," he had given us
no character so complex and so interesting as this Richard. Coleridge
overpraised the character-drawing probably because the study of
Richard's weakness and irresolution, and the pathos resulting from such
helplessness, must have seemed very like an analysis of his own nature.
Let us now examine "Richard II.," and see what light it casts on
Shakespeare's qualities. There was an old play of the same title, a play
which is now lost, but we can form some idea of what it was like from
the description in Forman's Diary. Like most of the old history-plays it
ranged over twenty years of Richard's reign, whereas Shakespeare's
tragedy is confined to the last year of Richard's life. It is probable
that the old play presented King Richard as more wicked and more
deceitful than Shakespeare imagines him. We know that in the "Confessio
Amantis," Gower, the poet, cast off his allegiance to Richard: for he
cancelled the dedication of the poem to Richard, and dedicated it
instead to Henry. William Langland, too, the author of the "Vision of
Piers Plowman," turned from Richard at the last, and used his deposition
as a warning to ill-advised youth.
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