"How now! rain within doors, and none abroad! How doth the king?" But his gaiety is presently subdued :— The Prince and Falstaff never again meet in | We are approaching that final scene when fellowship. Falstaff goes to the wars; and the reformation of the Prince is to be fully he throws a spirit into those scenes of accomplished in the spectacle of his father's treachery and bloodshed which we look for deathbed. The King has swooned. The in vain amidst the policy of Westmoreland prince enters gaily :— and the solemnity of John of Lancaster. In Falstaff and his recruits we see the undercurrent of all warfare-the things of common life that are mixed up with great and fearful events the ludicrous by the side of the tragic. The scene of Falstaff choosing his recruits-the corruption of Bardolphthe defence of that corruption by his most impudent captain-the amazement of the justices the different tempers with which the recruits meet their lot-furnish altogether one of the richest realities of this un equalled drama. We here see how war, and especially civil war, presses upon the comforts even of the lowliest: "My old dame will be undone now for one to do her husbandry." Is he who won the crown by civil tumult, and who wears it uneasily as the consequence of his usurpation is he happier than the peasant who is dragged from his hut to fight in a cause which he neither cares for nor understands? Beautifully has Shakspere shown us what happiness Bolingbroke gained by the deposition of Richard : "How many thousand of my poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses in forgetfulness?" "I will sit and watch here by the king." The French critic (a very unfit representative of the present state of opinion in France as to the merits of Shakspere) gives us the following most egregious description of the scene which follows:-"The King wakes. He calls out-misses his crown-commands the Prince to come to him-and overwhelms him with reproaches for that impatience to seize upon his inheritance which will not wait even till his father's body is cold. Henry, with an hypocrisy worse than the action which he would defend, pretends only to have taken away the crown through indignation that it had shortened the days of his father!" This is to read poetry in a literal spirit. We commend the fourth scene of the fourth act (Part II.) to our readers, without another remark that may weaken the force of M. Paul Duport's objections. Through that great trial which has for awhile softened and purified the hearts of most men-the death of a father-has Henry passed. But he has also put on the state of a king. He has done so amidst the remembrances and fears of his brothers and advisers : "You all look strangely on me." Henry is a politic and wise king; but he is The scene with the Lord Chief Justice en a melancholy man. The conduct of the Prince still lies heavy at his heart, and his grief "Stretches itself beyond the hour of death," in dread of the "rotten times" that would ensue when the Prince's riot hath no curb. The King too is "much ill;" "The incessant care and labour of his mind Hath wrought the mure, that should confine it in, sues,-written with all Shakspere's rhetorical "The tide of blood in me So thin, that life looks through, and will Falstaff. The poet has most skilfully contrived to bring out the worst parts of Fal break out." staff's character when he learns the death of Henry IV. his presumption-his rapacity -his evil determinations: "Let us take any man's horses ;-the laws of England are at my commandment. Happy are they which have been my friends; and woe to my lord chief justice." When he plants himself in the way of the coronation procession to "leer" upon the King-when he exclaims "God save thy grace, king Hal,”—Henry was compelled to assert his consistency by his severity. Warburton has truly observed that, in his homily to Falstaff, Henry makes a trip, and is sliding into his old habit of laughing at Falstaff's bulk : The very struggle, in this moment of trial, which the king had between his old habits and affections and his new duties, demands this harshness. We understand from Prince John that, though Falstaff is taken to the Fleet, he is not to be utterly deserted :— "He hath intent, his wonted followers The dramatic action is complete. Henry of Monmouth has passed through the dangerous trial of learning the great lessons of humanity amidst men with whom his follies "know, the grave doth gape made him an equal. The stains of this con For thee thrice wider than for other men." tact were on the surface. His heart was first elevated by ambition-then purified by sorrow—and so "Consideration like an angel came, And whipp'd th' offending Adam out of him." CHAPTER III. KING HENRY V. 'HENRY V.' was first printed in 1600, under the following title: The Chronicle History of Henry the Fift, with his battell fought at Agin Court in France. Together with auntient Pistoll.' This copy, which differs most materially from the text of the folio, was reprinted in 1602, and again in 1608. The quarto of 1600 runs only to 1800 lines; whilst the lines in the folio edition amount to 3500. Not only is the play thus augmented by the additions of the choruses and new scenes, but there is scarcely a speech, from the first scene to the last, which is not elaborated. In this elaboration the old materials are very carefully used up; but they are so thoroughly refitted and dovetailed with what is new, that the operation can only be compared to the work of a skilful architect, who, having an ancient mansion to enlarge and beautify, with a strict regard to its original character, preserves every feature of the structure, under other combinations, with such marvellous skill, that no unity of principle is violated, and the whole has the effect of a restoration in which the new and the old are undistinguishable. The alterations are so manifestly those of the author working upon his first sketch, that we are utterly at a loss to conceive upon what principle some of our editorial predecessors have reconciled the differences upon the easy theory of a surreptitious copy. A passage in the chorus to the fifth act proves, beyond doubt, that the choruses formed a part of the performance in 1599; but this does not prove that there was not an earlier performance without the choruses. The first quarto was printed in 1600, after the choruses were brought upon the stage; but, because they are not found in that first quarto, it is asserted that the copy from which that edition was printed was "not a first draught or hasty sketch." Malone and Steevens appear to us to have fallen into the mistake that a copy could not, at one and the same time, be a piracy and a sketch. According to their theory, if it is procured by fraud, it must be an “imperfect transcript." Is it not much more easy to believe that, after a play had been thoroughly remodelled, the original sketch which existed in some playhouse copy might be printed without authority, and continue so to be printed, rather than that an imperfect transcript should be printed, and continue to be printed, in which the most striking and characteristic passages of the play were omitted? But the question of "imperfect transcript" or "hasty sketch" may, to our minds, be at once disposed of by internal evidence. We will take a passage from the very first scene of the quarto of 1608, and print with it the text of the folio. Open the book where we may, similar examples will present themselves : QUARTO OF 1608. "Bishop. God and his angels guard your sacred throne, And make you long become it! King. Sure, we thank you: and, good my Why the law Salique which they have in Or should or should not stop in us our claim: same. For God doth know how many now in health How you awake the sleeping sword of war: Sure, we thank you. K. Hen. Why the law Salique, that they have in Or should, or should not, bar us in our claim. Or nicely charge your understanding soul Of what your reverence shall incite us to: person, How you awake the sleeping sword of war: For never two such kingdoms did contend drops Are every one a woe, a sore complaint, That make such waste in brief mortality. As pure as sin with baptism." Can any one doubt that this careful elaboration, involving nice changes of epithets, was the work of the author himself? Would the amanuensis or the reciter have given us some passages so correctly, and altogether omitted others, making substitutions which required him to reconstruct particular lines, so that the rhythm might be preserved ? In the prose passages the same process of change and elaboration may be as clearly traced. Our belief, then, is, that the original quarto of 1600 was printed after the play had appeared in its amended and corrected form, such as we have received it from the folio of 1623; but that this quarto, and the subsequent quartos, were copies of a much Canterbury. God and his angels guard shorter play, which had been previously pro FOLIO OF 1623. your sacred throne, And make you long become it! duced, and, perhaps, hastily written for some temporary occasion. We further believe that the text of these quartos was surrep-| shrunk from a subject which appeared to titiously obtained from the early playhouse copy, and continued through three editions to be palmed upon the public,-the author and his co-proprietors in the Globe Theatre not choosing that the amended copy should be published. The single passage in the play which furnishes any evidence as to its date is found in the chorus to the fifth act : "Were now the general of our gracious empress (As, in good time, he may) from Ireland coming, Bringing rebellion broached on his sword, The allusion cannot be mistaken. "About the end of March" (1599), says Camden, "the Earl of Essex set forward for Ireland, and was accompanied out of London with a fine appearance of nobility and gentry, and the most cheerful huzzas of the common people." Essex returned to London on the 28th of September of the same year. This play, then, with the choruses, must have been performed in the summer of 1599. Without the choruses there is nothing to show that it might not have been performed earlier. 66 Shakspere," says Frederick Schlegel, "regarded the drama as entirely a thing for the people, and, at first, treated it throughout as such. He took the popular comedy as he found it, and whatever enlargements and improvements he introduced into the stage were all calculated and conceived according to the peculiar spirit of his predecessors, and of the audience in London." "* This is especially true with regard to Shakspere's Histories. In the case of the 'Henry V.' it appears to us that our great dramatic poet would never have touched the subject, had not the stage previously possessed it in the old play of 'The Famous Victories.' 'Henry IV.' would have been perfect as a dramatic whole, without the addition of 'Henry V.' The somewhat doubtful mode in which he speaks of continuing the story appears to us a pretty certain indication that he rather *Lectures on the History of Literature,' vol. ii. him essentially undramatic. It is, however, highly probable that, having brought the history of Henry of Monmouth up to the period of his father's death, the demands of an audience, who had been accustomed to hail "the madcap Prince of Wales" as the conqueror of Agincourt, compelled him to "continue the story." That he originally contemplated lending to it the interest of his creation of Falstaff is also sufficiently clear. It would be vain to speculate why he abandoned this intention; but it is evident that, without the interest which Falstaff would have imparted to the story, the dramatic materials presented by the old play, or by the circumstances that the poet could discover in the real course of events, is our belief, therefore, that, having hastily were extremely meagre and unsatisfying. It met the demands of his audience by the first sketch of Henry V., as it appears in the quarto editions, he subsequently saw the capacity which the subject presented for being treated in a grand lyrical spirit. Instead of interpolating an under-plot of petty passions and intrigues,-such, for the most part, as we find in the dramatic treatment of an heroic subject by the French poets,he preserved the great object of his drama entire by the intervention of the chorus. Skilfully as he has managed this, and magnificent as the whole drama is as a great national song of triumph, there can be no doubt that Shakspere felt that in this play he was dealing with a theme too narrow for his peculiar powers. His drama, generally, was cast in an entirely different mould from that of the Greek tragedy. The Greek stage was, in reality, more lyrical than dramatic: "Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught In Chorus or Iambic, teachers best Of moral prudence, with delight received High actions and high passions best describing." The didactic lessons of moral prudence,-the brief sententious precepts,-the descriptions | of high actions and high passions, are alien from the whole spirit of Shakspere's drama. The Henry V.' constitutes an exception to the general rules upon which he worked. "High actions" are here described as well as exhibited; and "high passions," in the Shaksperean sense of the term, scarcely make their appearance upon the scene. Here are no struggles between will and fate; no frailties of humanity dragging down its virtues into an abyss of guilt and sorrow,--no crimes, no obduracy, no penitence. We have the lofty and unconquerable spirit of national and individual heroism riding triumphantly over every danger; but the spirit is so lofty that we feel no uncertainty for the issue. We should know, even if we had no foreknowledge of the event, that it must conquer. We can scarcely weep over those who fall in that "glorious and well-foughten field," for "they kept together in their chivalry," and their last words sound as a glorious hymn of exultation. The subject is altogether one of lyric grandeur; but it is not one, we think, which Shakspere would have chosen for a drama. And yet how exquisitely has Shakspere thrown his dramatic power into this undramatic subject! The character of the King is altogether one of the most finished portraits that has proceeded from this masterhand. It could, perhaps, only have been thoroughly conceived by the poet who had delineated the Henry of the Boar's Head, and of the Field of Shrewsbury. The surpassing union, in this character, of spirit and calmness, of dignity and playfulness, of an ever-present energy, and an almost melancholy abstraction, the conventional authority of the king, and the deep sympathy, with the meanest about him, of the man,was the result of the most philosophical and consistent appreciation by the poet of the moral and intellectual progress of his own Prince of Wales. And let it not be said that the picture which he has painted of his favourite hero is an exaggerated and flattering representation. The extraordinary merits of Henry V. were those of the individual; his demerits were those of his times. Stand ing now upon the vantage-ground of four centuries of experience, in which civilization has marched onwards at a pace which could only be the result of great intellectual impulses, we may, indeed, say that, if Henry V. was justly fitted to be a leader of chivalry, fearless, enterprising, persevering, generous, pious,—he was, at the same time, rash, obstinate, proud, superstitious, seeking after vain renown and empty conquests, instead of making his people happy by wise laws and the cultivation of sound knowledge. But Henry's character, like that of all other men, must be estimated by the circumstances amidst which he moved. After four centuries of illumination, if we find the world still suffering under the dominion of unjust governors and ambitious conquerors, we may pardon one who acted according to his lights, believing that his cause justified his attempt to seize upon another crown, instead of wearing his own wisely and peacefully. At any rate, it was not for the poet to regard the most popular king of the feudal times with the cold and severe scrutiny of the philosophical historian. It was for him to embody in the person of Henry V. the principle of national heroism; it was for him to call forth "the spirit of patriotic reminiscence." There are periods in the history of every people when their nationality, lifting them up almost into a frenzy of enthusiasm, is one of the sublimest exhibitions of the practical poetry of social life. In the times of Shakspere such an aspect of the English mind was not unfrequently presented. Neither in our own times have such manifestations of the mighty heart been wanting. But there have been, and there may again be, periods of real danger when the national spirit shows itself drooping and languishing. It is under such circumstances that the heart-stirring power of such a play as ' Henry V.' is to be tested. Frederick Schlegel says, "The feeling by which Shakspere seems to have been most connected with ordinary men is that of nationality." But how different is his nationality from that of ordinary men. It is reflective, tolerant, generous. It lives not in an atmosphere of falsehood and prejudice. Its theatre is war and con |