repugnant to the hereditary sentiment of the author, had een sure to offend the prepossessions of his audience. It is to this cause, probably, that we should attribute whatsoever of discrepancy there may be in the representation. All that is pure and beautiful in her life as depicted in the play resulted, no doubt, from the Poet's universality of mind and heart overbearing for a time the strong natural, and, we may add, honourable current of national feeling. Nor should it be unremembered that herein Shake. speare's course was against the whole drift of the Chronicles; for the account they give of her is indeed consistent, but then it is consistently bad. How the catastrophe of her career in the drama may have affected a contemporary English audience, we of course have no means of knowing: but to us her behaviour thereabouts seems nowise of her character, but rather a piece of, perhaps justifiable, hypocrisy, taken up as a sort of forlorn hope, and so form ing no part of herself; the impression of her foregoing life thus triumphing over the seeming sacrifice of honour and virtue at its close. What a subject she would have been for Shakespeare's hand, could he have done, what no good man has been able to do, namely, viewed her in the pure light of universal humanity, free from the colourings and refractings of national prepossession! Amidst the general comparative tameness of the drama in hand, several scenes and parts of scenes may be specified as holding out something more than a promise of Shakespeare's ripened power. Such are the maiden's description of herself in Act i. sc. 2, beginning, Dauphin, I am by birth a shepherd's daughter;". and Talbot's account of his entertainment by the French while their prisoner, in sc. 4 of the same Act, where the story relishes at every turn of the teller's character, and the words seem thoroughly steeped in his individuality. Not less admirable, perhaps, in its way, is the pungent and pithy dialogue between Winchester, Glos ter, Warwick, and Somerset, at the opening of Act iii., where the words strike fire all round, and where the persons, because they dare not speak, therefore out of their pent-up wrath speak all the more spitefully. Again, of whole scenes, the third in Act ii., between old Talbot and the countess of Auvergne, is in the conception and the execution a genuine stroke of Shakespearian art, full of dramatic spirit, and making a strong point of stage-effect in the most justifiable sense. And in the Temple-Garden scene, which is the fourth of the same Act, we have a concentration of true dramatic life issuing in a series of forcible and characteristic flashes, where every word tells with singular effect both as a develop. ment of present temper and a germ of many tragic events And, on the higher principles of art, how fitting it was that this outburst of smothered rage, th's distant ominous grumbling of the tempest, should be followed by the subdued and plaintive tones that issue from the prison of the aged Mortimer, where we have the very spring and cause of the gathering storm discoursed in a strain of melancholy music, and a virtual sermon of revenge and slaughter breathed from dying lips. And of the fifth, sixth, and seventh scenes a Act iv., also, we may well say with Dr. Johnson, "If we take these scenes from Shakespeare, to whom shall they be given ? ” The chief merits of the play are well stated, though doubtless with some exaggeration, by Schlegel, the judiciousness of whose criticisms in the main hath been so often approved, that no apology seems needed for quoting him. "Shakespeare's choice," says he, "fell first on this period of English history, so full of misery and horrors of every kind, because to a young poet's mind the pathetic is naturally more suitable than the characteristic. We do not here find the whole maturity of his genius, yet certainly its whole strength. Careless as to the seeming unconnectedness of contemporary events, he bestows little attention on preparation and development: all the figures follow in rapid succession, and announce themselves emphatically for what we ought to take them. The First Part contains but the forming of the parties of the White and Red Rose, under which blooming ensigns such bloody deeds were afterwards perpetrated; the varying results of the war in France principally fill the stage. The wonderful saviour of her country, Joan of Arc, is portrayed by Shakespeare with an Eng lishman's prejudice: yet he at first leaves it doubtful whether she has not in reality an heavenly mission; she appears in the pure glory of virgin heroism; by her supernatural eloquence this circumstance is of the Poet's invention she wins over the duke of Burgundy to the French cause; afterwards, corrupted by vanity and luxury, she has recourse to hellish fiends, and comes to a miserable end. To her is opposed Talbot, a rough iron warrior, who moves us the more powerfully, as, in the moment when he is threatened with inevitable death, all his care is tenderly directed to save his son, who performs his first deeds of arms under his eye. The interview between the aged Mortimer in prison, and Richard Plantagenet, unfolds the claims of the latter to the throne, and forms, by itself, a beautiful tragic elegy." -and PERSONS REPRESENTED. KING HENRY THE SIXTH. HUMPHREY, Duke of Gloster, Protector, THOMAS BEAUFORT, Duke of Exeter. his Uncles. HENRY BEAUFORT, Bishop of Winchester, and Cardinal JOHN LORD TALBOT, afterwards Earl of Shrewsbury. EDMUND MORTIMER, Earl of March. Mortimer's Keeper, and a Lawyer. SIR JOHN FASTOLFE. SIR WILLIAM GLANSDALE. WOODVILLE, Lieutenant of the Tower. Mayor of London CHARLES, the Dauphin; afterwards King of France. The Duke of Alençon. The Bastard of Orleans. Governor of Paris. Master-Gunner of Orleans, and his Son General of the French Forces in Bordeaux. A French Sergeant. A Porter. Au old Shepherd, Father to Joan la Pucelle. MARGARET OF ANJOU, Queen to Henry VI. The Countess of Auvergne. JOAN LA PUCELLE, commonly called Joan of Arc. Fiends appearing to La Pucelle, Lords, Warders of the Tower, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, Messengers, and sev eral Attendants both on the English and French. SCENE, partly in England, and partly in France. FIRST PART OF HENRY VI. ACT I. SCENE I. Westminster Abbey. Dead March. Enter the Funeral of King HENRY the Fifth, attended by the Dukes of BEDFORD, GLOSTER, and EXETER; the Earl of WARWICK, the Bishop of WINCHESTER, Heralds, &c. Bed. HUNG be the heavens with black,' yield day to night! 2 Comets, importing change of times and states, 1 The upper part of the stage was in Shakespeare's time tech nically called the heavens, and was used to be hung with black, when tragedies were performed. To this custom the text probably refers. So in Marston's Insatiable Countess : "The stage of heaven is hung with solemn black; H. The epithet crystal was often bestowed on comets by the old writers. Thus in a Sonnet by Lord Sterline, 1604: When as those crystal comets whiles appear."— Coleridge thus comments on this opening speech: Read aloud any two or three passages in blank verse even from Shakespeare's earliest dramas, as Love's Labour's Lost, or Romeo and Juliet; and then read in the same way this speech, with special attention to the metre; and if you do not feel the impossibility of the latter having been written by Shakespeare, all I dare suggest is, that you may have ears, — - for to has another animal, but an ear you cannot have, me judice' н. That have consented 3 unto Henry's death! Glo. England ne'er had a king, until his time. Virtue he had, deserving to command: His brandish'd sword did blind men with his beams; Than midday sun fierce bent against their faces. Exe. We mourn in black: why mourn we not Henry is dead, and never shall revive: 5 3 Consented here means conspired together to promote the death of Henry by their malignant influence on human events. 4 Thomas Beaufort, the present duke of Exeter, was son to John of Ghent by Catharine Swynford; born out of wedlock, but legitimated along with three other children in the time of Richard II. Of course therefore he was great uncle to King Henry VI At the death of Henry V. he was appointed governor of the infant king, which office be held till his death in 1425. The Poet, however, prolongs his life till 1444, the period of the First Part Holinshed calls him "a right sage and discreet counsellor." The naine Beaufort was derived from the place of his birth, which was Beaufort castle in France. H. This is well explained by a passage in Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584: The Irishmen will not sticke to |