Prevented from a damned enterprize :

My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign.

K. Hen. God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence. You have conspir'd against our royal person,

Join'd with an enemy proclaim'd,' and from his coffers
Receiv'd the golden earnest of our death;

Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,
His princes and his peers to servitude,
His subjects to oppression and contempt,
And his whole kingdom unto desolation.
Touching our person, seek we no revenge;
But we our kingdom's safety must so tender,
Whose ruin you three sought, that to her laws
We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence,
Poor miserable wretches, to your death:
The taste whereof, God, of his mercy, give you
Patience to endure, and true repentance
Of all your dear offences !-Bear them hence.

[Exeunt Conspirators guarded.
Now, lords, for France; the enterprize whereof
Shall be to you, as ús, like glorious.
We doubt not of a fair and lucky war;

Since God so graciously hath brought to light
This dangerous treason, lurking in our way,
To hinder our beginnings, we doubt not now,
But every rub is smoothed on our way.
Then, forth, dear countrymen; let us deliver
Our puissance into the hand of God,
Putting it straight in expedition.

Cheerly to sea: the signs of war advance ;
No king of England, if not king of France.

London.

SCENE III.

[Exeunt.

Mrs. QUICKLY's house in Eastcheap. Enter PisTOL, NYM, BARDOLPH, Boy, and Mrs. QUICKLY. Quic. Pr'ythee, honey-sweet husband, let me bring thee to Staines.

Pist. No; for my manly heart doth yearn.

Bardolph, be blithe ;-Nym, rouse thy vaunting veins.Boy, bristle thy courage up; for Falstaff he is dead, And we must yearn therefore.

[5] Mr. Ritson recommends the omission of this word, which deforms the measure. STEEVENS.

3

VOL. VI.

B 2

Bard. 'Would, I were with him, wheresome'er he is, either in heaven, or in hell!

6

Quic. 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 end, and went away, an it had been any christom child; 'a parted even just between twelve and one, e'en at turning o' th' tide: for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and 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. How now, sir John? quoth I: what, man! be of good cheer. So 'a cried out-God, God, God! three or four times now I, to comfort him, bid him, 'a should not think of God; I hoped, there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet: So, 'a bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand into the bed, and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and so upward, and upward, and all was as cold as any stone.9

Nym. They say, he cried out of sack.

[6] Finer end, for final. JOHNSON.

Mrs. Quickly needs no justification for not adhering to the rules of grammar. MALONE.

[7] She uses christom for chrisom, and Arthur instead of Abraham. The chrisom was the white garment put upon the child at its baptism. And this the child wore till the time the mother came to be churched, who was then to offer it to the minister. So that a chrisom child was one that died after it had been baptized, and before its mother was churched. Erroneously, however, it was used for children that die before they are baptized; and by this denomination such children were entered in the bills of mortality down to the year 1726. WHALLEY.

[8] It has been a very old opinion, which Mead, de imperio solis, quotes, as if he believed it, that nobody dies but in the time of ebb; half the deaths in London confute this notion; but we find that, it was common among the women of the poet's time. JOHNSON.

[9] Such is the end of Falstaff, from whom Shakespeare had promised us in his epilogue to Henry IV. that we should receive more entertainment. It happened to Shakespeare, as to other writers, to have his imagination crouded with a tumultuary confusion of images, which, while they were yet unsorted and unexamined, seemed sufficient to furnish a long train of incidents, and a new variety of merriment; but ' which, when he was to produce them to view. shrunk suddenly from him, or could not be accommodated to his general design. That he once designed to have brought Falstaff on the scene again, we know from himself; but whether he could contrive no train of adventures suitable to his character, or could match with him no companions, likely to quicken his humour, or could open no new vein of pleasantry, and was afraid to continue the same strain lest it should not find the same reception, he has here forever discarded him, and made haste to despatch him, perhaps for the same reason that Addison killed Sir Roger, that no other hand might attempt to exhibit him. Let meaner authors learn from this example, that it is dangerous to sell the bear which is not hunted; to promise to the public what they nave not written. -This disappointment probably inclined queen Elizabeth to command the poet to produce him once again, and to show him in love or courtship. This was, indeed, a new source of humour, and produced a new play from the former characters.I forgot to note in its proper place, and therefore note bere, that Falstaff's courtship, or The Merry Wives of Windsor, should be read between Henry IV, and Henry V. JOHNSON.

Quic. Ay, that 'a did.

Bard. And of women.

Quic. Nay, that 'a did not.

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

carnate.

Quic. 'A could never abide carnation ; 'twas a colour he never liked.

Boy. 'A said once, the devil would have him about wo

men.

Quic. 'A did in some sort, indeed, handle women: but then he was rheumatic,' and talked of the whore of Babylon.

Boy. Do you not remember, 'a saw a flea stick upon Bardolph's nose; and 'a said, it was a black soul burning in hell-fire?

Bard. Well, the fuel is gone, that maintained that fire. That's all the riches I got in his service.

Nym. Shall we shog off? the king will be gone from Southampton.

Pist. Come, let's away.-My love, give me thy lips. Look to my chattels, and my moveables :

Let senses rule; the word is, Pitch and Pay;
Trust none;'

For oaths are straws, men's faiths are wafer-cakes,
And hold-fast is the only dog, my duck ;3

Therefore, caveto be thy counsellor.

Go, clear thy crystals.'-Yoke-fellows in arms,
Let us to France! like horse-leeches, my boys;

To suck, to suck, the very blood to suck!

Boy. And that is but unwholesome food, they say.
Pist. Touch her soft mouth, and march.

Bard. Farewell, hostess.

[Kissing her. Nym. I cannot kiss, that is the humour of it; but adieu. Pist. Let housewifery appear; keep close, I thee command.

Quic. Farewel; adieu.

[Exeunt.

[9] Mrs. Quickly mistakes the word incarnate for a colour. HENDERSON. [1] She probably means lunatic. MALONE.

[2] The caution was a very proper one to Mrs. Quickly, who had suffered before, by letting Falstaff run in her debt. STEEVENS.

[3] Alluding to the proverbial saying-" Brag is a good dog, but holdfast is a better." DOUCE.

[4] Dry thine eyes. JOHNSON.

SCENE IV.

France. A Room in the French King's Palace. Enter the French King attended; the Dauphin, the duke of BURGUNDY, the Constable, and others.

Fr. King. Thus come the English with full power

upon us ;

And more than carefully it us concerns,

To answer royally in our defences.

Therefore the dukes of Berry, and of Bretagne,
Of Brabant, and of Orleans, shall make forth,-
And you, prince dauphin,—with all swift despatch,
To line, and new repair, our towns of war,
With men of courage, and with means defendant :
For England his approaches makes as fierce,
As waters to the sucking of a gulph.

It fits us then, to be as provident

As fear may teach us, out of late examples
Left by the fatal and neglected English
Upon our fields.

Dau. My most redoubted father,

It is most meet we arm us 'gainst the foe :

For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom

(Though war, nor no known quarrel, were in question,)

But that defences, musters, preparations,

Should be maintain'd, assembled, and collected,

As were a war in expectation.

Therefore, I say, 'tis meet we all go forth,

To view the sick and feeble parts of France:

And let us do it with no show of fear;

No, with no more, than if we heard that England
Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance:

For, my good liege, she is so idly king'd,

Her sceptre so fantastically borne

By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,
That fear attends her not.

Con. O peace, prince dauphin!

You are too much mistaken in this king:
Question your grace the late ambassadors,-
With what great state he heard their embassy,
How well-supplied with noble counsellors,
How modest in exception, and, withal,
How terrible in constant resolution,-
And you shall find, his vanities fore-spent

[6] How diffident and decent in making objections. JOHNSON.

Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus,
Covering discretion with a coat of folly ;7
As gardeners do with rodure hide those roots
That shall first spring, and be most delicate.
Dau. Well, 'tis not so, my lord high constable,
But though we think it so, it is no matter:
In cases of defence, 'tis best to weigh
The enemy more mighty than he seems,
So the proportions of defence are fill'd;
Which, of a weak and niggardly projection,
Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat, with scanting
A little cloth.

Fr. King. Think we king Harry strong;

And, princes, look, you strongly arm to meet him.
The kindred of him hath been flesh'd upon us;
And he is bred out of that bloody strain,
That haunted us in our familiar paths:
Witness our too much memorable shame,
When Cressy battle fatally was struck,
And all our princes captiv'd, by the hand

Of that black name, Edward black prince of Wales;
Whiles that his mountain sire,-on mountain standing,
Up in the air, crown'd with the golden sun,-
Saw his heroical seed, and smil'd to see him

[7] Shakespeare not having given us, in the First or Second part of Henry IV. or in any other place but this, the remotest hint of the circumstances here alluded to, the comparison must needs be a little obscure to those who do not know or refleci what some historians have told us, that Henry IV. had entertained a deep jealousy of his son's aspiring superior genius. Therefore, to prevent all umbrage the prince withdrew from public affairs, and amused himself with consorting with a dissolute erew of robbers. It seems to me, that Shakespeare was ignorant of this circumstance when he wrote the two parts of Henry IV for it might have been so managed as to have given new beauties to the character of Hal, and great improvements to the plot And with regard to these matters, Shakespeare generally tells us all be knew, and as soon as he knew it. WARBURTON.

Thomas Otterbourne, and the translator of Titus Livius, indeed, says, that Henry the Fourth, in his latter days, was jealous of his son, and apprehended that he would attempt to depose him; to remove which suspicion, the prince is said (from the relation of an earl of Ormond, who was an eye witness of the fact,) to have gone with a great party of his friends to his father, in the twelfth year of his reign, and to have presented him with a dagger, which he desired the king to plunge into his breast, if he still entertained any doubts of his loyalty but, I believe it is no where said, that he threw himself into the company of dissolute persons to avoid giving umbrage to his father, or betook himself to irregular courses with a political view of quieting his suspicions. MALONE.

[8] To haunt is a word of the utmost horror, which shows that they dreaded the English as goblins and spirits. JOHNSON.

[9] Mr. Theobald would read-mounting; that is, high minded, aspiring. The emendation may be right, and yet I believe the poet meant to give an idea of more than human proportion in the figure of the king:

Quantus Athos, aut quantus Eryx, &c. Virg.

Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremov'd." Milton. STEEVENS.