King Henry the Fourth.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

SHAKSPEARE has apparently designed a regular connection of these dramatic histories, from Richard the Second to Henry the Fifth. King Henry, at the end of Richard the Second, declares his purpose to visit the Holy Land, which he resumes in the first speech of this play. The complaint made by King Henry, in the last act of King Richard the Second, of the wildness of his son, prepares the reader for the frolics which are here to be recounted, and the characters to be exhibited.'-JOHNSON.

The historical dramas of Shakspeare have indeed become the popular history. Vain attempts have been made by Walpole to vindicate the character of King Richard III. and in later times by Mr. Luders, to prove that the youthful dissipation ascribed to King Henry V. is without foundation. The arguments are probable, and ingeniously urged, but we still cling to our early notions of that mad cap-that same sword and buckler Prince of Wales.' No plays were ever more read, nor does the inimitable, all-powerful genius of the poet ever shine out more than in the two parts of King Henry IV. which may be considered as one long drama divided.

It has been said that' Falstaff is the summit of Shakspeare's comic invention,' and we may consequently add the most inimitable comic character ever delineated; for who could invent like Shakspeare? Falstaff is now to us hardly a creature of the imagination, he is so definitely and distinctly drawn, that the mere reader of these dramas has the complete impression of a personal acquaintance. He is surrounded by a group of comic personages, from time to time, each of which would have been sufficient to throw any ordinary creation into the shade, but they only serve to make the supereminent humour of the knight doubly conspicuous. What can come nigher to truth and real individual nature than those admirable delineations Shallow and Silence? How irresistibly comic are all the scenes in which Falstaff is made to humour the fatuity and vanity of this precious pair!

The historic characters are delineated with a felicity and individuality not inferior in any respect. Harry Percy is a creation of the first order; and our favourite harebrained Prince of Wales, in whom mirthful pleasantry and midnight dissipation are mixed up with heroic dignity and generous feeling, is a rival worthy of him. Owen Glendower is another personification, managed with the most consummate skill; and the graver cha

racters are sustained and opposed to each other in a manner peculiar to our great poet alone.

The transactions contained in the First Part of King Henry IV. are comprised within the period of about ten months; for the action commences with the news brought of Hotspur having defeated the Scots under Archibald Earl of Douglas, at Holmedon (or Halidown Hill), which battle was fought on Holy-rood day (the 14th of September) 1402; and it closes with the battle of Shrewsbury, on Saturday the 21st of July, 1403.

Malone places the date of the composition of this play in 1597; Dr. Drake in 1596. It was first entered at Stationers' Hall February 25, 1597. There are no less than five quarto editions published during the author's life, viz. in 1598, 1599, 1604, 1608, 1613. For the piece which is supposed to have been its original the reader is referred to the Six Old Plays on which Shakspeare founded, &c. published by Steevens and Nichols.

Friends to the King.

SIR WALTER BLUNT,

THOMAS PERCY, Earl of Worcester.

HENRY PERCY, Earl of Northumberland.

HENRY PERCY, surnamed Hotspur, his Son.
EDWARD MORTIMER, Earl of March.

SCROOP, Archbishop of York.

ARCHIBALD, Earl of Douglas.
OWEN GLENDOWER.

SIR RICHARD VERNON.

SIR JOHN FALSTAFF.

LADY PERCY, Wife to Hotspur, and Sister to Mortimer. LADY MORTIMER, Daughter to Glendower, and Wife to Mortimer.

MRS. QUICKLY, Hostess of a Tavern in Eastcheap.

Lords, Officers, Sheriff, Vintner, Chamberlain, Drawers, two Carriers, Travellers, and Attendants.

SCENE, England.

FIRST PART OF

KING HENRY IV.

ACT I.

SCENE I. London. A Room in the Palace.

Enter KING HENRY, WESTMORELAND, SIR WALTER BLUNT, and Others.

King Henry.

So shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,
And breathe short-winded accents of new broils
To be commenc'd in stronds1 afar remote.
No more the thirsty entrance of this soil?
Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood;
No more shall trenching war channel her fields,
Nor bruise her flowrets with the armed hoofs
Of hostile paces: those opposed eyes,

1 Strands, banks of the sea.

2 Upon this passage the reader is favoured with three pages of notes in the Variorum Shakspeare. Steevens adopted Monk Mason's bold conjectural emendation, and reads

No more the thirsty Erinnys of this soil.'

Which, in my opinion, does not make the passage clearer, to say nothing of the improbability of such a corruption as entrance for Erinnys. Mr. Douce proposed to read entrails instead of entrance; and Steevens once thought that we should read entrants. I am satisfied with the following explanation of the text, modified from that of Malone :- No more shall this soil have the lips of her thirsty entrance (i. e. surface) daubed with the blood of her own chil

Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,-
Did lately meet in the intestine shock
And furious close of civil butchery,

Shall now, in mutual, well beseeming ranks,
March all one way; and be no more oppos'd
Against acquaintance, kindred, and allies:
The edge of war, like an ill sheathed knife,
No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends,
As far as to the sepulchre of Christ

(Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross
We are impressed and engag'd to fight),
Forthwith a power of English shall we levy 3,
Whose arms were moulded in their mother's womb,
To chase these pagans, in those holy fields,
Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet,
Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nail'd
For our advantage, on the bitter cross.
But this our purpose is a twelve-month old,

dren.' The soil is personified, and called the mother of those who live upon her surface; as in the following passage of King Richard II.:

My mother and my nurse, that bears me yet.'

The thirsty earth was a common epithet in the poet's age. Thus, in his own King Henry VI. Part III. :

6

Thy brother's blood the thirsty earth hath drunk.'

And in the old play of King John:

Is all the blood y-spilt on either part,
Closing the crannies of the thirsty earth,

Grown to a love-game, and a bridal feast?'

It is true, as Malone remarks, that Shakspeare seldom attends to the integrity of his metaphors; and why therefore should we suspect this passage to be corrupt, because it offers a trifling difficulty of that kind?

·

3 To levy a power to a place has been shown by Mr. Gifford to be neither unexampled nor corrupt; but good authorized English. Scipio, before he levied his force to the walls of Carthage, gave his soldiers the print of the city on a cake to be devoured.-Gosson's School of Abuse, 1587, E. 4.