THE EXACT SOURCES of Richard II are still a matter of controversy. It has been argued1 that Shakespeare used, in addition to Holinshed’s Chronicles, Hall, Berners’ Froissart, Woodstock, A Mirror for Magistrates, Daniel’s Civile Wars, and three French manuscripts: Chronicque de la Traïson et Mort de Richart Deux Roy Dengleterre, Le Beau’s version of this (Chronique de Richard II depuis l’ an 1399), and Créton’s chronicle, mostly, but not altogether, in verse. To attribute such erudition to Shakespeare was altogether too much for J. Dover Wilson and, believing as he did in the validity of the parallels collected by himself and previous critics, he was driven to postulate a lost play. Shakespeare, he supposed, did not even have to consult Holinshed: he made use of Woodstock, the other play, and Daniel’s Civil Wars:2
I can see no reason for believing that he took the trouble to read Holinshed or any other chronicle for his Richard II, any more than he had done for his King John. Daniel’s poem, an actor’s knowledge of Thomas of Woodstock, and our hypothetical play-book by the author of The Troublesome Reign of King John are together sufficient to account for all the facts.
They might account for all the facts if there were any direct evidence for the existence of the lost play. The indirect evidence advanced by Dover Wilson has not met with general acceptance – the ‘strange mixture of historical erudition and inaccuracy’ displayed by the dramatist, several points which are unintelligible in the play as it stands, the survival of passages from the old play in v. iii, and the presence of fossil-rhymes in I. iii and III. iii. The mixture of historical erudition and inaccuracy is to be found also in Macbeth; and if Shakespeare consulted recondite sources it would not be for the sake of historical accuracy, but rather as a stimulus to his imagination, and as a means of amplification. The alleged unintelligibility of certain passages can be explained by imperfections in the text, or by revision, or by sheer carelessness. The fossil-rhymes may be explained by the fact that some of Shakespeare’s Sonnets were written about this time, or else by Shakespeare’s rewriting in blank verse of scenes originally written in rhyme. But the strongest argument against Dover Wilson’s theory is that it presupposes an unknown dramatist – the author, too, of The Troublesome Raigne – who possessed the erudition denied to Shakespeare. It is obvious that the author of The Troublesome Raigne did not have such erudition; and it is known, on the other hand, that Shakespeare did use a number of different sources in other plays (e.g. Macbeth, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice) and it is easier to believe that he followed the same practice in Richard II than that the author of The Troublesome Raigne went to this trouble.
Peter Ure tried to redeem Shakespeare from the aspersion of ‘academic’ by showing that he had no need to consult the French sources, or even Froissart, or Hall.3 He could have taken the main outlines of his play from Holinshed, and taken hints here and there from Woodstock, Daniel, and A Mirror for Magistrates. Apparent resemblances between the play and the French chronicles are fortuitous, Shakespeare inventing for dramatic reasons incidents which, unknown to him, he could have found in Créton or Traïson. It is not possible to prove that Shakespeare read the French chronicles; but they were not quite inaccessible. Holinshed, Hall, and Daniel all used Traïson, and Holinshed used Créton’s poem. Holinshed, indeed, refers three times to Créton’s poem as ‘Master Dees French booke’,4 and four times to Traïson as ‘an old French pamphlet belonging to Iohn Stow’.5 Ure asserted6 that Stow’s copy contained only the first fifth of Traïson in translation; but it is possible, of course, that he also possessed the whole of the original, as Hall apparently did. Ure showed, however, that Holinshed is unlikely to have used more than the translation. But if Shakespeare had wanted to follow up Holinshed’s references he could probably have done so, for he is thought to have been acquainted with Holinshed, Camden, and Lambarde, and through them he could have met Dee and Stow.
The evidence that he actually did so is not overwhelming. Créton mentions more than once that Richard’s face grew pale with anger.7
La face en ot de mal-talent pâlie,
Ce me sembla…
Le roy en ot de maltalent le vis
Descoulouré…
Là fut le roy, qui ot souvent la face
Descoulourée…
But, even apart from similar passages in Froissart, there is no reason to suppose that Shakespeare required a source for such a commonplace.
A messenger in Créton’s poem describes the way people of all ages flock to support Bolingbroke:8
Lors véissiez jeune, viel, feble et fort
Murmure faire, et par commun accort,
Sans regarder ni le droit ni le tort,
Eulx esmouvoir…
A lui soubsmet, jeunes et anciens…
This is paralleled by Scroope’s speech (III. ii. 113 ff.) which, after describing the white-beards and boys who have joined Bolingbroke, adds that ‘both young and old rebel’. The passage from Holinshed (501/2/55), quoted by Ure, about Bolingbroke’s journey to London, is much less close:
For in euerie towne and village where he passed, children reioised, women clapped their hands, and men cried out for ioy.
But Scroope’s speech could have been amplified from the information supplied by Holinshed on Bolingbroke’s initial successes:
he found means … forthwith to assemble a great number of people… And thus, what for loue, and what for feare of losse, they came flocking vnto him from euerie part.
(498/2/54)
The appeals to heaven made by Richard in III. ii, the use of Salisbury to bring evil tidings, and the account of successive disasters in the same scene, may all be paralleled in Créton’s account, as in the stanza:9
Et quant le roy lui ot tout laissié dire
Sachiez de vray qu’il n’ot pas fain de rire;
Car de tous lez lui venoient, tire à tire,
Meschief et paine.
Here again there is no proof that Shakespeare was indebted to Créton. A monarch threatened by rebellion in an Elizabethan play would inevitably assume that God was on his side; Salisbury was a convenient character to use in this scene; and the other parallel is a commonplace. The idea that
had not God, for some strong purpose, steel’d
The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted,
And barbarism itself have pitied him…
(v. ii. 34–6)
is an obvious means of arousing the sympathies of the audience for the tragic hero; but it could have been suggested by Créton’s lines, which however, related to an earlier episode:10
Plus de cent fois en getay mainte larme;
N’il n’est vivant si dur cuer ne si ferme,
Qui n’en éust pleuré, veu le diffame
C’on lui faisoit.
It may be mentioned that in both Créton’s account and in Traïson, Richard in the scene of his surrender to Bolingbroke, addresses him as ‘Beau cousin de Lancastre’;11 in the play Richard addresses him as ‘Fair cousin’. The same epithet, however, is used by Stow in his account of the interview: ‘Fair Cousin of Lancaster’; and Froissart makes Richard call Bolingbroke ‘Fair cousin’ in the abdication scene.
The most striking parallel, however, is the comparison of Richard’s betrayal and suffering to Christ’s, to be found in both Créton and Traïson. In the prose section of his chronicle, Créton compares the rejection of Richard by the people to Christ’s:12
Lors dist le duc Henry moult hault aux communes de ladicte ville: ‘Beaux seigneurs, ve-cy votre roy, or regardez que vous en ferez ne volez faire’. Et ilz respondirent à haute-voix: ‘Nous voulons qu’ill soit mené à Westmoustier’. Et ainsi il leur délivra. A celle heure il me souvint-il de Pilate, le quel fist batre notre Seigneur Jhésu-Crist a l’estache, et apres le fist mener devant le turbe des Juifs disant: ‘Beaux seigneurs, ve-cy votre roy’. Lesquelz respondirent: ‘Nous voulons qu’il soit crucifié’. Alors Pilate en lava ses mains disant: ‘Je suis innocent du sancjuste’. Est ainsi leur délivra notre Seigneur. Assez semblablement fist le duc Henry quant son droit seigneur livra au turbe de Londres, à fin telle que s’ilz le faisoient mourir, qu’ll peust dire: ‘Je suis innocent de ce fait icy’.
In Traïson there are several similar passages.13 On the betrayal of the King by Northumberland, the author compares the traitor to Judas and Ganelon. A few pages later Richard compares himself to Christ:
Adonc regarda ses compaignons qui plouroyent et leur dist en souspirant, Ha mes bons loyaulx amis nous sommes tous trahiz et mis entre les mains de nos ennemis sanz cause pour Dieu auez pascience et vous souuiengne de nostre Saulueur qui fu vendu et mis entre la main de ses ennemis sanz ce quil leust deseruy.
(52)
A third passage refers to Christ’s passion:
et se a mourir fault prenons la mort en gre et ayons memoire de la passion de notre Saulueur et des sains martirs qui sont en Paradiz.
(56)
Although Holinshed refers to a prelate as a Pilate, and although Shakespeare often associates treachery with Judas, it is worth noting that the betrayal into the hands of Bolingbroke is omitted by him. The emphasis on the Christ-parallel is to be found in Créton, Traïson, and Shakespeare, but not elsewhere.
There are a number of minor parallels with Traïson. The word ‘hardie’ in the phrase ‘si hardie de mectre la main sur les lices’14 is used in precisely the same context by Shakespeare (I. iii. 46) and both writers use the expression ‘base court’ to describe the place where Richard meets Bolingbroke.15 On the whole there seems to be a slight balance of probability that Shakespeare was acquainted, directly or indirectly, with Créton’s poem and Traïson.
The evidence that Shakespeare had read, seen, or acted in Woodstock is less in doubt, for there are a number of substantial, if unimportant, echoes. It has been shown by Harold Brooks and others that he was well acquainted with A Mirror for Magistrates.16 There are no certain echoes of Stow and Froissart, but Tillyard was surely right when he said17 that
quite apart from any tangible signs of imitation it is scarcely conceivable that Shakespeare should not have read so famous a book as Berners’s Froissart, or that having read it he should not have been impressed by the bright pictures of chivalric life in those pages.
Paul Reyher argued18 that Shakespeare was indebted to Froissart for his characterization of John of Gaunt and Dover Wilson suggested19 that Gaunt’s death-scene was based on Froissart’s chapter entitled ‘Howe the duke of Lancastre dyed’, his death being due to his son’s banishment and his grief at the King’s misgovernment:
for he sawe well that if he longe perceyuered and were suffred to contynewe, the realme was lykely to be utterly loste. with these ymagynacyons and other, the duke fell sycke wheron he dyed.
(Cap. 230)
Froissart mentions that on Gaunt’s death Richard ‘in maner of joye wrote therof to the Frenche kyng’. Dover Wilson has further suggested20 that Gaunt’s admonitions to his nephew were based on an earlier passage in Froissart’s Chronicle:
He consydred the tyme to come lyke a sage prince, and somtyme sayd to suche as he trusted best. Our nephue the kynge of Englande wyll shame all or he cease: he beleueth to lyghtly yuell counsayle who shall distroy hym; and symply (if he lyue longe) he wyll lese his realme, and that hath been goten with moche coste and trauayle by our predecessours and by us: he suffreth to engendre in this realme bytwene the noble men hate and dyscorde, by whom he shulde be serued and honoured, and this lande kepte and douted.
(Cap. 224)
A. P. Rossiter, however, claimed21 that it was not necessary to go beyond Woodstock, plus Stow and Hall, for the model of Shakespeare’s Gaunt, since he is merely ‘the type of virtuous Englishry variously represented by Duke Humphrey, by Woodstock’, and by the Bastard in King John. Ure was also inclined to doubt22 whether Shakespeare owed anything to Froissart, and he pointed out that the patriotic Gaunt is to be found in several Elizabethan works. Nevertheless, even though Shakespeare had to have an outspoken critic of the King, and even though he certainly took hints from Woodstock, it seems unlikely that Froissart did not contribute to his idea of Gaunt.
About seventy echoes have been listed from Daniel’s Civile Wars,23 and although fnany of these are dubious and others not peculiar to Daniel’s poem, enough remain to convince all recent editors that Shakespeare was influenced by it, especially in II. i, IV. i, and Act V. Both poets altered the age of the Queen, making her a woman instead of a child; Shakespeare was clearly indebted to Daniel for the account of the entry into London by Richard and Bolingbroke; he blended Daniel with the Homilies for the Bishop of Carlisle’s speech; and the meditation in prison by Daniel’s Richard appears to have influenced a passage in the scene of the King’s parting from the Queen. Richard compares his situation with that of a herdsman he sees through the grating of his cell:24
Thou sit’st at home safe by thy quiet fire
And hear’st of others harmes, but feelest none;
And there thou telst of kinges and who aspire,
Who fall, who rise, who triumphs, who doe mone:
Perhappes thou talkst of mee, and dost inquire
Of my restraint, why here I liue alone,
O know tis others sin not my desart,
And I could wish I were but as thou art.
(III. 65)
So in the play Richard tells the Queen:
In Winter’s tedious nights sit by the fire
With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales
Of woeful ages, long ago betid:
And ere thou bid good-night, to quit their grief,
Tell thou the lamentable tale of me,
And send the hearers weeping to their beds.
(v. i. 40–5)
It is difficult to be certain that Shakespeare had read Hall’s account of Richard II because Holinshed borrowed so much from it. The verbal parallels, as Ure insisted,25 may be fortuitous; and we are left with the fact that Shakespeare begins his second tetralogy, as Hall begins his massive chronicle, at precisely the same point – the quarrel between Mowbray and Bblingbroke. The theme of Hall’s book is the overthrow of the legitimate monarch and the evils that ensued therefrom. At the critical point of the story, just before Bolingbroke’s landing, Hall says26 that Richard
sawe his title iust, trewe, and vnfallible, and beside that he had no small truste in the Welshemen, hys conscience to be cleane, pure, immaculate wythout spot or enuye.
He pities Richard in prison, and after the murder he comments:27
What trust is in this worlde, that suretie may hath of his life, & what constancie is in the mutable comonaltie, all men maie apparantly perceyue by the ruyne of this noble prince, which beeyng an vndubitate kyng, crouned and anoynted by the spiritualtie, honored and exalted by the nobilitee, obeyed and worshipped of the comon people, was sodainly disceyued by theim whiche he moste trusted, betrayed by them whom he had preferred, & slayn by theim whom he had brought vp and norished: so that all menne maye perceyue and see, that fortune wayeth princes and pore men all in one balance.
It is often said that the published accounts of the reign of Richard II showed a Lancastrian bias, and it is implied that for dramatic reasons Shakespeare was compelled to give a more sympathetic portrait of his hero. Yet it is obvious from Elizabeth I’s identification of herself with Richard at the time of the Essex rebellion, the censoring of the deposition-scene in the early editions of the play, the difficulties which beset Hayward for his history of Henry IV (which begins with the deposition of Richard), and the unambiguous teaching of the Homilies that it would have been impossible for a dramatist to approve openly of Richard’s deposition, even if he had wanted to do so – which Shakespeare did not. In fact, all the sources of the play exhibited considerable sympathy for Richard. Holinshed, after discussing Richard’s virtues and vices, is outspoken in condemning the way he was treated:28
But if I may boldlie saie what I thinke: he was a prince the most vnthankfullie vsed of his subiects, of any one of whom ye shall lightlie read…. Yet in no kings daies were the commons in greater wealth, if they could haue perceiued their happie state: neither in any other time were the nobles and gentlemen more cherished, nor churchmen lesse wronged. But such was their ingratitude towards their bountifull and louing souereigne, that those whom he had cheeflie aduanced, were readiest to controll him.
Bolingbroke’s want of moderation and loyalty led to the scourging of himself and his descendants, for he was guilty of
tigerlike crueltie … wooluishlie to lie in wait for the distressed creatures life, and rauenouslie to thirst after his bloud, the spilling whereof should haue touched his conscience.
(508/2/11)
Daniel’s portrait of Richard was more sympathetic than that of the chronicler; and Froissart, who was personally acquainted with the King, gives a moving expression of his grief:29
And when I departed fro hym it was at Wynsore; and at my departynge the kyng sent me by a knight of his … a goblet of syluer and gylte, weyeng two marke of siluer, and within it a C. nobles, by the which I am as yet the better, and shal be as long as I lyve; wherfore I am bounde to praye to God for his soule, and with moche sorowe I write of his dethe.
(Cap. 245)
Even if he had not read Créton and Traïson, Shakespeare had plenty of precedent for his sympathetic portrayal of Richard in the last three acts of the play, just as he had ample material for depicting Richard’s misgovernment in the first two acts. Indeed, the impression one gets of Richard in the early part of the play is a good deal worse than that derived from Hall, Holinshed, or Daniel, partly because of the influence of Woodstock and partly because of the patriotic sentiments put into the mouth of Gaunt.
A more detailed consideration of two passages in the play will show the way in which a number of different sources coalesced in these set pieces.30 The first is Gaunt’s attempt to console his son on his banishment, and Bolingbroke’s reply. After his banishment, Bolingbroke tells the King:
Your will be done. This must my comfort be –
That sun that warms you here shall shine on me,
And those his golden beams to you here lent
Shall point on me, and gild my banishment.
(I. iii. 144–7)
When the King has left the stage, Gaunt tries to comfort his son by telling him to call his exile ‘travel that thou tak’st for pleasure’:
All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
Teach thy necessity to reason thus:
There is no virtue like necessity.
Think not the King did banish thee,
But thou the King …
Go, say I send thee forth to purchase honour,
And not the King exiled thee; …
Suppose the singing birds musicians,
The grass whereon thou tread’st, the presence strew’d,
The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more
Than a delightful measure or a dance
For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite
The man that mocks at it and sets it light.
(273 ff.)
Bolingbroke replies bitterly:
O who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite,
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow
By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?
O no! the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.
Fell sorrow’s tooth does never rankle more
Than when he bites, but lanceth not the sore.…
Where’er I wander, boast of this I can,
Though banish’d, yet a trueborn Englishman.
T. W. Baldwin pointed out31 that when Gaunt begins to console his son, ‘he takes his departure from a stock quotation which occurs under patria in the quotation books’, namely Ovid’s32
Omne solum forti patria est, vt piscibus aequor,
Ut volucri vacuo quicquid in orbe patet.
This sentiment is rendered by Brooke in his poem about Romeo and Juliet:33
Vnto a valiant hart there is no banishment,
All countreys are his natiue soyle beneath the firmament.
As to his fishe the sea, as to the fowle the ayre,
So is like pleasant to the wise eche place of his repayre.
(1443–6)
Shakespeare must have read this passage when he was writing Romeo and Juliet, though lie does not give his own Friar Lawrence this particular argument. To console a friend who has been sent into exile was, in fact, a favourite exercise. Erasmus, for example, in his De Conscribendis Epistolis provided a letter on this very subject; and Shakespeare was acquainted with this book and made use of it for Friar Lawrence’s speech of consolation to Romeo.34 There does not seem, however, to be anything in Erasmus’ epistle very close to the passage in Richard II.
Baldwin showed that Shakespeare must have used the original Latin when he wrote this scene. ‘Omne solum’ becomes ‘All places’; and ‘solum’, by a pun, suggested ‘sol’, the sun, which appears as ‘the eye of heaven’ (another Ovidian phrase); and ‘patria’ is expanded to ‘ports and happy havens’.
Another book certainly known to Shakespeare was Lyly’s Euphues, and towards the end of the book Lyly prints a letter offering consolation to a banished friend:35
I thincke thee happy to be so well rydde of the courte and bee so voyde of crime. Thou sayest banishment is bitter to the free borne –
a sentence which may have suggested Bolingbroke’s last line –
Though banish’d, yet a trueborn Englishman.
Lyly continues:
I speake this to this ende, that though thy exile seeme grieuous to thee, yet guiding thy selfe with the rules of Philosophye it shall bee more tollerable.… Plato would neuer accompt him banished that had The Sunne, Fire, Aire, Water, and Earth, that he had before, where he felt the Winters blast and the Summers blaze, where the same Sunne, and the same Moone shined….
So Bolingbroke comforts himself with the reflection that the same sun will shine on him. Lyly continues with Plato’s view:
whereby he noted that euery place was a Countrey to a wise man, and all partes a pallace to a quiet minde.
Gaunt tells Bolingbroke that
all places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
Lyly proceeds to tell an anecdote about Diogenes:
When it was cast in Diogenes teeth that the Synoponetes had banished hym Pontus, yea, sayde hee, I them of Diogenes.
So Gaunt urges Bolingbroke:
Think not the King did banish thee,
But thou the King.
Lyly’s later remark that ‘the Nightingale singeth as sweetly in the desarts as in the woodes of Crete’ may have suggested Gaunt’s mention of the singing birds. The certainty that Shakespeare knew his Euphues, together with the four or five echoes from this passage, are substantial evidence that he was echoing Lyly. But it is fairly certain that he was also echoing Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations (either in the original or in Dolman’s translation). In the fifth book there is a long discussion of exile as one of the worst of evils:36
What is there, that a man should feare? Exile perhaps, which is counted one of the greatest euels… But if you counte it a misery, to be from your contrey: then trulye is euery prouince ful of wretched men, of whom very fewe retourne home againe into theyr countrey…
And truly, exyle and banishment, if we weygh the nature of the things, and not the shame of the name, how much differeth it from that continuall wanderinge, in the whyche these most notable philosophers … haue spent their whole age, and the course of their life? … For in what soeuer place we haue such thynges, there we may liue well and happelye. And therfore, hereunto, that saying of Teucer may well be applyed. My countrey (quod he) is, wheresoeuer I liue well.
There is no direct evidence that Shakespeare read this passage, but in the same book is another passage which Steevens believed to lie behind Bolingbroke’s speech:37
But he sayeth, he is contented onely with the remembraunce of his former pleasures. As if, a man well nye parched with heate, so that, he is no longer able to abide the sonne should comfort him selfe with the remembraunce, that once heretofore, he had bathed him selfe in the cold ryuers of Arpynas. For truly, I see not, howe the pleasures that are past, may ease the gryeues that are present.
That Shakespeare did indeed know Cicero’s book appears to be clinched by a fact pointed out by J. C. Maxwell.38 Shortly after the above passage, Cicero asks:
What parte of Barbary is there, more wylde or rude, then India? Yet neuerthelesse, emonges theim those which are counted wyse men, are fyrst bred vp, bare and naked. And yet suffer both the colde of the hil Caucasus, and also, the sharpenes of the winter, without any paine. And when they come to the fyer, they are able to abide the heate, well nie, till they rost.
Here there are a number of parallels: ‘wyse men’/‘wise man’; ‘bare and naked’/‘bare’ imagination ‘… naked’; ‘colde … Caucasus … sharpenes … winter’/‘Caucasi nives hiemalem: frosty Caucasus … hungry edge … December snow’; and ‘fyer’/‘fire’. It must be admitted however that there is a very similar passage in Valerius Maximus (III. 3), a popular school author, under the heading of patience.
Apud Indos vero patientiae meditatio tam obstinate usurpari creditur, ut sint qui omne vitae tempus nudi exigant modo Caucasi montis gelido rigore corpora sua durantes: modo flammis sine ullo gemitu obiicientes: atque haud parva his gloria contemptu doloris acquiritur; titulusque sapientiae datur.
Here again we have the frosty Caucasus, the mention of fire and wise men, and the use of the adjective ‘nudi’. In one respect, indeed, it might be argued that Shakespeare is nearer to Valerius Maximus than he is to Cicero: Bolingbroke’s repetition of ‘thinking’ may be compared with ‘patientiae meditatio’. But it is the juxtaposition of the three passages in Cicero that makes it certain that Shakespeare had read the Tusculan Disputations, and the passage about the Caucasus might well link up with the parallel passage in Valerius Maximus he had translated at school.
The other passage to be considered is the speech spoken by John of Gaunt on his death-bed. In Daniel’s Civile Wars there is a description of Flint Castle; but Shakespeare echoed this not in the scene which takes place before the castle, but in Gaunt’s description of England:
A place there is, where proudly raisd there stands
A huge aspiring rocke neighb’ring the skies;
Whose surly brow imperiously commands
The sea his bounds that at his proud feet lies;
And spurnes the waues that in rebellious bands
Assault his Empire and against him rise:
Vnder whose craggy gouernment there was
A niggard narrow way for men to passe.
(II. 49)
In another passage Daniel asks:
With what contagion, France, didst thou infect
The land by thee made proud, to disagree?
(IV. 43)
In a third passage Daniel refers to the advantages of being cut off from the manners and morals of the continent. He complains of ‘the deedes hye forraine wittes inuent’ (IV. 88) and of their ‘vile cunning’. He admits that there may be fairer cities, and goodlier soils, but argues that we are spared
Such detestable vile impietie.
(IV. 89)
He therefore exhorts Neptune:
Neptune keepe out, from thy imbraced Ile
This foul contagion of iniquitie;
Drowne all corruptions comming to defile
Our faire proceedings ordred formally;
Keepe vs meere English, let not craft beguile
Honor and Iustice with strang subtiltie.
(IV. 90)
In the next stanza he again uses the image of conflict between sea and shore:
And now that current with maine fury ran …
Vnto the full of mischiefe that began
T’a vniuersall ruine to extend
That Isthmus failing which the land did keepe,
From the intire possession of the deepe.
In Richard II (II. i), York complains of the influence of Italian fashions, and Gaunt describes the advantages of being cut off from other countries:
This royal throne of kings, this scept’red isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself,
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
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,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear’d by their breed, and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son;
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leas’d out – I die pronouncing it –
Like to a tenement or pelting farm.
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of wat’ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds.
(II. i. 40–64)
There is a similar passage in King John (II. i):
that white-fac’d shore,
Whose foot spurns back the ocean’s roaring tides,
And coops from other lands her islanders –
Even till that England, hedg’d in with the main,
That water-walled bulwark, still secure
And confident from foreign purposes…
(23–8)
There are too many links between the Daniel and Shakespeare passages for them to be accidental. Rock, sea, bounds, spurns, Neptune, isle, main, and infect are all common words, but their juxtaposition, the certainty that Shakespeare knew Daniel’s poem, and the use of the same image would appear to be conclusive proof of Shakespeare’s indebtedness.
The germ of the whole scene may have been the passage from Froissart’s Chronicles already quoted.39 But in Woodstock Shakespeare would have found a passage about fashions which may have coloured York’s lines at the beginning of the scene. In Woodstock, too, he would have found the phrase ‘pelting farm’ and the word ‘landlord’ in a speech by Richard himself:40
Our great father toiled his royal person
Spending his blood to purchase towns in France;
And we his son, to ease our wanton youth
Become a landlord to this warlike realm,
Rent out our kingdom like a pelting farm
That erst was held as fair as Babylon.
(IV. i. 143–8)
The end of Gaunt’s speech may have been suggested by two separate passages in Woodstock in which Gloucester says:41
I would my death might end the misery
My fear presageth to my wretched country.
Send thy sad doom, King Richard: take my life.
I wish my death might ease my country’s grief.
Then J. W. Lever has argued42 that Shakespeare was also indebted to John Eliot’s translation of some lines by Du Bartas in praise of France. As Shakespeare had certainly read Ortho-Epia Gallica (1593) – he echoed it in Love’s Labour’s Lost – he had presumably read these verses:
O Fruitfull France! most happie Land, happie and happie thrice!
O pearle of rich European bounds! O earthly Paradice!
All haile sweet soile! O France the mother of many conquering
knights,
Who planted once their glorious standards like triumphing wights,
Upon the banckes of Euphrates where Titan Day-torch bright
Riseth, and bloodie swords unsheathd where Phoebus drounds his
light,
The mother of many Artist-hands whose workemanship most rare
Dimmes Natures workes, and with her fairest flowers doth
compare.
The Nurse of many learned wits who fetch their skill diuine
From Rome, from Greece, from Aegypt farre, and ore the learnedst
shine,
As doth the glymmering-Crimsin-dye ouer the darkest gray:
Titan ore starres, or Phoebus flowers ore marigolds in May.
Thy flouds are Ocean Seas, thy townes to Prouinces arise,
Whose ciuill gouernement their walles hath raisd to loftie skies.
Thy soile is fertill-temperate-sweete, no plague thine aire doth
trouble,
Bastillyons fower borne in thy bounds: two Seas and mountaines
double.
The stress on the happiness of France ‘most happie Land’ etc., the comparison to a pearl and to an earthly paradise, the reference to the crusades, the mention of the country as mother and nurse (as Shakespeare calls England ‘teeming womb’ and ‘Nurse’), the reference to walls, and the statement that ‘no plague thine aire doth trouble’ all find parallels in Shakespeare’s lines.
Peter Ure, however, called attention43 to the resemblances between Sylvester’s version of the same lines and Gaunt’s speech. He, like Shakespeare, applies what Du Bartas says of France to England:44
All-haile (deere ALBION) Europes Pearle of price,
The Worlds rich Garden, Earths rare Paradice:
Thrice-happy Mother, who aye bringest-forth
Such Chiualry as daunteth all the Earth…
Sweet is thine Aire, thy soile exceeding Fat,
Fenc’d from the World (as better-worth then That)
With triple Wall (of Water, Wood, and Brasse)
Which neuer Stranger yet had power to passe…
Ure pointed out that ‘The Worlds rich Garden’ may be compared with ‘This other Eden’ and that Sylvester and Shakespeare, but not Eliot or Du Bartas, both speak of chivalry. (It might be said, however, that Eden is implied by Paradise as much as by garden, and that chivalry is implied by the reference to the crusades.) As Sylvester’s version was not published until 1605, as there is no evidence that it existed ten years previously, and as Shakespeare and Eliot, but not Du Bartas and Sylvester, both use the word ‘nurse’, it seems reasonable to assume that Shakespeare was echoing Eliot, and that Sylvester, in translating Du Bartas, blended the original with memories of Shakespeare’s lines which he might have heard on the stage, or read in one of the first three quartos, or in England’s Parnassus.
The idea of England as an island-fortress was, of course, familiar, and it dated at least from the Armada year. Shakespeare combined it not merely with the material he found in Eliot’s translation, but also with some stanzas by Thomas Lodge entitled ‘Truth’s Complaint over England’. To Dorothy Earnshaw belongs the credit of this discovery.45 Lodge links the idea of England as an island-fortress with a comparison of England to Eden:46
Within an Iland compast with the waue,
A safe defence a forren foe to quell,
Once Albion cald, next Britaine Brutus gaue,
Now England hight, a plot of beautie braue,
Which onely soyle, should seeme the seate to bee,
Of Paradise, if it from sinne were free.
Within this place, within this sacred plot,
I first did frame, my first contented bower,
There found I peace and plentie.…
Here the sequence of ideas is very close to that of Gaunt’s speech: Iland (Isle) – defence (defensive) – England – seate – Paradise (demi paradise) – sacred plot (blessed plot) – peace (war).
Truth is the spokesman in Lodge’s poem and John of Gaunt, speaking as a prophet, makes a similar pronouncement. There are several other links between Lodge’s poem and this scene of the play.47 Lodge speaks of the import of fashions:
Then flew not fashions euerie day from Fraunce.
York, in the play, complains of the aping of Italian fashions. Lodge uses the images of the unbroken colt:
For as the horse well mand abides the bit,
And learnes his stop by raine in riders hand,
Where mountaine colt, that was not sadled yet,
Runnes headlong on amidst the fallowed land,
Whose fierce resist scarce bends with anie band:
So men reclaimde by vertue, tread aright,
Where led by follies, mischiefes on them light.
So York urges Gaunt to deal mildly with the young King:
For young hot Coltes being rag’d do rage the more.
(II. i. 70)
A few lines later Lodge mentions that
the great commaunder of the tides,
God Neptune can allay the swelling seas.
In between these two passages there is an image of an unweeded garden:48
Yet as great store of Darnell marres the seed,
Which else would spring within a fertile field:
And as the fruitfull bud is choakt by weede:
Which otherwise a gladsome grape would yeeld,
So sometimes wicked men doe ouerweeld,
And keepe in couert those who would direct,
The common state, which error doth infect.
This stanza may have suggested the garden imagery in Richard II particularly the speeches of the gardeners (III. iv):
I will go root away
The noisome weeds which without profit suck
The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers…
When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds; her fairest flowers chok’d up,
Her fruit-trees all unprun’d.
(37 ff.)
Lodge shows that the happiness of England depends on the conduct of the prince. Once upon a time
Their Prince content with plainnesse loued Truth,
And pride by abstinence was kept from youth.
But he seems to imply that times have changed:
For common state can neuer sway amisse
When Princes liues doo levell all a right,
Be it for Prince that England happie is,
Yet haplesse England if the fortune light;
That with the Prince, the subiects seeke not right,
Vnhappie state, vnluckie times they bee,
When Princes liues and subiects disagree.
Lodge speaks of the bramble growing at Court, and he complains of flatterers and rack-rents:
And who giues most, hath now most store of farmes,
Rackt rents, the Lord with golden fuell warmes.
So Gaunt blames Richard for England’s woes, warns him of flatterers, and complains that England
Like to a tenement or pelting farm.
(II. i. 59–60)
These lines are, in fact, closer to the passage already quoted from Woodstock; but, as we have seen, passages were more likely to coalesce in Shakespeare’s mind if they had words or phrases in common.
Lodge’s poem was published in a volume entitled An Alarum against Usurers (1584), and in the opening treatise there are a number of words and phrases which might have influenced Richard II. On two pages a reference to ‘farmes’ is followed by the use of the word ‘glose’ in connection with youth, and also the phrase ‘not yet stayed’ (p. 14). (Cf. II. i. 10, 2, 60: ‘youth’, ‘glose’ ‘unstaid youth’ ‘Farme’. But Holinshed uses the word ‘vnstaid’ in connection with Gloucester.) On the same pages Lodge has the words ‘riotous’, ‘lasciuious’, and ‘giues the willing lade the spure’ (p. 16). York uses ‘lascivious’ (p. 19), and Gaunt ‘riot’ (p. 33) and ‘spurs’ (p. 36). There is another allusion to the proverbial ‘the spur to a willing horse, or the raine to an unwildie colt’. There are frequent references to bonds (p. 64), and there is one sentence (p. 53) which Shakespeare used with little change:
They bee the Caterpillers of a Common weale….
(p. 24)
So Bushy, Bagot, and their accomplices are described as
The caterpillers of the commonwealth.
(II. iii. 166)
Sir Edmund Chambers, however, cited William Harrison’s words about sturdy beggars in his Description of England as ‘thieues and caterpillers in the commonwealth’; and doubtless the phrase was something of a cliché.
These two passages are exceptional in their fusion of many different sources, although other speeches were apparently composed with equal care. The Bishop of Carlisle’s speech against Bolingbroke’s usurption (IV. i. 114 ff.) is a blend of the Homilies with the chronicles, whilst Richard’s lament on the fate of kings (III. ii. 145 ff.) reads like the quintessence of A Mirror for Magistrates. Yet, as in the plays written about the same time, there are scenes of great dramatic power alongside others which are, for whatever reason, much less effective. There is likewise a disturbing contrast between the masterly presentation of the major characters and the conventional and even fumbling portrayal of some of the others. We cannot be certain, to give a notorious example, whether the scene in which Aumerle is pardoned was meant to be funny. The most curious point about the dramaturgy, however, is that in the opening scene we are not informed that the King himself was ultimately responsible for the death of Woodstock – this is revealed only in the second scene. Shakespeare may have been relying on the audience’s knowledge of Woodstock, or he may have felt that the first scene would be more effective if neither Bolingbroke nor Mowbray was obviously in the wrong. As it turns out, Mowbray keeps the King’s secret and dies as a crusader while Bolingbroke rebels, and is as guilty of Richard’s death as Richard had been of Woodstock’s.