The tragedy of "Richard II." is then, generally speaking, sufficiently conformable to history; and the manner in which the poet has described the deposition of Richard, and the accession to the throne of Henry of Lancaster, appears singularly in accordance with what Hume says on the subject: "Henry IV. became king, nobody could tell how or wherefore." But it would be necessary to be like Hume, entirely unacquainted with the sight of revolutions, to be puzzled to say how and why the Duke of Lancaster, after having acted for some time in the name of the king, whom he kept prisoner, finally established himself without difficulty in his place. Shakspeare did not think it necessary to explain this; Richard left Flint Castle with the title of king, in the retinue of Bolingbroke; and we next see him signing his own deposition. The poet does not in any way indicate to us what has passed; but in order not to guess how the fall of Richard was accomplished it would be necessary for us to have very ill understood the picture presented to us of his first degradation; and the conversation of the gardener with his servants completes the description by revealing to us its effects upon public opinion. {306} It was a characteristic of Shakspeare's art to make us present at every part of the event; and he always transports us to the scene in which he strikes his most decisive blows, while at a distance from our view the action pursues its course, and contents itself with meeting us again when it has reached its consummation. Although this tragedy is entitled "The Life and Death of King Richard II.," it only comprises the last two years of that prince's reign, and contains only a single event, namely, his downfall--the catastrophe toward which every circumstance tends from the very outset of the play. This event has been considered under different aspects, and a rather singular anecdote has revealed to us the existence of another tragedy on the same subject, anterior, as it would appear, to Shakspeare's drama, and treated in an altogether different point of view. Some of the partisans of the Earl of Essex, on the day preceding his extravagant enterprise, procured the performance of a tragedy in which, as in Shakspeare's drama, Richard II. was deposed and put to death on the stage. The actors having represented to them that the play was entirely out of fashion, and would not attract a sufficient audience to cover the expense of the performance, Sir Gilly Merrick, one of the confederates, gave them forty shillings above the receipts. This fact was mentioned at the trial of Sir Gilly, and served to procure his condemnation.