Which serves it in the office of a wall

Or as a moat defensive to a house

Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."

The remonstrance and the warnings of his dying uncle are of no avail to stop the headlong course of the king; they serve but to exasperate his royal pride.-REED, Lectures on English History as illustrated by Shakspeare.

BOLINGBROKE

Of a totally reverse character to Richard's was that of Bolingbroke: cold, crafty, determined, persevering, designing, and treacherous; politically plausible, and insolently unjust; an oppressor with a heart of ice, and there is no tyrant like that;-a demagogue, a traitor, and a violator of his oath. He swore by the tomb of his grandfather, Edward III (an impressive and solemn oath in that age), that he had no design upon the crown; yet, as it were, in the same breath, he assumed the prerogative of royalty, condemning to death the favorites of Richard; and in a few weeks after he deposed and imprisoned his relation and sovereign.-CLARKE, Shakespeare-Characters.

The character of Bolingbroke is less elaborately wrought out, emphasizing by its very severity of outline and color the unsubstantial pageantry of Richard's mind. Every trait tends to heighten the contrast between the two,—a contrast hardly surpassed for subtlety and suggestiveness in the whole range of the Histories. Bolingbroke's astute compliance with the laws is pointedly opposed to Richard's reckless and insane defiance of law. He pursues his ends by constitutional forms, knows how to bide his time, uses violence only to vindicate justice, and controls while appearing to obey. The historical Bolingbroke was not averse from ruder methods. Shakespeare tells us nothing of the plot laid by him in June, 1397, in concert with Mowbray and Gloucester, to seize and imprison Richard, and his

uncles York and Lancaster, and to put the rest of the council to death. His first step towards bringing Gloucester's murder home to the king is the cautious "indirection" of accusing his accomplice Mowbray. His return from banishment has an excuse as well as a pretext in Richard's flagrant confiscation of his inheritance. Once landed, he finds himself at the head of a national uprising which bears him by its own momentum to the throne; and he is already a king in power before he has put off the obeisances of the subject.—HERFORD, The Eversley Shakespeare.

INTERPRETATION OF THE PLAY

The best commentator on the character of Richard would be a great actor; and the same remark applies to other characters in this play. It is scarcely possible, in reading the play to oneself, to appreciate the exact feeling which dictates words that in literal acceptation are at variance with the feeling of the speaker. Henry speaks words of truth and repentance when he purposes to wash off his guilt in the Holy Land, and yet his speech is dictated by politic hypocrisy: precisely as at the commencement the ensuing play he smoothly opens the council with. words on the end of civil conflict, while he all the. has letters in his pocket and the messenger waiting summons, to announce the contumacy of the Percies. The reader, or the spectator, must form his own judgment how far a character is to be understood as willfully deceiving others, or unconsciously deceiving himself; and the poet appears to desire to reduce the positive indications of insincerity to the lowest degree, and leave as much as possible to the sagacity of his audience, recognizing motive in the flow and rhythm of lines which in purport are at entire variance with these motives. Thus the hollow loyalty of the challenger, Bolingbroke, in the first act, is expressed, but not in words; by what he does not say it appears, rather than by what he does; or by what he says as betraying by tone and occasion, that it must be interpreted by

reverse. I am inclined to think that this refinement is sometimes overwrought, even for the spectator, now the actors are gone who enjoyed the author's own instructions, or could dispense with them; but of course we cannot impeach Shakespeare, who wrote for the stage, for not considering a reader. The interpretation of many scenes can only be correctly obtained by the same study that an actor must give of his entire part, and that only an accomplished actor is capable of giving. His rendering and intonation of one scene is governed by those which he knows must follow, but that the reader for the first time is of course ignorant of, and gaining no aid from previous scenes, is unprepared for when they arrive. So refined is the finesse that I believe that, in some instances, the clue to the spirit of the speaker is only obtainable from the impression of the flow and rhythm of his words in actual recitation.

Simply on this account the purport of much of the first act of Richard II is obscure to the reader, and the difficulty is enhanced by the assumption of his familiarity with circumstances that perished for him with the earlier play; dif Richard II is ever to be successfully revived on the I think that a chorus-prologue should recite these t who shall write it?-LLOYD, Critical Essays.

THE GAGE

The glove then thrown down was popularly called “a gage" from the French, signifying a pledge, and in Richard II, Act IV, Sc. 1, it is so termed by Aumerle :—

"There is my gage, the manual seal of death,

That marks thee out for hell."

In the same play it is also called "honor's pawn." Thus
Bolingbroke, Act I, Sc. 1, says to Mowbray:-

"Pale trembling coward, there I throw my gage,
Disclaiming here the kindred of the king;
And lay aside my high blood's royalty,

Which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except.
If guilty dread have left thee so much strength
As to take up mine honor's pawn, then stoop."

And further on, Act IV, Sc. 1, one of the lords employs the same phrase:

"There is my honor's pawn;

Engage to the trial, if thou darest.”

It is difficult to discover why the glove was recognized as the sign of defiance. Brand suggests that the custom of dropping or sending the glove, "as the signal of a challenge, may have been derived from the circumstance of its being the cover of the hand, and therefore put for the hand itself. The giving of the hand is well known to intimate that the person who does so will not deceive, but stand to his agreement. To shake hands upon it would not be very delicate in an agreement to fight, and, therefore, gloves may possibly have been deputed as substitutes."-DYER, Folklore of Shakespeare.