The fortune of the day quite turn'd from him, King. With all my heart. Prince. Then, brother John of Lancaster, to you This honourable bounty shall belong. Go to the Douglas, and deliver him Up to his pleasure, ransomless, and free: His valour, shown upon our crests to-day, Hath taught us how to cherish such high deeds, John. I thank your grace for this high courtesy, Which I shall give away immediately.2 King. Then this remains, power. that we divide our You, son John, and my cousin Westmoreland, Myself, and you, son Harry, will towards Wales, [Exeunt. 1 Thus Holinshed: "To conclude, the kings enemies were vanquished and put to flight, in which flight the earle of Dowglas, for hast falling from the crag of an hie mounteine, brake one of his cullions, and was taken, and, for his valiantnesse, of the king franklie and freelie delivered." H. 2 This speech of Prince John, though in all the first four quar tos is strangely left out by Mr. Knight, merely because it is want ing in the folio. H. INTRODUCTION ΤΟ THE SECOND PART OF HENRY IV. In our Introduction to The First Part of Henry IV. authority was produced, such as to put it well nigh beyond question, that the original name of Falstaff was Oldcastle. It was seen, also, that if such were the case, the change must have been made before February 25, 1598, at which time the play was entered in the Stationers' Register, and "the conceited mirth of Sir John Falstaff” mentioned in the entry. That THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH was also written before that date, appears highly probable, to say the least, in that the quarto edition retains Old. as prefix to a speech in Act i. sc. 2, which unquestionably belongs to Falstaff. And the same thing might be further argued from Falstaff's being spoken of, in Act iii. sc. 2, as having been "page to Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk;" which was true of Sir John Oldcastle, and has been justly adduced by Mr. Halliwell as evidence that Falstaff originally bore that name. Nothing more has been discovered from which to infer the probable date of the writing. The play was published in 1600, in a quarto pamphlet of forty three leaves, the title-page reading as follows: "The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, continuing to his death, and coronation of Henry the Fifth With the humours of Sir John Falstaff, and swaggering Pistol. As it hath been sundry times publicly acted by the Right Honourable, the Lord Chamberlain his servants. Written by William Shakespeare. London: Printed by V. S. for Andrew Wise and William Aspley. 1600." The play is not known to have been published again till in the folio of 1623. These two editions differ greatly, several of the best parts having first appeared in the folio, and on the other hand a few passages of inferior quality being found only in the quarto. And there are many smaller differences of text, too numerous to mention, and of such a nature as to infer that the folio must have been printed from an independent manuscript, and that the play had been carefully revised by the author, and perhaps rewritten, after the first issue And it is quite remarkable that in some copies of the quarto the whole first scene of the third act is wanting; from which we may gather that the edition was brought out hastily, and that the oversight was detected while it was in press, and correct ed after a part of it had gone beyond the publisher's hand. All which of course goes to enhance the authority of the folio in com. parison of the quarto. Accordingly, in this, as in all good modern editions, the text of the folio is followed in the main, with the addition of such passages from the quarto as had been omitted, and with the exception of one set of changes which, there is the best reason to believe, proceeded from the strictness of the law, not from the judgment of the Poet. We refer to such expressions as " "'zounds," "'sblood," "by my faith," "by the mass," and sundry others, which, in compliance with a statute made in the third year of James I., were used to be trimmed away or softened down by the Master of the Revels, as savouring of profanity. And in respect of the passages restored from the quarto, even granting them to have been thrown out by the author himself, yet a modern edition ought by all means to retain them, both as illustrating the history of the Poet's mind, and because no right-minded reader would be content to lack any thing known to have come from Shakespeare's pen. Various particulars, and among them all the historical matter, pertaining to the Second Part, were given in our Introduction to the preceding play. Every one, upon reading the two dramas, must be sensible of a falling-off in the latter; for, besides the disappearance of Hotspur and Glendower, whose presence shed into the First Part a vast addition of life and glory, besides the lack of these, Prince Henry and Falstaff, though still themselves, are not presented in so great opulence of transpiration; the plot itself not yielding any such opportunities either for humour or for heroism as were furnished by the battle of Shrewsbury. As Sir John and the prince are the very summit of Shakespeare's art and excellence in comic representation, what was wanting in them could nowise be made good by the coming in of such characters as Shallow and Silence, rich and rare as are the treasures presented in the latter. It is true, something of compensation is given in the nobleness of mind, the wisdom and intrepidity of the Chief Justice and the Archbishop; but it was not for them, nor for thousands like them, to replace the unspeakable delectations which we miss. And indeed the defects in question were of a kind not to be squared up by any thing else that ever entered into the wit of man to conceive. From what hath been said of Bolingbroke it is plain enough what order and state of things would be likely to spring up around His prodigious force of character must needs give shape and tone to the manners and sentiments of the court and the him. council-board; while at the same time his being is so compact of subtlety and intricacy as might well render he place any thing but congenial and inviting to a young man of free and generous aptitudes. One can easily conceive that Prince Henry, as we have described him, would breathe somewhat hard in such an atmosphere, though he might not know why: however much he might respect such a father, and even if in thought he approved the public counsels, still he would reluct to mingle in them, as going against his grain; and so would naturally be drawn away either to such occupations where his high-strung energies could act without crossing his honourable feelings, or else to some tu multuous merrymakings where, laying off all distinct purpose, and untying his mind into perfect dishabille, he could let his bounding spirits run out in transports of frolic and fun. The question, then, is, to what kind of attractions would he be likely to betake himhimself? It must be no ordinary companionship that could yield entertainment to such a spirit, even in his loosest moments: whatsoever bad or questionable elements there might be in the compo sition of his mirth, it must have some fresh and rich ingredients, some sparkling and generous flavour, to make him relish it. Here, then, we have a sort of dramatic necessity for the "ununitated, inimitable Falstaff," whose character stamps itself as horoughly on the proceedings at Eastcheap as the king's does on those at the palace. Whatsoever may have been the facts in he case, there was strong artistic reason why he should be just such a marvellous congregation of charms and vices as he is none but an old man could be at once so dissolute and so discern ing, or appear to think so much like a wise man, even when talking most unwisely; and he must have a world of wit and sense, to reconcile a mind of such native rectitude and penetration to his riotous and profligate courses. In the qualities of Sir John we can easily see how the prince might be the madcap reveller that history gives him out, and yet be all the while secretly laying in choice preparations of wisdom and virtue, thus needing no other conversion than the calls of duty and the opportunities of noble enterprise. Falstaff is a very impracticable subject for criticism to deal with; his character being more complex and manifold than can well be digested into the forms of logical statement. He has more, or is more, than that one can easily tell what he is. Diverse and even opposite are the qualities that meet in him, yet their opposition only enriches, not distracts, their working; and so perfect, withal, is their fusion, so happily are they blended, so evenly balanced, and they move together so smoothly and in such mutual good will, that no generalities can be made to set him off: if we undertake to grasp him in a formal conclusion, the best part still escapes between the fingers; so that the only way to give any dea of him is to take the man himself along and show him. One of the wittiest of men, yet he is not a wit; one of the most sen sual of men, still he cannot with strict justice be called a sen sualist; he has a quick, strong sense of danger, and a lively regard to his own safety, a peculiar vein indeed of cowardice, or ot something very like it, yet he is not a coward; he lies and brags prodigiously, still he is not a liar nor a braggart. No such gencral terms, applied to him, can do otherwise than mislead, causing us to think we understand him when we do not. If we were to fix upon any thing as especially characteristic of Falstaff, we should say it is an amazing fund of good sense. His vast stock of this, to be sure, is pretty much all enlisted or impressed into the service of sensuality, yet nowise so but that the servant still overpeers and outshines the master. Moreover, his thinking has such agility and quickness, and at the same time is so apt and pertinent, as to do the work of the most prompt and popping wit, yet in such sort as we cannot but feel the presence of something much larger and stronger than wit. For mere wit, be it never so good, to be keenly relished must be sparingly used, and the more it tickles the sooner it tires. But no one can ever weary of Falstaff's talk, who understands it; his speech being like pure, fresh cold water, which always tastes good, because it is tasteless. The wit of other men seems to be some special faculty or mode of thought, and lies in a quick seizing of remote and fanciful affinities; whereas in Falstaff it lies not in any one thing more than another, for which cause it cannot be defined ; eing indeed none other than that roundness and evenness of mind which we call good sense, so quickened and pointed as to produce the effect of wit, yet without hindrance to its own proper effect. Inexhaustible and available, however, as is his stock of good sense, he is himself fully aware of it, and rests in the calm assurance that it will never fail him; and, though vastly proud thereof, his pride never shows itself in an offensive shape; it being the sure effect of good sense to keep off all such unhandsome exhi bitions. This proud consciousness of his resources it is, no doubt, that keeps him so perpetually at his ease; and hence, in part, the ineffable charm of his conversation. Never at a loss, and never apprehensive that he shall be at a loss, he therefore never exerts himself, nor concerns himself for the result; so that nothing is strained, or studied, or far-fetched firmly relying on his strength, ne still invites the toughest trials, as knowing that his powers will bng him off without any using of the whip or the spur, and by merely giving the rein to their natural briskness and celerity. Hence it is, also, that he so often lets go all regard to prudence of speech, and thrusts himself into the tightest places and narrowest predicaments, as fit opportunities of exercising and evincing his incomparable fertility and alertness of thought; being quite assured that he shall still come off uncornered and uncaught, and that the greater his seeming perplexity, the greater will be his |