And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your ftrength, and qua-

lities,

Give you advancement.-Be it your charge, my

lord,

To fee perform'd the tenor of our word.—

Set on.

[Exeunt King, and his Train. FAL. Master Shallow, I owe you a thoufand pound.

SHAL. Ay, marry, fir John; which I beseech you to let me have home with me.

FAL. That can hardly be, mafter Shallow. Do not you grieve at this; I fhall be fent for in private

This circumftance was originally mentioned by Hall, and is thus recorded by Holinfhed, who was certainly Shakspeare's hiftorian: Immediately after that he was invested kyng, and had receyved the crowne, he determined with himfelfe to putte upon him the fhape of a new man, turning infolence and wildness into gravitie and foberneffe: and whereas he had paffed his youth in wanton pastime and riotous miforder, with a forte of mifgoverned mates, and unthriftie playfeers, he now banished them from his presence, (not unrewarded nor yet unpreferred,) inhibiting them upon a great payne, not once to approche, lodge or fojourne within ten miles of his courte or manfion: and in their places he elected and chofe men of gravitie, witte, and hygh policie, by whofe wife counsell he might at all times rule to his honoure;-whereas if he should have reteined the other luftie companions aboute him, he doubted least they might have allured him unto fuch lewde and lighte partes, as with them before tyme he had youthfully ufed."Our author might have found the fame circumftance in the anonymous play of King Henry V:

your former life grieves me,

"And makes me to abandon and abolish your company for

ever:

"And therefore not upon pain of death to approche my

prefence,

By ten miles' fpace; then, if I heare well of you,

"It may be I will doe fomewhat for you;

"Otherwife looke for no more favour at my hands,
"That at any other man's." MALONE.

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 ftraw. I beseech you, good fir 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, fir John.

FAL. Fear no colours; go with me to dinner. Come, lieutenant Pistol;-come, Bardolph :-I fhall be fent for foon at night.

Re-enter Prince JOHN, the Chief Justice, Officers, &c.

CH. JUST. GO, carry fir 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 foon.

Take them away.

PIST. Si fortuna me tormenta, fpero me contenta. [Exeunt FAL. SHAL. PIST. BARD. Page, and Officers.

P. JOHN. I like this fair proceeding of the king's: He hath intent, his wonted followers

4 to the Fleet;] I do not fee why Falftaff is carried to the Fleet. We have never loft fight of him fince his difmiffion from the King; he has committed no new fault, and therefore incurred no punishment; but the different agitations of fear, anger, and furprize in him and his company, made a good fcene to the eye; and our author, who wanted them no longer on the stage, was glad to find this method of fweeping them away. JOHNSON.

Shall all be very well provided for;

But all are banifh'd, till their converfations
Appear more wife and modeft to the world.
CH. JUST. And so they are.

P. JOHN. The king hath call'd his parliament, my lord.

CH. JUST. He hath.

P. JOHN. I will lay odds,-that, ere this year expire,

We bear our civil fwords, and native fire,
As far as France: I heard a bird fo fing,'
Whose mufick, to my thinking, pleas'd the king.
Come, will you hence?

[Exeunt.

5 I heard a bird fo fing,] This phrafe, which I fuppofe to be proverbial, occurs in the ancient ballad of The Rifing in the North: "I heare a bird fing in mine eare,

"That I must either fight or flee." STEEVENS.

6 I fancy every reader, when he ends this play, cries out with Desdemona, "O moft lame and impotent conclufion!" 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 Jerufalem fhall Harry die.”

Thefe fcenes, which now make the fifth Act of Henry the Fourth, might then be the first of Henry the Fifth; but the truth is, that they do not unite very commodiously to either play. When thefe plays were reprefented, I believe they ended as they are now ended in the books; but Shakspeare feems to have defigned that the whole series of action from the beginning of Richard the Second, to the end of Henry the Fifth, fhould be confidered 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 fo much delight. The great events are interesting, for the fate of kingdoms depends upon them; the flighter occurrences are diverting, and, except one or two, fufficiently probable; the incidents are multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention, and the characters diverfified with the utmoft nicety of difcernment, 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 paffions, whofe fentiments are right, though his actions are wrong; whofe virtues are obfcured by negligence, and whofe understanding is diffipated by levity. In his idle hours he is rather loose than wicked; and when the occafion forces out his latent qualities, he is great without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is roufed into a hero, and the hero again repofes in the trifler. The character is great, original, and juft.

Percy is a rugged foldier, cholerick and quarrelfome, and has only the foldier's virtues, generofity and courage.

But Falftaff unimitated, unimitable Falstaff, how shall I defcribe thee? thou compound of fenfe and vice; of fenfe which may be admired, but not efteemed; of vice which may be defpifed, but hardly detested. Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with thofe faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief and a glutton, a coward and a boafter, always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous, and infult the defenceless. At once obfequious and malignant, he fatirizes in their abfence those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar with the prince only as an agent of vice, but of this familiarity he is fo proud, as not only to be fupercilious and haughty with common men, but to think his intereft of importance to the duke of Lancaster. Yet the man thus corrupt, thus defpicable, makes himself neceffary to the prince that defpifes him, by the most pleafing 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 fplendid or ambitious kind, but confifts in eafy fcapes and fallies of levity, which make sport, but raise no envy. It must be observed, that he is ftained with no enormous or fanguinary crimes, fo that his licentiousness is not so offenfive but that it may be borne for his mirth.

The moral to be drawn from this reprefentation 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 honefty ought to think themfelves fafe with fuch a companion, when they fee Henry feduced by Falstaff. JOHNSON.

Dr. Johnfon objects with good reafon, I think, to the "lame and impotent conclufion" of this play. Our author feems to have been as careless in the conclufion of the following plays as in that before us.

In The Tempeft the concluding words are,

-please you draw near."

In Much ado about Nothing:

Strike up pipers."

In Love's Labour's Loft:

<< You that way; we this way.”

"Go, bid the foldiers fhoot." MALONE.

That there is no apparent full and energetic close to any of the plays enumerated by Mr. Malone, is undeniable; but perhaps the epilogue fpoken in the character of Profpero, the dance which terminates Much Ado about Nothing, a final and picturesque feparation and proceffion of the perfonages in Love's Labour's Loft and the Winter's Tale, the fymphony of warlike inftruments at the end of Timon, and the peal of ordnance fhot off while the furvivers in Hamlet are quitting the ftage, might have proved as fatisfactory to our ancestors as the moral applications and polished couplets with which fo many of our modern dramatick pieces conclude. STEEVENS.