Fal. O base Assyrian knight, what is thy news 7 Sil. And we shall be merry ;-now comes in the sweet of the night. Fal. Health and long life to you, master Silence. I'll pledge you a mile to the bottom. Bard. Yes, sir, in a pottle-pot. Shal. I thank thee:-The knave will stick by thee, I can assure thee that: he will not out; he is true bred. Bard. And I'll stick by him, sir. Shal. Why, there spoke a king. Lack nothing: be merry. Knocking heard.] Look who's at door there: Ho! who knocks? [Exit Davy. Fal. Why, now you have done me right. [To Silence, who drinks a bumper. Sil. [Singing.] Do me right, And dub me knight: Is't not so? Samingo. Fal. 'Tis so. [Sings. Pist. Shall dunghill curs confront the Helicons? And shall good news be batlled? Then, Pistol, lay thy head in Furies' lap. Shal. Honest gentleman, I know not your breeding. Pist. Why then, lament therefore. Shal. Give me pardon, sir;-If, sir, you come with news from the court, I take it, there is but two ways; either to utter them, or to conceal them. I am, sir, under the king, in some authority. Pist. Under which king, Bezonian? speak, or die. Shal. Under king Harry. Pist. Harry the fourth? or fifth? Shal. Harry the fourth. A foutra for thine office! Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is king; Fal. What is the old king dead? Pist. As nail in door: The things I speak are just. Fal. Away, Bardolph; saddle my horse.-Master Robert Shallow, choose what office thou wilt thee with dignities. in the land, 'tis thine.-Pistol, I will double-charge Bard. O joyful day!-I would not take a knighthood for my fortune. Pist. What? I do bring good news? Fal. Carry master Silence to bed.—Master Shallow, my lord Shallow, be what thou wilt, I am fortune's steward. Get on thy boots; we'll ride all night:-0, sweet Pistol:-Away, Bardolph. [Exit Bardolph.]-Come, Pistol, utter more to me; and, withal, devise something, to do thyself good.— Boot, boot, master Shallow; I know, the young king is sick for me. Let us take any man's horses; the laws of England are at iny commandment, Happy are they which have been my friends; and Sil. Is't so? Why, then say, an old man can do wo to my lord chief justice! somewhat.. Puff in thy teeth, most recreant coward base!- Pist. A foutra for the world, and worldlings base! (1) Apples commonly called russetines. (4) He who drank a bumper on his knees to the health of nis mistress, was dubbed a knight for the| evening. Pist. Let vultures vile seize on his lungs also! SCENE IV.-London. A street. Enter Beadles, Host. No, thou arrant knave; I would I might die, that I might have thee hanged: thou hast drawn my shoulder out of joint. 1 Bead. The constables have delivered her over to me; and she shall have whipping-cheer enough, I warrant her: There hath been a man or two lately killed about her. Doil. Nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie. Come on; I'll tell thee what, thou damned tripe-visaged rascal; an the child I now go with, do miscarry, thou hadst better thou hadst struck thy mother, thou paper-faced villain. Host. O the Lord, that sir John were come! he would make this a bloody day to somebody. But I pray God the fruit of her womb miscarry! 1 Bead. If it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions' again; you have but eleven now. Come, I charge you both go with me; for the man is dead, that you and Pistol beat among you. Doll. I'll tell thee what, thou thin man in a censer! I will have you as soundly swinged for this, you blue-bottle rogue! you filthy famished correctioner! if you be not swinged, I'll forswear halfkirtles.2 1 Bead. Come, come, you she knight-errant, come. Host. O, that right should thus overcome might! Well; of sufferance comes case. Doll. Come, you rogue, come; bring me to a justice. Host. Ay; come, you starved blood-hound. Doll. Come, you thin thing; come, you rascal! SCENE V-A public place near Westminster Pist. The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame! Fal. God save thee, my sweet boy! King. My lord chief justice, speak to that vain man. Ch. Just. Have you your wits? know you what 'tis you speak? Fal. My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart! King. I know thee not, old man: Fall to thy prayers; How ill white hairs become a fool, and jester! I have long dream'd of such a kind of man, So surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane; But, being awake, I do despise my dream. [Exeunt. Make less thy body, hence, and more thy grace; Leave gormandizing; know, the grave doth gape For thee thrice wider than for other men:Reply not to me with a fool-born jest ; Presume not, that I am the thing I was: For heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turn'd away my former self; So will I those that kept me company. When thou dost hear I am as I have been, Approach me; and thou shalt be as thou wast, The tutor and the feeder of my riots: Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death,As I have done the rest of my misleaders,Not to come near our person by ten mile. 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, Fal. Come here, Pistol; stand behind mc.-O, We will,-according to your strength, and qualiif I had had time to have made new liveries, I [Exeunt Grooms. Enter Falstaff, Shallow, Pistol, Bardolph, and the Page. Fal. Stand here by me, master Robert Shallow; I will make the king do you grace: I will leer upon him, as 'a comes by; and do but mark the countenance that he will give me. Pist. God bless thy lungs, good knight. ties,lord, would have bestowed the thousand pound I bor- Give you advancement.-Be it your charge, my rowed of you. [To Shallow.] But 'tis no matter; this poor show doth better: this doth infer the zeal I had to see him. To see perform'd the tenor of our word.- 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 Fal. But to stand stained with travel, and sweat-me your doublet, and stuff me out with straw. I ing with desire to see him thinking of nothing beseech you, good sir John, let me have five hunelse: putting all affairs else in oblivion; as if there dred of my thousand. were nothing else to be done, but to see him. 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 P. John, the Chief Justice, Officers, &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 Appear more wise and modest to the world. P. John. The king hath call'd his parliament, Ch. Just. He hath. 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 depends upon them; the slighter occurrences are diverting, and, except one P. John. I will lay odds,-that, ere this year or two, sufficiently probable; the incidents are expire, We bear our civil swords, and native fire, EPILOGUE, SPOKEN BY A DANCER. multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention; and the characters diversified with the utmost nicety of discernment, and the profoundest skill in the nature of man. [Exeunt. The prince, who is the hero both of the comic and tragic part, is a young man of great abilities, and violent passions, whose sentiments are right, though his actions are wrong; whose virtues are obscured by negligence, and whose understanding FIRST, my fear; then, my court'sy; last, my is dissipated by levity. In his idle hours he is speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my court'sy, rather loose than wicked; and when the occasion my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If forces out his latent qualities, he is great without you look for a good specch now, you undo me: for effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is what I have to say, is of mine own making; and roused into a hero, and the hero again reposes in what, indeed, I should say, will, I doubt, prove the triller. The character is great, original, and just. mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to Percy is a rugged soldier, choleric and quarrelthe venture.-Be it known to you, (as it is very some, and has only the soldier's virtues, generosity well,) I was lately here in the end of a displeasing and courage. play, to pray your patience for it, and to promise But Falstaff! unimitated, unimitable Falstaff”! you a better. I did mean, indeed, to pay you with how shall I describe thee? thou compound of sense this; which if, like an ill venture, it come unluck-and vice; of sense which may be admired, but not ily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, esteemed; of vice which may be despised, but lose. Here, I promised you, I would be, and here hardly detested. Falstaff is a character loaded I commit my body to your mercies: bate me some, with faults, and with those faults which naturally and I will pay you some, and, as most debtors do, produce contempt. He is a thief and a glutton, a promise you infinitely. coward and a boaster; always ready to cheat the If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timowill you command me to use my legs? and yet rous, and insult the defenceless. At once obsequithat were but light payment,-to dance out of your ous and malignant, he satirizes in their absence debt. But a good conscience will make any possi-those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar ble satisfaction, and so will I. All the gentlewo- with the prince only as an agent of vice; but of men here have forgiven me; if the gentlemen will this familiarity he is so proud, as not only to be not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gen-supercilious and haughty with common men, but tlewomen, which was never seen before in such an to think his interest of importance to the duke of assembly. Lancaster. Yet the man thus corrupt, thus despi One word more, I beseech you. If you be not cable, makes himself necessary to the prince that too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author despises him, by the most pleasing of all qualities, will continue the story, with sir John in it, and perpetual gaiety; by an unfailing power of exciting make you merry with fair Katharine of France: laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his 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 Desdemona, 'O most lame and im potent 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: wit is not of the splendid or ambitious kind, but consists in easy scapes and sallies of levity, which make sport, but raise no envy. It must be observed, that he is stained with no enormous or sanguinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not so offensive but that it may be borne for his mirth. The moral to be drawn from this representation is, that no man is more dangerous than he that, with a will to corrupt, hath the power to please; and that neither wit nor honesty ought to think themselves safe with such a companion, when they sce Henry seduced by Falstaff. JOHNSON. called the First and Second Parts of Henry the Mr. Upton thinks these two plays improperly Fourth. The first play ends, he says, with the 'In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.' peaceful settlement of Henry in the kingdom by These scenes, which now make the fifth act of the defeat of the rebels. This is hardly true; for Henry the Fourth, might then be the first of Henry the rebels are not yet finally suppressed. The the Fifth; but the truth is, that they do not unite second, he tells us, shows Henry the Fifth in the very commodiously to either play. When these various lights of a good-natured rake, till, on his plays were represented, I believe they ended as they father's death, he assumes a more manly character. are now ended in the books; but Shakspeare seems This is true; but this representation gives us no to have designed that the whole series of action, idea of a dramatic action. These two plays will from the beginning of Richard the Second, to the appear to every reader, who shall peruse them end of Henry the Fifth, should be considered by without ambition of critical discoveries, to be sa the reader as one work upon one plan, only broken connected, that the second is merely a sequel to into parts by the necessity of exhibition. the first; to be two, only because they are too JOHNSON. None of Shakspeare's plays are more read than long to be one. Duke of York, cousin to the king. Duke of Exeter, unde to the king. Charles the Sixth, king of France. Lewis, the dauphin. Dukes of Burgundy, Orleans, and Bourbon. The Constable of France. Rambures, and Grandpre, French lords. Earls of Salisbury, Westmoreland, and Warwick. Governor of Harfleur. Montjoy, a French herald. Archbishop of Canterbury. Bishop of Ely. Earl of Cambridge, Lord Scroop, Sir Thomas Grey, Ambassadors to the king of England. Isabel, queen of France. conspirators against the king. Katharine, daughter of Charles and Isabel. Sir Thomas Erpingham, Gower, Fluellen, Mac-Quickly, Pistol's wife, a hostess. Lords, ladies, officers, French and English soldiers, Enter Chorus. O, FOR a muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention! 2 Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all, Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times; (1) An allusion to the circular form of the theatre. The Scene, at the beginning of the play, lies in England; but afterwards, wholly in France. ACT I. SCENE I-London. An ante-chamber in the King's palace. Enter the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Bishop of Ely. Canterbury. MY lord, I'll tell you,-that self bill is urg'd, Which, in the eleventh year o'the last king's reign Was like, and had indeed against us pass'd, But that the scambling and unquiet time Did push it out of further question.4 Ely. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now? Of indigent faint souls, past corporal toil, A thousand pounds by the year: Thus runs the bill, Cant. "Twould drink the cup and all. To envelop and contain celestial spirits. (2) Helmets. (3) Powers of fancy. (4) Debate, Never came reformation in a flood, Ely. Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the net- And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best, And so the prince obscur'd his contemplation Cant. It must be so: for miracles are ceas'd; And therefore we must needs admit the means, How things are perfected. Ely. But, my good lord, How now for mitigation of this bill Cant. He seems indifferent; Ely. How did this offer seem receiv'd, my lord? Cant. The French ambassador, upon that instant, Crav'd audience: and the hour, I think, is come, To give him hearing: Is it four o'clock? Ely. It is. Cant. Then go we in, to know his embassy; Which I could, with a ready guess, declare, Before the Frenchman speak a word of it. Elu. I'll wait upon you; and I long to hear it. [Exeunt. (1) Listen to. (2) Theory. (3) Companions. SCENE 11-The same. A room of state in the same. Enter King Henry, Gloster, Bedford, Exeter, Warwick, Westmoreland, und attend ants. K. Hen. Where is my gracious lord of Canterbury? Exe. Not here in presence. K. Hen. Send for him, good uncle. West. Shall we call in the ambassador, my liege? K. Hen. Not yet, my cousin; we would be e solv'd, Before we hear him, of some things of weight, That task our thoughts, concerning us and France. Enter the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Bishop of Ely. Cant. God, and his angels, guard your sacred throne, And make you long become it! K. Hen. Sure, we thank you My learned lord, we pray you to proceed; And justly and religiously unfold, Why the law Salique, that they have in France, Or should, or should not, bar us in our claim. And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord, That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading, Or nicely charge your understanding soul With opening titles miscreate, whose right Suits not in native colours with the truth; For God doth know, how many, now in health, Shall drop their blood in approbation Of what your reverence shall incite us to: Therefore take heed how you impawn our person, How you awake the sleeping sword of war; We charge you in the name of God, take heed: For never two such kingdoms did contend, Without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops Are every one a wo, a sore complaint, 'Gainst him, whose wrongs give edge unto the swords That make such waste in brief mortality. Under this conjuration, speak, my lord: And we will hear, note, and believe in heart, That what you speak is in your conscience washi'd As pure as sin with baptism. Cant. Then hear nie, gracious sovereign,-and you peers, That owe your lives, your faith, and services, There left behind and settled certain French; (4) Increasing. (5) Spurious. (6) Explain. |