ouplet.

The rhetoric is compressed--

"That shakes the rotten carcase of old Death,"

and

"O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty,"

and

"Old Time the clock-setter, that bald sexton Time."

The finest poetry is intensely compressed--

"I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,
For grief is proud,"

and

"I have heard you say,
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven.
If that be true, I shall see my boy again,"

and

"When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him."

The characters in this truly noble play daunt the reader with a sense of
their creator's power. It is difficult to know intimately any human
soul, even with love as a lamp. Shakespeare's mind goes nobly into these
souls, bearing his great light. It is very wonderful that the mind who
saw man clearest should see him with such exaltation.

_King Richard II._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ 1597.

_Source of the Plot._ The lives of King Richard II and King Henry
IV in Raphael Holinshed's _Chronicles_.

_The Fable._ I. The Duke of Gloucester, uncle of King Richard, has
died under suspicious circumstances at Calais, after an accusation
of treachery. Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, the King's
cousin, accuses Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, of treachery to
the King and of the murder of the Duke of Gloucester. The King
appoints a day on which the two disputants may try their cause by
combat. On their arrival at the lists he banishes them both,
Bolingbroke for six years, Mowbray for ever. After they have gone
to fulfil their sentence, the King plans to subdue the rebels in
Ireland. He prays that the death of his uncle, John of Gaunt, the
wisest man about him, may occur, so that he may take his money to
equip soldiers.

II. Gaunt dies. Richard seizes his estate (lawfully the property of
Bolingbroke) and proceeds upon his Irish war. Bolingbroke lands
from exile to claim his father's estate and title. Richard's Welsh
forces grow weary of waiting for their king. They disband
themselves.

III. Bolingbroke's party prospers. Richard is taken and deposed.

IV. Bolingbroke makes himself king.

V. Richard, after sorrowing alone, and inspiring a hopeless attempt
at restoration, is killed, desperately fighting, at Pomfret.

Treachery i