praise is extravagant; but it would have been true to say that up to
1593 or 1594, when Shakespeare wrote "King Richard II.," 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. It may be assumed, then, that
tradition pictured Richard as a vile creature in whom weakness nourished
crime. Shakespeare took his story partly from Holinshed's narrative, and
partly either from the old play or from the traditional view of
Richard's character. When he began to write the play he evidently
intended to portray Richard as even more detestable than history and
tradition had presented him. In Holinshed Richard is not accused of the
murder of Gloster, whereas Shakespeare directly charges him with it, or
rather makes Gaunt do so, and the accusation is not denied, much less
disproved. At the close of the first act we are astonished by the
revelation of Richard's devilish heartlessness. The King hearing that