INTRODUCTION.

THE Second Part of King Henry IV. appears in the Stationers' Register as entered for publication on the 23rd of August, 1600, together with the comedy of Much Ado about Nothing.

23 AUGUSTI.

"Andrew Wyse entred for their copies vnder the William Aspley handes of the wardens Two bookes, the one called Muche a Doo about nothenge, Th other the second parte of the history of Kinge Henry the IIIJth with the humours of Sir John Ffallstaff: Wrytten by Master Shakespere."

In the preceding entry of the First Part of Henry IV., on the 25th of February, 1598 (New Style), the author's name was not inserted, and this entry of August, 1600, contains, in fact, the first

mention of the name of Shakespeare upon the books of the Stationers' Company.

It has been inferred from the fact that the 4to of the Second Part of Henry IV., published in 1600, contained in one place an unerased Old. for Falst., that the second part was written originally, like the first, with Sir John Oldcastle as the name of the fat knight. For it is observed that Falstaff was the knight's name in the Stationers' entry of Feb. 25, 1598, and the correction having then been made, the Second Part of Henry IV. must have been written before that date. The Second Part was printed hastily. The first scene of the third act was accidentally omitted, and the omission-discovered when part of the impression had been worked off-was made good by the addition of two leaves in the remaining copies. Of now remaining copies of the quarto of 1600 only two contain this addition; one belonged to Edward Malone, and is at Oxford, the other is in the library of the Duke of Devonshire.

The relation of the two parts of King Henry IV. and King Henry V. to the older play of The Famous Victories of Henry V., and the first faint suggestion of the character of Falstaff in the Sir John Oldcastie of that play, having been shown in

the Introduction to the First Part, we are now free to dwell on the view of life that runs through both the First Part and the Second.

Falstaff, cased in flesh, stands for the flesh and all its frailty. What Bushy, Bagot, and Green, are in the play of Richard II., which we may take, if we please, as Prologue to the Trilogy closed with the play of King Henry V., Falstaff stands for in the Trilogy itself. Richard II. presented youth in its weakness, dragged down by evil advisers, forfeiting the crown. Prince Harry represents youth in its strength, through the luxuriance of fresh life- -as "full subject is the fattest soil to weeds "-tempted and led aside by playfulness of fancy, but with strength to rise at the clear call of duty. Harry rises at the first call, represented at the close of the First Part by the Battle of Shrewsbury. At the close of the Second Part he is called to be King, to rise to the full state of man; and the play of Henry V. completes the Trilogy by showing what that is.

But shall Falstaff represent only the temptation of the flesh, only what the Church catechism makes a threefold ill-the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, that must be renounced? Is he not very pleasant? Yes, he is. Do we not all like him?

Yes, we do. Is he not a gentleman? No, he is not; although he knows how to be courteous. True gentleman he cannot be, since he is clearly represented, with all his wit and good humour, as a thief, a liar, and a coward. It is not the dull and empty-headed sensualist who can tempt generous youth to his side: but a young man with high animal spirits and large powers of enjoyment is easily drawn into sportive companionship with good wit and good humour. If what Falstaff stand for were without attraction it would be without danger, except to men whose brotherhood is with the swine. When Chaucer, in his Troilus and Cressida, turned Pandarus, the knightly cousin of Prince Troilus, into a worldly good-tempered uncle of Cressida, who chirps with her in her garden, looks like a kind old gentleman that understands the world, and so undermines her innocence, he was before Shakespeare in the essential part of the conception of Falstaff. When

Shakespeare, in Antony and Cleopatra, after striking his first note in his first lines with description of her in plain words that call Antony "a strumpet's fool," proceeds to paint Cleopatra in all colours that could represent the charm that dragged a large and noble nature, through its too great love of pleasure,

into ruin, the more he shows that the strange woman can have allurements even for an Antony, the more he forces home the truth that many strong men have been slain by her.

The continuation of the History from the play of King Richard II. shows civil war the fruit of usurpation, fulfilling the Bishop of Carlisle's prediction :

"Peace sl.all go sleep with Turks and infidels,

And in this seat of peace, tumultuous war

Shall kin with kin, and kind with kind confound."

But the spirit of history that Shakespeare breathed into the sequence of historical events in the set of plays beginning with King Richard II., and ending with King Henry V., was not of the essence of the tale. It was part only of the life of the details in which Shakespeare set his hero, Prince and at last King, to show youth not, as in Richard the Second, fallen victim, but rising at last to a true manhood from out of the temptations that beset it in us all.

The First Part of King Henry IV. opens with note of retribution in the king's first words, "So shaken as we are, so wan with care." A half sense of pause in civil war recalls the design, with which the play of King Richard the Second closed of expedition to the Holy Land; but there has