battle; the
episode of the spectres; and the fatal catastrophe on Bosworth Field.
Enough of the story was thus related to satisfy the Shakespeare scholar.

The notable peculiarity was the assumption that there are considerable
lapses of time at intervals during the continuance of the story. The
effort to reconcile poetry with history produced little if any
appreciable practical result upon the stage,--seeing that an audience
would not think of lapses of time unless those lapses were mentioned in
the play-bill. An incessant continuity of action, a ceaseless rush and
whirl of events, is the essential life of the play. No auditor can feel
that Richard has waited twelve years before making any movement or
striking any blow, after his aspiration that heaven will take King
Edward and leave the world for him "to bustle in." That word "bustle" is
a favourite word with Richard. And furthermore there is no development
of his character in Shakespeare's play: there is simply the presentation
of it, complete and rounded at the outset, and remaining invariably and
inflexibly the same to the close.

Mansfield, however, deduced this effect from his consideration of the
flight of time: a contrast between Richard at nineteen and Richard at
thirty-three, a contrast strongly expressive of the reactionary
influence that an experience of evil deeds has produced upon a man who
at first was only a man of evil thoughts and evil will. This imported
into the performance a diversity of delineation without, however,
affecting the formidable weight of the figure of Richard, or its
brilliancy, or its final significance. The embodiment was splendid with
it, and would be just as splendid without it. The presence of heart and
conscience in that demoniac human creature is denoted by Shakespeare and
must be shown by the actor. Precisely at what point his heaven-defying
will should begin to waver is not defined. Mansfield chose to indicate
the operation of remorse and terror in Richard's soul as early as the
throne scene and before yet the king has heard that the royal boys have
been murdered. The effect of his action, equally with the method of it,
was magnificent. You presently saw him possessed of the throne for which
he had so terribly toiled and sinned, and alone upon it, bathed in
blood-red light, the pitiable personification of gorgeous but haunted
evil, marked off from among mankind and henceforth desolate. Throughout
that fine scene Mansfield's