ONE of Shakespeare's plays are

6

more read than the First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth.' Perhaps no Author has ever in two plays afforded so much delight. The great events are interesting, for the fate of kingdoms depend upon them; the slighter occurrences are diverting, and except one or two sufficiently probable; the incidents are multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention, and the characters are diversified with the utmost nicety of discernment and the profoundest skill in the nature of man."

Thus far, Dr. Johnson, the most sensible though not the most painstaking of the old-fashioned Shakespearean commentators. The criticism, such as it is, covers the ground, though it does not essay to dig deeply into it.

6

66

What was doubtless true in 1764 probably remains true in 1904, "None of Shakespeare's plays are more read than the First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth." We still retain as a people enough of our feelings and our character to relish the histories of our country as narrated to us by Shakespeare, but we need to be reminded by Landor1 that it is only a people who do retain their feelings and their character that can relish Shakespeare's historical dramas in perfection. "Perhaps no Author has ever in two plays afforded so much delight." By the Lord, thou sayest true, lad." Whatever else may be questionable, so much at least is certain. But who is the great breeder of this delight, the father of this infinite merriment? Wherein do we rejoice greatly? It is not when we read of the "sad bloody hour" spent at Holmedon, nor of the day of Shrewsbury fight when the South Wind, by "his hollow whispering in the leaves," foretold the tempest. The “great events" may be interesting, having dependent upon them "the fate of kingdoms"; but these are not the things that have made these two plays the very lodestars of humour, wit, and social eloquence. Of course they are not. The thing that has done this is as plain as the road between London and St. Albans. There are, it may be, secrets still hidden in the plays of Shakespeare as there are said to be in Holy Writ, but the fat knight is not one of them. No need to drag him from behind the arras, where he lies fast asleep, snorting like a horse. We all have known him, have delighted in him- have even loved him, the scandalous old man, 1 66 Imaginary Conversations," "Milton and Andrew Marvell."

from the days of our most innocent youth till now when, like him, we are old "the more's the pity."

From the supreme moment, one of the greatest in the history of the English mind, when the second scene of the First Act of the "First Part of Henry the Fourth' first opened and disclosed to the eyes of a London audience "a room in the King's palace," “Enter Henry, Prince of Wales and Falstaff," it has been found in vain to contend with this " power behind the throne," or to dispute the dominancy over both mind and imagination of this wicked old man. As it was in 1598, so it is to-day. The world has grown bigger and older — but it matters not. However big the world may be, Falstaff's wit can overflow it, and however old it may grow, Sir John himself, though "blasted with antiquity," is still young.

Well, I cannot last ever, but it was always yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. If you will needs say I am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is. I were better to be eaten to death with rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion."

Some good things cannot be made too common, though we have still the trick Sir John complained of, and Falstaff's wit is as fresh as ever. There can be no rest for him he must go on making men laugh till the last syllable of recorded time. "Why, Hal, 't is my vocation, Hal; 't is no sin for a man to labour in his vocation." Literature is full of paradoxes. Falstaff (as is indeed

befitting) is the biggest of them. Never was Author less of an Author than Shakespeare, the greatest of Authors. Although he has peopled a whole world for us, and created more characters than any other, he never, as Hazlitt well said, "committed himself" to any of them. He does not fall in love with his own creatures, after a lamentably prevalent fashion, and keep sticking in a word here and a word there in order to misdirect the reader's judgment, and secure a verdict against the evidence. Shakespeare was incapable of such egotistical folly. He has no prejudices — Hazlitt once more Hazlitt once more-"for or against his characters." There they are-you may listen to them, see what they do, and hear what others who knew them say about them. He lets you off nothing, and extenuates naught. If you love Falstaff, and are angry with the old lord of the Council who rated him in the street, or with the Lord Chief Justice who sent him to the Fleet Prison, and, most of all, with his sweet Hal, "King Hal - my royal Hal," for cutting him so severely in a public place near Westminster Abbey, you have only yourself to blame; and if you should ever repent (which is most unlikely), you cannot call Shakespeare "the villainous abominable misleader" of your youth, for has he not put those very words in Prince Henry's mouth and applied them to "that old white-bearded Satan,” Falstaff himself?

The paradox is this-how comes it about that the character of Falstaff is even tolerable to us? "Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it? wherein

cunning, but in craft? wherein crafty, but in villainy? wherein villainous, but in all things? wherein worthy, but in nothing?" Which of us will undertake to answer this catechism? "But, sirrah, there is no room for faith, truth, nor honesty in this bosom of thine." Can any one of us reply there was? No generous action or thought is ever attributed to Falstaff from first to last. He wins affection, it is true, but Shakespeare, at all events, gives us no hint that he ever showed any. His corruption was as deep as the pit of hell, and his heartlessness is displayed with a hand that never flinches. Falstaff's recruiting is hardly a merry tale.

"Prince. But tell me, Jack, whose fellows are these that come after?

Fal. Mine, Hal, mine.

Prince. I did never see such pitiful rascals.

Fal. Tut, tut! good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they'll fill a pit as well as better: tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.

The poor devils met their fate in the fight near Shrewsbury.

"Fal. I have led my ragamuffins where they are peppered: there's not three of my hundred and fifty left alive; and they are for the town's end, to beg during life."

The incident of the boy the Prince gave Falstaff is a fine example of the method of Shakespeare's stern judgment upon men's cruelty and indifference. What a mercy it is no one can cast it in Shakespeare's teeth that he was a Puritan or had a conscience of any particular brand!