The third part describes Henry’s loss of his crown:  his death takes place in the last act, which is usually thrust into the common acting play of Richard III.  The character of Gloucester, afterwards King Richard, is here very powerfully commenced, and his dangerous designs and long-reaching ambition are fully described in his soliloquy in the third act, beginning, ’Aye, Edward will use women honourably.’  Henry VI is drawn as distinctly as his high-spirited Queen, and notwithstanding the very mean figure which Henry makes as a king, we still feel more respect for him than for his wife.

We have already observed that Shakespeare was scarcely more remarkable for the force and marked contrasts of his characters than for the truth and subtlety with which he has distinguished those which approached the nearest to each other.  For instance, the soul of Othello is hardly more distinct from that of Iago than that of Desdemona is shown to be from Aemilia’s; the ambition of Macbeth is as distinct from the ambition of Richard III as it is from the meekness of Duncan; the real madness of Lear is as different from the feigned madness of Edgar [Footnote:  There is another instance of the name distinction in Hamlet and Ophelia.  Hamlet’s pretended madness would make a very good real madness in any other author.] as from the babbling of the fool; the contrast between wit and folly in Falstaff and Shallow is not more characteristic though more obvious than the gradations of folly, loquacious or reserved, in Shallow and Silence; and again, the gallantry of Prince Henry is as little confounded with that of Hotspur as with the cowardice of Falstaff, or as the sensual and philosophic cowardice of the Knight is with the pitiful and cringing cowardice of Parolles.  All these several personages were as different in Shakespeare as they would have been in themselves:  his imagination borrowed from the life, and every circumstance, object, motive, passion, operated there as it would in reality, and produced a world of men and women as distinct, as true and as various as those that exist in nature.  The peculiar property of Shakespeare’s imagination was this truth, accompanied with the unconsciousness of nature:  indeed, imagination to be perfect must be unconscious, at least in production; for nature is so.  We shall attempt one example more in the characters of Richard ii and Henry VI.

The characters and situations of both these persons were so nearly alike, that they would have been completely confounded by a commonplace poet.  Yet they are kept quite distinct in Shakespeare.  Both were kings, and both unfortunate.  Both lost their crowns owing to their mismanagement and imbecility; the one from a thoughtless, wilful abuse of power, the other from an indifference to it.  The manner in which they bear their misfortunes corresponds exactly to the causes which led to them.  The one is always lamenting the loss of his power which he has not the