even his name of Robert) is indeed a "cavalero 'King Henry IV.'"—that is, before Falstaff | the sketch, Master Shallow (we do not find had met Shallow at his seat in Gloucestershire, at which meeting Shallow recollects nothing that had taken place at Windsor, and had clean forgotten the outrages of Falstaff upon his keeper, his dogs, and his deer. But Falstaff had been surrounded by much more important circumstances than had belonged to his acquaintance with Master Shallow. He had been the intimate of a Prince he had held high charge in the royal army. We learn indeed that he is a "soldier" when he addresses Mrs. Ford; but he entirely abstains from any of those allusions to his royal friend which might have been supposed to be acceptable to a Merry Wife of Windsor. In the folio copy of the amended play we have, positively, not one allusion to his connection with the court. In the quarto there is one solitary passage, which would apply to any courtto that of Elizabeth, as well as to that of Henry V." Well, if the fine wits of the court hear this, they'll so whip me with their keen jests that they'll melt me out like tallow." In the same quarto, when Falstaff hears the noise of hunters at Herne's Oak, he exclaims, "I'll lay my life the mad Prince of Wales is stealing his father's deer." This points apparently at the Prince of 'Henry IV.;' but we think it had reference to the Prince of the Famous Victories,'—a character with whom Shakspere's audience was familiar. The passage is left out in the amended play; but we find another passage which certainly is meant for a link, however slight, between 'The Merry-she did not see him "fumble with the Wives' and 'Henry IV.:' Page objects to Fenton that he kept company with the wild Prince and with Pointz." The corresponding passage in the quarto is "the gentleman is wild-he knows too much." What does Shallow do at Windsor-he who inquired "how a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?"-Robert Shallow, of Glostershire, a poor esquire of this county, and one of the king's justices of the peace?" It is true that we are told by Slender that he was "in the county of Gloster, justice of peace, and coram," but this information is first given us in the amended edition. In sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends," when "there was but one way." Falstaff and Quickly are strangers. She is to him either "goodwife" or "good maid,”—and at any rate only “fair woman.” Surely, we cannot place Mistress Quickly of The Merry Wives' after 'Henry V.,' when she was dead; or after 'The Second Part of Henry IV.,' when she was a "poor widow;" or before 'The Second Part,' when she had a husband and children. She must stand alone in 'The Merry Wives,'—an undefined predecessor of the famous Quickly of the Boar's Head. same 6 But Pistol and Bardolph-are they not the "irregular humourists" (as they are called in the original list of characters to 'The Second Part of Henry IV.') acting with Falstaff under the same circumstances? We think not. The Pistol of 'The Merry Wives' is not the "ancient" Pistol of "The Second Part of Henry IV.' and of 'Henry V.,' nor is Bardolph the "corporal" Bardolph of "The Second Part of Henry IV.,' nor the "lieutenant Bardolph of Henry V.' In the title-page, indeed, of the sketch, published as we believe without authority as a substitute for the more complete play, we have "the swaggering vaine (vein) of ancient Pistoll and corporal Nym." Corporal Nym is no companion of Falstaff in the historical plays, for he first makes his appearance in the 'Henry V.' Neither Pistol, nor Bardolph, nor Nym, appear in 'The Merry Wives' to be soldiers serving under Falstaff. They are his "cogging companions" of the first sketch; they are his "coney-catching rascals" of the amended play;-in both they are his "followers," whom he can turn away, discard, cashier; but Falstaff is not their "captain." It certainly does appear to us that these anomalous positions in which the characters common to 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' and the 'Henry IV.' and 'Henry V.' are placed, furnish a very strong presumption that the comedy was not a continuation of the histories. That The Merry Wives of Windsor' was a continuation of 'Henry V.' appears to us impossible. Malone does not think it very clear that 'The Merry Wives of Windsor'". was written after 'King Henry V.' Nym and Bardolph are both hanged in 'King Henry V.,' yet appear in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor.' Falstaff is disgraced in 'The Second Part of King Henry IV.,' and dies in 'King Henry V.;' but in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' he talks as if he were yet in favour at court." Assuredly these are very natural objections to the theory that the comedy was written after 'Henry V.;' but Malone disposes of the difficulty by the summary process of revival. Did ever any the most bungling writer of imagination proceed upon such a principle as is here imputed to the most skilful of dramatists ? | | Would any audience ever endure such a violence to their habitual modes of thought? Would the readers of 'The Spectator' have tolerated the revival of Sir Roger de Coverley in 'The Guardian?' Could the mother of the Mary of Avenel of 'The Monastery' be found alive in 'The Abbot,' except through the agency of the White Lady? The conception is much too monstrous. Every person who has written on the character of Falstaff admits the inferiority of the butt of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' to the wit of the Boar's Head. It is remarkable that in Morgann's very elaborate 'Essay on the Character of Falstaff' not one of his characteristics is derived from the comedy. It has been regretted, by more than one critic, that Shakspere should have carried on the disgrace of Falstaff in the conclusion of 'Henry IV.,' to the further humiliation of the scenes at Datchet Mead and Herne's Oak; and, what is worse, that Shakspere should in the comedy have exaggerated the vices of Falstaff, and brought him down from his intellectual eminence. Shakspere found somewhat similar incidents to the adventures of Falstaff with Mrs. Ford in a 'Story of the Two Lovers of Pisa,' published in Tarleton's 'Newes out of Purgatorie,' 1590. In that story an intrigue is carried on, with no innocent intentions on the part of the lady, with a young man who makes the old husband his confidant, as Falstaff makes Brook, and whose escapes in chests and up chimneys may have suggested the higher comedy of the buckbasket and the wise woman of Brentford. The story is given at length in Malone's edition of our poet. But Shakspere desired to show a butt and a dupe-not a successful gallant; a husband jealous without cause-not an unhappy old man plotting against his betrayers. He gave the whole affair a ludicrous turn. He made the lover old, and fat, and avaricious;—betrayed by his own greediness and vanity into the most humiliating scrapes, so that his complete degradation was the natural dénouement of the whole adventure, and the progress of his shame the proper source of merriment. Could the adroit and witty Falstaff of 'Henry IV.' have been selected by Shakspere nature. Could he much lower the character of that man? Another and a feebler dramatist might have given us the Falstaff of 'The Merry Wives' as an imitation of the Falstaff of 'Henry IV.;' but Shakspere must have abided by the one Falstaff that he had made after such a wondrous fashion of truth and originality. for such an exhibition? In truth the Falstaff | different from other men, but altogether in of 'The Merry Wives,' especially as we have him in the first sketch, is not at all adroit, and not very witty. Read the very first scene in which Falstaff appears in this comedy. To Shallow's reproaches he opposes no weapon but impudence, and that not of the sublime kind which so astounds us in the 'Henry IV.' Read further the scene in which he discloses his views upon the Merry Wives to Pistol and Nym. Here Pistol is the wit: And then Justice Shallow-never to be forgotten Justice Shallow!-The Shallow “Fal. My honest lads, I will tell you what I who will bring Falstaff "before the council" am about. Pist. Two yards and more. Fal. No quips now, Pistol." Again, in the same scene:— is not the Shallow who with him "heard the chimes at midnight." The Shallow of the sketch of 'The Merry Wives' has not even Shallow's trick of repetition. In the amended Play this characteristic may be recognised; Fal. Sometimes the beam of her view gilded but in the sketch there is not a trace of it. my foot, sometimes my portly belly. Pist. Then did the sun on dunghill shine." There can be no doubt, however, that, when the comedy was remodelled, which certainly was done after the production of 'Henry IV.,' the character of Falstaff was much heightened. But still the poet kept him far behind the Falstaff of 'Henry IV.' Falstaff's descriptions, first to Bardolph and then to Brook, of his buckbasket adventure, are amongst the best things in the comedy, and they are very slightly altered from the original sketch. But compare them with any of the racy passages of the Falstaff of the Boar's Head, and after the comparison we feel ourselves in the presence of a being of far lower powers of intellect than the Falstaff "unimitated, unimitable." Is this acknowledged inferiority of the Falstaff of 'The Merry Wives' most easily reconciled with the theory that he was produced before or after the Falstaff of the 'Henry IV.?' That Elizabeth might have suggested 'The Merry Wives,' originally, upon some traditionary tale of Windsorthat it might have been acted in the gallery which she built at Windsor, and which still bears her name-we can understand; but we cannot reconcile the belief that Shakspere produced the Falstaff of 'The Merry Wives' after the Falstaff of 'Henry IV.' with our unbounded confidence in the habitual power of such a poet. To him Falstaff was a thing of reality. He had drawn a man altogether For example, in the first scene of the finished play we find Shallow talking somewhat like the great Shallow, especially about the fallow greyhound; in the sketch this passage is altogether wanting. In the sketch he says to Page, "Though he be a knight, he shall not think to carry it so away. Master Page, I will not be wronged." In the finished play we have, "He hath wronged me; indeed, he hath; at a word he hath: believe me; Robert Shallow, esquire, saith he is wronged.” And Bardolph too! Could it be predicated that the Bardolph of a comedy which was produced after the 'Henry IV.' would want those "meteors and exhalations" which characterize the Bardolph who was a standing joke to Falstaff and the Prince? Would his zeal cease to "burn in his nose?" Absolutely, in the first sketch, there is not the slightest allusion to that face which ever "blushed extempore." One mention, indeed, there is in the complete play of the "red face," and one supposed allusion of "Scarlet and John." The commentators have wished to show that Bardolph in both copies is called " a tinderbox" on account of his nose; but this is not very clear. And then Pistol is not the magnificent bully of "The Second Part of Henry IV.,' and of 'Henry V.' He has "affectations," as Sir Hugh mentions, and speaks "in Latin," as Slender has it;— but he is here literally "a tame cheater," but not without considerable cleverness. "Why, then the world's mine oyster" is essentially higher than the obscure bombast of the real Pistol. Of Mistress Quickly we have already spoken as to the circumstances in which she is placed; and these circumstances are so essentially different that we can scarcely recognise any marked similarity of character in the original sketch. Having, then, seen the great and insuperable difficulties which belong to the theory that 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' was written after the histories, let us consider what difficulties, both of situation and character, present themselves under the other theory, that the comedy was produced before the histories. First, is it irreconcileable with the tradition referring to Queen Elizabeth? It is not so, if we adopt the tradition as related by Dennis -this comedy was written by Queen Elizabeth's command, and finished in fourteen days. This statement of the matter is plain and simple; because it is disembarrassed of those explanations and inferences which never belong to any popular tradition, but are superadded by ingenious persons who have a theory to establish. We can perfectly understand how 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' as we have it in the first sketch, might have been produced by Shakspere in a fortnight; -and how such a slight and lively piece, containing many local allusions, and perhaps some delineations of real characters, might have furnished the greatest solace to Elizabeth some seven or eight years before the end of the sixteenth century, after mornings busily employed in talking politics with Leicester, or in translating Boetius in her own private chamber. The manners throughout, and without any disguise, are those of Elizabeth's own time. Leave out the line in the amended play of "the mad Prince and Poins," and the line in the sketch about "the wild Prince killing his father's deer," and the whole play (taken apart from the histories) might with much greater propriety be acted with the costume of the age of Elizabeth. It is for this reason, most probably, that we find so little of pure poetry either in the sketch or the finished performance. As Shakspere placed his characters in his own country, with the manners of his own days, he made them speak like ordinary human beings, showing -deeds and language such as men do use, And persons such as Comedy would choose, When she would show an image of the times, And sport with human follies, not with crimes."* We may believe, therefore, the tradition (without adopting the circumstances which make it difficult of belief), and accept the theory that The Merry Wives of Windsor' was written before the 'Henry IV.' Secondly, is the theory that the comedy was produced before the histories, irreconcileable with the contradictory circumstances which render the other theory so difficult of admission? Assuming that the comedy was written before the histories, it can be read without any violence to our indelible recollections of the situations of the characters in the 'Henry IV.' and 'Henry V.' It must be read with a conviction that, if there be any connection of the action at all, it is a very slight one-and that this action precedes the Henry IV.' by some indefinite period. Then, the Falstaff who in the quiet shades of Windsor did begin to perceive he was "made an ass" had not acquired the experience of the city, for before he knew Hal he "knew nothing;"-then the fair maid Quickly, who afterwards contrived to have a husband and widow without changing her name, knew no higher sphere than the charge of Dr. Caius's laundry and kitchen ;-then Pistol was not an ancient, certainly had not married the quondam Quickly, had not made the dangerous experiment of jesting with Fluellen, and occasionally talked like a reasonable being;-then Shallow had some unexplained business which took him from Glostershire to Windsor, travelled without his man Davy, had not lent a thousand pounds to Sir John Falstaff, and was not quite so silly and so delightful as when he had drunk "too much sack at supper" toasting "all the cavaleroes about London; "-then, lastly, Bardolph was 'master corporate Bardolph," and certainly Nym and he had not been hanged. be a poor not 66 *Ben Jonson, Prologue to 'Every Man in his Humour.' Thirdly, does the theory of the production | of "The Merry Wives of Windsor' before 'Henry IV.' and 'Henry V.' furnish a proper solution of the remarkable inferiority in the comedy of several of the characters which are common to both? If we accept the opinion that the Falstaff, the Shallow, the Quickly, the Pistol, Bardolph, and Nym, of 'The Merry Wives,' were all originally conceived by the poet before the characters with similar names in the 'Henry IV.' and 'Henry V.;' and that, after they had been in some degree adopted in the historical plays, Shakspere remodelled 'The Merry Wives,' and heightened the resemblances of character which the resemblances of name implied,—| the inferiority in several of these characters, especially in the sketch, will be accounted for, without assuming, with Johnson, that "the poet approached as near as he could to the work enjoined him; yet, having perhaps in the former play completed his own idea, seems not to have been able to give Falstaff all his former powers of entertainment." | Johnson's opinion proceeds upon the very just assumption that continuations are, for the most part, inferior to original conceptions. But The Merry Wives' could not have been proposed as a continuation of the 'Henry IV.' and the 'Henry V.,' even if it had been written after those plays. If it were written after the histories, the author certainly mystified all the new circumstances as compared with those which had preceded them, for the purpose of destroying the idea of continuation. This appears to us too violent an assumption. But no other can be maintained. To attribute such interminable contradictions to negligence is to assume that Shakspere was not only the greatest of poets, but of blunderers. And now we must hazard a conjecture. It has been attempted to show that the Falstaff of the 'First Part of Henry IV.' was originally called Oldcastle*. If that were the case, and the balance of evidence is in favour of that opinion, the whole matter seems to us clearer. Let it be remembered that Falstaff and Bardolph are the only characters that are * See Notice of Sir John Oldcastle,' a play by some attributed to Shakspere, Book vi. chap. 2. common to the First Part of Henry IV. and 'The Merry Wives of Windsor;' for in the original copy of 'Henry IV., Part I.,' the person who stands amongst the modern list of characters as Quickly is invariably called the Hostess. If the Falstaff, then, of 'Henry IV.' were originally Oldcastle, we have only Bardolph left in common to the two dramas. Was Bardolph originally called so in 'Henry IV., Part I.'? When Poins proposes to the Prince to go to Gadshill, he says, in the original copy, "I have a jest to execute that I cannot manage alone,-Falstaff, Harvey, Rossil, and Gadshill shall rob these men," &c. We now read, "Falstaff, Bardolph, Peto, and Gadshill," &c. It has been conjectured that Harvey and Rossil were the names of actors; but, as Oldcastle remains where we now read Falstaff in one place of the original copy, might not in the same way Bardolph have been originally Harvey or Rossil? This point, however, is not material. If Shaksperc were compelled, by a strong expression of public opinion, to remove the name of Oldcastle from the 'First Part of Henry IV.,' the name of Falstaff was ready to his hand as a substitute. He had drawn a knight, fat and unscrupulous, as he had represented Oldcastle, but far his inferior in wit, humour, inexhaustible merriment, presence of mind, and intellectual activity. The transition was not inconsistent from the Falstaff of 'The Merry Wives' to the Falstaff of 'Henry IV.' The character, when Shakspere remodelled the first sketch of the comedy, required some elevation;—but it still might stand at a long distance, without offence to an audience who knew that the inferior creation was first produced. With Falstaff Shakspere might have transferred Bardolph to the 'First Part of Henry IV.,' but materially altered. The base Hungarian wight who would "the spigot wield" had, as a tapster, made his nose a "fiery kitchen" to roast malt-worms; and he was fit to save him "a thousand marks in links and torches." When, further, Falstaff had completely superseded Oldcastle in the First Part of Henry IV.,' Shakspere might have adopted Pistol, and Shallow, and Quickly in the Second Part,-but greatly changed;and, lastly, have introduced Nym to the |
