Text: C. F. Briggs (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), March 8, 1845, vol. 1, no. 10, p. ??

[page 155, column 2, continued:]

The Last of the Plantagenets, a Tragic Drama in three acts. By Caroline M. Keteltas. Founded on the romance of that name by William Heseltine of Turret house, South Lambeth, England. New-York, 1844.

The gentle author of this “Tragic Drama” has given her book to the world from a very amiable motive, namely, a desire to counteract the prejudices which Shakspeare's delineation of Richard the Third has created in the minds of mankind. But her intention is better than her gift. Horace Walpole labored zealously and learnedly in the same cause, in his “Historic Doubts,” but Shakspeare's Richard still keeps possession of men's minds, and the world will never forgive him for his tyrannies, or forget that he murdered the infants in the Tower. The blood of the innocent will always make an immortal outcry against those who shed it. The author of the “Tragic Drama” has taken a great chronological liberty with the last of the Plantagenets, in making him kneel before the bust of Shakspeare, which we are less willing to forgive, since we learn from a note to her epilogue that she is descended from a great dramatic poet; no less than “glorious John.” She also informs us that she has a relative who has a monument in Westminster Abbey. “A genealogical tree in the author's family,” she says, “traces a descent from the Poet Dryden, who married Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Earl of Berkshire.” How fine and natural the allusion to “the Poet Dryden who married,” &c. — Whatever doubts may be entertained of the descent from the husband of the daughter of the earl of Berkshire, there can be none in the [page 156:] world that the descent from the Poet Dryden to the author of the “Last of the Plantagenets” is not only very real, but very great.