I am the Douglas, fatal to all those That wear those colours on them.-What art thou

That counterfeit'st the person of a king?

So

K. Hen. The king himself; who, Douglas, grieves at heart,

many of his shadows thou hast met
And not the very king. I have two boys
Seek Percy, and thyself, about the field:
But seeing thou fall'st on me so luckily,
I will assay thee; so defend thyself.

Doug. I fear thou art another counterfeit ; And yet, in faith, thou bear'st thee like a king: But mine, I am sure, thou art, whoe'er thou be, And thus I win thee.

[They fight; the KING being in danger, enter PRINCE HENRY.

P. Hen. Hold up thy head, vile Scot, or thou art like

Never to hold it up again! the spirits
Of valiant Shirley, Stafford, Blunt, are in my

arms:

It is the prince of Wales that threatens thee;
Who never promiseth but he means to pay.
[They fight; DoUGLAS flies.
Cheerly, my lord; How fares your grace?-
Sir Nicholas Gawsey hath for succour sent,
And so hath Clifton; I'll to Clifton straight.
K. Hen. Stay, and breathe awhile:

Thou hast redeem'd thy lost opinion;
And shew'd thou mak'st some tender of my life,
In this fair rescue thou hast brought to me.

P. Hen. O heaven! they did me too much injury

That ever said I hearken'd for your death.
If it were so, I might have let alone
The insulting hand of Douglas over you;
Which would have been as speedy in your end,
As all the poisonous potions in the world,
And sav'd the treacherous labour of your son.
K. Hen. Make up to Clifton, I'll to sir Nicholas
Gawsey.
[Exit KING HENRY.

To share with me in glory any more:
Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere;
Nor can one England brook a double reign,
Of Harry Percy and the prince of Wales.

Hot. Nor shall it, Harry, for the hour is come To end the one of us; And would to Heaven, Thy name in arms were now as great as mine! P. Hen. I'll make it greater, ere I part from thee;

And all the budding honours on thy crest
I'll crop, to make a garland for my head.
Hot. I can no longer brook thy vanities.
[They fight.

Hot. O, Harry, thou hast robb'd me of my youth:

I better brook the loss of brittle life
Than those proud titles thou hast won of me;
They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword
my flesh :-

But thought's the slave of life, and life time's fool;

And time, that takes survey of all the world,
Must have a stop. O, I could prophesy,
But that the earthy and cold hand of death
Lies on my tongue :-No, Percy, thou art dust,
And food for-
[Dies.

P. Hen. For worms, brave Percy: Fare thee well, great heart !—

Ill-weav'd ambition, how much art thou shrunk!
When that this body did contain a spirit,
A kingdom for it was too small a bound;
But now, two paces of the vilest earth
Is room enough:-This earth, that bears thee
dead,

Bears not alive so stout a gentleman.

If thou wert sensible of courtesy,

What! old accquaintance! could not all this flesh Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell! I could have better spar'd a better man. O, I should have a heavy miss of thee, If I were much in love with vanity. Death hath not struck so fat a deer to-day, Though many dearer, in this bloody fray: Embowell'd will I see thee by and by: Till then, in blood by noble Percy lie. [Exit. Fal. [Rising slowly.] Embowelled! if thou embowel me to-day, I'll give you leave to powder me and eat me to-morrow. 'Sblood, 't was time to counterfeit, or that hot termagant Scot had paid me scot and lot too. Counterfeit ? I lie, I am no counterfeit: To die is to be a counterfeit ; for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man: but to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life. 'Zounds, I am afraid of this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead: How, if he should counterfeit too, and rise? I am afraid he would prove the better counterfeit. Therefore I'll make him sure: yea, and I'll swear I killed him. Why may not he rise, as well as I? Nothing confutes me but eyes, and nobody sees me. Therefore sirrah, [stabbing him.] with a new wound in your thigh,3 come you along with me.

[Takes HOTSPUR on his back.

Re-enter PRINCE HENRY and PRINCE JOHN.

P. Hen. Come, brother John, full bravely hast thou flesh'd

Thy maiden sword.

P. John. But, soft! who have we here ? Did you not tell me this fat man was dead? P. Hen. I did; I saw him dead, breathless and bleeding,

On the ground.

Art thou alive? or is it phantasy

That plays upon our eyesight? I prithee, speak;

We will not trust our eyes without our ears :Thou art not what thou seem'st.

Fal. No, that's certain; I am not a double man: but if I be not Jack Falstaff then am I a Jack. There is Percy: [throwing the body down.] if your father will do me any honour, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy himself. I look to be either earl or duke, I can assure you.

P. Hen. Why, Percy I killed myself, and saw thee dead.

Fal. Didst thou?-Lord, lord, how the world HISTORIES--VOL J. Q

is given to lying!—I grant you I was down, and out of breath; and so was he: but we rose both at an instant, and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. If I may be believed, so; if not, let them that should reward valour bear the sin upon their own heads. I'll take it upon my death, I gave him this wound in the thigh if the man were alive, and would deny it, I would make him eat 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 :
For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,
I'll gild it with the happiest terms I have.

[A retreat is sounded.

The trumpet sounds retreat, the day is ours. Come brother, let's to the highest of the field, To see what friends are living, who are dead.

[Exeunt PRINCE HENRY and PRINCE JOHN. Fal. I'll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me Heaven 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 V.-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.
Ill-spirited Worcester! did we not send grace,
Pardon, and terms of love to all of you?
And wouldst thou turn our offers contrary?
Misuse the tenor of thy kinsman's trust?
Three knights upon our party slain to-day,
A noble earl, and many a creature else,
Had been alive this hour,

If, like a christian, thou hadst truly borne
Betwixt our armies true intelligence.
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.—

1 SCENE I.-" Busky hill."

THE hill which rises over the battle-field near Shrewsbury, is called Haughmond hill. Mr. Blakeway says that Shakspere has described the ground as accurately as if he had surveyed it. "It still merits the appellation of a bosky hill."

* SCENE I.-" As that ungentle gull the cuckoo's bird U'seth the sparrow." &c.

Shakspere was a naturalist in the very best sense of the word. He watched the great phenomena of nature, the economy of the animal creation, and the peculiarities of inanimate existence; and he set these down with almost undeviating exactness, in the language of the highest poetry. Before White, and Jenner, and Montagu had described the remarkable proceedings of the cuckoo, Shakspere here described them, as we believe from what he himself saw. But let us analyze this description: being fed by us, you used us so

As that ungentle gull the cuckoo's bird
Useth the sparrow."

Pliny was the only scientific writer upon natural history that was open to Shakspere. We are no believers, as our readers may have collected, in the common opinion of Shakspere's want of learning; and we hold, therefore, that he might have read Pliny in Latin, as we think he read other books. The first English translation of Pliny, that of Philemon Holland, was not published till 1601; this play was printed in 1598. Now, the description of the cuckoo in Pliny is, in many respects, very different from the description before us in Shakspere. "They always," says the Roman naturalist, "lay in other birds' nests, and most of all in the stock dore's." In a subsequent part of the same passage, Pliny mentions the titling's nest, but not a word of the sparrow's. It was reserved for very modern naturalists to find that the hedgesparrow's nest was a favourite choice of the old cuckoo. Dr. Jenner, in 1787, says, "I examined the nest of a hedge-sparrow, which then contained a cuckoo and three hedge-sparrow's eggs." Colonel Montagu also found a cuckoo," when a few days old, in a hedge-sparrow's nest, in a garden close to a cottage." Had Shakspere not observed for himself, or, at any rate, not noted the original observations of others, and had taken his description from Pliny, he would, in all probability have mentioned the stock dove or the titling. In Lear we have the "hedge-sparrow." But let us see further

-" did oppress our nest."

The word oppress is singularly descriptive of the operations of the "ungentle gull." The great bulk of the cuckoo, in the small nest of the hedgeparrow, first crushes the proper nestlings; and the instinct of the intruder renders it necessary that they should be got rid of. The common belief, derived from the extreme voracity of the cuckoo, (to which we think Shakspere alludes when he calls it a gull-gulo) has led to an opinion, that it eats the young nestlings Pliny says, expressly, that it devours them. How remarkable is it, then, that Shakspere does not allude to this belief! He

makes Worcester simply accuse Henry, that he "did oppress our nest." Had Shakspere's natural history not been more accurate than the popular belief, he would have made Worcester reproach the king with actually destroying the proper tenants of the nest. The Percies were then ready to accuse him of the murder of Richard. We, of course, do not attempt to assert that Shakspere knew the precise mode in which the cuckoo gets rid of its cohabitants. This was first made known by Dr. Jenner. But, although Shakspere might not have known this most curious fact, the words, "did oppress our nest are not inconsistent with the knowledge. The very generality of the words is some proof that he did not receive the vulgar story of the cuckoo eating his fellow-nestlings. The term, "oppress our nest," is also singularly borne out by the observations of modern naturalists; for nests in which a cuckoo has been hatched have been found so crushed and flattened, that it has been almost impossible to determine the species to which they belonged.

"Grew by our feeding to so great a bulk,

That even our love durst not come near your sight,
For fear of swallowing; but with nimble wing,
We were enforc'd, for safety sake, to fly
Out of your sight."

We have here an approach to the inaccuracy of the
old naturalists. Pliny, having made the cuckoo
devour the other nestlings, says, that the mother
at last shares the same fate, for "the young cuckoo
being once fledged and ready to fly abroad, is so
bold as to seize on the old titling, and to eat her
up that hatched her." Even Linnæus has the
same story. But Shakspere, in so beautifully
carrying on the parallel between the cuckoo and
the king, does not imply that the grown cuckoo
swallowed the sparrow, but that the sparrow,
timorous of "so great a bulk," kept aloof from her
nest, "durst not come near for fear of swallowing."
The extreme avidity of the bird for food is here
only indicated; and Shakspere might himself have
seen the large fledged "gull" eagerly thrusting
forward its open mouth, while the sparrow fluttered
about the nest, where even its love durst not
come near." This extraordinary voracity of the
young cuckoo has been ascertained beyond a doubt;
but that it should be carnivorous is perfectly im-
possible for its bill is only adapted for feeding on
caterpillars and other soft substances. But that
its insatiable appetite makes it apparently violent,
and, of course, an object of terror to a small bird,
we have the evidence of that accurate observer,
Mr. White of Selborne. He saw
a young cuckoo
hatched in the nest of a titlark; it was become
vastly too big for its nest, appearing

66

To have stretched its wings beyond the little nest,' and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger, as I teased it, for many feet from the nest, sparring and buffeting with its wings like a game cock. The dupe of a dam appeared at a distance, hovering about with meat in her mouth, and expressing the greatest solicitude." In the passage before us Shakspere, it appears to us, speaks from

"KING HENRY," says Holinshed, "advertised of the proceedings of the Percies, forthwith gathered about him such power as he might make, and passed forward with such speed that he was in sight of his enemies lying in camp near to Shrewsbury before they were in doubt of any such thing." The Percies, according to the Chronicler, sent to the king the celebrated manifesto which is contained in Hardyng's Chronicle. The substance of the charges contained in this manifesto are repeated in Hotspur's speech to Sir Walter Blunt in the fourth Act. The interview of Worcester with the king, and its result, are thus described by Holinshed: "It was reported for a truth that now when the king had condescended unto all that was reasonable at his hands to be required, and seemed to humble himself more than was meet for his estate, the Earl of Worcester, upon his return to his nephew, made relation clean contrary to that the king had said:"

"O, no, my nephew must not know, Sir Richard,-
The liberal kind offer of the king."

In the Chroniclers, Hotspur exhorts the troops;

Shakspere clothes the exhortation with his own poetical spirit.

"Now,-Esperancé!-Percy!--and set on,"

is found in the Chroniclers:-" The adversaries cried Esperance, Percy." The danger of the king, and the circumstance of others being caparisoned like him, are also mentioned by Holinshed.

The prowess of Prince Henry in this his first great battle is thus described by Holinshed: "The Prince that day holp his father like a lusty young gentleman, for although he was hurt in the face with an arrow, so that divers noble men that were about him would have conveyed him forth of the field, yet he would in no wise suffer them so to do, lest his departure from his men might haply have stricken some fear into their hearts; and so, without regard of his hurt, he continued with his men, and never ceased, either to fight where the battle was most hottest, or to encourage his men where it seemed most need."

The personal triumph of Henry over Hotspur is a dramatic creation, perfectly warranted by the obscurity in which the Chroniclers leave the matter