Conceiv'd out
of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism--personifying in
unparallel'd ways the mediaeval aristocracy, its towering spirit of
ruthless and gigantic caste, with its own peculiar air and arrogance
(no mere imitation)--only one of the "wolfish earls" so plenteous in
the plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seem
to be the true author of those amazing works--works in some respects
greater than anything else in recorded literature.
The start and germ-stock of the pieces on which the present
speculation is founded are undoubtedly (with, at the outset, no small
amount of bungling work) in "Henry VI." It is plain to me that
as profound and forecasting a brain and pen as ever appear'd in
literature, after floundering somewhat in the first part of that
trilogy--or perhaps draughting it more or less experimentally or by
accident--afterward developed and defined his plan in the Second and
Third Parts, and from time to time, thenceforward, systematically
enlarged it to majestic and mature proportions in "Richard II,"
"Richard III," "King John," "Henry IV," "Henry V," and even in
"Macbeth," "Coriolanus" and "Lear." For it is impossible to grasp the
whole cluster of those plays, however wide the intervals and different
circumstances of their composition, without thinking of them as, in a
free sense, the result of an _essentially controling plan_. 'What was
that plan? Or, rather, what was veil'd behind it?--for to me there was
certainly something so veil'd.
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