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qualities that make up his well-rounded, beautiful character. His tenderness of filial piety appears in the words, "My heart bleeds inwardly, that my father is so sick;" and his virtuous prudence no less, in his putting off all show of grief, as knowing that this, taken together with his past levity, will be sure to draw upon him the imputation of hypocrisy: his magnanimity, in the eloquence with which he pleads for the life of Douglas: his ingenuousness, in the free and graceful apology to the king for his faults: his good-nature and kindness of heart, in the apostrophe to Falstaff, when he thinks him dead: his chivalrous generosity, in the enthusiasm with which he praises Hotspur; and his modesty in the style of his challenge to him. And yet his nobilities of heart and soul come along in such easy natural touches, drop out so much as the spontaneous issues of his life, that we scarce notice them, thus engaging him our love and honor, we know not how or why. Great without effort, and good without thinking of it, he is indeed a noble ornament of the kingly character. We must dismiss the enchanting theme with a few sentences from Knight. "Our sympathies," says this writer, "would be almost wholly with Hotspur and his friends, had not the Poet raised up a new interest in the chivalrous bearing of Henry of Monmouth, to balance the noble character of the young Percy. Rash, proud, ambitious, prodigal of blood, as Hotspur is, we feel that there is not an atom of meanness in his composition. He would carry us away with him, were it not for the milder courage of young Harry, the courage of principle and of mercy. Frank, liberal, prudent, gentle, yet brave as Hotspur himself, the prince shows that even in his wildest excesses he has drunk deeply of the fountains of truth and wisdom. The wisdom of the king is that of a cold and subtle politician;— Hotspur seems to stand out from his followers as the haughty feudal lord, too proud to have listened to any teacher but his own will;-but the prince, in casting away the diginity of his station to commune freely with his fel

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low-men, has attained that strength which is above all conventional power: his virtues as well as his frailties belong to our common humanity; the virtues capable, therefore, of the highest elevation, the frailties not pampered into crimes by the artificial incentives of social position."

COMMENTS

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By SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLARS

HENRY IV

The character of the king is worked out by Shakespeare with that perfect penetration which is peculiar to him, as a prototype of diplomatic cunning and of complete mastery over fair appearance and all the arts of concealment. The difference between that which a man is and that which he appears occupies the poet in this character as it does in Richard III. But Henry IV is rather a master in concealment than in dissimulation; he cannot, like the other, play any part required with dramatic skill; he can only exhibit the good side of his nature; he can steal kindness and condescension from Heaven; he is a Prometheus in diplomatic subtlety, and, as Percy calls him, "a king of smiles." That which separates him and his deep political hypocrisy from Richard II, as far as day from night, is that he possesses this good side, and has only to exhibit it and not to feign it. Far removed from authorizing murder like the other, and delighting in the iron-hearted assassin, wading ever deeper from blood to blood and deadening conscience, he has rather wished than ordered Richard's death, and has cursed and exiled the murderer; conscience is roused in him immediately after the deed, and he wishes to expiate largely for the once suggested bloodshed. At the close of Richard II, and at the beginning of this play, we find him occupied with the idea of making a crusade to the Holy Land in expiation of Richard's death. Strangely in this reserved mind, which fears to look into itself, does the domination of a wordly nature interweave itself with the stimulus of remorse; devout and serious thoughts of repentance are

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joined in this design with the most subtle political motives; earnestness of purpose and inclination to allow the purpose to be frustrated jar in a manner which the poet has made perfectly evident in the facts, though not more evident in the king's reflections than is natural to such a nature. We are in doubt whether the worldly man hesitates at the serious realization of his religious design, or whether by the decree of Heaven the expiation of that murder was to be denied him as the natural consequence of his earlier deeds. He is in earnest about the crusade, but mostly when he is ill; then his fleet and army are in readiness. It has been foretold to him that he shall die at Jerusalem (and he dies at last in a chamber which bears this name); when death is near, his haste and earnestness for the consecrated place of expiation become greater; but that he thinks on the pilgrimage also in days of health is a proof of the seriousness of his intention generally. This seriousness would not at such times have been so great in him if the political principles of wise circumspection did not prompt him to the same resolution as that to which he was urged by prophecy, superstition, and conscience. He would gladly divert the evil sap from the land, and lead the agitated spirits to the Holy Land, that "rest and lying still, might not make them look too near into his state;" in dying he bequeathed to his son the lesson of his domestic policy that he should "busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out, may waste the memory of the former days," the remembrance of his acquisition of the throne.-GERVINUS, Shakespeare Commentaries.

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The King, though the titular hero, is not the dramatic center of the play. He claims precedence, however, as the main link with Richard II, and how close Shakespeare meant the connection between the two pieces to be is shown by the fact that the one opens, as the other closed, with Henry's avowal of an intended crusade. Under the royal robe and crown we see the figure of the old Boling

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broke, in all essentials unchanged. But while hitherto he has been shown in contrast to characters who threw his higher qualities into effective relief, henceforward he is tried by harder tests. Diplomacy and determination enabled him to wrest the crown from Richard's feeble hands, and they enable him to keep it firmly in his grasp. But they cannot make him successful in the highest sense, either as a man or as a king; and they cannot, above all, yield him the inward peace for which he sighs. The usurper has to suffer a Nemesis in no wise arbitrary, but the inevitable result of his own nature and actions. As he confesses on his death-bed, it was by "bypaths and indirect crook'd ways" that he "met" his crown, only to find it sit troublesome upon his head. Richard's prophecies of woe to come are fulfilled. The shrewd, self-reliant politician cannot blossom into a benignant sovereign, loving and beloved. With all his talents and virtues, he lacks the integrity of nature and the personal magnetism which rivet permanently the attachment of men.-Boas, Shakspere and his Predecessors.

HOTSPUR AND PRINCE HENRY

The characters of Hotspur and Prince Henry are two of the most beautiful and dramatic, both in themselves and from contrast, that ever were drawn. They are the essence of chivalry. We like Hotspur the best upon the whole, perhaps because he was unfortunate.—HAZLITT, Characters of Shakespear's Plays.

FALSTAFF

He [Falstaff] is one of the brightest and wittiest spirits England has ever produced. He is one of the most glorious creations that ever sprang from a poet's brain. There is much rascality and much genius in him, but there is no trace of mediocrity. He is always superior to his surroundings, always resourceful, always witty, always