Re-enter Davy. Davy. There is a dish of leather-coats for you. [Setting them before Bardolph.

Shal. Davy,Davy. Your worship?--I'll be with you straight. [To Bard.]-A cup of wine, sir?

Sil. A cup of wine, that's brisk and fine,

And drink unto the leman? mine;

And a merry heart lives long-a.

Fal. Well said, master Silence.

[Singing.

Sil. And we shall be merry ;-now comes in the sweet of the night.

Fal. Health and long life to you, master Silence.
Sil. Fill the cup, and let it come;

I'll pledge you a mile to the bottom.
Shal. Honest Bardolph, welcome: If thou want-
est any thing, and wilt not call, beshrew thy heart.
-Welcome, my little tiny thief; [To the Page.]
and welcome, indeed, too.-I'll drink to master
Bardolph, and to all the cavaleroes about London.
Davy. I hope to see London once ere I die.
Bard. An I might see you there, Davy,-
Shal. By the mass, you'll crack a quart together.
Ha! will you not, master Bardolph ?

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 A

Is't not so?

Samingo.s

Fal. 'Tis so.

Fal. O base Assyrian knight, what is thy news?
Let king Cophetua know the truth thereof.
Sil. And Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John.

[Sings.

Pist. Shall dunghill curs confront the Helicons?
And shall good news be baffled?

Then, Pistol, lay thy head in Furies' lap.
Shal. Honest gentlemen, I know not your breed-
ing.

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.
Pist.

A foutra for thine office!-
Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is king;
Harry the fifth's the man. I speak the truth:
When Pistol lies, do this; and fig me, like
The bragging Spaniard.

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 in the land, 'tis thine.-Pistol, I will doublecharge thee with dignities.

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:-O, sweet Pistol :-Away, Bardolph. [Erit 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 my commandment.

Sil. Is't so? Why, then say, an old man can do Happy are they which have been my friends; and

somewhat.

Re-enter Davy.

wo to my lord chief justice!

Pist. Let vultures vile seize on his lungs also! Where is the life that late Iled? say they:

Davy. An it please your worship, there's one Why, here it is; Welcome these pleasant days, Pistol come from the court with news. Fal. From the court? let him come in.

[Exeunt. SCENE IV-London. A street. Enter Beadles, dragging in Hostess Quickly, and Doll Tearsheet.

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, warrant her: There hath been a man or two lately killed about her.

Doll. Nut-hook, nut-hook,6 you e. 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!

cushions again; you have but eleven now. Come, 1 Bead. If it do, you shall have a dozen of I charge you both go with me; for the man is dead, that you and Pistol beat among you.

(5) It should be Domingo; it is part of a song in one of Nashe's plays.

(6) A term of reproach for a catchpoll.
(7) To stuff her out to counterfeit pregnancy.

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 ease.

Doll. Come, you rogue, come; bring me to a justice.

Host. Ay; come, you starved blood-hound.
Doll. Goodman death! goodman bones!
Host. Thou atomy, thou!

Doll. Come, you thin thing; come, you rascal!
1 Bead. Very well.
[Exeunt.
SCENE V-A public place near Westminster
Abbey. Enter two Grooms, strewing rushes.
1 Groom. More rushes, more rushes.
2 Groom. The trumpets have sounded twice.
1 Groom. It will be two o'clock ere they come
from the coronation: Despatch, despatch.
[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. Fal. Come here, Pistol; stand behind me.-O, if I had had time to have made new liveries, I

would have bestowed the thousand pound I borrowed of you. [To Shallow.] But 'tis no matter; this poor show doth better: this doth infer the zeal I had to see him.

tience to shift me.

Shal. It is most certain.

Pist. The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp4 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;

gape

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.
Make less thy body, hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know, the grave doth
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,
We will,-according to your strength, and quali-
ties,-

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 Fal. But to stand stained with travel, and sweat-your doublet, and stuff me out with straw. I being with desire to see him thinking of nothing seech you, good sir John, let me have five hundred else; putting all affairs else in oblivion; as if there of my thousand. were nothing else to be done, but to see him. Pist. 'Tis semper idem, for absque hoc nihil est:3 'Tis all in every part.

Shal 'Tis so, indeed.

Pist. My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver,
And make thee rage.

Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts,
Is in base durance, and contagious prison;
Haul'd thither

By most mechanical and dirty hand :—

Rouse up revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto's

snake,

For Doll is in; Pistol speaks nought but truth.
Fal. I will deliver her.

[Shouts within, and the trumpets sound. Pist. There roar'd the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds.

Enter the King and his train, the Chief Justice" among them.

Fal. God save thy grace, king Hal! my royal Hal!

(1) Beadles usually wore a blue livery. (2) Short cloaks.

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

SECOND PART OF KING HENRY IV.

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.

Act V.

so much delight. The great events are interesting, the First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. Perhaps no author has ever, in two plays, afforded 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,

As far as France: I heard a bird so sing,
Whose music, to my thinking, pleas'd the king.
Come, will you hence?

EPILOGUE,

SPOKEN BY A DANCER.

[Exeunt.

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.

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 is dissipated by levity. In his idle hours he is rather loose than wicked; and when the occasion obscured by negligence, and whose understanding forces out his latent qualities, he is great without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is roused into a hero, and the hero again reposes in the trifler. The character is great, original, and just. some, and has only the soldier's virtues, generosity and courage, Percy is a rugged soldier, choleric and quarrel

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: how shall I describe thee? thou compound of sense But Falstaff! unimitated, unimitable Falstaff! which if, like an ill venture, it come unluckily and vice; of sense which may be admired, but not home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. esteemed; of vice which may be despised, but Here, I promised you, I would be, and here I com-hardly detested. Falstaff is a character loaded mit my body to your mercies: bate me some, and with faults, and with those faults which naturally I will pay you some, and, as most debtors do, pro-produce contempt. He is a thief and a glutton, a mise you infinitely. If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me,weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timocoward and a boaster; always ready to cheat the will you command me to use my legs? and yet that rous, and insult the defenceless. were but light payment,-to dance out of your debt.ous and malignant, he satirizes in their absence But a good conscience will make any possible satis- those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar At once obsequifaction, and so will I. have forgiven me; if the gentlemen will not, then this familiarity he is so proud, as not only to be All the gentlewomen here with the prince only as an agent of vice; but of the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, supercilious and haughty with common men, but which was never seen before in such an assembly. to think his interest of importance to the duke of One word more, I beseech you. If you be not Lancaster. Yet the man thus corrupt, thus despitoo much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author cable, makes himself necessary to the prince that will continue the story, with sir John in it, and despises him, by the most pleasing of all qualities, make you merry with fair Katharine of France: perpetual gaiety; by an unfailing power of exciting where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard wit is not of the splendid or ambitious kind, but opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is consists in easy scapes and sallies of levity, which not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs make sport, but raise no envy. It must be obare too, I will bid you good night: and so kneel served, that he is stained with no enormous or sandown before you;-but, indeed, to pray for the guinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not so offensive but that it may be borne for his mirth.

queen.

The moral to be drawn from this representation I fancy every reader, when he ends this play. neither wit nor honesty ought to think themselves is, that no man is more dangerous than he that, with cries out with Desdemona, 'O most lame and im-safe with such a companion, when they see Henry a will to corrupt, hath the power to please; and that potent conclusion! As this play was not, to our seduced by Falstaff. knowledge, divided into acts by the author, I could be content to conclude it with the death of Henry the Fourth:

JOHNSON.

In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.' Mr. Upton thinks these two plays improperly called the First and Second Parts of Henry the These scenes, which now make the fifth act of peaceful settlement of Henry in the kingdom by Henry the Fourth, might then be the first of Hen- the defeat of the rebels. This is hardly true; for Fourth. The first play ends, he says, with the ry the Fifth; but the truth is, that they do not the rebels are not yet finally suppressed. The unite very commodiously to either play. When second, he tells us, shows Henry the Fifth in the these plays were represented, I believe they ended various lights of a good-natured rake, till, on his as they are now ended in the books; but Shak- father's death, he assumes a more manly character. speare seems to have designed that the whole series This is true; but this representation gives us no of action, from the beginning of Richard the Se-idea of a dramatic action. These two plays will cond, 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.

None of Shakspeare's plays are more read than

appear to every reader, who shall peruse them
without ambition of critical discoveries, to be so
connected, that the second is merely a sequel to
to be one.
the first; to be two, only because they are too long
JOHNSON

Duke of Exeter, uncle to the King.

Duke of York, cousin to the King.

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.

conspirators against the
King.

Earl of Cambridge,
Lord Scroop,
Sir Thomas Grey,
Sir Thomas Erpingham, Gower, Fluellen, Mac-
morris, Jamy, officers in King Henry's army.
Bates, Court, Williams, soldiers in the same.
Nym, Bardolph, Pistol, formerly servants to Fal-
staff, now soldiers in the same.

Boy, servant to them. A Herald. Chorus.

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, a 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.

Enter Chorus.

O, for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention!
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and, at his heels,
Leash'd in, like hounds, should famine, sword, and
fire,

Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirit, that hath dar'd,
On this unworthy scaffold, to bring forth
So great an object: Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O, the very casques,2
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest, in little place, a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work:
Suppose, within the girdle of these walls
Are now confin'd two mighty monarchies,
Whose high-upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous, narrow ocean parts asunder.
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts:
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance:

Think, when we talk of horses, that you see
them

Printing their proud hoofs i'the receiving earth:
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our

kings,

Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times;
Turning the accomplishments of many years
Into an hour-glass; For the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who, prologue-like, your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

(1) An allusion to the circular form of the theatre.

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?
Cant. It must be thought on. If it pass against us,
We lose the better half of our possession:
For all the temporal lands, which men devout
By testament have given to the church,
Would they strip from us; being valued thus,-
As much as would maintain, to the king's honour,
Full fifteen earls, and fifteen hundred knights;
Six thousand and two hundred good esquires;
And, to relief of lazars, and weak age,
Of indigent faint souls, past corporal toil,
A hundred alms-houses, right well supplied;
And to the coffers of the king beside,

A thousand pounds by the year: Thus runs the bill.
Ely. This would drink deep.

Cant.

'Twould drink the cup and all. Ely. But what prevention?

Cant. The king is full of grace, and fair regard.
Ely. And a true lover of the holy church.
Cant The courses of his youth promis'd it not.
The breath no sooner left his father's body,
But that his wildness, mortified in him,
Seem'd to die too: yea, at that very moment,
Consideration like an angel came,
And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him;
Leaving his body as a paradise,

To envelop and contain celestial spirits.
Never was such a sudden scholar made:

(2) Helmets. (3) Powers of fancy. (4) Debate.

7

Never came reformation in a flood,
With such a heady current, scouring faults;
Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness
So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,
As in this king.

Ely. We are blessed in the change.
Cant. Hear him but reason in divinity,
And, all-admiring, with an inward wish
You would desire, the king were made a prelate :
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
You would say,-it hath been all-in-all his study:
List his discourse of war, and you shall bear
A fearful battle render'd you in music:
Turn him to any cause of policy,

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still,

And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,
To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences;
So that the art and practic part of life
Must be the mistress to this theoric :2
Which is a wonder, how his grace should glean it,
Since his addiction was to courses vain :
His companies unletter'd, rude, and shallow;
His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports;
And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.

Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the
nettle ;

And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best,
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality;
And so the prince obscur'd his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt,
Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
Unseen, yet crescive4 in his faculty.

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
Urg'd by the commons? Doth his majesty
Incline to it, or no?

Cant.

He seems indifferent;
Or, rather, swaying more upon our part,
Than cherishing the exhibiters against us:
For I have made an offer to his majesty,-
Upon our spiritual convocation;
And in regard of causes now in hand,
Which I have open'd to his grace at large,
As touching France,-to give a greater sum
Than ever at one time the clergy yet
Did to his predecessors part withal.

Ely. How did this offer seem receiv'd, my lord?
Cant. With good acceptance of his majesty;
Save, that there was not time enough to hear
(As, I perceiv'd, his grace would fain have done,)
The severals, and unhidden passages,

Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms;
And, generally, to the crown and seat of France,
Deriv'd from Edward, his great-grandfather.
Ely. What was the impediment that broke
this off?

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.
Ely. I'll wait upon you; and I long to hear it.
[Exeunt.

(1) Listen to. (2) Theory. (3) Companions.

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
resolv'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.

K. Hen.

Cant. God, and his angels, guard your sacred
throne,
And make you long become it!
Sure, we thank you.
And justly and religiously unfold,
My learned lord, we pray you to proceed;
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
Suits not in native colours with the truth;
With opening titles miscreate, whose right
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 wash'd
As pure as sin with baptism.

Cant. Then hear me, gracious sovereign,—and

you peers,

That owe your lives, your faith, and services,
To this imperial throne ;-There is no bar
To make against your highness' claim to France,
But this, which they produce from Pharamond,-
In terram Salicam mulieres nè succedant,
No woman shall succeed in Salique land:
To be the realm of France, and Pharamond
Which Salique land the French unjustly gloze,
The founder of this law and female bar.
That the land Salique lies in Germany,
Yet their own authors faithfully affirm,
Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe:
Where Charles the great, having subdued the
Saxons,

There left behind and settled certain French;
Who, holding in disdain the German women,
Establish'd there this law,-to wit, no female
For some dishonest manners of their life,
Should be inheritrix in Salique land;
Which Salique, as I said, 'twixt Elbe and Sala,
Is at this day in Germany call'd-Meisen.
Thus doth it well appear, the Salique law
Was not devised for the realm of France:
Nor did the French possess the Salique land
Until four hundred one and twenty years
After defunction of king Pharamond,
(4) Increasing.

(5) Spurious.

(6) Explain