therefore, is wholly internal, and depends very largely upon the characters of Faulconbridge and Arthur. On these pivots the drama largely moves.

Chatillon, ambassador to the King of France, claims the throne of England from John on behalf of Arthur of Brittany, son of John's elder brother, Geoffrey. John defies France and determines to invade the country; the revenues of the Church will pay the charges.

'Our abbeys and our priories shall pay

This expedition's charge.'

Thus the note is struck which sounds throughout the piece, the note of conflict between Church and King which is to end in the King's ruin.

France collects its forces before Angiers, where appear the King, the Duke of Austria, the Dauphin, Arthur, and Constance, his mother. John appears with his forces, recriminations follow between the parties, and Angiers is summoned by both to surrender to its lawful sovereign. Angiers, doubtful on the point, refuses to admit either. Faulconbridge turns the obstinacy of the town to account by suggesting that France and England shall unite to reduce Angiers, and settle their own differences afterwards. Angiers, dismayed at the prospect, suggests terms of accommodation, the Dauphin to marry Blanche, John's niece, and to receive John's French possessions as her dowry. These terms are agreed upon, and the cause of Arthur in England is abandoned by France. Consequent fury and disappointment of Constance.

At this point, Pandulph, Papal legate, summons Philip of France to abjure the cause of John and make war upon him in the interests of the Church. Philip obeys, war breaks out between Philip and John, in which John is successful.

Encouraged by success, John thinks to get rid of Arthur and his claims, and commissions Hubert to serve his purposes. Pathetic scene between Hubert and Arthur. Hubert relents, but Arthur none the less is kept a prisoner, and kills himself in trying to escape. The English lords, roused by John's treatment of Arthur and supposed complicity in his death, revolt, and call in the assistance of the Dauphin. John yields his kingdom

into the hands of the Papal legate, and implores his mediation with the revolted lords and the Dauphin. The Dauphin refuses terms, and a battle ensues; but the revolted lords, learning that the Dauphin intends, if successful, to betray them, return to the King, whom they find dying at Swinstead Abbey. Death of John, accession of Prince Henry, and departure of the Dauphin to France.

The Bastard Faulconbridge.

He is a natural son of Richard, Coeur-de-Lion, with many of his father's qualities. He remains faithful to John's interests throughout, rather by ties of family than affection, and all through the play exercises an important influence upon events. He also serves to afford relief to the general seriousness and gloom of the piece. But for Faulconbridge, the play would be without a hero, as it is without a heroine.

In construction and dramatic interest the drama is deficient, but is marked by (a) elevation of language and sentiment, (b) by the strong pathos of the Arthur and Hubert scene, (c) by the elaboration of the character of Faulconbridge.

LECTURE II.

RICHARD II.

Marlowe's Edward II. Analogy in motive to Shakespeare's Richard II. "The reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty.' Marlowe's methods of treatment contrasted and compared with Shakespeare's. Contrast in the character of the respective heroes. Edward the victim of his own dissoluteness and frivolity; Richard of his own misgovernment. Marlowe's skill in securing sympathy for his subject.

Richard II. Shakespeare's sources for the play were Hollinshed's Chronicles. The departures from the history as there recorded are trivial. His plot is the fall of Richard II.

Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Hereford, accuses Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, of treason and peculation. They appeal to the arbitrament of single combat. The lists are prepared at Coventry, but scarcely has the fight begun than the king stops it, banishes Hereford for six years and Norfolk for life. John of Gaunt, Hereford's father, dies. Richard seizes his property (he needs money for his wars in Ireland), thus dispossessing Hereford, John of Gaunt's son.

While the king is absent in Ireland, Hereford (now Duke of Lancaster) returns from banishment to claim his own. He is very generally supported, for Richard's exactions and misgovernment have roused all classes against him. The king, on his return, finds himself abandoned; remits Bolingbroke's sentence of banishment, and finally abdicates the crown in Bolingbroke's

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