Thou art not firm enough, since griefs are green;

And all my friends, which thou must make thy friends,
Have but their stings and teeth newly ta'en out;

By whose fell working I was first advanced,

And by whose power I well might lodge a fear
To be again displaced: which to avoid,

I cut them off; and had a purpose now

To lead out many to the Holy Land,

Lest rest and lying still might make them look

Too near unto my state. Therefore, my Harry,

Be it thy course to busy giddy minds

With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,
May waste the memory of the former days.1

Between the strong but lowly-aiming character of Henry IV. and the imaginative weakness of Richard II. stands the remarkable figure of Henry V. This prince is represented from the first as being moved by a double personality. When his father is reproving him for his excesses, he points out the similarity between his son's disposition and Richard's :

For all the world

As thou art to this hour was Richard then,
When I from France set foot at Ravenspurgh,
And even as I was then is Percy now.2

And this view of the Prince of Wales before he came to the throne is strongly borne out by the evidence of all the old historians. So too the conqueror of Agincourt had been already represented on the stage in an old play called The Famous Victories of Henry V., where the riotous conduct of the Prince and his companions was set forth in such a manner as to give an opportunity to Tarlton, the favourite buffoon actor of the period, who played in it the part of the clown Derrick. As Tarlton died in 1588, it is probable that The Famous Victories (which was very popular) had been produced before Shakespeare's arrival in London in any case, the play—a poor production written in prose-shows no trace of his hand, though it furnished him with one or two hints which he turned to good account

1 Henry IV. Part 2, Act iv. Sc. 5.

2 Ibid. Part 1, Act iii. Sc. 2.

For the external

in King Henry IV. and King Henry V facts and ground-work of his history he relied on Holinshed, but the strong vitality of the Prince of Wales's character he drew entirely from his imagination, and from his philosophic insight into his own and human nature.2 On the one side the Prince is impelled to excess, both by his own temperament and by the delight he finds in observing the humours of the life about him he is ironically amused, alike by the rich absurdity of Falstaff and by the fussy distractions of a "puny drawer." "I am of all humours," he says, "that have showed themselves humours since the old days of goodman Adam to the pupil age of this present twelve o'clock at midnight." Nevertheless he surveys all the shows of life from a post of observation :

:

I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness:
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.4

The King mistakes his character :—

Why, Harry, do I tell thee of my foes,
Which art my near'st and dearest enemy?
Thou that art like enough, through vassal fear,

Base inclination and the start of spleen,

To fight against me under Percy's pay,

To dog his heels and curtsy at his frowns,
To show how much thou art degenerate.

1 He obtained from it the idea of the mock conversation between the Prince and his father impersonated by Falstaff, which was suggested by the imitation in The Famous Victories by Derrick and John Cobler of the scene between the Prince and the Chief Justice; he also found in it the outline of Henry's courtship of Katherine of France.

2 The writer of The Famous Victories represents the change in the character of Henry V. as having been caused by his repentance at his father's deathbed Holinshed in his chronicle (A.D. 1412) is inclined to minimise the tradition of Henry's youthful excesses.

3 King Henry IV. Part 1, Act. ii. Sc. 4.

4 Ibid. Act i. Sc. 2.

To which the Prince replies:

Do not think so; you shall not find it so:
And God forgive them that have so much swayed
Your majesty's good thoughts away from me!1

With how much sympathy this was written we may infer from Shakespeare's Sonnet cxxi. :—

'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost which is so deemed
Not by our feeling but by others' seeing:
For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,

Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level

At my abuses reckon up their own:

I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel;
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown;
Unless this general evil they maintain,

All men are bad, and by their badness reign.2

The philosophic, ironic side of Henry's nature, which attracts him to the company of Falstaff, is strongly expressed in the half-humorous emotion with which he surveys the supposed dead body of the fat knight on the field of Shrewsbury :

What, old acquaintance! could not all this flesh
Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell!

I could have better spared a better man :
O, I should have a heavy miss of thee,
If I were much in love with vanity! 3

A manly energy and sense of reality in Henry prevents him from falling into such irresolution as destroyed Hamlet through over-reflection. On the other hand, he is raised above the impetuous Hotspur by the power of philosophic thought; both qualities combined render him the spiritual antithesis of Falstaff. A higher achievement of genius was never accomplished than the association of these three

1 Henry IV. Part 1, Act iii. Sc. 2.
2 Sonnet cxxi.

3 Henry IV. Part 1, Act. v. Sc. 4.

Richard recognises the power of resolution, and says to Bolingbroke :

Well you deserve they well deserve to have
That know the strong'st and surest way to get.1

Conscious that he himself had been unable to keep what he once had, he is not man enough even to fall with dignity. The same incapacity to understand the reality of things that he had shown as King appears in him as a prisoner; he quibbles with words, and makes his own calamities the subject of a tearful and self-conscious philosophy. His abdication is a spectacle of misfortune and weakness which moves at once compassion and contempt.

Bolingbroke affords a striking contrast to his cousin. Crafty, self-contained, and resolute, though not wanting in humane feelings, he knows how to turn all circumstances to his own advantage, and his dying speech to his heir exhibits him as an profound exponent of Machiavellism:—

Come hither, Harry, sit thou by my bed;

And hear, I think, the very latest counsel
That ever I shall breathe. God knows, my son,

By what by-paths and indirect crook'd ways

I met this crown; and I myself know well
How troublesome it sat upon my head.
To thee it shall descend with better quiet,
Better opinion, better confirmation ;
For all the soil of the achievement goes
With me into the earth. It seemed in me

But as an honour snatched with boisterous hand,

And I had many living to upbraid

My gain of it by their assistances ;

Which daily grew to quarrel and to bloodshed,

Wounding supposed peace: all these bold fears
Thou see'st with peril I have answered;
For all my reign hath been but as a scene

Acting that argument: and now my death

Changes the mode; for what in me was purchased,

Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort;

So thou the garland wear'st successively.

Yet, though thou stand'st more sure than I could do,

1 Richard II. Act iii. Sc. 3.

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