SHAKSPEARE'S CARICATURE OF RICHARD III.

'The youth of England have been said to take their religion from Milton, and their history from Shakspeare:' and as far as they draw the character of the last royal Plantagenet from the bloody ogre which every grand tragedian has delighted to personate, they set up invention on the pedestal of fact, and prefer slander to truth. Even from the opening soliloquy, Shakspeare traduces, misrepresents, vilifies the man he had interested motives in making infamous; while at the death of Jack Cade, a cutting address is made to the future monarch upon his deformity, just TWO years before his birth! There is no sufficient authority for his having been

A Scotch commission addressed him with praise of the 'princely majesty and royal authority sparkling in his face.' Rev. Dr. Shaw's discourse to the Londoners, dwells upon the Protector's likeness to the noble Duke, his father: his mother was a beauty, his brothers were handsome: a monstrous contrast on Richard's part would have been alluded to by the accurate Philip de Comines: the only remaining print of his person is at least fair: the immensely heavy armor of the times may have bowed his form a little, and no doubt he was pale, and a little higher shouldered on the right than the left side: but, if Anne always loved him, as is now proved, and the princess Elizabeth sought his affection after the Queen's decease, he could not have been the hideous dwarf at which dogs howl. Nay, so far from there being an atom of truth in that famous wooing scene which provokes from Richard the sarcasm:

Richard actually detected her in the disguise of a kitchen-girl, at London, and renewed his early attachment in the court of the Archbishop of York. And while Anne was never in her lifetime charged with insensibility to the death of her relatives, or lack of feeling, she died not from any cruelty of his, but from weakness, and especially from grief over her boy's sudden decease. Richard indeed 'loved her early, loved her late,' and could neither have desired nor designed a calamity which lost him many English hearts. The burial of Henry VI. Richard himself solemnized with great state; a favor that no one of Henry's party was brave and generous enough to return to the last crowned head of the rival house.

Gloucester did not need to urge on the well-deserved doom of Clarence: both Houses of Parliament voted it; King Edward plead for it; the omnipotent relatives of the Queen hastened it with characteristic malice; they may have honestly believed that the peaceful succession of the crown was in peril so long as this plotting traitor lived. No doubt it was.

It is next to certain that Richard did not stab Henry VI., nor the murdered son of Margaret, though he had every provocation in the insults showered upon his father; was devotedly attached to King Edward, and hazarded for him person and life with a constancy then unparalleled and a zeal rewarded by his brother's entire confidence.

Certain names wear a halter in history, and his was one. Richard I. was assassinated in the siege of Chalone Castle; Richard II. was murdered at Pomfret; Richard, Earl of Southampton, was executed for treason; Richard, Duke of York, was beheaded with insult; his son, Richard III., fell by the perfidy of his nobles; Richard, the last Duke of York, was probably murdered by his uncle, in the Tower.

At the decease of his brother Edward, the Duke of Gloucester was not only the first prince of the blood royal, but was also a consummate statesman, intrepid soldier, generous giver, and prompt executor, naturally compassionate, as is proved by his large pensions to the families of his enemies, to Lady Hastings, Lady Rivers, the Duchess of Buckingham, and the rest; peculiarly devout, too, according to a pattern then getting antiquated, as is shown by his endowing colleges of priests, and bestowing funds for masses in his own behalf and others. Shakspeare never loses an opportunity of painting Gloucester's piety as sheer hypocrisy, but it was not thought so then; for there was a growing Protestant party whom all these Romanist manifestations of the highest nobleman in England greatly offended, not to say alarmed.

Richard's change of virtual into actual sovereignty, in other words, the Lord Protector's usurpation of the crown, was not done by violence: in his first royal procession he was unattended by troops; a fickle, intriguing, ambitious, and warlike nobility approved the change; Buckingham, Catesby, and others, urged it. No doubt he himself saw that the crown was not a fit plaything for a twelve years' old boy, in such a time of frequent treason, ferocious crime, and general recklessness. There is no question but what, as Richard had more head than any man in England, he was best fitted to be at its head.

The great mystery requiring to be explained is, not that 'the Lancastrian partialities of Shakspeare have,' as Walter Scott said, 'turned history upside down,' and since the battle of Bosworth, no party have had any interest in vindicating an utterly ruined cause, but how such troops of nobles revolted against a monarch alike brave and resolute, wise in council and energetic in act, generous to reward, but fearful to punish.

The only solution I am ready to admit is, the imputed assassination of his young nephews; not only an unnatural crime, but sacrilege to that divinity which was believed to hedge a king. The cotemporary ballad of the 'Babes in the Wood,' was circulated by Buckingham to inflame the English heart against one to whom he had thrown down the gauntlet for a deadly wrestle. Except that the youngest babe is a girl, and that the uncle perishes in prison, the tragedy and the ballad wonderfully keep pace together. In one, the prince's youth is put under charge of an uncle 'whom wealth and riches did surround;' in the other, 'the uncle is a man of high estate.' The play soothes the deserted mother with, 'Sister, have comfort;' the ballad with, 'Sweet sister, do not fear.' The drama says that:

And the poem:

But

There is a like agreement in their deaths:

And the ballad:

Finally, the greatest of English tragedies represents Richard's remorse as:

While the most pathetic of English ballads gives it:

As it is probable that this ballad was started on its rounds by Buckingham, the arch-plotter, was eagerly circulated by the Richmond conspirators, and sung all over the southern part of England as the fatal assault on Richard was about to be made, we shall hardly wonder that, in an age of few books and no journals, the imputed crime hurled a usurper from his throne.

But was he really guilty? Did he deserve to be set up as this scarecrow in English story? The weight of authority says, 'Yes;' facts are coming to light in the indefatigable research now being made in England, which may yet say: 'No.'

The charge was started by the unprincipled Buckingham to excuse his sudden conversion from an accomplice, if Shakspeare is to be credited, to a bloodthirsty foe. It was so little received that, months afterward, the convocation of British clergy addressed King Richard thus, 'Seeing your most noble and blessed disposition in all other things'—so little received that when Richmond actually appeared in the field, there was no popular insurrection in his behalf, only a few nobles joined him with their own forces; and when their treason triumphed, and his rival sat supreme on Richard's throne, the three pretended accomplices in the murder of the princes were so far from punishment that their chief held high office for nearly a score of years, and then perished for assisting at the escape of Lady Suffolk, of the house of York. And when Perkin Warbeck appeared in arms as the murdered Prince Edward, and the strongest possible motive urged Henry VII. to justify his usurpation by producing the bones of the murdered princes, (which two centuries afterward were pretended to be found at the foot of the Tower-stairs,) at least to publish to the world the three murderers' confessions, and demonstrate the absurdity of the popular insurrection, Lord Bacon himself says, that Henry could obtain no proof, though he spared neither money nor effort! We have even the statement of Polydore Virgil, in a history written by express desire of Henry VII., that 'it was generally reported and believed that Edward's sons were still alive, having been conveyed secretly away, and obscurely concealed in some distant region.'

And then the story is laden down with improbabilities. That Brakenbury should have refused this service to so willful a despot, yet not have fled from the penalty of disobedience, and even have received additional royal favors, and finally sacrificed his life, fighting bravely in behalf of the bloodiest villain that ever went unhung, is a large pill for credulity to swallow.

Again, that a mere page should have selected as chief butcher a nobleman high in office, knighted long before this in Scotland, and that this same Sir Edward Tyrrel should have been continued in office around the mother of the murdered princes, and honored year after year with high office by Henry VII., and actually made confidential governor of Guisnes, and royal commissioner for a treaty with France, seems perfectly incredible. All of Shakspeare's representation of this most slandered courtier is, indeed, utterly false; while Bacon's repetition of the principal charges only shows how impossible it is to recover a reputation that has once been lost, and how careless history has been in repeating calumnies that have once found circulation.

Bayley's history of the Tower proves that what has been popularly christened the Bloody Tower could never have been the scene of the supposed murder; that no bones were found under any staircase there; so that this pretended confirmation of the murder in the time of Charles II., on which many writers have relied, vanishes into the stuff which dreams are made of.

And yet by this charge which the antiquarian Stowe declared was 'never proved by any credible witness,' which Grafton, Hall, and Holinshead agreed could never be certainly known; which Bacon declared that King Henry in vain endeavored to substantiate, a brave and politic monarch lost his crown, life, and historic fame! Nay, it is a curious fact that Richard could not safely contradict the report of the princes' deaths when it broke out with the outbreak of civil war, because it would have been furnishing to the rebellion a justifying cause and a royal head, instead of a milksop whom he despised and felt certain to overthrow.

As it was, Richard left nothing undone to fortify his failing cause; he may be thought even to have overdone. He doubled his spies, enlisted fresh troops, erected fortifications, equipped fleets, twice had Richmond at his fingers' ends, twice saw Providence take his side in the dispersion of Richmond's fleet, the overthrow of Buckingham's force; then was utterly ruined by the general treason of his most trusted nobles and his not unnatural scorn of a pusillanimous rival. In vain did he strive to be just and generous, vigilant and charitable, politic and enterprising. The poor excuse for Buckingham's desertion, the refusal of the grant of Hereford, is refuted by a Harleian MS. recording that royal munificence; yet Buckingham, without any question, wove the net in which this lion fell; he seduced the very officers of the court; he invited Richmond over, assuring him of a popular uprising, which was proved to be a mere mockery by the miserable handful that rallied around him, until Richard fell at Bosworth. And after Buckingham's death, Richmond merely followed his plans, used the tools he had prepared, headed the conspiracy which this unmitigated traitor arranged, and profited more than Richard by his death, because he had not to fear an after-struggle with Buckingham's insatiable ambition, overweening pride, and unsurpassed popular power.

As one becomes familiar with the cotemporary statements, the fall of Richard seems nothing but the treachery which provoked his last outcry on the field of death. Even Catesby probably turned against him; his own Attorney-General invited the invaders into Wales with promise of aid; the Duke of Northumberland, whom Richard had covered over with honor, held his half of the army motionless while his royal benefactor was murdered before his eyes. Stanley was a snake in the grass in the next reign as well as this, and at last expiated his double treason too late upon the scaffold. Yet while the nobles went over to Richmond's side, the common people held back; only three thousand troops, perhaps personal retainers of their lords, united themselves to the two thousand Richmond hired abroad. It was any thing but a popular uprising against the jealous, hateful, bloody humpback of Shakspeare; it excuses the fatal precipitancy with which the King (instead of gathering his troops from the scattered fortifications) not only hurried on the battle, but, when the mine of treason began to explode beneath his feet on Bosworth field, refused to seek safety by flight, but heading a furious charge upon Richmond, threw his life magnificently away.

Even had he been guilty of the great crime which cost him his crown, his fate would have merited many a tear but for the unrivaled genius at defamation with which the master-dramatist did homage to the triumphant house of Lancaster. Lord Orford says, that it is evident the Tudors retained all their Lancastrian prejudices even in the reign of Elizabeth; and that Shakspeare's drama was patronized by her who liked to have her grandsire presented in so favorable a light as the deliverer of his native land from a bloody tyranny.

Even in taking the darkest view of his case, we find that other English sovereigns had sinned the same: Henry I. probably murdered the elder brother whom he robbed; Edward III. deposed his own father; Henry IV. cheated his nephew of the sceptre, and permitted his assassination; Shakspeare's own Elizabeth was not over-sisterly to Mary of Scotland; all around Richard, robbery, treason, violence, lust, murder, were like a swelling sea. Why was he thus singled out for the anathema of four centuries? Why was the naked corpse of one who fell fighting valiantly, thrown rudely on a horse's back? Why was his stone coffin degraded into a tavern-trough, and his remains tossed out no man knew where? Not merely that the Plantagenets never lifted their heads from the gory dust any more, so that their conquerors wrote the epitaph upon their tombs, and hired the annalists of their fame; but, still more, that the weak and assailed Henry required every excuse for his invasion and usurpation; and that the principal nobility of England wanted a hiding-place for the shame of their violated oaths, their monstrous perfidy, their cowardly abandonment in the hour of peril of one of the bravest leaders, wisest statesmen, and most liberal princes England ever knew.