triumph of right, and justice, and feeling, and beauty, and poetry, for all time, in the universal heart of mankind, over the very meanness, selfishness, and crime, which oppress and crush them for the hour. Whatever doubts might exist at the historic period in question, as to the validity of young Arthur's title to the crown of England, any such doubtful title would have been little to the purpose of the dramatist; and accordingly we find, in the play, that Arthur's claim and John's usurpation are regarded by all parties as clear and indisputable. In the very opening of the piece,

Your strong possession, much more than your right,
Or else it must go wrong with you and me,

says John's mother, Queen Elinor, assuredly his warmest and staunchest partisan. This clearness of Arthur's title cannot be overlooked for a moment, without essentially perverting and weakening the interest which the poet has attached to the position as well as character of the widowed mother, Constance of Bretagne. Nor is it Shakespeare's fault if the reader or spectator fail to be forcibly reminded of this fact, at numerous intervals throughout the play. Among the most remarkable of these instances are the passages to that effect in those ruminating speeches of Faulconbridge (the most intelligent as well as devoted and spirited of John's adherents) which form, as it were, the chorus of the tragedy. Thus, when moralising on the peace patched up between the two kings by the marriage of Blanch to the Dauphin, he speaks of the French monarch as one

whose armour conscience buckled on,
Whom zeal and charity brought to the field,
As God's own soldier;

and adds that this "commodity," this self-interest, against which the speaker is railing,

Hath drawn him from his own determin'd aid,
From a resolv'd and honourable war,

To a most base and vile-concluded peace.

Again, at the close of the fourth act, over the dead body of Arthur, addressing Hubert, he says

Go, bear him in thine arms.

How easy dost thou take all England up!
From forth this morsel of dead royalty,

The life, the right, and truth, of all this realm
Is fled to heaven.

It is in tracing the course of the retribution upon John, political and personal, as a usurper and a murderer, brought upon him by those unscrupulous means which he had taken to prevent it, that the interest of the concluding act resides, and the satisfaction which it affords to the feelings of the auditor.

So far, then, from representing either Arthur or his mother as ambitious, the poet, in legitimate pursuit of his dramatic object, has studiously excluded from view every historical circumstance that could countenance the smallest impression of that nature. He has not only reduced the prince's age to such tender years as would hardly admit of his harbouring a political sentiment; but, in direct opposition to the recorded facts, represents the boy as one of a peculiarly mild and quiet temper, devoid of all princely airs and all appetite for command-simple-hearted, meek, and affectionate. He weeps at the violent scene produced by his mother's meeting with Queen Elinor, and exclaims,

Good my mother, peace!

I would that I were low laid in my grave;

I am not worth this coil that's made for me.

Again, to his mother's violent grief at hearing of the accommodation between the two kings, he says,

I do beseech you, madam, be content.

And again, in "his innocent prate" to his keeper Hubert,

So I were out of prison, and kept sheep,

I should be merry as the day is long, &c.

C

Is it not plain that this very inoffensiveness is designed by the dramatist to place in the stronger light the clearness of Arthur's title, as the exclusive reason for his uncle's hostility, at the same time that it deepens so wonderfully the pathos of the scene wherein he pleads for the preservation of his eyes? Another element of this pathos is, the exceeding beauty which the poet has ascribed to the princely boy, which is made to affect the hearts of all who approach him, even the rudest of his uncle's creatures, and gives to this only orphan child the crowning endearment to his widowed mother's heart.

That mother herself, it is most important to observe and to bear in mind, whatever she was in history, is not represented by the poet as courting power for its own sake. Had he so represented her, it would have

defeated one of those fine contrasts of character in which Shakespeare so much delighted—that between Constance and Elinor, which is perfect in every way. The whole conduct and language of Constance in the piece, shew that her excessive fondness for her son, and that alone, makes her so eagerly desire the restitution of his lawful inheritance. She longs to see this one sole, and beautiful, and gracious object of her maternal idolatry, placed on the pedestal of grandeur which is his birthright, that she may idolize it more fondly still

Thou and thine usurp

The domination, royalties and rights
Of this oppressed boy.

Such is her defiance to Elinor. Still more strikingly unfolded is the entire subordination, in the breast of Constance, of all ambitious view, to the concentrated feelings of the doting mother, in the well-known address to Arthur, when her sworn friends have betrayed her:

If thou, that bidst me be content, wert grim,
Ugly and slanderous to thy mother's womb,

I would not care, I then would be content;

For then I should not love thee; no, nor thou
Become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown.
But thou art fair; and at thy birth, dear boy!
Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great.
Of Nature's gifts thou mayst with lilies boast,
And with the half-blown rose. But Fortune, oh!
She is corrupted, chang'd, and, won from thee,
Adulterates hourly with thine uncle John.

If we could still doubt the absolute and all-absorbing predominance of the maternal affection, it is disclosed to us in all its awful and beautiful depth, in those bursts of sublimest poetry that gush from her heart when informed of Arthur's capture. In all these she never once thinks of him as a prince, who ought to be a king-far less of the station to which she is herself entitled. It is the thought of never more beholding her "absent child," her "pretty Arthur," her "fair son," that is driving her to distraction

I will not keep this form upon my head
While there is such disorder in my wit.-
O Lord! my boy! my Arthur! my fair son!
My life! my joy! my soul! my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrow's cure!

We come now to consider the most important point of all that should guide us in judging of the histrionic expression of this character-namely, the indications afforded by the whole tenour of the incident and dialogue, as to the individuality of Constance's person and disposition as a woman-independently even of that maternal relation in which the drama constantly places her before us.

That Constance, in the poet's conception, is of graceful as well as noble person, we are not left to infer merely from the graces of her vigorous mind, nor from the rare loveliness of her child, and her extreme sensibility to it. We hear of her beauty more explicitly from the impression which it makes upon those around her-especially from the exclamations of King Philip on beholding her distress for Arthur's loss, the greater part of which we regret to find omitted in the present acting of the play

Bind

up those tresses. Oh, what love I note In the fair multitude of those her hairs, &c.

But it is the moral and intellectual beauty, the logic and the poetry of the character, that it is most essential to consider. And here we are called upon to dissent materially from the view of this matter which Mrs. Jameson has exhibited at some length. In commencing her essay on this character, she numbers among the qualities which the Lady Constance of Shakespeare has in common with the mother of Coriolanus, "self-will and exceeding pride." In a following page, she speaks again of "her haughty spirit" and "her towering pride." Again, of "her proud spirit" and "her energetic self-will;" and "her impetuous temper conflicting with her pride." Once more-"On the whole it may be said, that pride and maternal affection form the basis of the character of Constance ;" and "in all the state of her great grief, a grand impersonation of pride and passion." But the contrary of all this inherent pride and self-will which the critic alleges, appears in the poet's delineation. It is the mild language of gratitude and patience that we first hear from Constance, in the scene where she thanks the French king and the Austrian duke for their espousal of her dear son's cause, but entreats them to wait for John's answer to the French ambassador before they proceed to bloodshed. In the scene where she encounters Elinor, all the "pride and self-will" are on the side of her enemies; the outraged right and feeling, on her own. To Elinor's Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?

it is but natural that she should say,

Let me make answer-thy usurping son.

And Elinor's atrocious imputation upon her, of adultery and of guilty ambition