ishment compared with Mowbray's unaffected lamentation. In
the one, all is ambitious hope of something yet to come; in the other it
is desolation and a looking backward of the heart,

_Ib._ sc. 2.--

"_Gaunt._ God's is the quarrel; for God's substitute,
His deputy anointed in his right,
Hath caus'd his death: the which, if wrongfully,
Let heaven revenge; for I may never lift
An angry arm against his minister."

Without the hollow extravagance of Beaumont and Fletcher's ultra-royalism,
how carefully does Shakespeare acknowledge and reverence the eternal
distinction between the mere individual, and the symbolic or
representative, on which all genial law, no less than patriotism, depends.
The whole of this second scene commences, and is anticipative of, the tone
and character of the play at large.

_Ib._ sc. 3. In none of Shakespeare's fictitious dramas, or in those
founded on a history as unknown to his auditors generally as fiction, is
this violent rupture of the succession of time found:--a proof, I think,
that the pure historic drama, like _Richard II._ and _King John_, had its
own laws.

_Ib._ Mowbray's speech:--

"A dearer _merit_
Have I deserved at your highness' hand."

O, the instinctive propriety of Shakespeare in the choice of words!

_Ib._ Richard's speech:--

"Nor never by advised purpose meet,
To plot, contrive, or complot any ill,
'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land."

Already the selfish weakness of Richard's character opens. Nothing will
such minds so readily embrace, as indirect ways softened down to their
_quasi_-consciences by policy, expedience, &c.

_Ib._ Mowbray's speech:--

... "All the world's my way."

"The world was all before him."--_Milt._

_Ib._--

"_Boling._ How long a time lies in one little word!
Four lagging winters, and four wanton springs,
End in a word: such is the breath of kings."

Admirable anticipation!

_Ib._ sc. 4. This is a striking conclusion of a first act,--letting the
reader into the secret;--having before impressed us with the dignified and
kingly manners of Richard, yet by well managed anticipations leading us on
to the full gratification of pleasure in our own penetration. In this
scene a new light is thrown on Richard's character. Until now he has
appeared in all the beauty of royalty; but here, as soon as he is left to
himself, the inherent weakness of his character is immediately shown. It
is a weakness, however, of a peculiar ki