SCENE V.

strewing Rushes.

A public Place near Westminster Abbey.

1 Groom. More rushes, more rushes.

Enter two Grooms,

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 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.

Shal. It doth so.

Fal. It shows my earnestness of affection.

Shal. It doth so.

Fal. My devotion.

Shal. It doth, it doth, it doth.

Fal. As it were, to ride day and night; and not to deliberate, not to remember, not to have patience to shift me. Shal. It is most certain.

Fal. But to stand stained with travel, and sweating with desire to see him thinking of nothing else; putting all affairs else in oblivion; as if there were nothing else to be done, but to see him.

Pist. 'Tis semper idem, for absque hoc nihil est : "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 :

Rouze 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! Pist. The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame! 7

Fal. God save thee, my sweet boy!

King. My lord chief justice, speak to that vain man.
C.Jus.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.
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 ; 8
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, 3,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,-
Not to come near our person by ten mile.

[7] The word imp is pep tually used by ancient writers, for progeny. Imp-yn is a Welch word,and primitively signifiés a sprout,a sucker. STEEV. [8] Nature is highly touched in this passage. The King having shaken off his vanities, schools his old companion for his follies with great sove ity he assumes the air of a preacher, bids him fall to his prayers, seek grace, and leave gormandizing But that word unluckily presenting him with pleasant idea he cannot forbea pursuing it: Know, the grave doth gape for thee thrice wider &c. and is just falling back into Hal, by an humorous allusion to Falstaff's bulk; but he perceives it immediately, and fearing Sir John should take the advantage of it, checks both himself and the knight, withReply not to me with a fool-born jest; and so resumes the thread of his discourse,ard goes moralizing along to the end of the chapter Thus the poet copies nature with great skill,and shows us how apt men are to fall back into their old customs, when the change is not made by degrees, and brought into habit, but determined of at once, on the motives of honour,interest.or reason WAR. [9 Mr. Rowe observes, that many readers lament to see Falstaff so hardly us d by his old fri nd. But if it be considered, that the fat knight has never uttered one sentiment of generosity,an with all his power of exciting mirth, has: othing in him that can be esteemed, no great pain will be suffered from the reflection that he is compelled to live honestly and maintained by the King, with a promise of advancement when he shell deserve it I think the poet is more blameable for Poins, who is always represented as joining some virtues with his vices, and is therefore treated by the Prince with apparent distinction, yet he does nothing in the time of action; and though after the bustle is over he is again a favourite. at last vanishes without notice. Shak. speare certainly lost him by heedlessness, in the multiplicity of his charac ters, the variety of his action, and his eagerness to end the play. JOHNS.

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 qualities,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 your doublet, and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good Sir John, let me have five hundred of my thousand. 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 the Chief Justice, Prince JoHN, &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 soon.Take them away.

Pist. Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta.

[Ex. FAL. SHAL. PIST. BARD. Page, and Officers. P. John. I like this fair proceeding of the king's; He hath intent, his wonted followers

Shall all be very well provided for ;

But all are banish'd, till their conversations

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.

P.John. I will lay odds,-that, ere this year 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?

[Exeunt.

EPILOGUE.

SPOKEN BY A DANCER.

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; which, if, like an ill venture, it come unluckily home, I break; and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here, I promised you, I would be, and here I commit my body to your mercies: bate me some, and I will pay you some, and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely.

If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so will I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me ; if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly.

One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France; 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 impotent 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 :

"In that jerusalem shall Harry die."

These scenes, which now make the fifth Act of Henry the Fourth, might then be the first of Henry the Fifth; but the truth is, that they do not unite very commodiously to either play When these plays were represented, I believe they ended as they are now ended in the books; but Shakspeare seems to have designed that the whole series of action. from the beginning of Richard the Second, 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. JOHNS,

KING HENRY V.