fought in December 1460. In King Richard the Third, Act i. sc. 3, Shakespeare calls him a "babe." Henry, Prince of Wales, at the battle of Shrewsbury, was younger than Rutland at the battle of Wakefield.

I. 4. Q. MARGARET.

Was't you that revell'd in our parliament,

And made a preachment of your high descent.

The allusion here is to the Bill exhibited in Parliament by the Duke of York, in 1460, 39 Henry VI., shewing at large his descent through father and mother from King Edward the Third, and still higher from King Henry the Third. It may be seen on the printed Rolls, vol. v. p. 375.

II. 1. WARWICK.

From your kind AUNT, Duchess of Burgundy.

Here, again, is a genealogical mistake. The Duchess of Burgundy was sister not aunt to the young princess, for Margaret Duchess of Burgundy, in all probability, was in the mind of the writer of this scene, who was, perhaps, not Shakespeare.

II. 5. Q. MARGARET.

Edward and Richard, like a brace of grey-hounds.

Grey-hounds was commonly written grewnds, and pronounced as a monosyllable. There are numerous instances in Golding and Harington. This preserves the metre, and, what is more, the melody.

V. 7. K. EDWARD.

Once more we sit in England's royal throne,
Re-purchased with the blood of enemies;
What valiant foe-men, like to autumn's corn
Have we mowed down in tops of all their pride!
Three dukes of Somerset! threefold renown'd

For hardy and undoubted champions :

Two Cliffords, as the father and the son;

And two Northumberlands; two braver men

Ne'er spurred their coursers at the trumpet's sound :
With them, the two brave bears, Warwick and Montague,
That in their chains fetter'd the kingly lion,

And made the forest tremble when they roar'd.

Shakespeare is true to history in this enumeration of great peers fallen in the contest of the two houses:

The three Dukes of Somerset were—

Edmund, slain at St. Alban's, 1455.

Henry, his son and heir, beheaded after the battle of
Hexham, 1462.

Edmund, his brother, beheaded after the battle of
Tewkesbury, 1471.

Two Cliffords

Thomas, slain at St. Alban's, 1455.

John, his son, slain near Ferrybridge, 1461.

Two Northumberlands

Henry, slain at St. Alban's, 1455.

Henry, his son, slain at Towton, 1461.

Warwick and Montague, brothers, slain at Barnet, 1471. Many more might have been placed on this bloody file. The temptation to historical notes, such as these, it is not easy to resist; but they might be multiplied without number.

KING RICHARD THE THIRD.

THERE are two manuscript copies of the Latin play in the British Museum, both among the Harleian manuscripts, namely, No. 2412 and 6926. The author is said in one of them to be Henry Lacy, of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the date 1586. It has little or no resemblance to Shakespeare's play. The directions for playing at the end of one of the copies might be found to contain hints respecting the representations at the theatres. "Actio" is here used for

"Acts," and "Actus" for "Scenes."

Mr. Malone speaks of a poem in a very rare poetical miscellany in his possession, entitled, “Licia, or Poems of Love, &c.," with this title, "The Rising to the Crown of Richard the Third, written by himself," meaning in his own character. It is a poem of three hundred verses in six-line stanzas. Mr. Caldecott has also a copy of this very rare anonymous volume. I know not that these poems have ever been traced to their authors; but there can be no doubt that the Licia, or at least the poem on the reign of Richard the Third, is the work of the elder Giles Fletcher, of that eminently poetical family. The proof is this:-In the First Piscatory Eclogue of his son Phineas Fletcher, he is the person represented by Thelgon. There is such an exact correspondency between the facts of Dr. Giles Fletcher's

life, as collected from other sources of information, with the facts related of himself by Thelgon, that there can be no

doubt about the matter. Thelgon there speaks of poems written by himself, thus:

I

sang sad Telesutha's frustrate plaint,

And rustic Daphne's wrong, and Magia's vain restraint.

10.

And then appeared young Myrtillus, repining

At general contempt of shepherd's life;

And raised my rime to sing of Richard's climbing,
And taught old Chame to end the old-bred strife,
Mythicus claim to Nicias resigning.

The while his goodly nymph with song delighted

My note with choicest flowers and garlands sweet requited.

“Richard's Climbing" must be the "Rising to the Throne" appended to Licia. The dedication to the Lady Molineux, wife of Sir Richard Molineux, is dated September 4, 1593, which fixes the date of the publication of this poem on Richard the Third. The author was evidently a scholar of one of the Universities, and probably of Cambridge, to which Dr. Giles Fletcher belonged. He was the father of Phineas and the younger Giles, both eminent poetical names, and uncle to Fletcher the dramatic poet.

Shakespeare's living about the time when he wrote this play within the sight of Crosby Place may perhaps have led to the mention of it, as before suggested. It was in his time the residence of the wealthy citizen, Sir John Spencer, who kept his mayoralty in it in 1594-5. We have no proof of the existence of the play before October 1597, when it was entered for publication on the books of the Stationers' Company.

I. 1. GLOSter.

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this SUN of York.

In the old copies it is son, and few changes could be less judicious. The intention of the dramatist was to connect this with the preceding play, and to shew at once that the

son of that York with whom the audience had been familiar was now on a prosperous throne.

Of course the word son would also be regarded as appropriate to the metaphor. This may not have been in the best taste, but it suited the taste of the audience. There is a similar instance in Hamlet, and another in the third scene of this very act,

GLOSTER.-Our aiery buildeth in the cedar's top,

And dallies with the wind and scorns the sun.

Q. MARGARET.-And turns the sun to shade ;-alas! alas!
Witness my son now in the shade of death,

Whose bright-outshining beams thy cloudy wrath
Hath in eternal darkness folded up.

Your aiery buildeth in our aiery's nest.

This long soliloquy is a kind of prologue to the ensuing tragedy; and it seems as if Shakespeare had formed the intention of making Richard a theatrical character, without being very solicitous whether he caught the real features of the real Richard. Without pretending to enter into an examination of the evidence respecting the character and conduct of this worst of the princes of the house of York, it is manifest that when the Poet introduces him as saying,

I am determined to prove a villain,

the audience must have been prepossessed, and the subsequent events must be made to correspond with the image the Poet had thus at the outset presented before them. A man who, owing to personal defects, has no pleasure in the gentle arts of peace, with a capacity for business and enterprise, able and eloquent, with no limits to his ambition, wading through slaughter to a throne, uneasy there, and dying at last in battle, is a fine character for a dramatic writer, preparing not a tragedy but a history.