promised her daughter to Richmond.

It is an obscure

point in the Drama, but we may suppose that the Queen deceives the butcher of her sons; Richard fails in his new plan the star of his destiny is beginning to set. The domestic tie, which he has so deeply injured, revenges itself on him by a refusal.

Next, Richard destroys his most cunning and unprincipled tool, Buckingham, who hesitated at the murder of the young Princes. Buckingham had managed successfully many important transactions, particularly the coronation; it was folly in Richard to throw away such a useful servant. But retribution thereby rays out the more glaring light; Buckingham is treated to that which he has done to others" underhand, corrupted, foul injustice," inflicted upon him by the very man for whose benefit his crimes were committed. He also sees the state of the matter too late, and expresses the justice of his punishment:

"Thus Margaret's curse falls heavy on my neck,

Wrong hath but wrong, and blame the due of blame."

But Richmond has landed on the shores of England. Let us give thanks, for he brings death to the monster, death to this age, and an end to this Tetralogy. Messenger after messenger reports bad news - Richard loses his poise amid danger; he feels himself sinking. He marches out to give battle; the hostile camps lie facing each other, when in the middle a strange vision passes before the mind of both captains. The ghostly forms of those whom Richard had murdered rise up before him and bid him think on their wrongs, that he may be unnerved and lose the battle. At the same time they give words of good

will and encouragement to Richmond.

The Poet has thus

indicated that the hour of retribution is come; and the motives of the play, with its leading incidents, he summarizes in the vision.

Moreover, the scene will aid us in arriving at a judgment concerning Shakespeare's employment of ghosts and supernatural appearances. The conscious intention of the Poet is here so manifest that nobody can deny it, for the ghosts only reiterate what has been fully given in the play without this unreal form. Richard's overthrow and Richmond's victory has been amply motived; here it is cast into the unconscious presentiment of both leaders. In sleep the foreboding of the soul moulds itself into the distinct image, and there results the dream. The subjective nature of both men is thus shown one buoyed up with a just cause, the other weighed down with his crimes. What Richard really is comes out in the vision; he might be able to suppress himself when awake.

Now he for the first time is frightened; the dream has fully revealed, not merely his character to himself— that he knew before-but the certainty of his punishment. It is the revelation of his own soul concerning his destiny, for Richard hitherto had no faith in retribution; his belief was in successful villainy. Hence his terror.

"By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night

Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers
Armed in proof and led by shallow Richmond."

But he shuts his eyes, as it were, on the future; stamps out the rising remorse; 66 conscience is a word that cowards

use." Utterly reckless, he gives the command to march

on-"if not to Heaven, then hand in hand to Hell." So he rushes into the fight, seeking to drown conscience in death.

own.

In Richmond we have the religious-and, in a higher. sense, the national-hero, who unites the two parties into the nation. He stands above the dissension which produced the Wars of the Roses; his object is not partisan, but patriotic. With the battle of Bosworth Field a solution is given to the Yorkian Tetralogy—a solution which is essentially tragic, though it points beyond to a reconciliation. Both Houses have perished in all their immediate representatives; their names descend to remote members of each line, who proceed to disown the titles York and Lancaster-and to found a new House of their A man and a woman- -the heir of the Lancastrians and the heiress of the Yorkists-unite in marriage, and thus transform the political hate of the hostile Houses into the domestic love of the Family. But this Yorkian Tetralogy is truly one great historical tragedy; in fact, we may go back and include the whole eight plays, beginning with Richard the Second. It was, indeed, the tragic period of English History, in which, not an individual, but the entire nation, became tragic. But such is not the true destiny of England; there must be a conclusion which is not tragic, as the nation is still surviving. The play of Henry the Eighth, therefore, is to follow; it will bring to a happy termination the English Historical series.

HENRY THE EIGHTH.

In this drama there is always felt to be something foreign to the genius of Shakespeare as revealed elsewhere in his works. Much critical dissatisfaction has been expressed concerning it, and some writers have even gone to the extent of excluding the greater portion of it from the genuine works of the Poet. To enter into the question of authorship is not the purpose here; it is the domain of unlimited, uncontrolled conjecture, upon which there are at present many squatters, and which can accommodate many more. Let the reader enter and make his choice for himself, since he has as good a right as anybody else. According to the external evidence, however, the claim of Shakespeare can hardly be gainsaid without danger of undermining all his other claims.

Still, the critical dissatisfaction just mentioned, as far as it pertains to the quality of the work, has good grounds -the drama of Henry the Eighth is certainly wanting in unity of structure. It lies there in great masses, almost disjointed; with a little change in the arrangement every Act might be made into a play by itself, with its plot, central figure, and catastrophe. Yet there are certain characters and threads which run through the drama from beginning to end, thus keeping up a connection of all the parts; still, on the other hand, these connecting threads constitute, not the main, but the subordinate, interest. King Henry, for example, remains as a character of the

play from the first Act to the last; he is, however, hardly more than a tool of mightier personalities in the first three Acts. There is the conflict between Wolsey and Buckingham first; second, between Wolsey and the Queen; third, between Wolsey and the King. Then Wolsey drops out entirely. Not enough concentration is brought into the dramatic structure; too much of a tendency of the parts to fall into independence is manifested. This is, indeed, owing mainly to its spectacular purpose, which appeals to the eye rather than to the mind, and, hence, it must look to immediate sensuous effects more than to the long and careful preparation of dramatic motives.

The style, too, has in it many elements which are alien to the best style of Shakespeare. The versification has been subjected to the so-called metrical tests; in accordance with these, the foreign portions have been designated. But the difficulty reaches much deeper than the formal meter; it extends to the coloring, to the figurative speech, to the forms of expression-in fine, to the style generally. Taking the drama as a whole, apart from single passages, we miss the richness, the glow, the Shakespearian ecstasy; when the language is elevated, it is emotional and subjective rather than sensuous and objective. Single passages of great beauty may be found, undoubtedly; but it is in the power of even fourth-rate poets to write beautiful lines now and then. It is the sustained style which marks the great work and great poet-not sudden spurts amid dreary wastes of stupidity.

At this point we may be permitted to go out of the way a little and make a further application of what has just been said. It is often declared by learned critics that here and there, in some disputed play, they "see the hand