Hubert. I faint, I fear, my conscience bids desist:
Faint did I say? fear was it that I nam'd?
My king commands, that warrant sets me free:
But God forbids, and he commandeth kings,
That great Commander counterchecks my charge,
He stays my hand, he maketh soft my heart.
Go, cursed tools, your office is exempt:
Cheer thee, young lord, thou shalt not lose any eye,
Though I should purchase it with loss of life,
I'll to the king, and say his will is done,
And of the langour tell him thou art dead;
Go in with me, for Hubert was not born

To blind those lamps that nature polish'd so."

From Arthur we naturally turn to his mother, the Lady Constance, who makes a far less prominent and alluring figure in history than on the stage. The tragic muse has not described her as the widow of Gefferey, the divorced wife of the earl of Chester, and the actual consort of a third husband, Guie de Tours, but has represented the only beautiful feature in her character maternal tenderness, — and super-added the "widow's plaint, that issues from a wounded soul."* In Shakspeare, also, she is

"sick and capable of fears,

Oppress'd with wrongs, and therefore full of fears;
A widow, husbandless, subject to fears."t

The maternal distress of Constance, in the old play, is clamorous and passionate, vindictive

and contumelious. The hand of Shakspeare
tempered her rage into vehemence, attuned her
clamour to eloquence, and (for the most part)
modulated her coarse vindictiveness into a deep
sense of gross injuries and undeserved mis-
fortunes. For those passages in her character
most worthy of admiration, Shakspeare drew
chiefly from his own resources. Of her eloquent
rejoinder to the prayer of Arthur that she would
be "content*,” not a trace is to be met with in
the original, nor of that noble burst of passion,
"I will instruct my sorrows to be proud;

For grief is proud, and makes its owner stoop.
To me, and to the state of my great grief,
Let kings assemble; for my grief's so great,
That no supporter but the huge firm earth
Can hold it up; here I and sorrows sit;

Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it."

Equally free from obligation, also, in the same scene, is Constance's designation of the nuptial day of Blanch and Lewis, and her animated exposure of the perfidy of Philip and Austria.

The entrance of Constance, in the fourth scene of the third act, is prefaced, in the old play, by Philip's observation :

"To aggravate the measure of our grief,

All mal-content comes Constance for her son.

* Act III. sc. 1.

Be brief, good madam, for your face imports
A tragick tale behind that's yet untold.
Her passions stop the organ of her voice,
Deep sorrow throbeth mis-befall'n events;
Out with it lady, that our act may end
A full catastrophe of sad laments."

Shakspeare substituted the following vivid picture:

"Look, who comes here! a grave unto a soul;
Holding the eternal spirit, against her will,
In the vile prison of afflicted breath :”—

The whole of the part is Shakspeare's from the striking apostrophe to death*, to Constance's beautiful detail of her inducements for doating upon grief. This is the last scene of her ap

pearance.

The bold admixture of broad humour, sarcastic bitterness, and playful levity, in a plain, blunt, and unpretending Englishman, was first sketched in the "Troublesome Raigne." The character is not wrought with the care, nor pointed with the emphasis, that mark the Faulconbridge of Shakspeare, yet it is delineated with much discrimination and vigour.

* "Death, death:-O amiable, lovely death!
Arise forth from the couch of lasting night," &c.
Act III. sc. 4.

+ "Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed," &c.

“Then, Robin Faulconbridge, I wish thee joy,
My sire a king, and I a landless boy.
God's lady-mother, the world is in my debt,
There's something owing to Plantagenet.
Aye marry, sir, let me alone for game,
I'll act some wonders now I know my name.
By blessed Mary, I'll not sell that pride
For England's wealth and all the world beside.
Sit fast the proudest of my father's foes,
Away, good mother, there the comfort goes."

Though Shakspeare has not actually imitated this spirited passage, it undoubtedly influenced him when he composed the conclusion of his first act. Faulconbridge's defiance of Austria, in the old play, is dull and tedious:

"What words are these?

How do my sinews shake?
My father's foe clad in
my father's spoil;
A thousand furies kindle with revenge,
This heart, that choler keeps a consistory,
Searing my inwards with a brand of hate:
How doth Alecto whisper in mine ears?
Delay not, Philip, kill the villain straight,
Disrobe him of the matchless monument,
Thy father's triumph o'er the savages;

Base heardgroom, coward, peasant, worse than a
threshing slave,

What mak'st thou with the trophie of a king?
Sham'st thou not, coistril, loathsome dunghill swad,

To grace thy carcase with an ornament
Too precious for a monarch's coverture?
Scarce can I temper due obedience
Unto the presence of my sovereign,

From acting outrage on this trunk of hate :
But arm thee, traitor, wronger of renown,

For by his soul I swear, my father's soul,
Twice will I not review the morning's rise,
'Till I have torn that trophie from thy back,
And split thy heart for wearing it so long.
Philip hath sworn, and if it be not done,
Let not the world repute me Richard's son."

But in Shakspeare, with what spirit and conciseness. is it said—

Austria.

Falcon.

"What the devil art thou?
"One that will play the devil, sir, with you,
An 'a may catch your hide and you alone.
You are the hare of whom the proverb goes,
Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard;
I'll smoke your skin-coat, an I catch you right;
Sirrah, look to't; i'faith, I will, i'faith."

Act II. sc. 1.

Faulconbridge's keen reflections on the universal sway of interest in every transaction of life*, is entirely Shakspeare's, as is the fine strain of humour with which Austria is taunted through the first scene of the third act. Shakspeare has nobly elevated the Bastard by his feeling and manly conduct when Hubert is accused of the murder of Arthurt, and by assigning him some of the most animated sentences in the play. Of his appeal to the courage, pride, and glory of John ‡; his bold defiance of Lewis§; and his affectionate lament over + Act IV. sc. 3.

*Act II. sc. 2.

Act V. sc. 1. "But wherefore do you droop," &c.
Act V. sc. 2. "Now hear our English king."