BOOKS.

SHAKESPEARE'S HENRY

THIS is a striking work of imagination, but hardly a great play, for Shakespeare's dramatic fire runs rather low in it, and much the most remarkable scenes are scenes in which we see the divorced Queen or the fallen Cardinal meditating on the instability of human things, and endeavouring to reconcile their minds to the blows of Heaven, by no means those in which men are seen struggling with each other for the guidance of events, or torn by those conflicting passions which give even to soliloquy a great dramatic fire and force. The most dramatic situations in Henry VIII., such as the scene in which Katherine of Aragon repudi- ates the jurisdiction of the Court convened to try the legality of her marriage and appeals to the Pope, and the scene of Cardinal Wolsey's disgrace, are dramatic situations embodying a certain grave and stately passion, but not passion of the deepest kind. And even these scenes seem to derive their greatest interest from leading up to others of a much less dramatic character, though of a more pensive grandeur. Queen Katharine's conversation with Griffith, in which they weigh Wolsey after his decease, and pass upon him a pitiful, reluctant, and even admiring, but still profound censure, and the Cardinal's own meditation on the vanity of his career, are probably the passages which most men will recall the oftenest after reading the play. Yet both these passages are, to some extent, blots on the drama as a drama, because they contain rather the imaginative reverie of the historic poet on the occasion, poured out through a somewhat clumsily chosen mouthpiece, than the actual play of feeling appropriate to the characters who thus express themselves. Take, first, the conversation between Katharine and Griffith :— Kath. So may he rest; his faults lie gently on him !

Yet thus far, Griffith, give me leave to speak him, And yet with charity. He was a man Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking Himself with princes ; one that, by suggestion, Tied all the kingdom ; simony was fair-play ; His own opinion was his law ; i' the presence He would say untruths ; and be ever double Both in his words and meaning; he was never, But where he meant to ruin, pitiful ; His promises were, as he then was, mighty ; But his performance, as be is now, nothing ; Of his own body he was ill; and gave The clergy ill example.

Grit: Noble madam, Men's evil manners live in brass ; their virtues We write in water. May it please your highness To hear me speak his good now ? Kath. Yes, good Griffith ; I were malicious else.

Grit: This cardinal, Though from an humble stock, undoubtedly Was fashion'd to much honour from his cradle. He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one ; Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading; Lofty and sour to them that loved him not ; But to those men that sought him sweet as summer. And though he were unsatisfied in getting, Which was a sin, yet in bestowing, madam, * King Henry VIII. By William Shakespeare.

He was most princely : ever witness for him Those twins of learning that he raised in you, Ipswich and Oxford ; one of which fell with him, Unwilling to outlive the good that did it ; The other, though unfinish'd, yet so famous, So excellent in art, and still so rising, That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue.

His overthrow beeped happiness upon him ; For then, and not till then, he felt himself, And found the blessedness of being little : And, to add greater honours to his age . Than man could give him, he died fearing God."

Now here Queen Katharine's sententious indictment is too terse and judicial, too little coloured with the sense of personal injury from which she herself had so keenly suffered, sums up, in short, Wolsey's faults too much from the position of a grave, impartial observer, too little from that of the woman who was struggling earnestly to forgive a powerful and successful enemy who had, as she believed, wrecked her life, for the mouth it comes from. And when Griffith comes to state the other side, he is obviously and incontestably a mere mouthpiece for the historic poet. "He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one," is wholly out of keeping with the mood of Katharine's mind and the issue which had been raised. A gentleman usher, in such a conversation, might, perhaps, have briefly referred to the foundations of Ipswich and Oxford, just as illustrations of the Cardinal's princely care for learning, but would certainly not have apostrophised them with the elaboration of this speech. It is more like a little bit of doge such as would be pronounced in Parliament over a statesman "now no more," than the plea of a just man in ex- tenuation of the faults of his mistress's deadliest foe,—or at least of one so regarded. Especially the reference to the beauty of the Oxford College is almost bizarre in such a dialogue between a dying woman and her devoted attendant, for Griffith should be think- ing only of the indications of true virtues to be set off against the obvious sins of Wolsey, and not, of course, of the con- sequences of those virtues to the nation. Shakespeare makes him speak like a public man commemorating the great services of another public man to the nation, not like the friend and servant of a dying woman who is anxious to soften her severe estimate of a personal foe.

Still less dramatic is the fine speech in which Wolsey muses over his lost greatness. Wolsey has just come out of the passionate scene with Norfolk, Suffolk, and Surrey, in which he has refused to acknowledge their authority to demand the Great Seal of him, told them passoinately how "sleek and wanton "they "appear in everything may bring my ruin," and has given Surrey the lie direct. Surrey in return has called him "thou scarlet sin," and referred in the most taunting language to Wolsey's personal vices. Wolsey's last word to Surrey had been :—

" Speak on, Sir.

I dare your worst objections : if I blush, It is to see a nobleman want manners?

And Norfolk had that moment left him with the contemptuous adieu,—

"So fare you well, my little good Lord Cardinal."

Here, without any interval we have Wolsey's first reverie :— WoL So farewell to the little good you hear me. Farewell ! a long farewell, to all my greatness ! This is the state of man : to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hopes ; to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him ; The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, This many summers in a sea of glory,

But far beyond my depth : my high-blown pride At length broke under me and now has left me, Weary and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye : I feel my heart new open'd. 0, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours ! There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars or women have : And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again."

Now that surely is not the reverie of a man just smarting under the new insolence of triumphant foes whom he had been accustomed to see silent, if not servile, before him. That he should even fancy his heart was "new open'd " at such a moment is not true to the anguish of a soaring am- bition in the tumult of the first great crash. The metaphor, too, taken from the tender leaves and blossoms blighted by a sadden frost is far too elaborate and poetical for the moment in which it is poured forth. This speech is the poet's, who ventzilo- guises on Wolsey's fall through Wolsey's lips, not what that proud and scheming heart would have poured forth in the first moment of ruin. No doubt Shakespeare intended to give us the image of a mind even greater in reverses than in prosperity, as he had pre- viously done in the case of Buckingham, Wolsey's foe and victim. But here the transition to calm, poetical meditation on his own fate is altogether too abrupt. The "poor man" who has hung for years on "princes' favours" does not take so kindly to the delight of his disencumbrance of them. That a really great man might discover, with a sort of gasp of surprise, the secret of his own inherent strength, when suddenly freed from all his schemes and cares, is true, and the kind of imagina- tive conception which it takes a Shakespeare to realise. But it is a secret not discoverable in the first moment of excited passion, when bitter taunts have just been flying to and fro be- tween him and his victorious enemies, and the foot of the foe is on the breast of the vanquished. And this criticism applies still more to the speech which Wolsey almost immediately makes to his faithful friend, Cromwell :—

Crone. How does your grace ? 11761. Why, well;

Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell.

I know myself now; and I feel within me

A peace above all earthly dignities'

A still and quiet conscience. The King has cured me, I humbly thank his grace; and from these shoulders These ruin'd pillars, out of pity, taken A load would sink a navy, too much honour:

0, 'tit; wburthen, Cromwell, 'tis a burthen

Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven !"

That Wolsey might, within a very short time, have dropped upon the reserve of power in his own heart is, as we have said, quite within the limits of the grand conception Shakespeare wished to work out, but that fresh from the tumult of his spoiled hopes and reckless sins, he could with any reality declare that he felt within him "a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet con- science," is contrary to all our conceptions of dramatic possibility. Indeed, if this speech were wholly sincere, mere failure would in Wolsey's mind be equivalent to absolution ; if not wholly sincere, what purpose does the dissimulation, to so true a follower as Cromwell, serve?

But, no doubt, the finest dramatic study in King Henry VIII. is the study of the great Tudor himself, who, as Mr. Tennyson makes Lord Howard tell Queen Mary,— "Was a man Of such colossal kinghood, yet so courteous Except when wroth, you scarce could meet his eye And hold your own; and were he wroth indeed You held it less or not at all. I say,

Your father had a will that beat men down; Your father had a brain that beat men down."

Such a will and such a brain are delineated for us with infinite vivacity and force in King Henry VIII. It is not difficult to see that Shakespeare had no love for Henry VIII. Indeed, many writers have maintained that the play could not have been pro- duced till after Elizabeth's death, with such hits as it parades at Henry's perpetual "ha !" such a satire as it contains on his pas- sions,—for instance, in the first scene in which he falls in love with Anne Boleyn, just after he has told Katharine "you have half our power ;"—and again, with that touch of hypocrisy,—

" But conscience, conscience,

Oh! 'tis a tender place, and I must leave her,"

delivered at the very moment when he is burning with rage at the delays of the Cardinals, and resolving to work through Cranmer to a hastier divorce. But in spite of Shakespeare's visible contempt for Henry's moral nature, he never for a moment forgets to let us see the almost magic fascination of the King for his servants, both while he uses them and after he has thrown them over. He shows us Buckingham going to the block an innocent man betrayed by his own servants, but yet imploring blessings on the King who had ordered his arraignment and refused him mercy. He shows us Wolsey checked by his King in mad career, and ordered to transmit a pardon to every subject who had refused to bend to his financial exactions. He shows us Katharine with all her dignity feeling the divorce more as a calamity in itself, and as a wrong done by Henry's Ministers, than as an injury and insult inflicted by himself. Again he shows us Wolsey struck down in a moment by the King's wrath, not so much for any misdoings of his own as for the proof that he was unfavourable to the marriage with Anne Boleyn ; and yet Wolsey, like all the others, kisses the hand which chastises him. It is the same with Cranmer and Gardiner, except that Cranmer averts anything like rebuke by kissing the rod in anticipation, while Gardiner kisses it in grati- tude for a blow. And finally, it shows the divorced wife grateful for a cold crumb of comfort in the shape of a kind message from the husband who had put her away and taken a new Queen. In a word, throughout the play the Tudor King's per- sonality is so completely in the ascendant, that even Wolsey's genius pales beside his master's. And Shakespeare also shows us how skilfully Henry fitted his personal humours to the predomi- nant humour of the English people ; how sternly he rebuked and how abruptly he annulled the policy of exacting from the people a tribute intended to pay for his own and his ministers' prodigalities ; how be availed himself of the English jealousy of the Pope to make his divorce popular ; and how he used the dread of a weak successor to himself to enlist the public mind on behalf of a new marriage which might bring him a son. King Henry's is, indeed, in Shakespeare's play, an overbearing and predominant, but wholly un-moral, personality, which has the art of linking its caprices with the wishes of the people and the hopes of the nation. In this sense King _Henry VIII. is in the highest degree a dramatic play, but only in this. Not a word spoken by the King is other than dramatic. But the other scenes of the play very frequently, as we have shown, pass into historic and very undramatic reverie, quite out of place in the mouths of those who speak them. On the whole, and making every allowance for the many dramatic by-ways of the play,—like, for instance, Anne Boleyn's conversation with the old lady-in- waiting on the subject of feminine advancements, wherein Anne protests so strongly that she would not be Queen or even Coun- tess even if she could,—no one who reads through King Henry VIII. with a critical eye will doubt that it far oftener deviates from the dramatic mood, and avails itself of any actor's mask that is nearest at hand as an excuse for free poetic meditation, than Mr. Tennyson's drama of Queen Mary. Shakespeare took no end of liberties with his plays—often in the most reckless fashion— which modern critics would severely censure in any modern author.