"And, in the closing of some glorious day,
Be bold to tell you that I am your son."

Years pass on after the battle of Shrewsbury; and the prince has not entirely cast aside his habits. The duty of meeting the insurrection under Scroop is not committed to him. We find him in London, playing the fool with the time, but yet “sad,” looking forward to higher things; "let the end try the man." His sense of duty is, however, roused into instant action at the news from the north :

"By heaven, Poins, I feel me much to blame,

So idly to profane the precious time;
When tempest of commotion, like the south,
Borne with black vapour, doth begin to melt,
And drop upon our bare unarmed heads.

Give me my sword and cloak :-Falstaff, good night."

The prince and Falstaff never again meet in fellowship. Falstaff goes to the wars; and he throws a spirit into those scenes of treachery and bloodshed, which we look for in vain amidst the policy of Westmoreland, and the solemnity of John of Lancaster. In Falstaff and his recruits we see the under-current of all warfare-the things of common life that are mixed up with great and fearful events the ludicrous by the side of the tragic. The scene of Falstaff choosing his recruits-the corruption of Bardolph-the defence of that corruption by his most impudent captain-the amazement of the justices,-the different tempers with which the recruits meet their lot,-furnish altogether one of the richest realities of this unequalled drama. We here see how war, and especially civil war, presses upon the comforts even of the lowliest; my old dame will be undone now for one to do her husbandry." Is he who won the crown by civil tumult, and who wears it uneasily as the consequence of his usurpation-is he happier than the peasant who is dragged from his hut to fight in a cause which he neither cares for nor understands? Beautifully has Shakspere shewn us what happiness Bolingbroke gained by the deposition of Richard :

"How many thousand of my poorest subjects

Are at this hour asleep!-O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,
And steep my senses in forgetfulness."

Henry is a politic and wise king; but he is a melancholy man. The conduct of the prince still lies heavy at his heart, and his grief,

"Stretches itself beyond the hour of death,"

in dread of the "rotten times" that would ensue when the prince's riot hath no curb. The king too is "much ill;"

"The incessant care and labour of his mind

Hath wrought the mure that should confine it in,

So thin, that life looks through, and will break out."

We are approaching that final scene when the reformation of the prince is to be fully accomplished in the spectacle of his father's death-bed. The king has swooned. The prince enters gaily—

"How now! rain within doors, and none abroad!
How doth the king?"

But his gaiety is presently subdued,—

"I will sit and watch here by the king."

The French critic (a very unfit representative of the present state of opinion in France as to the merits of Shakspere) gives us the following most egregious description of the scene which follows:"The king wakes. He calls out-misses his crown-commands the prince to come to him-and overwhelms him with reproaches for that impatience to seize upon his inheritance, which will not wait even till his father's body is cold. Henry, with an hypocrisy worse than the action which he would defend, pretends only to have taken away the crown, through indignation that it had shortened the days of his father!" This is to read poetry in a literal spirit. We commend the fourth Scene of the fourth Act (Part II.), to our readers, without another remark that may weaken the force of M. Paul Duport's objections.

Through that great trial which has for awhile softened and purified the hearts of most men-the death of a father-has Henry passed. But he has also put on the state of a king. He has done so amidst the remembrances and fears of his brothers and advisers :

"You all look strangely on me."

The scene with the Lord Chief Justice ensues,-written with all Shakspere's rhetorical power.- Henry has solemnly taken up his position :

"The tide of blood in me Hath proudly flow'd in vanity till now: Now doth it turn, and ebb back to the sea."

It is in this solemn assurance, publicly made upon the first occasion of meeting his subjects, that we must rest the absolute and inevitable necessity of Henry's harshness to Falstaff. The poet has most skilfully contrived to bring out the worst parts of Falstaff's character, when he learns the death of Henry IV.-his presumption-his rapacity-his evil determinations: "Let us take any man's horses; -the laws of England are at my commandment. Happy are they which have been my friends; and woe to my Lord Chief Justice." When he plants himself in the way of the coronation procession to "leer" upon the king-when he exclaims "God save thy grace, king Hal,"-Henry was compelled to assert his consistency by his severity. Warburton has truly observed that in his homily to Falstaff, Henry makes a trip, and is sliding into his old habit of laughing at Falstaff's bulk :

"know, the grave doth gape

For thee thrice wider than for other men."

He saw the rising smile, and the smothered retort, upon Falstaff's lip,-and he checks him with
"Reply not to me with a fool-born jest;
Presume not that I am the thing I was."

The very struggle, in this moment of trial, which the king had between his old habits and affections, and his new duties, demands this harshness. We understand from Prince John, that though Falstaff is taken to the Fleet, he is not to be utterly deserted:

"He hath intent his wonted followers

Shall all be very well provided for;
But all are banish'd till their conversations
Appear more wise and modest to the world."

The dramatic action is complete. Henry of Monmouth has passed through the dangerous trial of learning the great lessons of humanity amidst men with whom his follies made him an equal. The stains of this contact were on the surface. His heart was first elevated by ambition-then purified by sorrow

and so

"Consideration like an angel came,

And whipp'd th' offending Adam out of him."

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.

STATE OF THE TEXT, AND CHRONOLOGY, OF KING HENRY V.

HENRY V. was first printed in 1600, under the following title, The Chronicle History of Henry the Fift, with his battell fought at Agin Court in France. Together with auntient Pistoll As it hath bene sundry times played by the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his Servants. London: printed by Thomas Creede for Thomas Millington and John Busby.' This copy, which differs most materially from the text of the folio, was reprinted in 1602, and again in 1608.

We have pointed out, in our foot notes, the more important additions which the folio copy contains, as compared with the quartos. The reprint of the quarto of 1608, in Steevens's collection of twenty plays, runs only to 1800 lines; whilst the lines in the folio edition amount to 3500. Not only is the play thus augmented by the additions of the choruses and new scenes, but there is scarcely a speech, from the first scene to the last, which is not elaborated. In this elaboration the old materials are very carefully used up; but they are so thoroughly refitted and dove-tailed with what is new, that the operation can only be compared to the work of a skilful architect, who, having an ancient mansion to enlarge and beautify, with a strict regard to its original character, preserves every feature of the structure, under other combinations, with such marvellous skill, that no unity of principle is violated, and the whole has the effect of a restoration in which the new and the old are undistinguishable. Unless we were to reprint the original copy, page by page, with the present text, it would be impossible to convey a satisfactory notion of the exceeding care with which this play has been recast. The alterations are so manifestly those of the author working upon his first sketch, that we are utterly at a loss to conceive upon what principle some of our editorial predecessors have reconciled the differences upon the easy theory of a surreptitious copy. Malone, for example, says, "The fair inference to be drawn from the imperfect and mutilated copies of this play, published in 1600, 1602, and 1608, is, not that the whole play, as we now have it, did not then exist, but that those copies were surreptitious; and that the editor in 1600, not being able to publish the whole, published what he could." Again, Malone says: "The quarto copy of this play is manifestly an imperfect transcript procured by some fraud, and not a first draught or hasty sketch of Shakspere's. The choruses, which are wanting in it, and which must have been written in 1599, before the quarto was printed, prove this." Now, to our minds, the choruses and all the other passages not found in the quarto, prove precisely the contrary. The theory of Steevens as to the cause of the difference of the two copies, is this: The elder was, perhaps, taken down, during