prayers: How ill white hairs become a fool and jester! I have long dreamed of such a kind of man, So surfeit-swelled, so old, and so profane: But being awake, I do despise my dream. Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace: Leave gormandising: know the grave doth gape For thee thrice wider than for other men :Reply not to me with a fool-born jest; Presume not that I am the thing I was: For heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turned 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 (As I have done the rest of my misleaders), Not to come near our person by ten mile. 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 performed 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 PRINCE JOHN, the Chief Justice,
Officers, &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.

FIRST my fear; then my courtesy; last my speech. My fear is your displeasure; my courtesy 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 my 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 anything 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.

"Enter RUMOUR, painted full of tongues."-Induction. Rumour, or Fame, was commonly thus represented in the masques of Shakspere's day. In a masque by Thomas Campion, presented on St. Stephen's night, 1614, Rumour comes on "in a skin-coat, full of winged tongues." Many similar instances are cited by the commentators.

"But let one spirit of the first-born Cain

Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,
And darkness be the burier of the dead!"

Act I., Scene 1.

The conclusion of this noble speech is extremely striking. There is no need to suppose it exactly philosophical: darkness, in poetry, may be absence of eyes, as well as privation of light. Yet we may remark that, by an ancient opinion, it has been held that if the human race, for whom the world was made, were extirpated, the whole system of sublunary nature would cease at once.-JOHNSON.

The true point of this fine phrase ("darkness be the burier of the dead") is, we apprehend, that, if universal darkness prevailed, there would be no occasion for any other entombment:-on the poetical supposition that the sole use of burial is to remove the dead from the sight of the living.-O.

"FAL. Very well, my lord, very well."-Act I., Scene 2.

In the quarto edition of 1600, this speech has the prefix "OLD." to it. This is a strong corroboration of the tradition that Falstaff was originally called Oldcastle.

"If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle.”—Act I., Scene 2.

A "three-man beetle" is a heavy instrument, with three handles, used in driving piles, &c. To "fillip" may mean merely to strike; but it is commonly thought to allude to a barbarous practice of placing a toad at the end of a board, which was laid across another; when, the first board being struck with a bat or large stick, the persecuted toad was thrown high into the air, and his best fortune was to be killed by the fall.

"For his divisions, as the times do brawl,

Are in three heads: one power against the French,
And one against Glendower: perforce, a third
Must take up us."-Act I., Scene 3.

During this rebellion of Northumberland and the archbishop, a French army of twelve thousand men landed at Milford Haven, in aid of Owen Glendower.

"A pretty slight drollery, or the story of the Prodigal, or the German hunting in water-work."-Act II., Scene 1.

By "water-work" is meant water-colours, either frescoepaintings or hangings in water-colours. The painted cloth was generally oil-colour; but a cheaper sort, probably resembling in its execution some modern paper-hangings, was brought from Holland or Germany, executed in watercolours, or distemper.

"See if thou canst find out Sneak's noise."-Act II., Scene 4.

A "noise of musicians" signified a concert or company of them. In the old play of "HENRY V.," which preceded that of Shakspere, it is said:-"There came the young prince, and two or three more of his companions, and called for wine good store; and then they sent for a noise of musicians."

"I will bar no honest man my house, nor no cheater." Act II., Scene 4..

Dame Quickly here uses the offensive word "cheater" in its original sense of escheator, an officer of the Exchequer.

"These be good humours, indeed! Shall packhorses
And hollow pampered jades of Asia,

Which cannot go but thirty miles a day,
Compare with Cæsars and with Cannibals,
And Trojan Greeks?"-Act II., Scene 4.

The poet has put into the mouth of Pistol a tissue of absurd and fustian passages from various old plays. Those quoted are a parody on some lines in Marlowe's "TAMBUR LAINE:"

"Holla, you pampered jades of Asia!

What! can you draw but twenty miles a day?" The same passage is burlesqued by Beaumont and Fletcher, in "THE COXCOMB."

"My brother general, the commonwealth,

To brother born an household cruelly,

I make my quarrel in particular."—Act IV., Scene 1. There is an obscurity (probably, a corruption) in this passage, which no efforts of the commentators have been able to remove. Dr. Johnson proposes to read "quarrel" for "brother," in the first line; and thinks the meaning may be, "My general cause of discontent is public mismanagement: my particular cause, a domestic injury done to my natural brother." The archbishop's resentment on

the last account is adverted to in Act I.

"Good faith, this sume young sober-blooded boy doth not love me, nor a man cannot make him laugh."-Act IV., Scene 3.

Falstaff speaks here like a veteran in life. The young prince did not love him; and he despaired to gain his affection, for he could not make him laugh. Men only become friends by community of pleasures. He who cannot be softened into gaiety, cannot easily be melted into kindness.-JOHNSON.

"Learning, a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it, and sets it in act and use."-Act IV., Scene 3.

It was anciently supposed that all mines of gold, &c., were guarded by evil spirits.

"'Tis seldom when the bee doth leave her comb
In the dead carrion."-Act IV., Scene 4.

As the bee, having once placed her comb in a carcass, stays by her honey; so he that has once taken pleasure in bad 'company, will continue to associate with those that have the art of pleasing him.-JOHNSON.

"The river hath thrice flowed, no ebb between." Act IV., Scene 4. This phenomenon is said to have occurred October 12, 1411.

"No! Amurath an Amurath succeeds, But Harry, Harry."-Act V., Scene 2. Amurath, Emperor of the Turks, died in 1596: his second son, Amurath, who succeeded him, had all his brothers strangled at a feast, to which he invited them while yet ignorant of their father's death. The allusion in the text is probably to this transaction.

"Do me right,

And dub me knight:

Samingo."-Act V., Scene 3.

To "do a man right," and to "do him reason," were formerly the usual expressions in pledging healths: he who drank a bumper, expected a bumper should be drunk to his toast. It was also customary to drink a large draught on their knees, to the health of their mistresses. He who performed this exploit was dubbed a knight for the rest of the evening. "Samingo" is probably a corruption of "Domingo," which appears to have been a burden to various drinking songs and catches of the period.

"I'll tell thee what, thou thin man in a censer."Act V., Scene 4.

The old censers of thin metal had generally at the bottom the figure of some saint raised up with a hammer. in a barbarous kind of embossed or chased work. The hunger-starved beadle is compared in substance to one of these thin raised figures.-WARBURTON.

"For competence of life I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to erit."
Act V., Scene 5.

The dismission of Heury's former associates is founded on historical fact. Stowe says, that " King Henry, after his coronation, called unto him all those young lords and gentlemen that were the followers of his young acts; to every one of whom he gave rich gifts: and then commanded that as many as would change their manners (as he intended to do), should abide with him in his court; and to all that would persevere in their former like conversation, he gave express commandment, upon pain of their heads, never after that day to come in his presence."

"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."-Epilogue.

It was customary for the players, at the conclusion of the performance, to pray for their patrons or for the head of the state. Hence, perhaps, the "Vivant Rex et Regina" at the bottom of our modern playbills.

NONE of Shakspere's plays are more read than the First and Second Parts of "HENRY IV.' Perhaps no author has ever, in two plays, afforded so much delight. The great events are interesting, for the fate of kingdoms depends upon them: the slighter 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 & 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 cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous, and insult the defenceless. At once obsequious and malignant, he satirizes in their absence those whom he lives by flattering. 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 quali ties, 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 that 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.