Pist. My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver, Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts, By most mechanical and dirty hand :- [Shouts within, and the trumpets sound. Pist. There roar'd the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds. Enter the KING and his Train, the CHIEF JUSTICE among them. Fal. Save thy grace, king Hal! my royal Hal! Pist. The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame! Fal. Save thee, my sweet boy! King. My lord chief justice, speak to that vain man. Ch. Just. Have you your wits; know you what 't is you speak? Fal. My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart! King. I know thee not, old man: Fall to thy prayers; How ill white hairs become a fool and jester! I have long dream'd of such a kind of man, So surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane; But, being awake, I do despise my dream. Make less thy body, hence, and more thy grace: Leave gormandizing; know, the grave doth gape For thee thrice wider than for other men: Reply not to me with a fool-born jest ; Presume not that I am the thing I was: For Heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turn'd away my former self; So will I those that kept me company. When thou dost hear I am as I have been, Approach me; and thou shalt be as thou wast, The tutor and the feeder of my riots: Fal. That can hardly be, master Shallow. Do not you grieve at this; I shall be sent for in private to him: look you, he must seem thus to the world. Fear not your advancement; I will be the man yet that shall make you great. Shal. I cannot well perceive how; unless you should give me your doublet, and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good sir John, let me have five hundred of my thousand. Fal. Sir, I will be as good as my word: this that you heard was but a colour. Shal. A colour, I fear, that you will die in, sir John. Fal. Fear no colours; go with me to dinner. Come, lieutenant Pistol ;-come, Bardolph:-I shall be sent for soon at night. Re-enter PRINCE JOHN, the CHIEF JUSTICE, Ch. Just. Go, carry sir John Falstaff to the Fleet; Ch. Just. I cannot now speak: I will hear you soon Take them away. Pist. "Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta." [Exeunt FAL., SHAL., PIST., BARD., PAGE, and Officers. P. John. I like this fair proceeding of the king's: He hath intent, his wonted followers Shall all be very well provided for: But all are banish'd, till their conversations Appear more wise and modest to the world. Ch. Just. And so they are. P. John. The king hath call'd his parliament, my lord. EPILOGUE. [Spoken by a Dancer.] First, my fear; then, my court'sy; last, my speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my court'sy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me: for what I have to say is of mine own making; and what, indeed, I should say, will, I doubt, prove mine own marring But to the purpose, and so to the venture.-Be it known to you, (as it is very well,) I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it, and to pronise you a better. I did mean, indeed, to pay you with this; which if, like an ill venture, it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here, I promised you, I would be, and here I commit my body to your mercies: bate me some, and I will pay you some, and, as most debtors do, promise you finitely. If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will [Exeunt you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment,-to dance out of your debt But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so will I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me; if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly. One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France: where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night and so kneel down before you ;—but, indeed, t pray for the queen. : 'HENRY V. was first printed in 1600. This copy differs most materially from the text of the folio. The play runs only to 1800 lines; whilst the lines in the folio edition amount to 3500. Not only is the copy thus augmented by the additions of the choruses and new scenes, but there is scarcely a speech, from the first scene to the last, which is not elaborated. In this elaboration the old materials are very carefully used up; but they are so thoroughly refitted and dovetailed with what is new, that the operation can only be compared to the work of a skilful architect, who, having an ancient mansion to enlarge and beautify, with a strict regard to its original character, preserves every feature of the structure, under other combinations, with such marvellous skill, that no unity of principle is violated, and the whole has the effect of a restoration in which the new and the old are undistinguishable. 6 finished portraits that has proceeded from this masterhand. It could, perhaps, only have been thoroughly conceived by the poet who had delineated the Henry of the Boar's Head, and of the Field of Shrewsbury. The surpassing union, in this character, of spirit and calmness, of dignity and playfulness, of an ever-present energy, and an almost melancholy abstraction,—the conventional authority of the king, and the deep sympathy, with the meanest about him, of the man,—was the result of the most philosophical and consistent appreciation by the poet of the moral and intellectual progress of his own Prince of Wales. And let it not be said that the picture which he has painted of his favourite hero is an exaggerated and flattering representation. The extraordinary merits of Henry V. were those of the individual; his demerits were those of his times. It was not for the poet to regard the most popular king of the feudal age with the cold and severe scrutiny of the philosophical historian. It was for him to embody in the person of Henry V. the principle of national heroism; it was for him to call forth" the spirit of pa triotic reminiscence." Frederick Schlegel says, “The feeling by which Shakspere seems to have been most But how different is his nationality from that of ordinary men! It is reflective, tolerant, generous. It lives not in an atmosphere of falsehood and prejudice. Its theatre is war and conquest; but it does not hold up war and conquest as fitting objects for nationality to dedicate itself to, except under the pressure of the most urgent necessity. Neither does it attempt to conceal the fearful responsibilities of those who carry the principle of nationality to the last arbitrement of arms; nor the enormous amount of evil which always attends the rupture of that peace, in the cultivation of which nation "Shakspere," says Frederick Schlegel, “regarded the drama as entirely a thing for the people; and, at first, treated it throughout as such. He took the popular comedy as he found it, and whatever enlargements and improvements he introduced into the stage were all calculated and conceived according to the peculiar spirit of his predecessors, and of the audience in Lon-connected with ordinary men is that of nationality.” don."* This is especially true with regard to Shakspere's Histories. In the case of the Henry V. it appears to us that our great dramatic poet would never have touched the subject, had not the stage previously possessed it in the old play of The Famous Victories.' 'Henry IV.' would have been perfect as a dramatic whole, without the addition of Henry V. The somewhat doubtful mode in which he speaks of continuing the story appears to us a pretty certain indication that he rather shrunk from a subject which appeared to him essentially undramatic. It is, however, highly probable that, having brought the history of Henry of Mon-ality is best displayed. mouth up to the period of his father's death, the demands of an audience who had been accustomed to hail "the madcap Prince of Wales' as the conqueror of Agincourt compelled him to "continue the story." Having hastily met the demands of his audience by the first sketch of Henry V.,' as it appears in the quarto editions, he subsequently saw the capacity which the subject presented for being treated in a grand lyrical spirit. Instead of interpolating an under-plot of petty passions and intrigues,—such, for the most part, as we find in the dramatic treatment of an heroic subject by the French poets, he preserved the great object of his drama entire by the intervention of the chorus. Skilfully as he has managed this, and magnificent as the whole drama is as a great national song of triumph, there can be no doubt that Shakspere felt that in this play he was dealing with a theme too narrow for his peculiar powers. The subject is altogether one of lyric grandeur; but it is not one, we think, which Shakspere | would have chosen for a drama. And yet how exquisitely has Shakspere thrown his dramatic power into this undramatic subject! The character of the King is altogether one of the most * Lectures on the History of Literature, vol. ii. In the inferior persons of the play-the comic cha racters-the poet has displayed that power which be, above all men, possesses, of combining the highest postical conceptions with the most truthful delineations of real life. In the amusing pedantry of Fluellen, and the vapourings of Pistol, there is nothing in the slightest degree incongruous with the main action of the scene. The homely bluntness of the common soldiers of the army brings us still closer to a knowledge of the great mass of which a camp is composed. Perhaps one of the most delicate but yet most appreciable instances of Shakspere's nationality, in all its power and justice, is the mode in which he has exhibited the characters of these common soldiers. They are rough, somewhat quarrelsome, brave as lions, but without the slightest particle of anything low or grovelling in their composi tion. They are fit representatives of the "good yeomen, whose limbs were made in England." On the other hand, the discriminating truth of the poet is equally shown in exhibiting to us three arrant cowards in Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph. His impartiality could afford to paint the bullies and blackguards that even our na tionality must be content to reckon as component parts of every army. KING HENRY V. PERSONS REPRESENTED. KING HENRY V. Duke of Exeter, uncle to the King. EARL OF SALISBURY. EARL OF WESTMORELAND. Appears, Act I. sc. 2. Act II. sc. 2. Act IV. sc. 3. Act V. sc. 2. Appears, Act I. sc. 2. Act IV. sc. 7; sc. 8. Act V. sc. 2. ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. Appears, Act I. sc. 1; sc. 2. BISHOP OF ELY. Appears, Act I. sc. 1; sc. 2. Appears, Act II. sc. 4. Act V. sc. 2. Appears, Act III. sc. 7. Act IV. sc. 2; sc. 5. Appears, Act III. sc. 5. Act IV. sc. 5. THE CONSTABLE OF FRANCE. Appears, Act II. s. 4. Act III. sc. 5; sc. 7. Act IV. sc. 2; sc. 5 Appears, Act III. sc. 7. Act IV. sc. 2; sc. 5. Appears, Act IV. sc. 2. Appears, Act III. sc. 3. MONTJOY, a French herald. Appears, Act III. sc. 6. Act IV. sc. 3; sc. 7. ISABEL, Queen of France. KATHARINE, daughter of Charles and Isabel. ALICE, a lady attending on the Princess Katharine. QUICKLY, Pistol's wife, an hostess. Lords, Ladies, Officers, French and English Soldiers, SCENE,-IN ENGLAND AND IN FRANCE. CHORUS. O for a muse of fire, that would ascend ACT I. Crouch for employment. But, pardon, genties all, Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire, Attest, in little place, a million; And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Who, prologue-like, your humble patience pray, SCENE I.-London. An Ante-chamber in the King's Paluce. So that the art and practic part of life Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY and BISHOP Since nis addiction was to courses vain : OF ELY. Cant. My lord, I'll tell you,-that self bill is urg'd, Which, in the eleventh year of the last king's reign, Was like, and had indeed against us pass'd, But that the scambling" and unquiet time Did push it out of further question. Ely. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now? Cant. It must be thought on. If it pass against us, We lose the better half of our possession: For all the temporal lands, which men devout By testament have given to the church, Would they strip from us; being valued thus,-As much as would maintain, to the king's honour, Full fifteen earls, and fifteen hundred knights; Six thousand and two hundred good esquires; And, to relief of lazars, and weak age, Of indigent faint souls, past corporal toil, A hundred almshouses, right well supplied; And to the coffers of the king beside A thousand pounds by the year: Thus runs the bill. Ely. This would drink deep. Cant. 'T would drink the cup and all. And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him; To envelop and contain celestial spirits. Never came reformation in a flood, With such a heady currance, scouring faults; So soon did lose his seat, and all at once, Ely. And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears, His companies unletter'd, rude, and shallow; Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle; Cant. It must be so; for miracles are ceas'd; And therefore we must needs admit the means How things are perfected. Ely. But, my good lord, How now for mitigation of this bill Urg'd by the commons? Doth his majesty Incline to it, or no? Cant. He seems indifferent: And in regard of causes now in hand, Ely. How did this offer seem receiv'd, my lord? Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms; Ely. What was the impediment that broke this off! It is. Ely. I'll wait upon you; and I long to hear it. [Exeunt. SCENE II.-The same. A Room of State in the same. Enter KING HENRY, GLOSTER, BEDFORD, EXETER, a Companies is here used for companions. b severals. The plural noun has the force of our modern details. |