Welcome, my little tiny thief; [to the Page.] and land, 'tis thine.-Pistol, I will double-charge thee with dignities. Bard. O joyful day!—I would not take a knighthood for my fortune. Pist. What? I do bring good news? Fal. Carry master Silence to bed.-Master Shallow, my lord Shallow, be what thou wilt, I am fortune's steward. Get on thy boots: we'll ride all night: O, sweet Pistol :-Away, Bardolph. [Exit BARD.] Shal. I thank thee :-The knave will stick by thee, I can assure thee that: he will not out; he is true bred.-Come, Pistol, utter more to me; and, withal, deBard. And I'll stick by him, sir. vise something, to do thyself good.-Boot, boot, SCENE IV.-London. A Street. [Exeunt. Enter Beadles, dragging in Hostess QUICKLY and DOLL TEAR-SHEET. Host. No, thou arrant knave; I would I might die, Davy. An it please your worship, there's one that I might have thee hang'd: thou hast drawn my Pistol come from the court with news. Fal. From the court, let him come in. How now, Pistol? Enter PISTOL. Pist. God save you, sir John! Fal. What wind blew you hither, Pistol? Pist. Not the ill wind which blows no man to good. Sweet knight, thou art now one of the greatest men in the realm. Sil. By'r lady, I think 'a be; but goodman Puff of Barson. Pist. Puff? Puff in thy teeth, most recreant coward base!- And helter-skelter have I rode to thee; Pist. A foutra for the world, and worldings base! Fal. O base Assyrian knight, what is thy news? Sil. And Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John. [Sings. Shal. Honest gentleman, I know not your breeding. Shal. Give me pardon, sir;-If, sir, you come with news from the court, I take it, there is but two ways; either to utter them, or to conceal them. I am, sir, under the king, in some authority. Pist. Under which king, Bezonian? speak, or die. Shal. Harry the fourth. Pist. Harry the fourth? or fifth? A foutra for thine office!- When Pistol lies, do this; and fig me, like The bragging Spaniard. Fal. What! is the old king dead? shoulder out of joint. 1 Bead. The constables have delivered her over to me and she shall have whipping-cheer enough, I warrant her; there hath been a man or two lately killed about her. Doll. Nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie. Come on; I'll tell thee what, thou damned tripe-visaged rascal; an the child I now go with, do miscarry, thou hadst better thou hadst struck thy mother, thou paper-faced villain. Host. O the Lord, that sir John were come! he would make this a bloody day to somebody. But I pray God the fruit of her womb miscarry! 1 Bead. If it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions again; you have but eleven now. Come, I charge you both to go with me; for the man is dead, that you and Pistol beat among you. Doll. I'll tell thee what, thou thin man in a censer! I will have you as soundly swinged for this, you bluebottle rogue! you filthy famished correctioner; if you be not swinged, I will forswear half-kirtles. 1 Bead. Come, come, you she knight-errant, come. Host. O, that right should thus overcome might! Well; of sufferance comes ease. Doll. Come, you rogue, come; bring me to a justice. Doll. Come, you thin thing; come, you rascal! [Exeunt. SCENE V.-A public Place near Westminster Abbey. 1 Groom. More rushes, more rushes. 1 Groom. It will be two o'clock ere they come from the coronation: Despatch, despatch. [ExeuntGrooms. Enter FALSTAFF, SHALLOW, PISTOL, BARDOLPH, and the Page. Fal. Stand here by me, master Robert Shallow; I will make the king do you grace: I will leer upon him, as 'a comes by; and do but mark the counte Pist. As nail in door: the things I speak, are just.nance that he will give me. Fal. Away, Bardolph; saddle my horse.-- Master Robert Shallow, choose what office thou wilt in the you speak? Fal. My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart! King. I know thee not, old man: Fall to thy prayers; How ill white hairs become a fool, and jester! I have long dream'd of such a kind of inan, So surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane; But, being awake, I do despise my dream. Make less thy body, hence, and more thy grace; Leave gormandizing; know, the grave doth gape For thee thrice wider than for other men :Reply not to me with a fool-born jest ; Presume not, that I am the thing I was: For heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turn'd away my former self; So will I those who kept me company. When thou dost hear I am as I have been, Approach me; and thou shalt be as thou wast, The tutor and the feeder of my riots: Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death,-As I have done the rest of my misleaders,Not to come near our person by ten mile. For competence of life, I will allow you, That lack of means enforce you not to evil : And, as we hear you do reform yourselves, We will, according to your strength, and qualities, Give you advancement.-Be it your charge, my lord, To see perform'd the tenor of our word.Set on. [Exeunt KING and his Train. Fal. Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound. Shal. Ay, marry, sir John; which I beseech you to let me have home with me. Fal. That can hardly be, master Shallow. Do not you grieve at this; I shall be sent for in private to him: look you, he must seem thus to the world. Fear not your advancement; I will be the man yet, that shall make you great. Shal. I cannot perceive how; unless you give me your doublet, and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good sir John, let me have five hundred of my thousand. Fal. Sir, I will be as good as my word: this that you heard, was but a colour. Shal. A colour, I fear, that you will die in, sir John. Fal. Fear no colours; go with me to dinner. Come, lieutenant Pistol;-come, Bardolph; — I shall be sent for soon at night. Re-enter PRINCE JOHN, the CHIEF JUSTICE, Officers, &c. Ch. Just. Go, carry sir John Falstaff to the Fleet; Take all his company along with him. Fal. My lord, my lord,- Ch. Just. I cannot now speak: I will hear you soon. Take them away. Pist. Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta. [Ex. FAL. SHAL. PIST. BARD. Page, & Officers. P. John. I like this fair proceeding of the king's: 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. Ch. Just. And so they are. P. John. The king hath call'd his parliament, my Ch. Just. He hath. [lord. P. John. I will lay odds,-that, ere this year expire, We bear our civil swords, and native fire, As far as France: I heard a bird so sing, Whose music, to my thinking, pleas'd the king. Come, will you hence? EPILOGUE. Spoken by a Dancer. [Exeunt. First, my fear; then, my court'sy: last, my speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my court'sy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me: for what I have to say, is of mine own making; and what, indeed, I should say, will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture.-Be it known to you, (as it is very well,) I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it, and to promise you a better. I did mean, indeed, to pay you with this; which, if, like an ill venture, it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here, I promised you, I would be, and here I commit my body to your mercies: bate me some, and I will pay you some, and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely. If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment,-to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so will I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me; if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly. One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katherine of France: 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. My I fancy every reader, when he ends this play, cries out with Desdemona, "O most lame and impotent conclusion!" As this play was not, to our knowledge, divided into acts by the author, I could be content to conclude it with the death of Henry the Fourth: "In that Jerusalem shall Harry die." These scenes, which now make the fifth act of Henry the Fourth, might then be the first of Henry the Fifth; but the truth is, that they do not unite very commodiously to either play. When these plays were represented, I believe they ended as they are now ended in the books; but Shakspeare seems to have designed that the whole series of action, from the beginning of Richard the Second, to the end of Henry the Fifth, should be con. sidered by the reader as one work, upon one plan, only broken into parts by the necessity of exhibition. None of Shakspeare's plays are more read than the First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. Perhaps no author has ever, in two plays, afforded so much delight. The great events are interesting, for the fate of kingdoms depends upon them; the slighter occurrences are diverting, and, except one or two, sufficiently probable: the incidents are multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention, and the characters diversified with the utmost nicety of discernment, and the profoundest skill in the nature of man. The prince, who is the hero both of the comic and tragic part, is a young man of great abilities and violent passions, whose sentiments are right, though his actions are wrong; whose virtues are obscured by negligence, and whose understanding is dissipated by levity. In his idle hours he is rather loose than wicked; and when the occasion forces out his latent qualities, he is great without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night: and so kneel down before you: but, indeed, to pray for the queen. is roused into a hero, and the hero again reposes in the trifler. The character is great, original, and just. Percy is a rugged soldier, choleric, and quarrelsome, and has only the soldier's virtues, generosity and courage. But Falstaff, unimitated, unimitable Falstaff, how shall I describe thee? thou compound of sense and vice; of sense whic may be admired, but not esteemed; of vice, which may be de spised, but hardly detested. Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with those faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief and a glutton, a coward and a boaster, always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous, and insult the defenceless. At once obsequious and malignant, he satirizes in their absence those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar with the prince only as an agen of vice, but of this familiarity he is so proud, as not only to be supercilious and haughty with common men, but to think his interest of importance to the Duke of Lancaster. Yet the man thus corrupt, thus despicable, makes himself necessary to the prince that despises him, by the most pleasing of all qualities, perpetual gaiety, by an unfailing power of exciting laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his wit is not of the splen did or ambitious kind, but consists in easy scapes and sallies of levity, which make sport, but raise no envy. It must be ob served, that he is stained with no enormous or sanguinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not so offensive but that it may be borne for his mirth. The moral to be drawn from this representation is, that no man is more dangerous than he that, with a will to corrupt, hath the power to please; and that neither wit nor honesty ought to think themselves safe with such a companion, when they see Henry seduced by Falstaff.-JOHNSON. LORD SCROOP, Sir THOMAS GREY, conspirators against the King. Enter Chorus. O, for a muse of fire, that would ascend Sir THOMAS ERPINGHAM, GOWER, FLUELLEN, MAC-The brightest heaven of invention! BATES, COURT, WILLIAMS, soldiers in the same. And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! kingdom for a stage, princes to act, NYM, BARDOLPH, PISTOL, formerly servants to Fal-Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, staff, now soldiers in the same. Boy, servant to them. A Herald. Chorus. CHARLES THE SIXTH, King of France. DUKES OF BURGUNDY, ORLEANS, and Bourbon. RAMBURES, and GRANDPREE, French lords. MONTJOY, a French herald. Ambassadors to the King of England. ISABEL, Queen of France. KATHARINE, daughter of Charles and Isabel. Assume the port of Mars; and, at his heels, Are now confin'd two mighty monarchies, Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Who, prologue-like, your humble patience pray, ACT I. SCENE I. London.-An Ante-chamber in the King's Palace. Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, and BISHOP OF ELY. Cant. My lord, I'll tell you,-that self bill is urg'd, Which, in the eleventh year o' the last king's reign Was like, and had indeed against us pass'd, But that the scambling and unquiet time Did push it out of further question. Ely. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now? A thousand pounds by the year: Thus runs the bill. 'Twould drink the cup and all. And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him; To envelop and contain celestial spirits. With such a heady current, scouring faults; So soon did lose his seat, and all at once, Ely. The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks, Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle: Cant. It must be so; for miracles are ceas'd; And therefore we must needs admit the means, How things are perfected. Fly. But, my good lord, How now for mitigation of this bill, Urg'd by the commons? Doth his majesty Incline to it, or no? Cant. He seems indifferent; Or, rather, swaying more upon our part, And in regard of causes now in hand, Ely. How did this offer seem receiv'd, my lord? Ely. What was the impediment that broke this off? Cant. The French ambassador, upon that instant, Crav'd audience: and the hour, I think, is come, To give him hearing: Is it four o'clock? Ely. It is. SCENE II.-The same. A Room of State in the same. K. Hen. Send for him, good uncle. West. Shall we call in the ambassador, my liege? K. Hen. Not yet, my cousin; we would be resolv'd, Before we hear him, of some things of weight, That task our thoughts, concerning us and France. Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY and BISHOP OF ELY. Cant. God and his angels, guard your sacred throne, And make you long become it! K. Hen. Sure, we thank you. My learned lord, we pray you to proceed! --- [peers, Eight hundred five. Besides, their writers say, Of Blithild, which was daughter to king Clothair, Tnat fair queen Isabel, his grandmother, Was lineal of the lady Ermengare, Daughter to Charles the foresaid duke of Lorain : Go, my dread lord, to your great grandsires tomb, Making defeat on the full power of France; O noble English, that could entertain Ely. Awake remembrance of these valiant dead, Exe. Your brother kings and monarchs of the earth, Do all expect that you should rouse yourself, As did the former lions of your blood. [aud might; West. They know, your grace hath cause, and means, So hath your highness; never king of England Had nobles richer, and more loyal subjects; Whose hearts have left their bodies here in England, And lie pavilion'd in the fields of France. Cant. O, let their bodies follow, my dear liege, With blood, and sword, and fire, to win your right: In aid whereof, we of the spiritualty Will raise your highness such a mighty sum, K. Hen. We must not only arm to invade the French, Cant. They of those marches, gracious sovereign, Shall be a wall sufficient to defend Our inland from the pilfering borderers. [only, K. Hen. We do not mean the coursing snatchers But fear the main intendment of the Scot, Who hath been still a giddy neighbour to us; For you shall read, that my great grandfather Never went with his forces into France, But that the Scot on his unfurnish'd kingdom Came pouring, like the tide into a breach, With ample and brim fulness of his force; Galling the gleaned land with hot essays : Girding with grievous siege, castles and towns; |