Again, look at Pistol swallowing the leek, in 'Henry V.,' and Pistol kicked down stairs by Falstaff, in this play, and note the difference between " a counterfeit cowardly knave" and Falstaff. The truth is, all these generalities about Falstaff, and false comparisons arising out of the generalities, are popular mistakes too hastily received into criticism. There is infinitely more truth in Mackenzie's parallel between Falstaff and Richard III. than in Johnson's comparison of Falstaff with Parolles. "Both," says Mackenzie, "are men of the world; both possess that sagacity and understanding which is fitted for its purposes; both despise those refined feelings, those motives of delicacy, those restraints of virtue, which might obstruct the course they have marked out for themselves. Both use the weaknesses of others, as skilful players at a game do the ignorance of their opponents; they enjoy the advantage, not only without selfreproach, but with the pride of superiority. Indeed, so much does Richard in the higher walk of villainy resemble Falstaff in the lower region of roguery and dissipation, that it were not difficult to show, in the dialogue of the two characters, however dissimilar in situation, many passages and expressions in a style of remarkable resemblance.” * Mackenzie has given us no example of the remarkable resemblance of passages and expressions; and, indeed, after a careful comparison, we doubt whether such resemblances of "expression" do exist. But what is more to the purpose, and more in confirmation of Mackenzie's theory, Falstaff and Richard, throughout their career, display the same "alacrity of spirit," the same "cheer of mind," the same readiness in meeting difficulties, the same determination to surmount them. One parallel, and that a very remarkable one, will sufficiently illustrate this. The first scene between the Lord Chief Justice and Falstaff,-that scene of matchless impudence and self-reliance, and the scene where Richard evades Buckingham's claim to the earldom of Hereford, are as similar as the difference of circumstances will allow them to be. We give the parallel passages :-- *Lounger,' No. 69. FALSTAFF. "Ch. Just. Sir John Falstaff, a word with you. Fal. My good lord !-Give your lordship good time of day. I am glad to see your lordship abroad: I heard say your lordship was sick: I hope your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I most humbly beseech your lordship to have a reverend care of your health. Ch. Just. Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury. Fal. If it please your lordship, I hear his majesty is returned with some discomfort from Wales. Ch. Just. I talk not of his majesty:-You would not come when I sent for you. Fal. And I hear, moreover, his highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy. Ch. Just. Well, heaven mend him! I pray, let me speak with you. Fal. This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy; a sleeping of the blood, a whoreson tingling. Ch. Just. What tell you me of it? be it as it is. Fal. It hath its original from much grief; have read the cause of his effects in Galen; it is from study, and perturbation of the brain: I a kind of deafness. Ch. Just. I think you are fallen into the disease; for you hear not what I say to you.” RICHARD III. "Buck. My lord, I claim the gift, my due by promise, For which your honour and your faith is pawn'd; The earldom of Hereford, and the moveables, Which you have promised I shall possess. K. Rich. Stanley, look to your wife; if she convey Letters to Richmond, you shall answer it. Buck. What says your highness to my just request? K. Rich. I do remember me,-Henry the Did prophesy that Richmond should be king, Buck. My lord K. Rich. How chance, the prophet could not at that time Have told me, I being by, that I should kill him? Buck. My lord, your promise for the earldom, N K. Rich. Richmond !-When last I was at Justice is half moved to laugh at him and Exeter, The mayor in courtesy show'd me the castle, And called it-Rouge-mont: at which name I started; Because a bard of Ireland told me once, I should not live long after I saw Richmond. Buck. My lord, K. Rich. Ay, what's o'clock? Buck. I am thus bold to put your grace in mind Of what you promised me. K. Rich. Well, but what's o'clock? Well, let it strike." Falstaff again not unfrequently reminds us of Iago. We have already noticed this resemblance in one particular. The humorous rogue and the sarcastic villain are equally unscrupulous in their attacks upon the property of others. Falstaff making the Hostess withdraw the action and lend him more money, and Iago's advice to Roderigo, "Put money in thy purse," supply an obvious example. Falstaff, in his schemes upon Justice Shallow, hugs himself in the very philosophy of roguery; "If the young dace be a bait for the old pike, I see no reason, in the law of nature, but I may snap at him." Iago thinks it would be a disgrace to his own intellectual superiority if he did not plunder his dupe : If I would time expend with such a snipe, But for my sport and profit." Falstaff, however, is not all knave, as Richard and Iago are each all villain. Richard and Iago are creatures of antipathies; Falstaff is a creature of sympathies. There is something genial even in his knavery. With Dame Quickly and Doll, with Bardolph and the Page, his good humour is irresistible: his followers evidently love him. The Hostess speaks their thoughts :-" Well, fare thee well: I have known thee these twentynine years come peascod-time; but an honester and truer-hearted man-Well, fare thee well." He extracts Shallow's money from his purse as much by his sociality as his cunning. Even the grave Lord Chief with him. We have already spoken of the fascination which he exercised over the mind We are of the prince; and even when Harry is in many respects a changed man- -when he has shown us the heroical side of his characterwe still learn that he has been "so much engraffed to Falstaff." The dominion which he exercised over all his associates he exercises over every reader of Shakspere. never weary of him; we can never hate him ; we doubt if we can despise him; we are half angry with the prince for casting him off; we are quite sure that there was no occasion to send him to the Fleet; when we hear in 'Henry V,' that the "king has killed his heart," we are certain that, with all his selfishness, there were many kind and loving feelings about that heart, which neglect and desertion would deeply touch; and when at last we see him, in poor Dame Quickly's description of his deathbed, "fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends," we involuntarily exclaim, "Poor Jack, farewell.” We must now recall the attention of our readers to the principle with which we set out,—that the great dramatic action of these plays is the change of character in the Prince of Wales. In the first part we have seen his levities cast away, when his ambition called upon him to answer the reproofs of his father by heroic actions :— "And, in the closing of some glorious day, Be bold to tell you that I am your son." Years pass on after the battle of Shrewsbury; and the Prince has not entirely cast aside his habits. The duty of meeting the insurrection under Scroop is not committed to him. We find him in London, playing the fool with the time, but yet "sad," looking forward to higher things; "let the end try the man." His sense of duty is, however, roused into instant action at the news from the north :"By Heaven, Poins, I feel me much to blame, So idly to profane the precious time; When tempest of commotion, like the south, The Prince and Falstaff never again meet in fellowship. Falstaff goes to the wars; and he throws a spirit into those scenes of treachery and bloodshed which we look for in vain amidst the policy of Westmoreland and the solemnity of John of Lancaster. In Falstaff and his recruits we see the undercurrent of all warfare-the things of common life that are mixed up with great and fearful events-the ludicrous by the side of the tragic. The scene of Falstaff choosing his recruits—the corruption of Bardolphthe defence of that corruption by his most impudent captain-the amazement of the justices the different tempers with which the recruits meet their lot-furnish altogether one of the richest realities of this un equalled drama. We here see how war, and especially civil war, presses upon the comforts even of the lowliest: "My old dame will be undone now for one to do her husbandry." Is he who won the crown by civil tumult, and who wears it uneasily as the consequence of his usurpation-is he happier than the peasant who is dragged from his hut to fight in a cause which he neither cares for nor understands? Beautifully has Shakspere shown us what happiness Bolingbroke gained by the deposition of Richard : "How many thousand of my poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses in forgetfulness?" Henry is a politic and wise king; but he is a melancholy man. The conduct of the Prince still lies heavy at his heart, and his grief "Stretches itself beyond the hour of death," in dread of the "rotten times" that would ensue when the Prince's riot hath no curb. The King too is "much ill;" We are approaching that final scene when the reformation of the Prince is to be fully accomplished in the spectacle of his father's deathbed. The King has swooned. The prince enters gaily : "How now! rain within doors, and none abroad! How doth the king?" But his gaiety is presently subdued :— "I will sit and watch here by the king." The French critic (a very unfit representative of the present state of opinion in France as to the merits of Shakspere) gives us the following most egregious description of the scene which follows:—“The King wakes. He calls out-misses his crown-commands the Prince to come to him-and overwhelms him with reproaches for that impatience to seize upon his inheritance which will not wait even till his father's body is cold. Henry, with an hypocrisy worse than the action which he would defend, pretends only to have taken away the crown through indignation that it had shortened the days of his father!" This is to read poetry in a literal spirit. We commend the fourth scene of the fourth act (Part II.) to our readers, without another remark that may weaken the force of M. Paul Duport's objections. Through that great trial which has for awhile softened and purified the hearts of most men-the death of a father-has Henry passed. But he has also put on the state of a king. He has done so amidst the remembrances and fears of his brothers and advisers : "You all look strangely on me." The scene with the Lord Chief Justice ensues, written with all Shakspere's rhetorical power. Henry has solemnly taken up his position : "The tide of blood in me Hath proudly flow'd in vanity, till now: Now doth it turn, and ebb back to the sea." It is in this solemn assurance, publicly made upon the first occasion of meeting his subjects, that we must rest the absolute and inevitable necessity of Henry's harshness to So thin, that life looks through, and will Falstaff. The poet has most skilfully conbreak out." trived to bring out the worst parts of Fal "The incessant care and labour of his mind Hath wrought the mure, that should confine it in, which the king had between his old habits and affections and his new duties, demands this harshness. We understand from Prince John that, though Falstaff is taken to the Fleet, he is not to be utterly deserted :— staff's character when he learns the death of | The very struggle, in this moment of trial, Henry IV.—his presumption—his rapacity -his evil determinations: "Let us take any man's horses;—the laws of England are at my commandment. Happy are they which have been my friends; and woe to my lord chief justice." When he plants himself in the way of the coronation procession to "leer" upon the King-when he exclaims "God save thy grace, king Hal,”—Henry was compelled to assert his consistency by his severity. Warburton has truly observed that, in his homily to Falstaff, Henry makes a trip, and is sliding into his old habit of laughing at Falstaff's bulk : "He hath intent, his wonted followers The dramatic action is complete. Henry of Monmouth has passed through the dangerous trial of learning the great lessons of humanity amidst men with whom his follies “know, the grave doth gape made him an equal. The stains of this con For thee thrice wider than for other men.” He saw the rising smile, and the smothered retort, upon Falstaff's lip,—and he checks him with "Reply not to me with a fool-born jest; Presume not that I am the thing I was.” tact were on the surface. His heart was first elevated by ambition-then purified by sorrow—and so "Consideration like an angel came, And whipp'd th' offending Adam out of him." CHAPTER III. KING HENRY V. 'HENRY V.' was first printed in 1600, under feature of the structure, under other combi the following title :— The Chronicle History of Henry the Fift, with his battell fought at Agin Court in France. Together with auntient Pistoll.' This copy, which differs most materially from the text of the folio, was reprinted in 1602, and again in 1608. The quarto of 1600 runs only to 1800 lines; whilst the lines in the folio edition amount to 3500. Not only is the play 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 nations, 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. The alterations are so manifestly those of the author working upon his first sketch, that we are utterly at a loss to conceive upon what principle some of our editorial predecessors have reconciled the differences upon the easy theory of a surreptitious copy. A passage in the chorus to the fifth act proves, beyond doubt, that the choruses formed a part of the performance in 1599; but this does not prove that there was not an earlier performance without the choruses. The first quarto was printed in 1600, after the choruses were brought upon the stage; but, because they are not found in that first quarto, it is asserted that the copy from which that edition was printed was “not a first draught or hasty sketch." Malone and Steevens appear to us to have fallen into the mistake that a copy could not, at one and the same time, be a piracy and a sketch. According to their theory, if it is procured by fraud, it must be an "imperfect transcript." Is it not much more easy to believe that, after a play had been thoroughly remodelled, the original sketch which existed in some playhouse copy might be printed without authority, and continue so to be printed, rather than that an imperfect transcript should be printed, and continue to be printed, in which the most striking and characteristic passages of the play were omitted? But the question of "imperfect transcript" or hasty sketch" may, to our minds, be at once disposed of by internal evidence. We will take a passage from the very first scene of the quarto of 1608, and print with it the text of the folio. Open the book where we may, similar examples will present themselves : 66 QUARTO QF 1608. "Bishop. God and his angels guard your sacred throne, And make you long become it! King. Sure, we thank you: and, good my Why the law Salique which they have in Or should or should not stop in us our claim: same. For God doth know how many now in health How you awake the sleeping sword of war: FOLIO OF 1623. × Sure, we thank you. K. Hen. Why the law Salique, that they have in Or should, or should not, bar us in our claim. Or nicely charge your understanding soul Of what your reverence shall incite us to: Are every one a woe, a sore complaint, That make such waste in brief mortality. As pure as sin with baptism." Can any one doubt that this careful elaboration, involving nice changes of epithets, was the work of the author himself? Would the amanuensis or the reciter have given us some passages so correctly, and altogether omitted others, making substitutions which required him to reconstruct particular lines, so that the rhythm might be preserved ? In the prose passages the same process of change and elaboration may be as clearly traced. Our belief, then, is, that the original quarto of 1600 was printed after the play had appeared in its amended and corrected form, such as we have received it from the folio of 1623; but that this quarto, and the subsequent quartos, were copies of a much "Canterbury. God and his angels guard shorter play, which had been previously pro your sacred throne, And make you long become it! duced, and, perhaps, hastily written for some temporary occasion. We further believe |