Persons represented. mw KING HENRY V. DUKE OF GLOSTER, brother to the King. DUKE OF YORK, cousin to the King. EARL OF WESTMORELAND. EARL OF WARWICK. ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. BISHOP OF ELY. EARL OF CAMBRIDGE, a conspirator against the KING. SIR THOMAS GREY, a conspirator against the King. SIR THOMAS ERPINGHAM, an officer in King Henry's army. GOWER, an officer in King Henry's army. FLUELLEN, an officer in King Henry's army. JAMY, an officer in King Henry's army. COURT, a soldier in King Henry's army. WILLIAMS, a soldier in King Henry's army. NYM, formerly servant to Falstaff, now soldier in King Henry's army. A Herald. Chorus. CHARLES VI., King of France. LEWIS, the Dauphin. DUKE OF BURGUNDY. DUKE OF ORLEANS. DUKE OF BOURBON. THE CONSTABLE OF FRANCE. RAMBURES, a French lord. GRANDPRE, a French lord. Governor 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 SCENE,-In England and in France. INTRODUCTION. S Prince of Wales, Henry the Fifth gave no signs of those talents, which, as King of England, rendered him one of the most illustrious monarchs that ever sat on the throne of this country. His time was spent in debauchery of the lowest kind, and his companions were amongst the most dissipated and worthless of the people, and with them he was not ashamed to join in pursuits which merited the severest punishment of the law. No sooner, however, was the crown on his own head, and the reins of government in his own hands, than all this was changed. His wicked associates were discarded, and the wise ministers of his late father were taken into close friendship, amongst whom was Gascoigne, the Chief Justice, at whose hands in former years he had received heavy chastisement for some of his delinquencies. The first two years of his reign were spent in settling affairs at home, and more especially in executing the laws upon a new sect of heretics, called the Lollards, who had lately arisen in England, and one of the chief of whom was Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. He and many of his companions fell victims to the severity of the Church, and suffered death as the penalty of their offences both ecclesiastical and civil. But though the king was thus apparently zealous for the good of religion, he did not hesitate to cast longing eyes on the revenues of the monasteries, some of which he was about, at the instigation of his parliament, to seize upon; a measure, which was only averted by the remonstrance of the clergy; and even as it was, the revenues and lands of the alien priories, which depended on the abbeys in Normandy, were plundered by Henry; a step which was the first in that long course of sacrilege which followed, and which was completed by the dissolution of the abbeys and religious houses in the time of Henry VIII. At this period the disturbed state of France offered a tempting opportunity for its invasion by the English. Charles VI. had long since been deprived of his reason, with but few, if any, lucid intervals; and the contending factions of the dukes of Crleans and Burgundy, who had been appointed joint regents, served only to increase the disasters of that unfortunate kingdom. Moreover, the natural disposition of Henry led him to follow up those conquests which had been so gloriously achieved by his great-grandfather, Edward III.; added to which, there was the advice of his father, Henry IV., that he should rule the English by employing them in foreign warfare, thus preventing those intestine commotions which their restless spirits would give birth to at home. Influenced by all these reasons, Henry raised an army of about thirty thousand men, and prepared to embark for France from Southampton. But all his preparations were very nearly rendered useless by a conspiracy, which, with the Earl of Cambridge, Lord Scroop, and Sir Thomas Grey, as its chief supporters, proposed to dethrone Henry and to raise Mortimer, Earl of March, to the throne in his stead; it was, however, discovered in time, and the heads of it were put to death. Being freed from this danger the king set sail, and soon after landed near Harfleur, on the 14th of August, 1415, at the head of six thousand men-at-arms and twenty-four thousand foot, mostly archers. Harfleur was soon taken by the English; but afterwards, from the extreme heat of the weather, a plague broke out in the English army, and reduced its number to one half; upon which Henry offered to give up Harfleur if the French would allow him a safe passage to Calais, from which town he intended to return again to England. But by this time the French had mustered a strong force, consisting of sixty-four thousand men at least, and with this they thought that they could crush the paltry body of English, amounting to not more than fifteen thousand, and those worn out with sickness and want. Since, then, he could not make terms, Henry resolved to meet the enemy, trusting that, as at Cressy and at Poictiers, God would be pleased to give the victory to the few. He accordingly drew up his army near Agincourt, a village in Artois, and awaited the coming of the French under the Dauphin, the constable d'Albret, and the chief of the nobility of the country. The field of battle was so small that it did not allow room for the French to use their superior numbers, which, from being crowded into so confined a space, afforded excellent objects for the galling arrows of the English archers, who, thus throwing them into disorder, betook themselves to their battle-axes, and hewed their adversaries to pieces almost without resistance. Henry himself was in the thickest of the fight, and was near being killed several times, once in particular, when he met the Duke d'Alençon, and was felled to the ground by him, and was only rescued by the advance of his own guard, who came up and slew the duke. In the end, as is well known, a victory, the most extraordinary ever achieved, was declared for the English, who lost only forty men, amongst whom was the Duke of York, whilst the French had upwards of ten thousand slain, and fourteen thousand taken prisoners, including some of the chief princes and nobles of the land. After the Battle of Agincourt, Henry, unable for want of men and sufficient supplies to follow up his advantage thus gained, returned to England; but two years after, again perceiving that the disturbed condition of France offered him a tempting opportunity for a second invasion, he once more landed on her coasts with twenty-five thousand men, and everything yielded to him almost without opposition. After some time a treaty was concluded between the two countries, at Troyes, in which it was agreed that Henry should marry the Princess Catherine, and be considered heir of the French crown, to which on the death of Charles he was to succeed, and even during the life of that unfortunate monarch should take possession of Normandy, and some other of the most considerable provinces of France. Everything seemed to smile on the English monarch, more especially when, a year after his marriage with Catharine, she gave birth to a son, who was called by his father's name, and considered by every one as the undoubted heir to the throne of both kingdoms. Henry's course, however, now drew to a close just as he had attained the summit of his highest ambition. He was seized with a fistula, which, from the ignorance of the unskilful physicians of those days, soon proved fatal, and he expired on the 31st of August, 1422, at the early age of thirty-four, and after a short reign of only ten years. Henry the Fifth was evidently a favourite with Shakspeare, for we find him acting a prominent part in no less than three of his dramas. In the two first he is pourtrayed with all the frolicksome lightheartedness and dissipated revelry for which he was so famous in his early years; but amidst all affording us glimpses of that natural strength of character which he begins to exhibit on the field of Shrewsbury, and which was to shine forth in full glory on the plains of Agincourt. In our present play he draws him as gifted with every virtue, both of the preux chevalier and of the king; he is magnanimous, eloquent, pious, sincere; well skilled in all the arts of war, government, generalship, and policy; a lover of his country and of his people, and a faithful defender of their rights and liberties. a king, administering justice and protecting his throne from conspiracy, what can surpass the description of his conduct in the matter of Lord Scroop and his associates! He must punish them, indeed, but it is done in all the dignity of royal sorrow, and with nothing of private malice or revenge: he says to Lord Scroop; "I will weep for thee;" "For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like As And when he dismisses the conspirators, how is his justice tempered with dignified compassion: "God quit you in his mercy! Touching our person, seek we no revenge; But we our kingdom's safety must so tender, The subject of this drama was very difficult to be well treated, being suited more for epic than for dramatic poetry: and there was necessarily great danger lest the machinery should become heavy and unwieldy. But this danger has been met, and this difficulty over come, with Shakspeare's usual tact and felicity. It would have been impossible to have presented us with a detailed description of the several events of the reign of Henry, and so he has given us in each Act a vivid picture of those which might be deemed the more important; and then, lest these should seem to stand isolated and bare, he has introduced each Act by a prologue (in the technical language of that day, a chorus) which describes events necessary for the spectator to know, and which yet could not be easily set before his eyes. "These prologues," says Schlegel, "which unite epic pomp and solemnity with lyrical sublimity, and among which the description of the two camps before the Battle of Agincourt forms a most admirable night-piece, are intended to keep the spectators constantly in mind that the peculiar grandeur of the actions described cannot be developed on a narrow stage, and that they must therefore supply from their own imaginations the deficiencies of the representation. As the matter was not properly dramatic, Shakspeare chose to wander in the form also beyond the bounds of the species, and to sing, as a poetical herald, what he could not represent to the eye, rather than to cripple the progress of the action by putting long descriptions in the mouths of the dramatic personages." We have said that Henry is, in every sense of the word, the hero of this drama; but lest in describing his favourite he should weary us by dwelling upon one character, the poet has not failed to give us others which act as a strong relief to the principal figure in the picture. And, in doing this, he has introduced from his former plays characters which must have become favourites with his readers, thus anticipating and bespeaking their applause for them. Every one who has read the two parts of Henry IV. must be rejoiced at once again meeting his old friends Bardolph, Pistol, and Hostess Quickly; and he does not think their pleasantry diminished by being associated with the heavy Scotch captain, Jamy, and the hot-headed Irishman, Macmorris, and above all, the well-meaning, honourable, and brave, but eccentric and pedantic Welchman, Fluellen, all speaking in their own peculiar dialects. We would gladly, indeed, have seen more of Falstaff, according to the poet's promise, but we must not complain, since from Mrs. Quickly herself we have an almost unrivalled description of his death, which, whilst it excites a smile from its quaintness, cannot fail, at the same time, to call forth a sigh of pity and regret. In saying this, we are only reiterating what has been said by Dr. Johnson upon the last appearance of the comic personages of this drama: "the comic scenes," he says, are now at an end, and all the comic personages are now dismissed. Falstaff and Mrs. Quickly are dead; Nym and Bardolph are hanged Pistol is beaten into obscurity. I believe every reader regrets their departure." 66 In conclusion, we must make another quotation from our favourite German critic, Shakspeare's greatest admirer: "However much," he says, "Shakspeare celebrates the French conquest of Henry, still he has not omitted to hint, after his way, the secret springs of the undertaking. Henry was in want of foreign war to secure himself on the throne; the clergy also wished to keep him employed abroad, |