this play. Hotspur's life is in the flash-light of swords. His contempt of bedizened aristocracy is shown in his description of the frivolous nobleman who meets him to deliver a message on the field of battle, commencing with :

"But I remember, when the fight was done."

His other blunt, soldierly speeches are of a similar kind :

"To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac'd moon." "Tell truth, and shame the devil."

His wife whom he loved was second to the love of arms. The oestrus of battle was in him.

Hotspur-"How now, Kate! I must leave you within these two hours."

Lady Percy-"O my good lord, why are you thus alone?" "Tell me, sweet lord, what is 't that takes from thee"

"In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch'd,

And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars;

Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed;
Cry 'Courage! to the field! And thou hast talk'd

Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents,

Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets,

Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin,

Of prisoners' ransom, and of soldiers slain,
And all the currents of a heady fight.

Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war
And thus hath so bestirr'd thee in thy sleep,
That beads of sweat hath stood upon thy brow,
Like bubbles in a late-disturbed stream;

And in thy face strange motions hath appear'd,
Such as we see when men restrain their breath

On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these?

Some heavy business hath my lord in hand,

And I must know it, else he loves me not."

Hotspur-"What, ho!"

Lady Percy-"In faith, I'll break thy little finger, Harry, An if thou wilt not tell me all things true."

Hotspur-" God's me, my horse !"

It is a great leap in one play from Hotspur to Falstaff. This light and shade give, however, an opportunity for the practice of chiaroscuro, as in Rembrandt's pictures, and also as it sometimes occurs in nature and the mind, though it requires a consummate artist to make use of this bold contrast in literature; a large part of the historic play of "Henry IV." is taken up with the "humours of Falstaff." The name, Sir John Falstaff, was evidently drawn from Sir John Falstoffe, who was a

real character, a Lollard, and a man of honorable reputation, though a rebel and executed in the wars of the times.

Shakespeare did not mean to defame or drag down the name of " Oldcastle," another name of this same character, to whom he alludes in the Prologue; but he probably took the name at random, as a well-known one, yet it is unfortunate that by this name he seemed to cast a slur upon a worthy personage.

Shakespeare was the exact contemporary of Cervantes, and the suspicion is aroused that as Cervantes delineates with such exquisite humor the demented but noble, melancholy-visaged Spanish knight, Don Quixote, in order to satirize the decadence of Spanish chivalry, so Shakespeare might have drawn the fat knight, Sir John Falstaff, to throw contempt on some of the growing falsities and vulgarities of English chivalry and knighthood; in all probability this is not true, for both authors were too original to take one character from the other.

Falstaff is an immoral, lying old rascal, but has

no end of wit. The scene of his representation of the king, with his cushion for a crown and his dagger for a sceptre, who delivers a grave reprimand to the prince, instances his rapid seizure of the situation. His comments on his wondrously spectral squad of conscripts, such as "Mouldy, Cobweb, Shadow, Wart, Feeble, and Bullcalf," are philosophical:

Falstaff "Good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they'll fill a pit as well as better."

Falstaff-"Go thy ways, old Jack; die when thou wilt, if manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the earth, then am I a shotten herring. There lives not three good men unhanged in England; and one of them is fat, and grows old: God help the while! a bad world, I say. I would I were a weaver; I could sing psalms or anything. A plague of all cowards, I say still.'

Falstaff-"But to say I know more harm in him than in myself, were to say more than I know. That he is old, the more the pity, his white hairs do witness it; but that he is, saving your reverence, a whoremaster, that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked! if to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned if to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh's lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord; banish Peto,

banish Bardolph, banish Poins: but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant, being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry's company, banish not him thy Harry's company: banish plump Jack, and banish all the world."

How rapidly the men in buckram suits grew in number:

Falstaff "Two rogues in buckram suits."

"Four rogues in buckram let drive at me."

Falstaff will last as long as Hamlet, and is immortal. This foul-mouthed, wicked old rogue is the exponent or expression of the material nature, with the infusion of a keen intellectual element turned to baseness. Its humor saves it from obscenity that corrupts. Its good-natured coarseness doubtless appealed to the gross English palate of the age. In Falstaff the English mind saw its own abominations, and the electric lightning of his wit seemed to cleanse the foul marsh, and to make it a subject for ridicule and contempt.

Speaking to the prince's very face, he says:

"It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one of another; therefore, let men take heed of their company."