spirit to regain; the other seems only to regret that he had ever been king, and is glad to be rid of the power, with the trouble; the effeminacy of the one is that of a voluptuary, proud, revengeful, impatient of contradiction, and inconsolable in his misfortunes; the effeminacy of the other is that of an indolent, good-natured mind, naturally averse to the turmoils of ambition and the cares of greatness, and who wishes to pass his time in monkish indolence and contemplation.—­Richard bewails the loss of the kingly power only as it was the means of gratifying his pride and luxury; Henry regards it only as a means of doing right, and is less desirous of the advantages to be derived from possessing it than afraid of exercising it wrong.  In knighting a young soldier, he gives him ghostly advice—­

     Edward Plantagenet, arise a knight,
     And learn this lesson, draw thy sword in right.

Richard ii in the first speeches of the play betrays his real character.  In the first alarm of his pride, on hearing of Bolingbroke’s rebellion, before his presumption has met with any check, he exclaims: 

Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords:  This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king Shall falter under proud rebellious arms. . . . . .  Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm from an anointed king; The breath of worldly man cannot depose The Deputy elected by the Lord.  For every man that Bolingbroke hath prest, To lift sharp steel against our golden crown, Heaven for his Richard hath in heavenly pay A glorious angel; then if angels fight, Weak men must fall; for Heaven still guards the right.

Yet, notwithstanding this royal confession of faith, on the very first news of actual disaster, all his conceit of himself as the peculiar favourite of Providence vanishes into air.

     But now the blood of twenty thousand men
     Did triumph in my face, and they are fled. 
     All souls that will be safe fly from my side;
     For time hath set a blot upon my pride.

Immediately after, however, recollecting that ‘cheap defence’ of the divinity of kings which is to be found in opinion, he is for arming his name against his enemies.

     Awake, thou coward Majesty, thou sleep’st;
     Is not the King’s name forty thousand names? 
     Arm, arm, my name:  a puny subject strikes
     At thy great glory.

King Henry does not make any such vapouring resistance to the loss of his crown, but lets it slip from off his head as a weight which he is neither able nor willing to bear; stands quietly by to see the issue of the contest for his kingdom, as if it were a game at push-pin, and is pleased when the odds prove against him.

When Richard first hears of the death of his favourites, Bushy, Bagot, and the rest, he indignantly rejects all idea of any further efforts, and only indulges in the extravagant impatience of his grief and his despair, in that fine speech which has been so often quoted: