come to woo ladies, I fright them. But, in faith, Kate, the elder I wax the better I shall appear. My comfort is that old age, that ill layer-up of beauty, can do no more spoil upon my face: thou hast me, if thou hast me, at the worst; and thou shalt wear me, if thou wear me, better and better. And therefore tell me, most fair Katharine, will you have me? Put off your maiden blushes; avouch the thoughts of your heart with the looks of an empress: take me by the hand, and say,"Harry of England, I am thine." Which word thou shalt no sooner bless mine ear withal, but I will tell thee aloud, “England is thine, Ireland is thine, France is thine, and Henry Plantagenet is thine:" who, though I speak it before his face, if he be not fellow with the best king, thou shalt find the best king of good fellows. Come, your answer in broken music; for thy voice is music, and thy English broken: therefore, queen of all, Katharine, break thy mind to me in broken English: wilt thou have me?

Kath. Dat is as it shall please de roy mon père. K. Hen. Nay, it will please him well, Kate: it shall please him, Kate.

Kath. Den it shall also content me.

K. Hen. Upon that I will kiss your hand, and I call you my queen.

Kath. Laissez, mon seigneur, laissez, laissez : ma foy, je ne veux point que vous abbaissez vostre grandeur en baisant la main d'une vostre indigne serviteure. Excusez moy, je vous supplie, mon très puissant seigneur.

K. Hen. Then I will kiss your lips, Kate. Kath. Les dames et damoiselles pour estre baisées devant leur nopces, il n'est pas le coûtume de France.

K. Hen. Madammy interpreter, what says she? Alice. Dat it is not be de fashion pour les ladies of France,-I cannot tell what is "baiser" en English.

K. Hen. To kiss.

Alice. Your majesty entendre bettre que moy. K. Hen. It is not the fashion for the maids in France to kiss before they are married, would she say?

Alice. Ouy, vrayment.

K. Hen. O Kate, nice customs curt'sy to great Kings. Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashion we are the makers of manners, Kate; and the liberty that follows our places stops the mouths of all find-faults: as I will do yours, for upholding the nice fashion of your country, in denying me a kiss: therefore, patiently and yielding. [Kissing her.]—You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate: there is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them, than in the tongues of the

French council; and they should sooner persuade Harry of England than a general petition of monarchs. Here comes your father.

Enter the FRENCH KING and QUEEN, BURGUNDY, BEDFORD, GLOSTER, EXETER, WESTMORLAND, and other French and English Lords. Bur. God save your majesty! My royal cousin, teach you our princess English?

K. Hen. I would have her learn, my fair cousin, how perfectly I love her: and that is good English. Bur. Is she not apt?

:

K. Hen. Our tongue is rough, coz; and my condition is not smooth so that, having neither the voice nor the heart of flattery about me, I cannot so conjure up the spirit of love in her that he will appear in his true likeness.

Bur. Pardon the frankness of my mirth, if I answer you for that. If you would conjure in her, you must make a circle: if conjure up love in her in his true likeness, he must appear naked and blind can you blame her, then, being a maid yet rosed over with the virgin crimson of modesty, if she deny the appearance of a naked blind boy in her naked seeing self? It were, my lord, a hard condition for a maid to consign to. K. Hen. Yet they do wink and yield; as love is blind and enforces.

Bur. They are then excused, my lord, when they see not what they do.

K. Hen. Then, good my lord, teach your cousin to consent to winking.

Bur. I will wink on her to consent, my lord, if you will teach her to know my meaning: for maids, well summered and warm kept, are like flies at Bartholomew-tide, blind, though they have their eyes; and then they will endure handling, which before would not abide looking

on.

K. Hen. This moral ties me over to time and a hot summer; and so I will catch the fly your cousin in the latter end, and she must be blind too. Bur. As love is, my lord, before it loves. K. Hen. It is so: and you may, some of you, thank love for my blindness; who cannot see many a fair French city, for one fair French maid that stands in my way.

Fr. King. Yes, my lord, you see them perspectively, the cities turned into a maid: for they are all girdled with maiden walls, that war hath never entered.

K. Hen. Shall Kate be my wife?
Fr. King. So please you.

K. Hen. I am content, so the maiden cities you talk of may wait on her: so the maid that stood in the way of my wish shall shew me the way to my will.

Fr. King. We have consented to all terms of

reason.

K. Hen. Is't so, my lords of England? West. The King hath granted every article: His daughter first; and then, in sequel, all, According to their firm proposéd natures.

Exe. Only he hath not yet subscribed this: where your majesty demands that the King of France, having any occasion to write for matter of grant, shall name your highness in this form and with this addition, in French: "Notre très cher filz Henry, Roy d'Angleterre, heretier de France" and thus in Latin: "Præclarissimus filius noster Henricus, Rex Angliæ et hæres Franciæ."

Fr. King. Nor this I have not, brother, so denied But your request shall make me let it pass.

K. Hen. I pray you then, in love and dear alliance,

Let that one article rank with the rest:
And thereupon give me your daughter.

Fr. King. Take her, fair son; and from her blood raise up

Issue to me that the contending kingdoms Of France and England, whose very shores look pale

With envy of each other's happiness,

ENTER

CHORUS

Thus far, with rough and all unable pen,
Our bending author hath pursued the story :
In little room confining mighty men,

Mangling by starts the full course of their glory. Small time; but in that small most greatly lived

This star of England. Fortune made his sword; By which the world's best garden he achieved, And of it left his son imperial lord.

Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crowned King Of France and England, did this king succeed; Whose state so many had the managing,

That they lost France, and made his England bleed :

Which oft our stage has shewn: and for their sake,

In your fair minds let this acceptance take.

[Exit.

"O for a muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention."—Chorus, Act I.

This goes upon the notion of the peripatetic system, which imagines several heavens one above another; the last and highest of which was one of fire.-WARBURTON.

It alludes likewise to the aspiring nature of fire which by its levity, at the separation of the chaos, took the highest seat of all the elements.-JOHNSON.

"When he speaks,

The air, a chartered libertine, is still."-Act I., Scene 1.
This line is exquisitely beautiful.-JOHNSON.
The same thought occurs in "As You LIKE IT:"—
"I must have liberty

Withal; as large a charter as the wind,
To blow on whom I please."

"Send for him, good uncle."-Act I., Scene 2.

The person here addressed was Thomas Beaufort, halfbrother to King Henry IV.; being one of the sons of John of Gaunt, by Catharine Swynford. At this time he was properly Earl of Dorset, not having been created Duke of Exeter till after the battle of Agincourt.

“Also King Lewis the tenth,

Who was sole heir to the usurper Capet."-Act I., Scene 2. The monarch here alluded to was properly Lewis the Ninth, commonly called St. Lewis. The poet was led into the inaccuracy by Holinshed.

"For now sits Expectation in the air,

And hides a sword, from hilts unto the point, With crowns imperial, crowns, and coronets, Promised to Harry and his followers."--Chorus, Act II. This idea is derived from the ancient representations of trophies in tapestry or painting. Among these it is very common to see swords encircled with naval or mural crowns. Expectation is also personified by Milton:

"While Expectation stood

In horror."

"One, Richard, Earl of Cambridge; and the second,
Henry, Lord Servop of Masham; and the third,
Sir Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland."
Chorus, Act II.

Richard, Earl of Cambridge, was Richard de Conisbury, younger son of Edmund Langley, Duke of York. He was father of Richard, Duke of York, and grandfather of Edward IV. Henry, Lord Scroop, was third husband of Joan, Duchess of York, mother-in-law of Richard, Earl of Cambridge.

"O how hast thou with jealousy infected The sweetness of affiance!"-Act II., Scene 2. Shakspere urges this aggravation of the guilt of treachery with great judgment. One of the worst consequences of breach of trust is the diminution of that confidence which makes the happiness of life; and the dissemination of suspicion, which is the poison of society.-JOHNSON.

"For me, the gold of France did not seduce;
Although I did admit it as a motive,

The sooner to effect what I intended."—Act II., Scene 2. A passage from Holinshed will throw light on this confession of the Earl of Cambridge:

"Divers write that Richard, Earl of Cambridge, did not conspire with the Lord Scroop and Thomas Gray, for the murdering of King Henry, to please the French King withal, but only to the intent to exalt to the crown his brother-in-law, Edmund, Earl of March, as heir to Lionel, Duke of Clarence: after the death of which Earl of March (for divers secret impediments not able to have issue), the Earl of Cambridge was sure that the crown should come to him by his wife, and to his children of her begotten. And therefore (as was thought) he rather confessed himself, for need of money, to be corrupted of the French King, than he would declare his inward mind, &c.; which if it were espied, he saw plainly that the Earl of March should have tasted of the same cup that he had drunken; and what should come to his own children he much doubted."

"His nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green fields."-Act II., Scene 3.

This passage furnishes one of the many happy conjectural emendations of Theobald. It is universally received as the genuine text, and frequently quoted as an instance of Shakspere's close observation of nature. Yet the question is not without difficulty: Malone says on the subject:-"The folio of 1623 (for these words are not in the quarto), reads, and a table of green fields.' Mr. Theobald made the correction. Dr. Warburton objects to the emendation, on the ground of the nature of Falstaff's illness, who was so far from babbling, or wanting cooling in green fields, that his feet were cold, and he was just expiring.' But his disorder had been a burning quotidian tertian.' It is, I think, a much stronger objection that the word table, with a capital letter (for so it appears in the old copy), is very unlikely to have been printed instead of babbled."

"But keeps the pridge most valiantly, with excellent discipline."-Act III., Scene 6.

This mention of the bridge is founded on historical fact. After Henry had passed the Somme, the French endeavoured to intercept him in his passage to Calais; and for that purpose attempted to break down the only bridge that there was over the small river of Ternois, at Blangi, over which it was necessary for him to pass. But the King having notice of the design, sent a part of his troops before him, who, attacking and putting the French to flight, preserved the bridge till the whole English army arrived and passed over it.

"A beard of the general's cut."-Act III., Scene 6. It appears from an old ballad, inserted in a miscellany, entitled "LE PRINCE D'AMOUR" (1660), that our ancestors were very curious in the fashion of their beards, and that a certain cut or form was appropriated to the soldier, the bishop, the judge, the clown, &c.

The spade-beard, and perhaps the stiletto-beard also, was appropriated to the soldier. It is observable that Shakspere's patron, Henry, Earl of Southampton, who spent much of

his time in camps, is drawn with his beard in the stiletto fashion; while his unfortunate friend, the Earl of Essex, is represented with this cherished ornament in the spade form.

“Every subject's duty is the King's, but every subject's soul is his own."-Act IV., Scene 1.

This is a very just distinction, and the whole argument is well followed and properly concluded.-JoHNSON.

"Upon the King!"-Act IV., Scene 1.

There is something very striking and solemn in this soliloquy, into which the King breaks as soon as he is left alone. Something like this, on less occasions, every breast has felt. Reflection and seriousness rush upon the mind upon the separation of a gay company; and especially after forced and unwilling merriment.-JOHNSON.

"And I have built

Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests Sing still for Richard's soul."-Act IV., Scene 1. One of these chantries was for Carthusian monks, and was called Bethlehem: the other was for men and women of the order of St. Bridget, and was named Sion. They were on opposite sides of the Thames. Sion House, the seat of the Duke of Northumberland, now occupies the site of the last of these institutions.

"Their horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks,

With torchstaves in their hands."-Act IV., Scene 2. Ancient candlesticks were often in the form of human figures, holding the sockets for the lights, in their extended hands. Mr. Douce had one of these interesting relics in his possession. They are mentioned in "VITTORIA COROMBANA" (1612):-"He shewed like a pewter candlestick, fashioned like a man in armour, holding a tilting-staff in his hand, little bigger than a candle."

-"Be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition."-Act IV., Scene 3. Henry V. prohibited all persons, except such as had a right by grant or inheritance, from bearing coats of arms, except those who fought with him at the battle of Agincourt; and these were allowed the chief seats at all feasts and public meetings.

"YORK. My lord, most humbly on my knee I beg The leading of the vaward.

K. HEN. Take it, brave York."—Act IV., Scene 3. This Duke of York is the same person who appears (not very creditably) in "KING RICHARD II.," as Duke of Aumerle. He was the second son of Edmund Langley, the Duke of York of that play. Richard, Earl of Cambridge, who appears in the second act of this drama, was the younger brother of the Edward, Duke of York, mentioned in the quoted passage.

"Quality! Callino, castore me!' Art thou a gentleman?" Act IV., Scene 4. The original copy here reads, "Qualitie, calmie custure me." This jargon was changed by the editors to "Quality, call you me? Construe me," &c. But Malone subsequently found "Calen o custure me," mentioned as the burthen of a "Sonnet of a Lover," in a work called "A HANDFUL OF PLEASANT DELIGHTS, &c." (1564). And Mr. Boswell has still later discovered that it was an old Irish song, which is printed in Playford's "MUSICAL COMPANION," (1667 or 1673):

"Callino, Callino, Callino, castore me;

Eva ee, eva ee, loo, loo, loo lee."

The words are said to mean, "Little girl of my heart for ever

"As, by a lower but by loving likelihood,
Were now the general of our gracious empress
(As in good time he may) from Ireland coming,
Bringing rebellion broachéd on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit
To welcome him?"-Chorus, Act V.

The poet had good ground for supposing that the return of the unfortunate Essex from Ireland would be attended with a numerous concourse of well-wishers: for on his setting out for that country (as we are told by the Continuer of Stowe's Chronicle), "He took horse in Seeding-lane, and from thence, being accompanied with divers noblemen and many others, himself very plainly attired, rode through Gracechurch-street, Cornhill, Cheapside, and other high streets: in all which places, and in the fields, the people pressed exceedingly to behold him, especially in the highway, for more than four miles' space, crying, and saying, 'God bless your lordship,'' 'God preserve your honour,' &c.; and some followed him till the evening, only to behold him."

The disastrous circumstances attending and consequent on this great favourite's return are too well known to need recapitulation.

KING HENRY V. is visibly the favourite hero of Shakspere, in English history. He pourtrays him endowed with every chivalrous and kingly virtue: open, sincere, affable, yet still disposed to innocent raillery (as a sort of reminiscence of his youth) in the intervals between his dangerous and renowned achievements. To bring his life, after his ascent to the crown, on the stage, was, however, attended with great difficulty. The conquests in France were the only distinguished events of his reign; and war is much more an epic than a dramatic subject. If we would have dramatic interest, war must only be the means by which something else is accomplished, and not the last aim and substance of the whole.

In "KING HENRY V." no opportunity was afforded Shakspere of rendering the issue of the war dramatic; but he has availed himself of other circumstances attending it with peculiar care. Before the battle of Agincourt, he paints in the most lively colours the light-minded impatience of the French leaders for the moment of battle, which to them seemed infallibly the moment of victory: on the other hand, he paints the uneasiness of the English King and his army, from their desperate situation, coupled with the firm determination, if they are to fall, at least to fall with honour. He applies this as a general contrast between the French and English national character: a contrast which betrays a partiality for his own nation, certainly excusable in a poet, especially when he is backed with such a glorious document as that of the memorable battle in question.

However much Shakspere celebrates the French conquest of King Henry, still he has not omitted to hint to us, after his way, the secret springs of this undertaking. Henry was in want of foreign wars to secure himself on the throne: the clergy also wished to keep him employed abroad, and made an offer of rich contributions, to prevent the passing of a law which would have deprived them of the half of their reve His learned bishops are consequently as ready to prove to him his undisputed right to the crown of France, as he is to allow his conscience to be tranquilised by them. They prove that the Salic is not, and never was, applicable to France; and the matter is treated in a more succinct and convincing manner than such subjects usually are in mani

nues.

festoes.