HENRY IV. PART FIRST. WITH INTRODUCTION, AND NOTES EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL. FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES. BY THE REV. HENRY N. HUDSON, LL.D. BOSTON, U.S.A.: HARVARD Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by HENRY N. HUDSON, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. CUSHING & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A. PRESSWORK BY GINN & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A. drama, the whole being arranged as two only because too long to be one. For this cause it seems best to regard them as one in what follows, and so dispose of them both together. The writing of them must be placed at least as early as 1597, when the author was thirty-three years old. The First Part was registered at the Stationers' for publication in February, 1598, and was published in the course of that year. There were also four other quarto issues of the play before the folio edition of 1623. The Second Part was first published in 1600, and there is not known to have been any other edition of it till it reappeared along with the First Part in the folio. It is pretty certain, however, for reasons to be stated presently, that the Second Part was written before the entry of the First Part at the Stationers' in 1598. It is beyond question that the original name of Sir John Falstaff was Sir John Oldcastle; and a curious relic of that naming survives in Act i. scene 2, where the Prince calls Falstaff " my old lad of the castle." And we have several other strong proofs of the fact; as in the Epilogue to the Second Part: "For any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard |