in the acting.

CHAP. IV. an incident (for example) which might be impossible in itself becomes possible through other incidents with which it is associated, just as in actual life the action of a public personage which may have appeared strange at the time becomes intelligible when at his death we can review his life as a whole. Such a scene as the Wooing Scene might be impossible as a fragment; it becomes possible enough in the play, where it has to be taken in connection with the rest of the plot, throughout which the irresistibility of the hero is The fasci- prominent as one of the chief threads of connection. Nor is nation is to it any objection that the Wooing Scene comes early in the be conveyed action. The play is not the book, but the actor's interpretation on the stage, and the actor will have collected even from the latest scenes elements of the interpretation he throws into the earliest: the actor is a lens for concentrating the light of the whole play upon every single detail. (The fascination of irresistibility, then, which is to act by instinct in every scene, may be arrived at analytically when we survey the play as a whole-when we see how by Richard's innate genius, by the reversal in him of the ordinary relation of human nature to crime, especially by his perfect mastery of the successive situations as they arise, the dramatist steadily builds up an irresistibility which becomes a secret force clinging to Richard's presence, and through the operation of which his feats are half accomplished by the fact of his attempting them. }

means.

i. i, from

The irre- To begin with the sense of irresistible power is brought sistibility out by the way in which the unlikeliest things are conanalysed. Unlikely tinually drawn into his schemes and utilised as means. Not to speak of his regular affectation of blunt sincerity, he makes use of the simple brotherly confidence of Clarence as an engine of fraticide, and founds on the frank familiarity existing between himself and Hastings a plot by which he brings him to the block. The Queen's compunction at the thought of leaving Clarence out of the

42.

iii. iv; esp. 76 compared with

iii. i. 184.

ii. i, from

73; cf. 134.

general reconciliation around the dying king's bedside is the CHAP. IV. fruit of a conscience tenderer than her neighbours': Richard adroitly seizes it as an opportunity for shifting on to the Queen and her friends the suspicion of the duke's murder. The childish prattle of little York Richard manages to sug- iii. i. 154. gest to the bystanders as dangerous treason; the solemnity

of the king's deathbed he turns to his own purposes by out- ii. i. 52-72. doing all the rest in Christian forgiveness and humility; and

he selects devout meditation as the card to play with the iii. v. 99, Lord Mayor and citizens. On the other hand, amongst &c. other devices for the usurpation conspiracy, he starts a slander upon his own mother's purity; and further-by one iii. v. 75of the greatest strokes in the whole play-makes capital 94. in the Wooing Scene out of his own heartlessness, de- i. ii. 156scribing in a burst of startling eloquence the scenes of 167. horror he has passed through, the only man unmoved to tears, in order to add :

And what these sorrows could not thence exhale,

Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping.

There are things which are too sacred for villainy to touch, and there are things which are protected by their own foulness: both alike are made useful by Richard.

The sensation produced by

made to

bring about

77; cf. 134.

Similarly it is to be noticed how Richard can utilise the very sensation produced by one crime as a means to bring about more; as when he interrupts the King's dying moments one crime to announce the death of Clarence in such a connection as must give a shock to the most unconcerned spectator, and others. ii. i, from then draws attention to the pale faces of the Queen's friends as marks of guilt. He thus makes one crime beget another without further effort on his part, reversing the natural law by which each criminal act, through its drawing more suspicion to the villain, tends to limit his power for further mischief. It is to the same purpose that Richard chooses Richard's sometimes instead of acting himself to foist his own schemes own plans foisted on on to others; as when he inspires Buckingham with the to others.

CHAP. IV. idea of the young king's arrest, and, when Buckingham seizes the idea as his own, meekly accepts it from him :

ii. ii. 112154; esp.

149.

I, like a child, will go by thy direction.

There is in all this a dreadful economy of crime: not the economy of prudence seeking to reduce its amount, but the artist's economy which delights in bringing the largest number of effects out of a single device. Such skill opens

up a vista of evil which is boundless.

No signs of The sense of irresistible power is again brought out by his effort in Richard: perfect imperturbability of mind: villainy never ruffles his imperturb- spirits. He never misses the irony that starts up in the ability of circumstances around him, and says to Clarence :

mind;

i. i. III.

iii. i. 79, 94.

This deep disgrace in brotherhood

Touches me deeply.

While taking his part in entertaining the precocious King he treats us to continual asides

So wise so young, they say, do never live longshowing how he can stop to criticise the scenes in which he is an actor. He can delay the conspiracy on which his iii. iv. 24. chance of the crown depends by coming late to the council,

and then while waiting the moment for turning upon his iii. iv. 52. victim is cool enough to recollect the Bishop of Ely's strawhumour; berries. But more than all these examples is to be noted

i. i. 151156.

Richard's humour. This is par excellence the sign of a mind at ease with itself: scorn, contempt, bitter jest belong to the storm of passion, but humour is the sunshine of the soul. Yet Shakespeare has ventured to endow Richard with unquestionable humour. Thus, in one of his earliest meditations, he prays, 'God take King Edward to his mercy,' for then he will marry Warwick's youngest daughter:

What though I killed her husband and her father!

The readiest way to make the wench amends

Is to become her husband and her father!

e. g. i. i. And all through there perpetually occur little turns of lan

118; ii. ii.

guage into which the actor can throw a tone of humorous CHAP. IV. enjoyment; notably, when he complains of being 'too 109; iv. iii. childish-foolish for this world,' and where he nearly ruins the 38, 43; i. effect of his edifying penitence in the Reconciliation Scene, iii. 142; ii. i. 72; iii. by being unable to resist one final stroke:

I thank my God for my humility!

vii. 51-54,

&c.

Of a kindred nature is his perfect frankness and fairness to freedom
his victims: villainy never clouds his judgment. Iago, from pre-
judice.
astutest of intriguers, was deceived, as has been already'
noted, by his own morbid acuteness, and firmly believed-
what the simplest spectator can see to be a delusion—that
Othello has tampered with his wife. Richard, on the con-
trary, is a marvel of judicial impartiality; he speaks of King
Edward in such terms as these-

If King Edward be as true and just

As I am subtle, false and treacherous;

and weighs elaborately the superior merit of one of his victims to his own:

Hath she forgot already that brave prince,

Edward, her lord, whom I, some three months since,

Stabb'd in my angry mood at Tewksbury?

A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman,

Framed in the prodigality of nature,

Young, valiant, wise, and, no doubt, right royal,

The spacious world cannot again afford:

And will she yet debase her eyes on me,

That cropped the golden prime of this sweet prince,
And made her widow to a woful bed?

On me, whose all not equals Edward's moiety?

Richard can rise to all his height of villainy without its leaving on himself the slightest trace of struggle or even effort.

Again, the idea of boundless resource is suggested by an occasional recklessness, almost a slovenliness, in the details

i. i. 36.

i. ii, from

240.

A recklessness suggesting

boundless

of his intrigues. Thus, in the early part of the Wooing resources.

UNIVERSITY OF TALKUR

DEPARTMENT OF

i. ii. 91.

CHAP. IV. Scene he makes two blunders of which a tyro in intrigue might be ashamed. He denies that he is the author of Edward's death, to be instantly confronted with the evidence of Margaret as an eye-witness. Then a few lines further on he goes to the opposite extreme:

i. ii. 101.

General

Richard's

The merest beginner would know better how to meet accusations than by such haphazard denials and acknowledgments. But the crack billiard-player will indulge at the beginning of the game in a little clumsiness, giving his adversaries a prospect of victory only to have the pleasure of making up the disadvantage with one or two brilliant. strokes. And so Richard, essaying the most difficult problem ever attempted in human intercourse, lets half the interview pass before he feels it worth while to play with caution.

The mysterious irresistibility of Richard, pointed to by character of the succession of incidents in the play, is assisted by the intrigue: very improbability of some of the more difficult scenes in inspiration which he is an actor. Intrigue in general is a thing of calculation. reason, and its probabilities can be readily analysed; but the

rather than

genius of intrigue in Richard seems to make him avoid the caution of other intriguers, and to give him a preference for feats which seem impossible. The whole suggests how it is not by calculation that he works, but he brings the touch of an artist to his dealing with human weakness, and follows whither his artist's inspiration leads him. If, then, there is nothing so remote from evil but Richard can make it tributary; if he can endow crimes with power of self-multiplying; if he can pass through a career of sin without the taint of distortion on his intellect and with the unruffled calmness of innocence; if Richard accomplishes feats no other would attempt with a carelessness no other reputation would risk, even slow reason may well believe him irresistible. When,