Critical Comments.

I.

Argument.

I. Margaret of Anjou is brought over to England and wedded to King Henry VI.; but-much to the consternation of the King's uncle, Gloucester, the lord protector-she comes dowerless, and the duchies for which Henry V. warred are suffered to remain in French hands. Though the upright Gloucester's grief is strongly uttered, he is not upheld when he unburdens it to the other nobles. Instead, they make a temporary truce of their own quarreling, which has proceeded continuously during the young King's reign, and unite against the lord protector. They find a ready ally in the Queen, who is eager to secure unlimited control over her weak husband. They make their first attack through Gloucester's ambitious wife. She is betrayed into harbouring sorcerers who raise a spirit that utters sayings against the heads of the realm. She and the conjurers are taken into custody.

II. The Duchess of Gloucester is brought to trial and banished. Gloucester is deprived of his post of lord protector, and is summoned before Parliament.

Meanwhile the strife between the houses of York and Lancaster gathers force. The Duke of York convinces the powerful earls of Warwick and Salisbury of his right to the crown.

III. Gloucester answers the summons and appears before Parliament. He is accused of high treason and committed to prison, and since his accusers can find no evidence to support their charge against his integrity,

he is foully assassinated by direction of the Duke of Suffolk. The populace, learning of the deed, are driven to desperation, and storm the palace, demanding the death or exile of Suffolk, who is forthwith banished, and afterwards is slain at sea by pirates.

The powerless monarch's sway is marked by continued losses. News comes of the loss of the last of the French territories. Other tidings tell of an uprising in Ireland. The lords, jealous of York's power, think to be rid of him by sending him against the Irish. York, however, is glad of the pretext to muster an army; and before he sets sail he incites a rebellion at home under Jack Cade, a Kentish labourer.

IV. After meeting with one or two small successes, seizing London Bridge, and entering the city, Cade's forces are dispersed by the royal troops. The populace renew allegiance to the King, and sue for pardon, which is granted. But a price is placed on the head of the fugitive Cade, and he is slain. York's connection with this rebellion has been hidden; but upon hearing of its outcome he returns to England at the head of his army, ostensibly to redress private wrongs, though really to assist his claim to the throne.

V. The King holds parley with York near Blackheath, but the conference ends in open defiance on the part of the subject. The two armies meet in conflict on the field of Saint Albans, where the King, who now represents the Lancastrians, is defeated and forced to fly towards London. The victorious York and Warwick resolve to march rapidly upon the capital.

MCSPADDEN: Shakespearian Synopses.

II.

King Henry.

There is something of irony in the scene with_which the second part of Henry VI. opens. Suffolk, the Lance

lot of this tragedy, has brought from France the Princess Margaret, and the joy of the blameless King, upon receiving, at the cost of two hard-won provinces, this terrible wife, who will "dandle him like a baby," has in it something pitiable, something pathetic, and something ludicrous. The relations of the King to Margaret throughout the play are delicately and profoundly conceived. He clings to her as to something stronger than himself; he dreads her as a boy might dread some formidable master:

Exeter. Here comes the Queen, whose looks betray her anger: I'll steal away.

Henry. And so will I.

Yet through his own freedom from passion he derives a sense of superiority to his wife; and after she has dashed him all over with the spray of her violent anger and her scorn, Henry may be seen mildly wiping away the drops, insufferably placable, offering excuses for the vituperation and the insults which he has received:

"Poor Queen, how love to me and to her son

Hath made her break out into terms of rage!"

Among his "wolfish earls" Henry is in constant terror, not of being himself torn to pieces, but of their flying at one another's throats. Violent scenes, disturbing the cloistral peace which it would please him to see reign. throughout the universe, are hateful and terrible to Henry. He rides out hawking with his Queen and Suffolk, the Cardinal and Gloucester; some of the riders hardly able for an hour to conceal their emulation and their hate. Henry takes a languid interest in the sport, but all occasions supply food for his contemplative piety; he suffers from a certain incontinence of devout feeling and now the falcons set him moralizing:

"But what a point, my lord, your falcon made,
And what a pitch she flew above the rest!

To see how God in all his creatures works!"

A moment after and the peers, with Margaret among them, are bandying furious words. Henry's anguish is extreme, but he hopes that something may be done by a few moral reflections suitable to the occasion:

I pr'ythee, peace,

Good Queen, and whet not on these furious peers, For blessed are the peacemakers on earth. Cardinal. Let me be blessed for the peace I make

Against this proud Protector with my sword.

The angry colloquy is presently silenced by the cry, "A miracle! a miracle!" and the impostor Simcox and his wife appear. Henry, with his fatuous proclivity towards the edifying, rejoices in this manifestation of God's grace in the restoration to sight of a man born blind:

"Great is his comfort in this earthly vale,

Although by his sight his sin be multiplied."

(That is to say, "If we had the good-fortune to be deprived of all our senses and appetites, we should have a fair chance of being quite spotless; yet let us thank God for his mysterious goodness to this man!") And once more, when the Protector, by a slight exercise of shrewdness and common sense, has unmasked the rogue and has had him whipped, extreme is the anguish of the King:

K. Henry. O God! seest thou this, and bearest so long?
Queen. It made me laugh to see the villain run.

But the feeble saint, who is cast down upon the occurrence of a piece of vulgar knavery, can himself abandon to butchers the noblest life in England. His conscience assures him that Gloucester is innocent; he hopes the Duke will be able to clear himself; but Gloucester's judges are Suffolk, "with his cloudy brow," sharp Buckingham, "And dogged York, that reaches at the moon."

Henry is not equal to confronting such terrible faces as these; and so, trusting to God, who will do all things