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INTRODUCTION.

THE tragedy of Richard II. opens the grand course of chronicle plays in which Shakespeare shows us how the great and noble House of Plantagenet fell by their own sin, and destroyed one another.

We see, first, the feeble, pleasure-loving, passionate man, whose weakness and injustice tempts the ambition of his more able cousin, and thus works his own destruction. Then we see the new King, wishing to be just and merciful, but driven to severity and cruelty by the dangers of his position, till he dies, worn out in the prime of his life. His son sheds a brief glory over the family, but is cut off in his youth and the flower of his age, as are all his brave brothers, leaving only their nephew, the weak and gentle King of whom it was said— "Heavily upon his head

Ancestral crimes were visited."

Hot, ferocious ambition awakens itself in the dispossessed family; and after destroying the House of Lancaster, the members of the House of York turn on each other; and when the villainy of Richard III. has succeeded for a time, he meets his punishment at Bosworth.

All this is traced throughout by Shakespeare, beginning with the crime of Henry of Lancaster.

We will begin with the real history, so far as it is known, for the reign of Richard II. is one of those which

are least understood by historians. For the comprehension of the play we must go back a little.

Richard had come to the throne at eleven years of age, when the country was worn out with the long wars with France, begun by Edward III. His affairs were chiefly managed by his three uncles-John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; Edmund of Langley, Duke of York; Thomas, Duke of Gloucester. John was the ablest and the most loyal of the three, but for some years he was occupied by an attempt to obtain the crown of Spain; and Edmund of York was slow and dull, so that the mastery was gained by Thomas of Gloucester, who made himself popular, though he had no high qualities.

The son of John of Gaunt by his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, was Henry, called of Bolingbroke. He was of the same age as the King, and much more high-spirited, very brilliant in all accomplishments, a brave knight, and most gracious and courteous in manner to all ranks. Gloucester and Bolingbroke joined the other English nobles in overthrowing Richard's first favourite, Robert de Vere, and in establishing a commission to control the King, but they afterwards quarrelled. The great family of Bohuns, Earls of Hereford, had ended in two daughters. Gloucester had married Eleanor, the elder, and hoped to keep Mary, the younger, single, so as to preserve to himself the whole inheritance, but Henry of Bolingbroke contrived to accomplish a marriage with the young lady, and claimed her share of the lands of Hereford. Thus he and Gloucester, though at first united against the King's favourites, were at enmity with each other. Henry took the King's part, but Gloucester was too powerful for Richard, and actually put to death four knights, great friends of the King, one of them an old companion in arms of the Black Prince.

Richard never forgot or forgave this deed. In 1389, he succeeded in getting the Government into his own hands, but his rule was unpopular. He was a man of peaceful temper and elegant tastes, which the English despised, and the turbulent nobles were angered that the

war in France was not continued. Gloucester did all that he could to increase the general discontent, and there were endless plots and counterplots. One of these was concerted between Gloucester, the Earl of Arundel, and his brother, the Archbishop of Canterbury, for seizing the King and Queen and keeping them prisoners.

On discovering this treason, Richard himself undertook to secure his uncle, and taking with him the Earl Marshal, who was then the Duke of Norfolk, arrested Gloucester just outside his own castle at Plashy, and sent him off to Calais.

The Earl of Arundel was tried and beheaded; the Archbishop at first imprisoned, then exiled. When Norfolk was called on, as Earl Marshal, to produce Gloucester for trial, he answered that the Duke was dead. How he died, no one knows to this day. The King alleged that he expired in a fit. There was an inquiry, and John of Gaunt himself pronounced judgment that his dead brother had been guilty of treason. But the country at large disbelieved the whole story of the plot, and thought it the invention of the King, in order to ruin his uncle, and to be able to murder him in secret, for having stood up for the people, and for having remonstrated with the extravagance of the court. It was said that he was smothered by two men, one of whom belonged to Edward, the son of the Duke of York.

Richard, after losing his first wife, Anne of Bohemia, chose to ask in marriage Isabel of France, a little girl of eight years old, who was made over to him, and lived at Langley Bower until she should be old enough to become his wife.

Richard, meantime, really loved and trusted his uncle, John of Gaunt, more than any one, except perhaps his half-brothers, the Hollands, the Dukes of Exeter and Surrey, sons of his mother by her first marriage. He had also four favourites-William Scroop, whom he had made Earl of Wiltshire; Sir Stephen Scroop, Lord Chief Justice; and three men called Bagot, Bushy, and Green, who were thought to be very rapacious. How far they