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For competence of life, I will allow you;
That lack of means enforce you not to evil :
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,

We will,-according to your strength, and qualities,Give you advancement.-Be it your charge, my lord, To see perform'd the tenor of our word.

Set on.

[Exeunt King, and his train. Fal. Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound. Shal. Ay, marry, sir John; which I beseech you to let me have home with me.

Fal. That can hardly be, master Shallow. Do not you grieve at this; I shall be sent for in private to him: look you, he must seem thus to the world. Fear not your advancement; I will be the man yet, that shall make you great.

Shal. I cannot perceive how, unless you give me your doublet, and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good Sir John, let me have five hundred of my thousand. Fal. Sir, I will be as good as my word: this, that you heard, was but a colour.

Shal. A colour, I fear, that you will die in, Sir John. Fal. Fear no colours; go with me to dinner.-Come, lieutenant Pistol ;-come, Bardolph :-I shall be sent for soon at night.

Re-enter the Chief Justice, Prince JoHN, &c. Ch.Just. Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet; Take all his company along with him.

Fal. My lord, my lord

Ch.Just. I cannot now speak: I will hear you soon.-Take them away.

Pist. Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta.

[Ex. FAL. SHAL. PIST. BARD. Page, and Officers. P. John. I like this fair proceeding of the king's ; He hath intent, his wonted followers

Shall all be very well provided for ;

But all are banish'd, till their conversations

Appear more wise and modest to the world.

Ch Just. And so they are.

P.John. The king hath call'd his parliament, my lord. Ch.Just. He hath.

P.John. I will lay odds,-that, ere this year expire, We bear our civil swords, and native fire,

As far as France: I heard a bird so sing,

Whose music, to my thinking, pleas'd the king.
Come, will you hence?

[Exeunt.

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FIRST, my fear; then, my court'sy; last, my speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my court'sy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me for what I have to say, is of mine own making; and what, indeed, I should say, will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture. Be it known to you (as it is very well) I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it, and to promise you a better. I did mean, indeed, to pay you with this; which, if, like an ill venture, it come unluckily home, I break; and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here, I promised you, I would be, and here I commit my body to your mercies bate me some, and I will pay you some, and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely.

If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your debt. But a good Conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so will I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me ; if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly.

One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France; where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night, and so kneel down before you; but, indeed, to pray for the queen,

I fancy every reader, when he ends this play, cries out with Desdemo. na, "O most lame and impotent conclusion !" As this play was not, to our knowledge, divided into Acts by the author, I could be content to conclude it with the death of Henry the Fourth:

"In that jerusalem shall Harry die."

These scenes, which now make the fifth Act of Henry the Fourth, might then be the first of Henry the Fifth; but the truth is, that they do not unite very commodiously to either play. When these plays were represented, I believe they ended as they are now ended in the books; but Shakspeare seems to have designed that the whole series of action, from the beginning of Richard the Second, to the end of Henry the Fifth. should be considered by the reader as one work, upon one plan, only broken into parts by the necessity of exhibition. JOHNS.

KING HENRY V.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

King HENRY the Fifth.

Duke of GLOSTER, brothers to the king.

Duke of BEDFORD,

Duke of EXETER, uncle to the king.

Duke of YORK, cousin to the king.

Earls of SALISBURY, WESTMORELAND, and WAR

WICK.

Archbishop of CANTERBURY.

Bishop of ELY.

Earl of CAMBRIDGE,
Lord SCROOP,

Sir THOMAS GREY,

Econspirators against the king.

Sir THOMAS ERPINGHAM, GOWER, FLUELLEN, MACMORRIS, JAMY, officers in king Henry's army. BATES, COURT, WILLIAMS, soldiers in the same. NYM, BARDOLPH, PISTOL, formerly servants to Falstaff, now soldiers in the same.

Boy, servant to them. A Herald.

CHARLES the Sixth, king of France.

LEWIS, the Dauphin.

Chorus.

Dukes of BURGUNDY, ORLEANS, and BOURBON.

The Constable of France.

RAMBURES, and GRANDPREE, French lords.

Governour of Harfleur. MONTJOY, a French herald. Ambassadors to the king of England.

ISABEL, queen of France.

KATHARINE, daughter of Charles and Isabel.

ALICE, a lady, attending on the princess Katharine. QUICKLY, Pistol's wife, an hostess.

Lords, Ladies, Officers, French and English Soldiers, Messengers, and Attendants.

The SCENE-at the beginning of the play, lies in England; but afterwards, wholly in France.

OBSERVATIONS.

THIS play was writ (as appears from a passage in the cherus to the fifth act) at the time of the earl of Essex's commanding the forces in Ireland in the reign of queen Elizabeth, and not till after Henry the Sixth had been played, as may be seen by the conclusion of this play.

POPE.

The Life of Henry V.-The transactions comprised in this historical play commence about the latter end of the first, and terminate in the eighth year of this king's reign; when he married Katharine princess of France, and closed up the differences betwixt England and that crown. THEOBALD.

This play has many scenes of high dignity, and many of easy merriment. The character of the king is well supported, except in his courtship, where he has neither the vivacity of Hal, nor the grandeur of Henry. The humour of Pistol is very happily continued his character has perhaps been the model of all the bullies that have yet appeared on the English stage.

The lines given to the Chorus have many admirers; but the truth is, that in them a little may be praised, and much must be forgiven; nor can it be easily discovered why the intelligence given by the Chorus is more necessary in this play than in many others where it is omitted. The great defect of this play is the emptiness and narrowness of the last act, which a very little diligence might have easily avoided.

JOHNSON

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