"The king accompanied with the bishop of Carleill, th of Salisburie, and sir Stephan Scroope, Knight (who ba sword before him), and a few other, came foorth into th ward, and sate downe in a place prepared for him. F with as the duke got sight of the king, he shewed a re dutie as became him, in bowing his knee, and, commi ward, did so likewise the second and third time, till th tooke him by the hand, and lift him up, saieng: " cousine, ye are welcome.' The duke humblie thankin said: 'My sovereigne lord and king, the cause of my ming at this present, is (your honour saved) to have restitution of my person, my lands and heritage, throug favourable licence.' The King hereunto answered: cousine, I am readie to accomplish your will, so that y inioy all that is yours without exception (Boswell Shakespeares Holinshed, p. 109).

If these excerpts from Holinshed be compared with speare's text, they will exhibit fairly the closeness with the playwright followed the chronicler. The English of Richard II. is therefore that of Holinshed, and since speare only introduced occasionally, in the interests of certain modifications of the material offered him, the ment of the Shakespearian incidents with to-day's accep tory of Richard's reign is a question for the historical s of the Chronicles and not for us. It is, of course, neces record Shakespeare's main deviations from the narrat Holinshed.

First come those already dealt with as possibly ind the existence of an earlier play (see p. xi, supra). second place come deliberate changes of Holinshed's dat of them of very great importance. These are (i) 1 mission of four years from Bolingbroke's period of bani took place according to Holinshed at Eltham, evidentl than the day of the vetoed combat at Coventry. places the incident at Coventry, and makes it a re Richard's pity for Gaunt. This change is evidently interest of dramatic conciseness, and the motive supp a human touch entirely missing from the chronicle.

(ii) Bolingbroke did not delay his landing in Eng

, the earle

bare the the utter Foorthreverend ming for

the king = 'Deere, king him

my com

ve againe ough your : 'Deere

at ye may -ell-Stone

order to await "The first departing of the King for Ireland"
(I. i. 290); but "lay hovering aloofe, [on sea] and shewed him-
selfe now in this place and now in that, to see what countenance
was made by the people, whether they meant enviouslie to
resist him, or freendlie to receive him." In the last scene of
Act I. and the first scene of Act II., Shakespeare has chosen
to keep no count of time. Turning back to the end of Scene
iii. in Act I. we find ourselves at Coventry assisting at the
farewell of Bolingbroke. In the next scene we are at the
Court in London. Only about a day has elapsed since the
previous scene, for Bolingbroke has not yet left England;
Aumerle has just returned from accompanying him "to the
next highway." Passing on to the first scene of Act II. we
find it linked on without interval to the scene we have just
left, Richard hurrying straight from the Court to Gaunt's bed-
side, and we are still evidently in the same day. Without
any break we find, before the scene ends, that Bolingbroke
(who cannot yet have had time to leave England) is returning
from Brittany to claim his father's lands; John of Gaunt has
not been dead for more than a few minutes. There is no
possible means of explaining away the difficulties; as we have
said, Shakespeare deliberately chose to annihilate time for
dramatic purposes.
How far this licence damages the play

is a question for modern Aristotles.

(iii) The death of the Duchess of Gloucester is antedated a little, in order, presumably, to add to the confusion and helplessness of aged York. Holinshed mentions her death as taking place later than the incidents which Shakespeare treats as exactly contemporaneous. According to the inscription on her tomb in the Abbey the Duchess died on October 3rd, 1399.

(iv) Bolingbroke's exhortation to his lords to

Come... away

To fight with Glendower and his complices, is, if we trust the evidence of the use of "complices" both by Shakespeare and Holinshed, an antedating of Glendower's raid on Lord Grey of Ruthin in Henry IV.'s time-the summer of 1400.

(v) The episode at Flint Castle is compounded of Holin

b

shed's account of what happened at Conway Castle-w Northumberland was to beguile Richard to Flint Ca and his account of the happenings at the latter stro somewhat later.

(vi) Act IV., which consists of one scene, is compo from the Chronicle account of the Parliament at Westn on September 30th, 1399, which was summoned by R and dissolved the same day; from the account of the m of Henry IV.'s Parliament on October 14th, 1399, and on October 16th, 1399; from the account of Aumerle peachment by Fitzwater on October 18th; and from ported speech of Carlisle on "the Wednesdaie followin last incident;-October 18th being a Saturday, Carlisle's was made in Parliament on October 22nd.

The order of these events has been completely alte suit Shakespeare's dramatic development of the situatio (vii) According to Holinshed, Bolingbroke entered I the day before Richard. Shakespeare makes both part of the same pageant. The effect of the contrast b the receptions of the two personages is thus made striking.

(viii) Prince Henry being only twelve years of ag necessarily incapable of the conduct mentioned in Act v iii. This is a licence similar to that taken with the age Queen.

The first incident of Shakespeare's play represe event which took place in April, 1398. It ends wi occurrences of February, 1400, covering a historical pe twenty-two months. Mr. P. A. Daniel's Time-Anal the play, which all editors borrow, gives us "fourtee represented on the stage; with intervals the length of I cannot attempt to determine."

ltered to tion. dLondon

h entries

- between ade more

age was I v. Scene age of the

esents an with the period of nalysis of

teen days of which

Act v. Sc. vi.

(P. A. Daniel, A Time-Analysis of the Plots of Shakespere's
Plays. Transactions of the New Shakespere Society, 1877-9.)
Leaving for a later page any appreciation or criticism of the
characterisation, we have at this point to review the dramatis
persona in their relation to the plot.

The central figure is of course the King, Richard II.
Seven of the characters in the play are related to Richard by
descent from Edward III., and if we add to these Richard's
Queen, we find eight of Shakespeare's characters included in
a small genealogical table.

The Alianore Bohun of the above table is, of Shakespeare's Duchess of Gloucester, and it would not b of a licence to add the name of the murdered Duke list of dramatis persona, for the sinister motif of Gloud murder beats dully through the action and dialogue of than one scene in the play.

J

The characters outside the above group are, wit exception, of minor importance. The exception is T Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, a descendant of a younger Edward I. He was made Earl Marshal in 1386, and Go of Calais in 1397, when Gloucester was entrusted to his

The minor characters (excluding the women of the divide themselves up into the party of Richard; par Bagot, Bushy, Green; partisans: Salisbury, the Bish Carlisle, the Abbot of Westminster and Sir Stephen S and the party of Bolingbroke: Northumberland and h Harry Percy, Ross, Willoughby, Fitzwater, Berkeley, a Pierce of Exton. The Lord Marshal, the Gardener, the G and the Welsh Captain may be grouped with the Lords, I and attendants as "supers." The construction and ind of the play can be thoroughly understood without de any further history of the individual characters.

History gave the plot of Richard II. ready-made to speare, or—if we are justified in postulating his existen his anonymous predecessor. The actual events of 1398-1 whether we look upon them as the misgovernment of R followed by a just punishment, or as a strife between th and sentimental King and the strong and practical E broke-have a dramatic unity in themselves which r superfluous anything beyond a slight rearrangement cidents by the playwright. The contrast with King] obvious. That play, although departing much furthe Richard II. from the material of the Chronicles, has mu dramatic unity and coherence; is, indeed, much mor "Chronicle play." Richard II. stands at the point of between the "Chronicle play" and the Shakespearian " edy," probably not so much because of deliberate int on Shakespeare's part, but because Clio lent a ready tragedy to Melpomene.