Come, mourn with me for what I do lament,
And put on sullen black, incontinent;
I'll make a voyage to the Holy land,

To wash this blood off from my guilty hand :-
March sadly after; grace my mournings here,
In weeping after this untimely bier.

[Exeunt

y This play is extracted from the Chronicle of Holinshed, in which many passages may be found which Shakspeare has, with very little alteration, transplanted into his scenes; particularly a speech of the bishop of Carlisle, in defence of King Richard's unalienable right, and immunity from human jurisdiction.

Jonson, who, in his Catiline and Sejanus, has inserted many speeches from the Roman historians, was perhaps induced to that practice by the example of Shakspeare, who had condescended sometimes to copy more ignoble writers. But Shakspeare had more of his own than Jonson; and, if he sometimes was willing to spare his labour, shewed, by what he performed at other times, that his extracts were made by choice or idleness rather than necessity.

This play is one of those which Shakspeare has apparently revised; but as success in works of invention is not always proportionate to labour, it is not finished at last with the happy force of some other of his tragedies, nor can be said much to affect the passions, or enlarge the understanding.-JOHNSON.

The notion that Shakspeare revised this play, though it has long prevailed, appears to me extremely doubtful; or, to speak more plainly, I do not believe it.-MALONE.

FIRST PART OF

KING HENRY IV.

THIS exquisite play was entered at Stationers' Hall, Feb. 25, 1597; and was printed in quarto the following year. The transactions contained in it are comprised within the period of about ten months. The action commences with the news brought of Hotspur having defeated the Scots under Archibald earl of Douglas, at Holmedon (or Halidown-hill), which battle was fought on Holy-rood day (the 14th of September), 1402; and it closes with the defeat and death of Hotspur at Shrewsbury; which engagement happened on Saturday the 21st of July (the eve of Saint Mary Magdalen), in the year 1403.

'Shakspeare has," says Dr. Johnson, "apparently designed a regular connexion of these dramatick histories, from Richard the Second to Henry the Fifth. King Henry, at the end of Richard the Second, declares his purpose to visit the Holy Land, which he resumes in the first speech of this play. The complaint made by King Henry in the last act of Richard the Second, of the wildness of his son, prepares the reader for the frolicks which are here to be recounted, and the characters which are now to be exhibited.”

VOL. IV.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

King HENRY the Fourth.

HENRY, prince of Wales,

sons to the king.

Prince JOHN of Lancaster, S

Earl of Westmoreland, friends to the king.

Sir WALTER BLUNT,

THOMAS PERCY, earl of Worcester.

HENRY PERCY, earl of Northumberland.
HENRY PERCY, surnamed HOTSPUR, his son.
EDMUND MORTIMER, earl of March.
SCROOP, archbishop of York.

Sir MICHAEL, a friend of the archbishop.
ARCHIBALD, earl of Douglas.

OWEN GLENDOWER.

Sir RICHARD VERNON.

Sir JOHN FALSTAFF.

POINS.

GADSHILL.

PETO. BARDOLPH.

Lady PERCY, wife to Hotspur, and sister to Mortimer. Lady MORTIMER, daughter to Glendower, and wife to Mortimer.

Mrs. QUICKLY, hostess of a tavern in Eastcheap.

Lords, Officers, Sheriff, Vintner, Chamberlain, Drawers, two Carriers, Travellers, and Attendants.

Scene, England.

a Prince John of Lancaster.] The persons of the drama were originally collected by Mr. Rowe, who has given the title of duke of Lancaster to Prince John, a mistake which Shakspeare has been no where guilty of in the first part of this play, though in the second he has fallen into the same error. King Henry IV. was himself the last person that ever bore the title of duke of Lancaster. But all his sons (till they had peerages, as Clarence, Bedford, Gloucester), were distinguished by the name of the royal house, as John of Lancaster, Humphrey of Lancaster, &c. and in that proper style, the present John (who became afterwards so illustrious by the title of duke of Bedford), is always mentioned in the play before us.-STEEVENS.

FIRST PART OF

KING HENRY IV.

ACT I.

SCENE I.-London. A Room in the Palace.

Enter King HENRY, WESTMORELAND, Sir WALTER
BLUNT, and others.

K. Hen. So shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,
And breathe short-winded accents of new broilsa
To be commenc'd in stronds afar remote,
No more the thirsty entrance of this soil
Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood;
No more shall trenching war channel her fields,
Nor bruise her flowrets with the armed hoofs
Of hostile paces; those opposed eyes,
Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,-
Did lately meet in the intestine shock
And furious close of civil butchery,
Shall now, in mutual, well-beseeming ranks,
March all one way; and be no more oppos'd
Against acquaintance, kindred, and allies:
The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife,
No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends,
As far as to the sepulchre of Christ,

a Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,

And breathe short-winded accents of new broils-] That is, let us soften peace to rest awhile without disturbance, that she may recover breath to propose new wars.-JOHNSON.

b thirsty entrance of this soil-] This is the original reading; and means, according to Steevens, the porous surface of the earth. Mr. Douce proposes to read entrails for entrance. Mr. M. Mason's conjecture of Erinnys-a person of whom perhaps the author had never heard-has been adopted into the text of most editions since that of 1793.