cording to the ancient laws of this realm; or if he would have him saved from the rigour of the laws, that he should obtain, if he might, of the king his father his gracious pardon, whereby no law or justice should be derogate. "With which answer the prince nothing appeased, but rather more inflamed, endeavoured himself to take away his servant. The judge considering the perilous example and inconvenience that might thereby ensue, with a valiant spirit and courage commanded the prince upon his allegiance to leave the prisoner and depart his way; at which commandment the prince, being set all in a fury, all chafed, and in a terrible manner, came up to the place of judgement, men thinking that he would have slain the judge, or have done to him some damage: but the judge, sitting still without moving, declaring the majesty of the king's place of judgement, and with an assured and bold countenance, had to the prince these words following: 'Sir, remember yourself. I keep here the place of the king your sovereign lord and father, to whom you owe double obedience: wherefore eftsoones in his name, I charge you to desist of your wilfulness and unlawful enterprise, and from henceforth give good example to those which hereafter shall be your proper subjects. And now, for your contempt and disobedience, go you to the prison of the King's Bench, whereunto I commit you, and remain ye there prisoner until the pleasure of the king your father be further known.' With which words being abashed, and also wondering at the marvellous gravity of that worshipful justice, the noble prince, laying his weapon apart, doing reve rence, departed and went to the King's Bench as he was commanded. Whereat his servants disdained, came and showed to the king all the whole affair, whereat he a whiles studying, after as a man all ravished with gladness, holding his eyes and hands up towards heaven, abraided with a loud voice: 'O merciful God, how much am I bound to your infinite goodness, specially for that you have given me a judge who feareth not to minister justice, and also a son who can suffer semblably and obey justice.'" The circumstances which preceded the death of Henry IV., including the story of the prince removing the crown, are thus detailed by Holinshed: "In this fourteenth and last year of King Henry's reign, a council was holden in the White Friars in London, at the which, among other things, order was taken for ships and galleys to be builded and made ready, and all other things necessary to be provided, for a voyage which he meant to make into the Holy Land, there to recover the city of Jerusalem from the infidels. The morrow after Candlemas-day began a Parliament which he had called at London; but he departed this life before the same Parliament was ended for now that his provisions were ready, and that he was furnished with all things necessary for such a royal journey as he pretended to take into the Holy Land, he was eftsoones taken with a sore sickness, which was not a leprosy (saith Master Hall), as foolish friars imagined, but a very apo plexy. During this, his last sickness, he caused his crown (as some write) to be set on a pillow at his bed's head, and suddenly his pangs so sore troubled him, that he lay as though all his vital spirits had been from him departed. Such as were about him, thinking verily that he had been departed, covered his face with a linen cloth. The prince his son being hereof advertised, entered into the chamber, took away the crown, and departed. The father, being suddenly revived out of that trance, quickly perceived the lack of his crown, and having knowledge that the prince his son had taken it away, caused him to come before his presence, requiring of him what he meant so to misuse himself: the prince with a good audacity answered, Sir, to mine, and all men's judgements, you seemed dead in this world; wherefore I, as your next heir apparent, took that as mine own, and not as yours. Well fair son, said the king (with a great sigh), what right I had to it, God knoweth. Well, quoth the prince, if you die king, I will have the garland, and trust to keep it with the sword against all mine enemies, as you have done. Then, said the king, I commit all to God, and remember you to do well; and with that turned himself in his bed, and shortly after departed to God, in a chamber of the Abbots of Westminster called Jerusalem. We find that he was taken with his last sickness while he was making his prayers at Saint Edward's shrine, there as it were to take his leave, and so to proceed forth on his journey: he was so suddenly and grievously taken, that such as were about him feared lest he would have died presently; wherefore, to relieve him, if it were possible, they bare him into a chamber that was next at hand belonging to the Abbot of Westmin. ster, where they laid him on a pallet before the fire, and used all remedies to revive him: at length he recovered his speech and understanding, and perceiving himself in a strange place which he knew not, he willed to know if the chamber had any particular name, whereunto answer was made, that it was called Jerusalem. Then said the king, laudes be given to the Father of Heaven, for now I know that I shall die here in this chamber, according to the prophesy of me declared, that I should depart this life in Jerusalem." We close our Historical Illustrations with a pas sage from Holinshed, descriptive of the change of life in Henry V. : "This king was the man that, according to the old proverb, declared and shewed in what sort honours ought to change manners; for immediately after that he was invested king, and had received the crown, he determined with himself to put upon him the shape of a new man, turning inso lency and wildness into gravity and soberness: and whereas he had passed his youth in wanton pastime, and riotous misorder, with a sort of misgoverned mates, and unthrifty playseers, he now banished them from his presence (not unrewarded, nor yet unpreferred), inhibiting them, upon a great pain, not once to approach, lodge, or sojourn, within ten miles of his court or mansion and in their places he elected and chose men of gravity, wit, and high policy." : "In the Shaksperian drama there is a vitality which grows and evolves itself from within-a key-note which guides and controls the harmonies throughout."* It is under the direction of a deep and absolute conviction of the truth of this principle-not only as applied to the master pieces of Shakspere, the Lear, the Macbeth, the Othello, but to all his works without exception, that we can alone presume to understand any single drama of this poet,-much less to attempt to lead the judgment of others. Until by long and patient thought we believe that we have traced the roots, and seen the branches and buddings of that "vitality,"-until by frequent listening to those "harmonies" we hear, or fancy we hear, that "key-note," we hold ourselves to be utterly unfitted even to call attention to a solitary poetical beauty, or to develop the peculiarities of a single character. Shakspere is not to be taken up like an ordinary writer of fiction, whose excellence may be tested by a brilliant dialogue here, or a striking situation there. The proper object of criticism upon Shakspere is to shew the dependance of the parts upon the whole; for by that principle alone can we come to a due appreciation even of the separate parts. Dull critics, and brilliant critics, equally blunder about Shakspere, when they reject this safe guide to the comprehension of his works. We have a Frenchman before us--M. Paul Duport-who gives us an "Analyse Raisonnée" of our poet, which is perfectly guiltless of any imaginative power to hide or adorn the dry bones of the Analysis.+ Mark the confidence with which this gentleman speaks of the two plays before us! Of the first part he says, "This piece has still less of action and interest than those which preceded it-(John, and Richard II). It is only an historical picture, the various circumstances of which have no relation amongst themselves. There is no personage who predominates over the others, so as to fix the attention of the audience. It is the anarchy of the Scene. What, however, renders it worthy an attentive examination is, its division into a tragic and a comic portion. The two species are here very distinct. The tragic portion is cold, disjointed, undecided; but the comic, although absolutely foreigu to the shadow of the action which makes the subject of the piece, merits sometimes to be placed by the side of the better passages of the Regnards, and even of the Molières." This is pretty decided for a blockhead; and, indeed, the decision with which he speaks could only proceed from a blockhead par excellence. Had this Frenchman not been supremely dull and conceited, he would have had some glimmerings of the truth, though he might not have seen the whole truth. Our own Johnson had too strong a sympathy with the marvellous talent which runs through the scenes of the Henry IV., not to speak of these plays with more than common enthusiasm. The great events, he says, are interesting; the slighter occurrences diverting; the characters diversified with the profoundest skill; Falstaff is the unimitated, unimitable. But now comes the qualification-the result of Johnson looking at the Coleridge's Literary Remains, vol. i. prge 104. + Essais Littéraires sur Shakspeare. 2 tom. Paris, 1828. parts instead of the whole :- "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." Let us endeavour, in going through the scenes of these plays, with the help of the great guiding principle that Shakspere "worked in the spirit of nature by evolving the germ from within, by the imaginative power according to an idea ;"*- let us endeavour to prove,-not, indeed, that these plays do not want action and interest, and that the tragic parts are not cold, disjointed, and undecided, -but that all the circumstances have relation amongst themselves, and that the comic parts, so far from being absolutely foreign to the action, entirely depend upon it, and, to a certain extent, direct it. If we succeed in our attempt, we shall shew that, from the preliminary and connecting lines in Richard II., "Can no man tell of my unthrifty son?" to "the most lame and impotent conclusion," which Johnson would suppress, nothing can be sparednothing can be altered; that Dame Quickly and Justice Silence are as essential to the progress of the action, as Hotspur and the king;-that the prince could not advance without Falstaff, nor Falstaff without the prince;-that the poetry and the wit are co-dependant and inseparable;—and, above all, that the minute shades of character generally, and especially the extraordinary fusion of many contrary qualities in the character of Falstaff, are to be completely explained and reconciled, only by reference to their connexion with the dramatic action," the key-note which guides and controls the harmonies throughout." Some seventy lines from the commencement of this play (we shall find it convenient to speak of the two parts as forming one drama), the "key-note" is struck. The king communicates to his friends "the smooth and welcome news" of the battle of Holmedon. His exultation is unbounded: But when the king is told the one circumstance-the "And is not this an honourable spoil? "It is a conquest for a prince to boast of," "One fatal remembrance, one sorrow that throws the shame that extinguishes the right to boast, comes across his mind : "Yea, there thou mak'st me sad, and mak'st me sin, In envy that my lord Northumberland Should be the father of so blest a son: A son who is the theme of honour's tongue; Of my young Harry. O, that it could be prov'd, The king forces his "young Harry" from his thoughts, and talks of "young Percy's pride." But the real action of the drama has commenced, in this irrepressible disclosure of the king's habitual feelings. It is for the poet to carry on the exhibition of the "riot and dishonour,"- their course,-their ebbings and flowings, the circumstances which control, and modify, and subdue them. The events which determine the career of the prince finally conquer the habits by which he was originally surrounded; and it is in the entire disclosure of these habits, as not incompatible with their growing modification and ultimate overthrow by those events which constitute what is called the tragic action of the draina -that every incident and every character becomes an integral part of the whole-a branch, or a leaf or a bud, or a flower, of the one "vitality." * Coleridge's Literary Remains, vol. i. page 104. We have seen in what spirit the prince of the old play which preceded Shakspere was conceived. We have seen, also, the character of the associates by whom he was surrounded. We feel that the whole of such a representation must be untrue. The depraved and unfeeling blackguard of that play could never have become the hero of Agincourt. There was no unity of character between the prince of the beginning and of the end of that play; and therefore there could have been no unity of action. Perhaps no mind but Shakspere's could have reconciled the apparent contradiction, which appears to lie upon the surface both of the events by which the prince was moulded, and the characters by which he was surrounded. It was for him alone to exhibit a species of profligacy not only capable of being conquered by the higher energy which made the prince chivalrously brave and daring, but absolutely akin to that higher energy. This was to be effected, not only by the peculiar qualities of the prince's own mind, but by the still more peculiar qualities of his associates. As the prince of Shakspere, while he "Daff'd the world aside, and let it pass," never ceased to feel, in the depths of his nobler nature, "thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds, and mock us;”- -so he never could have been surrounded by the 'Ned' and 'Tom' of the old play, who must have extinguished all thoughts of the wise,' and have produced irredeemable dishonour.' Falstaff, the unimitated, unimitable Falstaff,' was the poetical creation that was absolutely necessary to the conduct of the great dramatic action,- the natural transformation of "the mad-cap Prince of Wales" into King Henry V. So, indeed, were all the satellites which revolve round Falstaff, sharing and reflecting his light. It is the perfect characterization of this drama which makes the incidents consistent: the characters cannot live apart from the incidents; the incidents cannot move on without the characters. If we attempt to unravel the characters, and the complicated character of Falstaff especially, without reference to the incidents, we are speedily in a labyrinth. The vulgar notion of Falstaff, for example, is the stage notion. Mrs. Inchbald truly remarks, "To many spectators, all Falstaff's humour is comprised in his unwieldy person." But the same lady adopts an equally vulgar stage generalization, and calls him the "cowardly Falstaff." The "wit" of Falstaff, though slightly received into the stage conception of the character, is a very vague notion, compared with the bulk and the cowardice of Falstaff. Mrs. Inchbald (we are quoting from her prefaces to the acted plays) says, “ The reader who is too refined to laugh at the wit of Sir John, must yet enjoy Hotspur's picture of a coxcomb." The refinement of the players even more sensitive; for they altogether leave out in the representation the scene where Falstaff and the prince alternately stand for the King and Harry-a scene to which nothing of comic that ever was written, except, perhaps, a passage or two in Cervantes, can at all approach. The players, however, are consistent. Their intolerance of poetry and of wit are equal. Not a line do they keep of the matchless first scene of the third Act, than which Shakspere never wrote anything more spirited, more individualized, more harinonious. But we are digressing. Falstaff, then, we see in the rude general conception of his character is fat, cowardly, and somewhat witty. The players always double and quadruple the author's notion of his fat and his cowardice; and they kindly allow us a modicum of his wit. To be fat and to be cowardly, and even to have some wit, would go far to make an excellent butt for a wild young prince; but they would not make a Falstaff. These qualities would be, to such a prince as Shakspere has conceived, little better than Bardolph's nose, or the Drawer's "anon, anon, sir." To understand Falstaff, however, we must take him scene by scene, and incident by incident; we must study his character in its development by the incidents. "Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon." Here is the sensualist introduced to us. We have here a vista of "the halfpenny-worth of bread to the intolerable deal of sack." But if we look closely, we shall see that the prince is exaggerating; and that Falstaff humours the exaggeration. It is Falstaff's cue to heighten all his own infirmities and frailties. "Men of all sorts," he says, "take a pride to gird at me." But he has himself a pride in the pride which they take :--" The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything that tends to laughter, more than I invent, or is invented on me: I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men." How immediately Falstaff turns the prince from bantering, to a position in which he has to deal with an antagonist. The thrusts of wit are exchanged like the bouts of a fencing match. The sensualist, we see, has a prodigious activity of intellect; and he at once passes out of the slough of vulgar sensuality. But the man of wit is also a man of action. He is ready for "purse-taking;”—'t is his "vocation." Is not this again meant to be an exaggeration? The "night's exploit on Gadshill" was the single violence, as far as we know, of Falstaff as well as of the prince. His "vocation" was that of a soldier. It is as a soldier that we for the most part see him throughout this drama ;-a soldier having charge and authority. But in the days of Henry IV., and long after, the "vocation" of a soldier was that of a plunderer, and "pursetaking” was an object not altogether unfamiliar to Falstaff's professional vision. That Shakspere ever meant to paint him as an habitual thief, or a companion of thieves, is, in our view, one of those absurdities which has grown up out of stage exaggeration. The prince and Poins are equally obnoxious to the charge. And yet, although Poins, the intimate of the prince, proposes to them, "My lads, my lads, to-morrow morning, by four o'clock early at Gadshill," the prince refuses to go till Poins shews him that he hath "a jest to execute." The prince, in the soliloquy which is intended to keep him right with those who look forward to the future king, does not talk of Falstaff and Poins as of utterly base companions: "I know you all, and will awhile uphold He saw, in Falstaff and Poins, the same "idleness" which was in himself-the idleness of preferring the passing pleasure, whether of sensual gratification, or of mental excitement without an adequate end-which led him to their society. His resolution to forsake the "idleness" was a very feeble one. He would for " awhile uphold " it. The prince is looking forward to the "virtue of the jest" that will follow the adventure on Gadshill. The once proud allies, but now haughty rivals, of his father are, at the same time, bearding that father in his palace. Worcester is dismissed, for his "presence is too bold and peremptory." Hotspur defends the denial of his prisoners, in that most characteristic speech which reveals his rough and passionate spirit. All the strength of his nature,-the elevation without refinement, the force of will rising into poetry even by its own chafings,-are fully brought out in the rapid movement of this scene. Never was the sublimity of an over-mastering passion more consummately displayed. No disjointed ravings, no callings upon the gods, no clenchings of the fist or tearings of the hair. no threats without a purpose,-none of the common-places which make up the staple of ordinary tragedy; but the uncontrolable rush of an energetic mind, abandoning itself from a sense of injury to impulses impossible to be guided by will or circumstance, and which finally sweeps into its own torrent all the feeble barriers of prudence which inferior natures would oppose to it. It runs its course like a mad blood horse; and every attempt to put on the bridle produces a new impatience. Exhaustion at last comes, and then how complete is the exhaustion: "I have done in sooth ;”— a word or two of question, a word or two of assent, to the calm proposals of Worcester;-and the passion of talk is ready to become the passion of action. We may now understand what Shakspere meant by approximating the ages of Hotspur and Henry of Monmouth. Let us make Hotspur forty-five years of age, and Henry sixteen, as the literarists would have it, and the whole dramatic structure crumbles into dust. Under the poet's hand we see that Hotspur is the good destiny of the young Henry; that his higher qualities are to fire the prince's ambition; that his rashness is to lead to the prince's triumph. Eastcheap is Hal's holiday scene; but the field of Shrewsbury will be Harry's working-place. All the minor characters and situations of this drama are wonderfully wrought up. The inn-yard at Rochester is one of those little pictures which live for ever in the memory, because they are thoroughly true to nature. Who that has read this scene, and has looked out upon the darkness of a winter morning, has not thought of "Charles' wain over the new chimney?" Who has not speculated upon the grief of the man with one idea, of Robin ostler, who "never joyed since the price of oats rose?" We see not the "Franklin from the wild of Kent, who hath brought three hundred marks with him in gold;" but we form a notion of that sturdy and portly English yeoman. The "eggs and butter" which the travellers have at breakfast, even interest us. This is the art by which a fiction becomes a reality,-the art of a Defoe, as well as of a Shakspere. But all this is but a preparation for the exploit of Gadshill. We hardly know what limits there are to the comedy of humour, but it seems impossible to go beyond this. Practical wit is here carried as far as it can well go. There are other scenes in this play, where the sense of the comic is brought from a deeper |