KING HENRY V.

ACT I. SCENE 1.

"West. They know your grace hath cause and means and might: So hath your highness; never king of England

Had nobler riches."

There are disputes about this passage, and corrections. proposed; and Coleridge's way of making the passage clear by emphasis, "So hath your highness," is announced as a discovery!-How is it possible that any other reading could have been thought of! It is that which was always from my boyhood spontaneous with me in reading the phrase itself; but in connection with the last part of the passage—“ never king of England," &c.,-it seems impossible to think of any other. [On examination of the Variorum Edition, I find that Coleridge was not the first to record this very obvious interpretation, though he ventures it as a suggestion, saying, "Perhaps these lines ought to be recited dramatically thus," and though Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight in their recent editions attribute the discovery to him. But Malone had written thus before Coleridge was well out of the nursery:

"So hath your highness;" i. e. your highness hath indeed what they think and know you have.

Variorum Edition, vol. xvii. p. 274.

"Exeter. For government, though high, and low, and lower,
Put into parts, doth keep in one consent
Congruing in a full and natural close,
Like music."

In Blackwood's Magazine (Sept. 1853) it is speciously proposed to read through for "though." "Surely," says the writer, "though' ought to be through. For government, put into parts, like a piece of music, doth keep in one consent or harmony, through high, and low, and lower,' &c." Surely not. Such a change would take away the very point of the speech. The Bishop says that government doth keep in one consent, is harmonious, though constructed of various parts, high, low, and lower; just as a piece of music, though written in many parts, is harmonious, because all those parts move together and have proper relations to each other. He refers to the differing functions of the "armed hand" and the "advised head," which are to be discharged in concert.

"While that the armed hand doth fight abroad,

The advised head defends itself at home;

For government, though high, and low, and lower,
Put into parts, doth keep in one consent:
Congruing in a full and natural close,
Like music."

The insertion of one letter would spoil all this.

ACT II. SCENE 1.

"Pist. O braggard vile, and damned furious wight! The grave doth gape, and doting death is near;

Therefore exhale!"

Malone says, "Exhale,' I believe, here signifies to

draw, or in Pistol's language, hale or lug out;" and Steevens responds "Therefore exhale' means only 'therefore breathe your last or die ;'" and no one says them nay. 'Exhale' means 'begone,' 'clear out,' 'vanish.' Pistol attempts to bully Nym, and tells him that "the grave doth gape" for him, and therefore he must make himself scarce,' 'exhale,' or, as a Yankee Pistol would have it, 'evaporate.'

SCENE 2.

"K. Hen. Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,

That knew'st the very bottom of my soul,

That almost might'st have coined me into gold,

Wouldst thou have practised on me for thy use?"

I think that the interrogation point at the end of this passage is wrongly placed there. There should be a period. The King would hardly call Scroop's killing him, 'practising on him for his use.' Henry is enumerating all the close relations which had existed between him and his treacherous friend, and tells him that he bore the key of his counsels, knew the bottom of his soul, and might have coined him into gold, if he would have practised on him for his use, that is, used his influence unduly for his own advantage; and the King then goes on to ask, this being the case,

"Might it be possible that foreign hire

Could out of thee extract one spark of evil
That might annoy my finger?"

SCENE 3.

"Quick. Nay, sure, he's not in hell; he's in Arthur's bosom, if ever

man went to Arthur's bosom. 'A made a finer cnd, and went away, an it had been any christom child; 'a parted even just between twelve and one, e'en at turning o' the tide; for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, aad smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green fields.

Mr. Collier's folio for "a babbled of green fields," gives on a table of green frieze. This is the unkindest cut of all. Unkind? it is cruel. If Mr. Collier even made the announcement of the change without a pang, his heart must be harder than the nether millstone.

In the original the passage is misprinted "a table of green fields." This, by a most felicitous conjecture of Theobald's, was changed to "'a babbled of green fields," which reading is not only excellent in itself, but conforms to the style of the context immediately following:

"Nym. They say, he cried out of sack.

Quick. Ay, that 'a did.

Bard. And of women.

Quick. Nay, that 'a did not.

Boy. Yes, that 'a did; and said, they were devils incarnate.

Quick. 'A could never abide carnation: 'twas a color he never liked. Boy. 'A said once, the devil would have him about women. Quick. 'A did in some sort, indeed, handle women: but then he was rheumatick; and talked of the whore of Babylon.

But the emendation in Mr. Collier's folio, atrocious as it is, has found indorsers, one of whom thus speaks, though reluctant and ashamed, in Blackwood's Magazine (Sept. 1853):

"Our reasons are-first, the calenture, which causes people to rave about green fields, is a distemper peculiar to sailors in hot climates; secondly, Falstaff's mind seems to have been running more on sack than on green fields, as Dame Quickly admits

further on in the dialogue; thirdly, however pleasing the supposition about his babbling of green fields may be, it is still more natural that Dame Quickly, whose attention was fixed on the sharpness of his nose set off against a countenance already darkening with the discoloration of death, should have likened it to the sharpness of a pen relieved against a table, or background, of green frieze."

The first reason refers to Theobald's justification of his emendation, on the ground that when people are delirious with a calenture-an intense fever, "their heads run on green fields." But what need of all this talk about calenture, sack, and discolored faces ? Falstaff had been a boy, like any other man,-a merry boy surely, and an innocent one perhaps; and now, as the end of his ill-spent life rapidly approaches, amid his confused ravings about the dreadful future and the ill-spent past, come up visions of the green and sunlit meadows over which he chased his childhood's happy hours. There is not in so few words a passage of such tearful pathos in the language, as this, which shows a reflected gleam of pure and childish joy, piercing the gloom of the mortal hour of such a man as Falstaff.

ACT IV. SCENE 1.

"Pist. The fico for thee."

This can hardly be ordinary use of the word fig, as in 'I don't care a fig !'-Douce to the contrary notwithstanding. Pistol would then have said "a fico for thee." He evidently means "the fig of Spain," of which he speaks before-Act III., Scene 6.