as little reason for believing that Sir John Fastolf was page to Thomas Mowbray Duke of Norfolk as that the Sir John Oldcastle of history was ever in his household. Shakespeare would have been greatly amused at the idea that such a question should be gravely discussed. But to return to the play itself. It is clear that in its original form the name of Oldcastle occupied the place of Falstaff, and as it can be shown that at least twenty years afterwards the name Oldcastle was still in popular memory associated with the character of the fat knight, it is a natural conclusion that before it was changed to Falstaff the play must have been long enough upon the stage to have impressed itself upon the imagination of the theatre-loving public. But when it was entered at Stationers' Hall in February 1598 of our reckoning, 'the conceipted mirthe of Sir John Falstoff' is a part of the description. The change of name from Oldcastle to Falstaff had therefore taken place, and if we make allowance for the period during which the play must have been acted in order to allow of the name Oldcastle being popularly connected with it, we can hardly give a later date than 1597 for its first appearance. Seven years afterwards, in The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinarie : or, The Walkes in Powles, which appeared in 1604, Sig. Shuttlecock says, '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 Old-castle, he wil tell you, he was his great Grandfather, ¡ and not much unlike him in Paunch if you marke him well by all descriptions.' And more than twenty years after the play first appeared we find an undoubted reference to the same character in Field's Amends for Ladies (1618): 'I doe heare Your Lordship this faire morning is to fight, There can be no question after this that Falstaff's soliloquy on honour in v. 1. 127-140 was once spoken by Oldcastle, and that the name remained in popular memory long after it had been changed in the play itself. In preparing the notes to this play I have endeavoured to make Shakespeare's language intelligible to modern readers, believing that in order to understand an author's meaning it is first of all necessary to understand what he says; and believing also that Shakespeare was not such an artist as the painter Orbaneja in Don Quixote, who, when he painted a cock, had to write under it' This is a cock,' for fear it should be mistaken for a fox, I have not encumbered my pages with remarks to which the painter's inscription affords an apt parallel. The notes which are given are not for those who know, but for those who are ignorant; and, as there are different kinds as well as different degrees of ignorance, it has been my endeavour to supply instruction which shall be applicable to all cases. But there is no ignorance so great as that of those who think they know, and such depths it is not easy to fathom. While however, in this and other plays in the series of which it forms part, I have endeavoured to supply material from which learners may learn and teachers may instruct, I have never contemplated that they should be turned to such barbarous uses as I am informed are to be found in some schools. In one of these an unfortunate pupil was observed committing the notes on a play to memory, having carefully fastened up the text in order that it might not interfere with the process. It was a natural exclamation, and one which must excite sympathy with the victim of such inhuman treatment, 'How I hate Shakespeare!', and it requires no spirit of prophecy to foresee that when the examination was over the book would never be opened again. After this it is a relief to go back to the middle of the last century and read the clear good sense of Johnson on the best method of studying Shakespeare. 'Let him, that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read. every play from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not stoop at correction or explanation. When his attention is strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald and Pope. Let him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness; and read the commentators. 'Particular passages are cleared by notes, but the general effect of the work is weakened. The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principal subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied. 'Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been surveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the comprehension of any great work in its full design and its true proportions; a close approach shows the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is discerned no longer.' With the exception of a few coarse expressions which have been omitted, the text is that of the Globe edition, from which also the references to other plays are taken, except where the notes to the Clarendon Press Series are quoted. WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT. TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 6 May, 1897. Enter KING HENRY, LORD JOHN OF LANCASTER, the EARL OF WESTMORELAND, SIR WALTER BLUNT, and others. King. So shaken as we are, so wan with care, Find we a time for frighted peace to pant, No more the thirsty entrance of this soil Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood; B Of hostile paces: those opposed eyes, Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks, West. My liege, this haste was hot in question, Upon whose dead corpse there was such misuse, By those Welshwomen done, as may not be 10 20 30 40 |