"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 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 shrunk from a subject which appeared to 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, were extremely meagre and unsatisfying. It is our belief, therefore, that having hastily 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

* Lectures on the History of Literature, vol. ii.

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 deligat receiv'd
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life;
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 Shaksperian 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 master hand. 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. Standing now upon the vantage ground of four centuries of experience, in which civilization has marched onward 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 peaceably. 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 to a phrenzy 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 heartstirring 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 conquest; but it

does not hold up war and conquest as fitting objects for nationality to dedicate itself to, except under the pressure of the most urgent necessity. Neither does it attempt to conceal the fearful responsibilities of those who carry the principle of nationality to the last arbitrement of arms; nor the enormous amount of evil which always attends the rupture of that peace, in the cultivation of which nationality is best displayed. Shakspere, indeed, speaks proudly as a member of that English family:"Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof;"

but he never forgets that he belongs to the larger family of the human race. When Henry tells the people of Harfleur :

"The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,"

and draws that most fearful picture of the horrors of a sacked city, the poet tells us, though not in sententious precepts, that nationality, when it takes the road of violence, may be driven to put off all the gentle attributes of social life, and assuming the "action of the tiger," have the tiger's undiscriminating blood-thirstiness. When Henry, on the eve of the battle, walks secretly amidst his soldiers, the poet makes him hear that truth which kings seldom hear; and which, however the hero, in this instance, may contend with it, cannot be disguised or controverted:-" If the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make; when all those legs, and arms, and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all-we died at such a place; some swearing; some crying for a surgeon; some upon their wives left poor behind them; some upon the debts they owe; some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument?" Again, when Henry has won France, what a France does the poet present to the winner :—

"all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,
Corrupting in its own fertility.

Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
Unpruned dies: her hedges even-pleached,
Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,
Put forth disorder'd twigs; her fallow leas
The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory,
Doth root upon; while that the coulter rusts
That should deracinate such savagery:
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness; and nothing teems
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs.
Losing both beauty and utility:

And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges
Defective in their natures, grow to wildness;
Even so our houses, and ourselves, and children
Have lost, or do not learn, for want of time,
The sciences that should become our country;
But grow, like savages, -as soldiers will,
That nothing do but meditate on blood,-
To swearing, and stern looks, diffus'd attire,
And everything that seems unnatural."

Thoughts such as these, coming from the great poet of humanity and wisdom, are the correctives of a false nationality.

It is scarcely necessary for us to trace, as we have done in other instances, the conduct of the dramatic action of Henry V. in connexion with its characters. In the inferior persons of the play -the comic characters-the poet has displayed that power which he, above all men, possesses, of combining the highest poetical conceptions with the most truthful delineations of real life. In the amusing pedantry of Fluellen, and the vapourings of Pistol, there is nothing in the slightest degree incongruous with the main action of the scene. The homely bluntness of the common soldiers of the army brings us still closer to a knowledge of the great mass of which a camp is composed. Perhaps one of the most delicate but yet most appreciable instances of Shakspere's nationality, in all its power and justice, is the mode in which he has exhibited the characters of these common soldiers. They are rough, somewhat quarrelsome, brave as lions, but without the slightest particle of anything low or grovelling in their composition. They are fit representatives of the good

yeomen, whose limbs were made in England." We almost as anxiously desire that these men should triumphantly show the "mettle of their pastures," as that the heroic Harry and his "band of brothers" should

"Be copy now to men of grosser blood,

And teach them how to war."

On the other hand, the discriminating truth of the poet is equally shown in exhibiting to us three arrant cowards in Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph. His impartiality could afford to paint the bullies and blackguards that even our nationality must be content to reckon as component parts of every army.

This drama is full of singularly beautiful detached passages: for example, the reflections of the king upon Ceremony, the descriptions of the deaths of York and Suffolk,-the glorious speech of the king before the battle,-the Chorus of the fourth Act,-are remarkable illustrations of Shakspere's power as a descriptive poet. Nothing can be finer, also, than the commonwealth of bees in the first Act. It is full of the most exquisite imagery and music. The art employed in transforming the whole scene of the hive into a resemblance of humanity is a perfect study-every successive object, as it is brought forward, being invested with its characteristic attribute.