count of the king's movements at this critical period the name of the place at which the battle was struck is Hynsifeld. It occurs thus:-Simon Fysacreley, a boy of the king's pantry, lost his horse "in campis de Hynsifeld prope Salop, die belli tent. in eisdem campis," and has an allowance of 68. 8d. made to him in compensation. But it is time that we return to Shakespeare. : KING HENRY THE FOURTH. PART THE FIRST. WHEN Shakespeare had determined to make Prince Henry a prominent dramatic character, it became necessary to call into existence a number of persons to form the circle of his gay associates, and to be participants with him in his riotous excesses. These were to be creatures of the Poet's own mind for neither history nor tradition had brought down the names of any veritably existent personages who formed his company of low associates, except that there was an opinion noticed by Hall that Sir John Oldcastle, who by his marriage with the heiress of the old line of the Lords Cobham obtained that title and rank, and who was one of the great opponents of the church in that age, had been one of them. We have therefore in this play and the two which follow it characters who are not veritable historical personages, which makes the plays in which they appear unlike the other histories. Any attempt at referring these characters (except Falstaff) to any existing originals must fail. They are poetical creations only. Perhaps we ought to rejoice that they are so; inasmuch as there has been the greater freedom allowed to the Poet's imagination. He has at least succeeded in a most admirable manner in marking specific differences in a numerous body of persons of the same genus, and in making these peculiarities administer largely to our entertainment. They did not all make their appearance at once. In the First Part of King Henry the Fourth we have only Bardolph, Gadshill, Poins, and Peto as companions of Falstaff and the Prince. In the Second Part Pistol appears; but it is not till we come to the play of King Henry the Fifth that we find Nym. Quickly, the hostess of the Boar's Head in East Cheap, is in all. In the older play entitled, The Famous Victories of King Henry the Fifth, these characters are represented by persons called Ned and Tom, while the Falstaff of Shakespeare is Sir John Oldcastle himself under his proper name, appearing as one of the seducers and gay companions of the young Prince. It is quite clear that in Shakespeare's play also the character now known as Sir John Falstaff was at first Sir John Oldcastle- Away, good Ned, Falstaff sweats to death where Oldcastle suits the rythm better. The Prince addresses Falstaff, "Old Lad of the Castle," and in one of the Quartos "Old," stands in one place as one of the interlocutors instead of "Falstaff." There is also a tradition to that effect. The Quarto of 1598 has Falstaff, not Oldcastle. All this and other matter to the point is fully stated in the Variorum; yet, after all, both Steevens and Malone hesitate in coming to the conclusion that Shakespeare wrote this play, the first in which Falstaff appears, with the name of Oldcastle given to the character. What has been already stated seems almost decisive. As to the rest, there is this difficulty, that when critics are found speaking of the abuse of the venerable name of the good Lord Cobham on the stage, it is not easy to determine whether they are alluding to the plays of Shakespeare, or to those of earlier or other dramatists, in which there is no reason to doubt that Lord Cobham was held up to contempt, because he appears under his proper name. Yet the external evidence that Falstaff was a supersession of Oldcastle in Shakespeare's own play is stronger than those commentators seem to have been aware. First we have James, a Fellow of Christ's College, Oxford (born 1592, died 1638), who prepared for the press a poem of Occleve's entitled, The Legend and Defence of the noble Knight and Martyr Sir John Oldcastle.* James prefixes a dedication to Sir Henry Bourchier, from which I extract the following remarkable passage, as I find it in one of Mr. Thorpe's valuable catalogues of the year 1834:-" A young gentle lady of your acquaintance having read the works of Shakespeare, made me this question:-How Sir John Falstaff could be dead in Harry the Fifth's time and again live in the time of Harry the Sixth to be banished for cowardice? Whereto I made answer, that this was one of those humours and mistakes for which Plato banished all poets out of his commonwealth that in Shakespeare's first share of Harry the Fifth [Fourth] the person with whom he undertook to play a buffoon was not Falstaff but Sir John Oldcastle; and that offence being worthily taken by personages descended from his title, as peradventure by many others also who ought to have him in honourable memory, the Poet was put to make an ignorant shift of abusing Sir John Fastolphe, a man not inferior of virtue, though not so famous in piety as the other who gave witness unto the truth of our Reformation with a constant and resolute martyrdom." James is a worthy witness, and his testimony seems to be decisive. The next is the testimony of an anonymous writer, who may however be identified without the least hesitation with Charles Aleyn, the author of various printed poems similar in style and subject to that of the manuscript I am about to quote. This manuscript poem is entitled, Trinarchodia: the several reigns of Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth, and * See it, No. 34 of James's MSS. in the Bodleian. Henry the Fifth, 1649. Here the testimony is not less decisive that Shakespeare's Falstaff was originally Oldcastle. The worthy sir, whom Falstaff's ill-used name Again, 136. Henry the Fifth. Stanza 47. Here, to evince the scandal has been thrown 137. But think how far unfit, how much below 138. Such stage mirth have they made him; Harry saw Of Honour with rank mouth; if Truth may draw Who crowd to see in expectation full To the sweet Nugilogues 'twixt Jack and Hal. 139. No longer please yourselves, to injure names Live Falstaff then, whose trust and courage once 140. This may suffice to right him; but the guilt |