The occasional interspersion of rhymes, and the more frequent winding up of a speech therewith--what purpose was this designed to answer? In the earnest drama, I mean. Deliberateness? An attempt, as in Mowbray, to collect himself and be cool at the close?--I can see that in the following speeches the rhyme answers the end of the Greek chorus, and distinguishes the general truths from the passions of the dialogue; but this does not exactly justify the practice, which is unfrequent in proportion to the excellence of Shakspeare's plays. One thing, however, is to be observed,--that the speakers are historical, known, and so far formal, characters, and their reality is already a fact. This should be borne in mind. The whole of this scene of the quarrel between Mowbray and Bolingbroke seems introduced for the purpose of showing by anticipation the characters of Richard and Bolingbroke. In the latter there is observable a decorous and courtly checking of his anger in subservience to a predetermined plan, especially in his calm speech after receiving sentence of banishment compared with Mowbray's unaffected lamentation. In the one, all is ambitious hope of something yet to come; in the other it is desolation and a looking backward of the heart. 'Ib.' sc. 2. 'Gaunt'. Heaven's is the quarrel; for heaven's substitute, His deputy anointed in his right, Hath caus'd his death: the which, if wrongfully, Let heaven revenge; for I may never lift An angry arm against his minister. Without the hollow extravagance of Beaumont and Fletcher's ultra-royalism, how carefully does Shakspeare acknowledge and reverence the eternal distinction between the mere individual, and the symbolic or representative, on which all genial law, no less than patriotism, depends. The whole of this second scene commences, and is anticipative of, the tone and character of the play at large. 'Ib.' sc. 3. In none of Shakspeare's fictitious dramas, or in those founded on a history as unknown to his auditors generally as fiction, is this violent rupture of the succession of time found:--a proof, I think, that the pure historic drama, like Richard II. and King John, had its own laws. 'Ib.' Mowbray's speech:-- A dearer _merit_ Have I deserved at your highness' hand. O, the instinctive propriety of Shakspeare in the choice of words! 'Ib.' Richard's speech: Nor never by advised purpose meet, To plot, contrive, or complot any ill, 'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land. Already the selfish weakness of Richard's character opens. Nothing will such minds so readily embrace, as indirect ways softened down to their 'quasi'-consciences by policy, expedience, &c. 'Ib.' Mowbray's speech:-- ...All the world's my way. 'The world was all before him.'--'Milt'. 'Ib.'