would deny it, I would make him eat a piece of my sword. P. JOHN. This is the strangest tale that e'er I heard. P. HEN. This is the strangest fellow, brother John. Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back: [A Retreat is sounded. [Exeunt Prince HENRY and Prince JOHN. FAL. I'll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, God reward him! If I do grow great, I'll grow less; for I'll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman should do. [Exit bearing off the Body. SCENE VI. Another Part of the Field. The Trumpets sound. Enter King HENRY, Prince HENRY, Prince JOHN, WESTMORELAND, and Others, with WORCESTER, and VERNON, prisoners. K. HEN. Thus ever did rebellion find rebuke 7. Lord Littleton observes, that Shakspeare applied an action to Falstaff, which William of Malmsbury tells us was really done by one of the Conqueror's knights to the body of King Harold. I do not however believe that Lord Littleton supposed Shakspeare to have read this old Monk. The story is told likewise by Matthew Paris and Matthew of Westminster; and by many of the English Chroniclers, Stowe, Speed, &c. &c. FARMER. 7 Thus ever did REBELLION find REBUKE.] Thomas Churchyard, in a catalogue of his own printed works, prefixed to his Ill-spirited Worcester! did we not send grace, If, like a christian, thou had'st truly borne WOR. What I have done, my safety urg'd me to; And I embrace this fortune patiently, Since not to be avoided it falls on me. K. HEN. Bear Worcester to the death, and Vernon too: Other offenders we will pause upon. [Exeunt WORCESTER and VERNON, guarded. How goes the field? P. HEN. The noble Scot, lord Douglas, when he saw The fortune of the day quite turn'd from him, K. HEN. With all my heart. P. HEN. Then, brother John of Lancaster, to you This honourable bounty shall belong : Go to the Douglas, and deliver him Up to his pleasure, ransomless, and free: His valour, shown upon our crests to-day, 8 Hath shown us how to cherish such high deeds, Challenge, 1593, informs us, that he had published “a booke called A Rebuke to Rebellion [dedicated] to the good old Earle of Bedford." STEEVENS. 8 Hath TAUGHT US- -] This reading, which serves to exclude an inelegant repetition, (and might have been derived from the quarto 1598, corrected by our author,) is refused by Mr. Malone. Even in the bosom of our adversaries". K. HEN. Then this remains,—that we divide our power. You, son John, and my cousin Westmoreland, Myself, and you, son Harry,-will towards Wales, [Exeunt. See the subsequent note. And yet, are we authorized to reject the fittest word, merely because it is not found in the earliest copy? In a note on p 403, Mr. Malone accepts a reading from a late quarto, which he acknowledges to be of no value. STEEVENS. "Hath shown us-" Thus the quarto 1598. In that of 1599, shown was arbitrarily changed to taught, which consequently is the reading of the folio. The repetition is much in our author's manner. MALONE. 9 Here Mr. Pope inserts the following speech from the quartos: "Lan. I thank your grace for this high courtesy, "Which I shall give away immediately." But Dr. Johnson judiciously supposes it to have been rejected by Shakspeare himself. STEEVENS. I can see no reason for its rejection. Prince John would naturally thank his brother for his kind delegation to him of so honourable an office. BoS WELL. "As the honey of Hybla, MY OLD LAD OF THE CASTLE." p. 193, Mr. Rowe took notice of a tradition, that this part of Falstaff was written originally under the name of Oldcastle. An ingenious correspondent hints to me, that the passage above quoted from our author, proves what Mr. Rowe tells us was a tradition. “ Old lad of the castle" seems to have a reference to Oldcastle. Besides, if this had not been the fact, why, in the Epilogue to The Second Part of King Henry IV. where our author promises to continue his story with Sir John in it, should he say, Where, for any thing 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." This looks like declining a point that had been made an objection to him. I'll give a farther matter in proof, which seems almost to fix the charge. I have read an old 66 play, called, The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, containing the honourable Battle of Agincourt.-The action of this piece commences about the 14th year of King Henry the Fourth's reign, and ends with Henry the Fifth's marrying Princess Catharine of France. The scene opens with Prince Henry's robberies. Sir John Oldcastle is one of the gang, and called Jockie; and Ned and Gadshill are two other comrades.-From this old imperfect sketch, I have a suspicion, Shakspeare might form his two parts of King Henry IV. and his history of King Henry V. and consequently it is not improbable, that he might continue the mention of Sir John Oldcastle, till some descendant of that family moved Queen Elizabeth to command him to change the name. THEOBÁLD. 66 66 - my old lad of the castle." This alludes to the name Shakspeare first gave to this buffoon character, which was Sir John Oldcastle; and when he changed the name he forgot to strike out this expression that alluded to it. The reason of the change was this: one Sir John Oldcastle having suffered in the time of Henry the Fifth for the opinions of Wickliffe, it gave offence, and therefore the poet altered it to Falstaff, and endeavours to remove the scandal in the Epilogue to The Second Part of King Henry IV. Fuller takes notice of this matter in his Church History :— Stage-poets have themselves been very bold with, and others very merry at, the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, whom they have fancied a boon companion, a jovial royster, and a coward to boot. The best is, Sir John Falstaff hath relieved the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, and of late is substituted buffoon in his place." Book iv. p. 168. But, to be candid, I believe there was no malice in the matter. Shakspeare wanted a droll name to his character, and never considered whom it belonged to. We have a like instance in The Merry Wives of Windsor, where he calls his French quack Caius, a name at that time very respectable, as belonging to an eminent and learned physician, one of the founders of Caius College in Cambridge. WARBURTON. Sir John Oldcastle was not a character ever introduced by Shakspeare, nor did he ever occupy the place of Falstaff. The play in which Oldcastle's name occurs was not the work of our poet. STEEVENS. 66 Fuller, besides the words cited in the note, has in his Worthies, p. 253, the following passage: Sir John Oldcastle was first made a thrasonical puff, an emblem of mock valour, a make-sport in all plays, for a coward." Speed, likewise, in his Chronicle, edit. 2, p. 178, says: "The author of The Three Conversions (i. e. Parsons the Jesuit,) hath made Oldcastle a ruffian, a robber, and a rebel, and his authority, taken from the stage players, is more befitting the pen of his slanderous report, than the credit of the judicious, being only grounded from the papist and the poet, of like conscience for lies, the one ever feigning, and the other ever falsifying the truth." RITSON. From the following passage in The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinaire, or the Walkes in Powles, quarto, 1604, it appears that Sir John Oldcastle was represented on the stage as a very fat man (certainly not in the play printed with that title in 1600 :) "Now, signiors, how like you mine host? did I not tell you he was a madde round knave and a merrie one too? and if you chaunce to talke of fatte Sir John Oldcastle, he will tell you, he was his great grandfather, and not much unlike him in paunch." -The host, who is here described, returns to the gallants, and entertains them with telling them stories. After his first tale, he says: Nay gallants, I'll fit you, and now I will serve in another, as good as vinegar and pepper to your roast beefe."—Signor Kickshawe replies: "Let's have it, let's taste on it, mine host, my noble fat actor." 66 The cause of all the confusion relative to these two characters, and of the tradition mentioned by Mr. Rowe, that our author changed the name from Oldcastle to Falstaff, (to which I do not give the smallest credit,) seems to have been this. Shakspeare appears evidently to have caught the idea of the character of Falstaff from a wretched play entitled The Famous Victories of King Henry V. (which had been exhibited before 1589,) in which Henry Prince of Wales is a principal character. He is accompanied in his revels and his robberies by Sir John Oldcastle, ("a pamper'd glutton, and a debauchee," as he is called in a piece of that age,) who appears to be the character alluded to in the passage above quoted from The Meeting of Gallants, &c. To this character undoubtedly it is that Fuller alludes in his Church History, 1656, when he says, "Stage-poets have themselves been very bold with, and others very merry at, the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, whom they have fancied a boon companion, a jovial royster, and a coward to boot." Speed, in his History, which was first published in 1611, alludes both to this "boon companion" of the anonymous King Henry V. and to the Sir John Oldcastle exhibited in a play of the same name, which was printed in 1600 : "The author of The Three Conversions hath made Oldcastle a ruffian, a robber, and a rebel, and his authority taken from the stage players." Oldcastle is represented as a rebel in the play last mentioned alone; in the former play as a ruffian and a robber." 66 Shakspeare probably never intended to ridicule the real Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, in any respect: but thought proper to make Falstaff, in imitation of his proto-type, the Oldcastle of the old King Henry V. a mad round knave also. From the first appearance of our author's King Henry IV. the old play in which Sir John Oldcastle had been exhibited, (which was printed in 1598,) was probably never performed. Hence, I conceive, it is, |