For the State cannot be true to itself unless it is animated by an ecclesiastical spirit, the Church by a political spirit, that is, unless both are inspired by the spirit of true morality.

The fortunes, the doings and the sufferings of all the secondary figures are, of course, determined and conditioned: by the course of the main action, as the latter is determined by the leading thought of the whole; accordingly, it will also be reflected in all the secondary parts. The plans of the King of France, of the Dauphin, and of the Archduke of Austria are frustrated by their own selfish, arrogant, and faithless policy, which is equally opposed to the nature of the state; consequently it also proves the ruin of Blanche's hopes. The conduct of the English barons is explained from their feudal position to the royal power and from John's usurped sovereignty, the unjustness of which is manifest from its very weakness, uncertainty, and violence. Where the inmost nature of the body is unsound, the separate members cannot be prefectly healthy. The fortunes of Constance and Arthur are a kind of episode in John's own life, but yet appear significantly interwoven with the history of the state. Their story may be said to form a pendant to the fundamental moral of the play: that nothing is more disavowed by history than passionateness and want of self-control, the hereditary failings of woman's nature. Women ought not to interfere with history, as history demands action, for which they are usually unfit. The pathos of maternal love which rules the soul of Constance is indeed a motive as noble as it is just, considering the circumstances. But, on the one hand, this love is not quite pure and disinterested, it is manifestly mixed with a goodly amount of ambition and love of dominion; on the other hand, owing to Constance's impetuous nature, it becomes immoderate passion, which blindly and heedlessly follows its own object, and in trying in vain to force the iron course of history from its path, rises to a height where it turns into suicidal rage. In fact, Constance and her son are ruined by the very vehemence of the passion with which she endeavours to obtain his rights, although Arthur, not being of age, could not have

ascended the throne. The boy, because dependent, as the child of his mother, had therefore to forfeit his life, although he was himself innocent, and had already once been saved from John's murderous designs by the compassion of Hubert. Had Constance possessed more prudence, and waited till he himself, of his own manly strength, could have asserted his right-and then only could he have been fully entitled to his right-that which belonged to them would have fallen into their hands of its own accord.

Moreover, the historical subject-matter offered by the reign of King John-the perpetually conflicting interests, the disorganised state of the body politic, the many fluctuations of fortune, and the vacillation of a selfish policy, the alternate advance and retrogression of the course of history before it arrived at its proper resultin short, the great variety of events and characters imperatively demanded that this multiplicity should be reduced and concentrated in definite and prominent individuals. Shakspeare, therefore, require representatives: above all a person in whom to exhibit John's injustice, his violence, and recklessly despotic government, a person in John's treatment of whom, these fundamental features of his character (which were pre-eminently the cause of his own ruin) could be set forth in the sharpest and most distinct form; in other words a character such as Arthur, who, notwithstanding his childish innocence, gracefulness and amiability, John pursues to the very death, merely because he stands in the way of his love of dominion, and whose fate, therefore, gives us a clear and pregnant illustration of the ethical element here interwoven with state policy. But Shakspeare also required a representative of the generally heroic and chivalrous spirit of the age, such as Faulconbridge, a contrast to whom we have in the hollow, boastful Archduke of Austria; both, at the same time, are the representatives of the history of the immediate past under Richard Coeur de Lion; the poet further required, a representative of the papacy, such as Cardinal Pandulph; representatives of the English aristocracy, such as the earls of Pembroke and Salisbury; a representative of the loyalty that still prevailed among the people, of the ready obedience to the royal power,

which, however, as a sign of its healthy mind, recoils with horror from an unequivocal crime, such as we have in Hubert de Burgh; he even required a representative of medieval superstition (a caricature of the powerful ecclesiastical faith), such as the prophet Peter of Pomfret. History does not everywhere, and at every period, offer such representative men; where they do not exist, the poet has to create them, not, however, according to his own fancy, he has, as it were, to form them out of given historical features. Only as such, as, likenesses of the spirit of the age, can they claim historical authority, and it is only the greatest masters in historicodramatic composition that will succeed in drawing such 1.kenesses.

As regards the question as to when 'King John' first appeared on the stage, our only external evidence is the fact that the play is mentioned by Meres. If, as Tieck thinks, Meres did not refer to the older play of 'Kynge Johan,' which appeared in print in 1591, because, as 1 think, the piece was not written by Shakspeare, then all that is certain is that Shakspeare's play must have appeared before 1597. Most critics do not place it earlier than 1596-97. I, for my part, believe that it may have appeared some years earlier. It is true that it contains but few passages in rhyme (as the subject offered no occasion either for lyrical effusions or for the expression of calm contemplative reflection), but these rhymes are often just those very alternate rhymes which are always less frequently met with in Shakspeare's later works. The drama is also written wholly in verse, to the exclusion of all prose; but this circumstance, to which Gervinus draws attention, I do not consider of any great importance, for in Shakspeare's tragedies and historical dramas (except in the comic scenes introduced) it is invariably only persons from the lower ranks who speak in prose, and such persons and such scenes do not occur in 'King John.' Of greater weight, in my opinion, is the generally clear and regular flow of the language, which is still free from complicated similes and constructions, and also the regular, almost monotonous versification with its Lsually masculine endings-a circumstance pointed out

by K. Elze. I am therefore inclined to assume that 'King John' may have appeared in 1593-94, that is, in the interval after the completion of the earlier tetralogy. of English histories, which comprises the three parts of 'Henry VI.' and 'Richard III.,' but before the commencement of the later one, which includes Richard II.,' 'Henry IV.' (1st and 2nd Parts), and 'Henry V.'

6

CHAPTER VI.

RICHARD II.

THE character of Richard II. is in many respects the counterpart of King John, for while he tries in vain to maintain his usurped sovereignty by bad means, Richard forfeits his good right to the royal power by making bad use of it. History, inasmuch as it is life, will tolerate no abstract or dead ideas. The fixed formula of an external, legal right established by man, it regards as nothing but a formula; it values a right which is truly just only in so far as it is founded upon morality. This right Richard has forfeited, because he has himself trampled upon it. Even the highest earthly power is not independent of the external laws of history; and even the right of majesty by the grace of God loses its title as soon as it breaks away from its foundation, the grace of God, whose justice acknowledges no legal claims, no hereditary or family right in contradiction to the sole right of truth and reason. Richard boasts in vain of his legal title, in vain of the divine right of majesty, he calls in vain to its angels who set him on the throne; his right and his name do not produce the slightest effect, because they are devoid of the creative power of inward justice. His people forsake him because he first forsook them. The wrong of rebellion prevails: Richard's nature, which in itself is noble, and has merely become degenerate, succumbs to the shrewdness and prudence of a Bolingbroke. Small as is the truly moral spirit exhibited by the man afterwards king Henry IV., he seems a hero of virtue compared with the unworthy, most unkingly Richard; at all events he possesses the necessary and essential attributes of princes, wisdom, self-control and strength of will and

energy.

Under so unkingly a sovereign the country could not