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ALLEGORICAL FRONTISPIECE.

THE HOUSE IN WHICH SHAKSPEARE WAS BORN. A VIGNETTE ON THE TITLE PAGE.

ཡ - སི ཎི་ཙ ཌཱུཅི་ྲ

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HISTORICAL NOTES.......

101

KING HENRY IV.

PART I.

ENT

NIQUE

*

BIBLIOTE

I fancy every reader, when he ends this play, cries out with Desdemona, "O most lame and impotent
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, 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.

None of Shakspeare's plays are more read than the First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. Perhaps no author has ever, in two plays, afforded so inuch delight. The great events are interesting, for the fate of kingdoms depend upon them; the sighter occurrences are diverting, and, except one or two, sufficiently probable; the incidents are multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention; and the characters diversified with the utmost nicety of discernment, and the profoundest skill in the nature of man.

The prince, who is the hero both of the comic and tragic part, is a young man of great abilities, and violent passions, whose sentiments are right, though his actions are wrong; whose virtues are obscured by negligence, and whose understanding is dissipated by levity. In his idle hours he is rather loose than wicked; and when the occasion forces out his latent qualities, he is great without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is roused into a hero, and the hero again reposes in the trifler. The character is great, original, and just.

Percy is a rugged soldier, choleric and quarrelsome, and has only the soldier's virtues, generosity and courage. But Falstaff! unimitated, unimitable Falstaff! how shall I describe thee? thou compound of sense and vice; of sense which may be admired, but not esteemed; of vice which may be despised, but hardly detested. Falstaff' is a character loaded with faults, and with those faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief and a glutton, a coward and a boaster; always ready to chent the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous, and insult the defenceless. At once obsequious and malignant, be satírizes in their absence those whom he lives by Cattering. He is familiar with the prince only as an agent of vice; but of this familiarity he is so proud, as not only to be supercilious and haughty with common men, but to think his interest of importance to the duke of Lancaster. Yet the man thus corrupt, thus despicable, makes himself necessary to the prince that despises him, by the most pleasing of all qualities, perpetual gaiety: by an unfailing power of exciting laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his wit is not of the splendid or ambitious kind, but consists in easy scapes and sallies of levity, which make sport, but raise no envy. It must be observed, that he is stained with no enormous or sanguinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not so offensive but thaf it may be borne for his mirth.

The moral to be drawn from this representation is, that no man is more dangerous than he that, with a will to corrupt, hath the power to please; and that neither wit nor honesty ought to think themselves safe with such a companion, when they see Henry seduced by Falstaff. Johnson.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

KING HENRY THE FOURTH
HENRY, Prince of Wales,
PRINCE JOHN of Lancaster,

Sons to the King.

EARL OF WESTMORELAND, Friends to the King.

SIR WALTER BLUNT,

THOMAS PERCY, Earl of Worcester.
HENRY PERCY, Earl of Northumberland.

HENRY PERCY, surnamed HOTSPUR, his Son.
EDMUND MORTIMER, Earl of March.

SCROOP, Archbishop of York.

ARCHIBALD, Earl of Douglas.
OWEN GLENDOWER.

SIR RICHARD VERNON,

ACT I.

SCENE, England.

SCENE I.-London. A Room in the Palace.
Enter King HENRY, WESTMORELAND, Sir WALTER
BLUNT, and others.

K. Hen. So shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,
And breathe short winded accents of new broils
To be commenc'd in stronds afar remote.
No more the thirsty Erinnys of this soil

Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood;
No more shall trenching war channel her fields,
Nor bruise her flowrets with the armed hoofs
Of hostile paces: those opposed eyes,
Which,-like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,-
Did lately meet in the intestine shock
And furious close of civil butchery,
Shall now, in mutual, well-beseeming ranks,
March all one way; and be no more oppos'd
Against acquaintance, kindred, and allies:
The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife,
No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends,
As far as to the sepulchre of Christ,
(Whose soldier now, ander whose blessed cross
We are impressed and engaged to fight,)
Forthwith a power of English shall we levy;
Whose arms were moulded in their mothers' womb,

To chase these pagans, in those holy fields,
Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet,
Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nail'd
For our advantage on the bitter cross.
But this our purpose is a twelve-month old,
And bootless 'tis to tell you-we will go;
Therefore we meet not now:-Then let me hear
Of you, my gentle cousin Westmoreland,
What yesternight our council did decree,
In forwarding this dear expedience.

West. My liege, this haste was hot in question,
And many limits of the charge set down
But yesternight: when, all athwart, there came
A post from Wales, loaden with heavy news,
Whose worst was,-that the noble Mortimer,
Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight
Against the irregular and wild Glendower,
Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken,
And a thousand of his people butchered:
Upon whose dead corpse there was snch misuse,
Such beastly, shameless transformation,
By those Welshwomen done, as may not be,
Without much shame, re-told or spoken of.
K. Hen. It seems, then, that the tidings of this
broil

Brake off our business for the Holy Land.
West. This, match'd with other, did, my gracious
lord;