Fr. King. We have consented to all terms of reason. K. Hen. Is't so, my lords of England? West. The King hath granted every article: His daughter first; and then, in sequel, all, According to their firm proposéd natures. Exe. Only he hath not yet subscribed this: where your majesty demands that the King of France, having any occasion to write for matter of grant, shall name your highness in this form and with this addition, in French: "Notre très cher filz Henry, Roy d'Angleterre, heretier de France:" and thus in Latin: "Præclarissimus filius noster Henricus, Rex Angliæ et hæres Francia." Fr. King. Nor this I have not, brother, so denied But your request shall make me let it pass. K. Hen. I pray you then, in love and dear alliance, Let that one article rank with the rest: Fr. King. Take her, fair son; and from her blood raise up Issue to me that the contending kingdoms Of France and England, whose very shores look pale With envy of each other's happiness, NOTES. "O for a muse of fire, that would ascena The brightest heaven of invention.”—Chorus, Act I. This goes upon the notion of the peripatetic system, which imagines several heavens one above another; the last and highest of which was one of fire.-WARBURTON. It alludes likewise to the aspiring nature of fire; which by its levity, at the separation of the chaos, took the highest seat of all the elements.-JOHNSON. "When he speaks, The air, a chartered libertine, is still."-Act I., Scene 1. Withal; as large a charter as the wind, "Send for him, good uncle."—Act I., Scene 2 The person here addressed was Thomas Beaufort, halfbrother to King Henry IV.; being one of the sons of John of Gaunt, by Catharine Swynford. At this time he was properly Earl of Dorset, not having been created Duke of Exeter till after the battle of Agincourt. -“Also King Lewis the tenth, Who was sole heir to the usurper Capet."—Act I., Scene 2. The monarch here alluded to was properly Lewis the Ninth, commonly called St. Lewis. The poet was led into the inaccuracy by Holinshed. "For now sits Expectation in the air, And hides a sword, from hilts unto the point, With crowns imperial, crowns, and coronets, Promised to Harry and his followers."-Chorus, Act II. This idea is derived from the ancient representations of trophies in tapestry or painting. Among these it is very common to see swords encircled with naval or mural crowns. Expectation is also personified by Milton: "While Expectation stood In horror " "One, Richard, Earl of Cambridge; and the second, Richard. Earl of Cambridge, was Richard de Conisbury, younger son of Edmund Langley, Duke of York. He was father of Richard, Duke of York, and grandfather of Edward IV. Henry, Lord Scroop, was third husband of Joan, Duchess of York, mother-in-law of Richard, Earl of Cambridge. "O how hast thou with jealousy infected The sweetness of affiance!"—Act II., Scene 2. Shakspere urges this aggravation of the guilt of treachery with great judgment. One of the worst consequences of breach of trust is the diminution of that confidence which makes the happiness of life; and the dissemination of suspicion, which is the poison of society.-JOHNSON. "For me, the gold of France did not seduce The sooner to effect what I intended."-Act II., Scene 2. A passage from Holinshed will throw light on this confession of the Earl of Cambridge: "Divers write that Richard, Earl of Cambridge, did not conspire with the Lord Scroop and Thomas Gray, for the murdering of King Henry, to please the French King withal, but only to the intent to exalt to the crown his brother-in-law, Edmund, Earl of March, as heir to Lionel, Duke of Clarence: after the death of which Earl of March (for divers secret impediments not able to have issue), the Earl of Cambridge was sure that the crown should come to him by his wife, and to his children of her begotten. And therefore (as was thought) he rather confessed himself, for need of money, to be corrupted of the French King, than he would declare his inward mind, &c.; which if it were espied, he saw plainly that the Earl of March should have tasted of the same cup that he had drunken; and what should come to his own children he much doubted." "His nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green fields."-Act II., Scene 3. This passage furnishes one of the many happy conjectural emendations of Theobald. It is universally received as the genuine text, and frequently quoted as an instance of Shakspere's close observation of nature. Yet the question is not without difficulty. Malone says on the subject:-"The folio of 1623 (for these words are not in the quarto), reads, 'and a table of green fields.' Mr. Theobald made the correction. Dr. Warburton objects to the emendation, on the ground of the nature of Falstaff's illness, who was so far from babbling, or wanting cooling in green fields, that his feet were cold, and he was just expiring.' But his disorder had been a burning quotidian tertian.' It is, I think, a much stronger objection that the word table, with a capital letter (for so it appears in the old copy), is very unlikely to have been printed instead of babbled." "But keeps the pridge most valiantly, with excellent dis cipline."-Act III., Scene 6. This mention of the bridge is founded on historical fact. After Henry had passed the Somme, the French endeavoured to intercept him in his passage to Calais; and for that purpose attempted to break down the only bridge that there was over the small river of Ternois, at Blangi, over which it was necessary for him to pass. But the King having notice of the design, sent a part of his troops before him, who, attacking and putting the French to flight, preserved the bridge till the whole English army arrived and passed over it. "A beard of the general's cut."-Act III., Scene 6. It appears from an old ballad, inserted in a miscellany, entitled "LE PRINCE D'AMOUR" (1660), that our ancestors were very curious in the fashion of their beards, and that a certain cut or form was appropriated to the soldier, the bishop, the judge, the clown, &c. The spade-beard, and perhaps the stiletto-beard also, was appropriated to the soldier. It is observable that Shakspere's patron, Henry, Earl of Southampton, who spent much of "YORK. My lord, most humbly on my knee I beg The leading of the vaward K. HEN. Take it, brave York."-Act IV., Scene 3. This Duke of York is the same person who appears (not very creditably) in "KING RICHARD II.," as Duke of Aumerle. He was the second son of Edmund Langley, the Duke of York of that play. Richard, Earl of Cambridge, who appears in the second act of this drama, was the younger brother of the Edward, Duke of York, mentioned in the quoted passage. "Quality! Callino, castore me. Art thou a gentleman?" Act IV., Scene 4. The original copy here reads, "Qualitie, calmie custure me." This jargon was changed by the editors to "Quality, call you me? Construe me," &c. But Malone subsequently found "Calen o custure me," mentioned as the burthen of a "Sonnet of a Lover," in a work called "A HANDFUL OF PLEASANT DELIGHTS," &c. (1584). And Mr. Boswell has still later discovered that it was an old Irish song, which is printed in Playford's "MUSICAL COMPANION," (1667 or 1673): "Callino, Callino, Callino, castore me; The words are said to mean, "Little girl of my heart for ever and ever." Mr. Boswell remarks, "they have, it is true, no great connexion with the poor Frenchman's supplications, nor were they meant to have any: Pistol, instead of attending to him, contemptuously hums a tune." Pistol probably means to express contempt for the Frenchman's flattery in speaking of his "quality." He wants something more substantial.-"Art thou a gentleman?" His mind is set on the "egregious ransom."-0. "As, by a lower hut by loving likelihood, Were now the general of our gracious empress The poet had good ground for supposing that the return of the unfortunate Essex from Ireland would be attended with a numerous concourse of well-wishers: for on his setting out for that country (as we are told by the Continuer of Stowe's Chronicle), "He took horse in Seeding-lane, and from thence, being accompanied with divers noblemen and many others, himself very plainly attired, rode through Gracechurch-street, Cornhill, Cheapside, and other high streets: in all which places, and in the fields, the people pressed exceedingly to behold him, especially in the highway, for more than four miles' space, crying, and saying, 'God bless your lordship,' 'God preserve your honour,' &c.; and some followed him till the evening, only to behold him." The disastrous circumstances attending and consequent on this great favourite's return are too well known to need recapitulation. KING HENRY V. is visibly the favourite hero of Shakspere, in English history. He pourtrays him endowed with every chivalrous and kingly virtue: open, sincere, affable, yet still disposed to innocent raillery (as a sort of reminiscence of his youth) in the intervals between his dangerous and renowned achievements. To bring his life, after his ascent to the crown, on the stage, was, however, attended with great difficulty. The conquests in France were the only distinguished events of his reign; and war is much more an epic than a dramatic subject. If we would have dramatic interest, war must only be the means by which something else is accomplished, and not the last aim and substance of the whole. In "KING HENRY V." no opportunity was afforded Shakspere of rendering the issue of the war dramatic; but he has availed himself of other circumstances attending it with peculiar care. Before the battle of Agincourt, he paints in the most lively colours the light-minded impatience of the French leaders for the moment of battle, which to them seemed infallibly the monent of victory: on the other hand, he paints the uneasiness of the English King and his army, from their desperate situation, coupled with the firm determination, if they are to fall, at least to fall with honour. He applies this as a general contrast between the French and English national character: a contrast which betrays a partiality for his own nation, certainly excusable in a poet, especially when he is backed with such a glorious document as that of the memorable battle in question. However much Shakspere celebrates the French conquest of King Henry, still he has not omitted to hint to us, after his way, the secret springs of this undertaking. Henry was in want of foreign wars to secure himself on the throne: the clergy also wished to keep him employed abroad, and made an offer of rich contributions, to prevent the passing of a law which would have deprived them of the half of their reveHis learned bishops are consequently as ready to prove to him his undisputed right to the crown of France, as he is to allow his conscience to be tranquilised by them. They prove that the Salic is not, and never was, applicable to France; and the matter is treated in a more succinct and convincing manner than such subjects usually are in manifestoes.-SCHLEGEL nues. WERE TERE we not restricted by the plan of the present edition of Shakspere from offering more than a summary of the merits of each drama, with such observations as its history may render necessary, we should yet refrain from entering at much length into the controversy to which this and the two following plays have given rise. Still, Malone's Dissertation, in which he endeavours to convince his reader and himself, that the First Part of "HENRY VI." owes not a word to Shakspere, and that the Second and Third Parts are merely mended by his hand, must not be passed over in entire silence. He grounds his belief, that the First Part was entirely the work of an earlier dramatist, mainly on the circumstance that there is an unusual amount of mythological allusion in it; more, as he conjectures, than Shakspere had, at the time, to bestow; and that the metre is differently constructed from his later plays. No conclusion, however, against the genuineness of the present drama can fairly be drawn from the affluence of mythological or classical allusion contained in it, or from the construction of its metre. Whoever the author, this play was undoubtedly written when Shakspere was a very young man. Supposing it to be his, what more likely than that a youthful poet should be anxious to shew his acquirements (witness the pedantry of his early comedy "LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST"), or that he should have adopted a structure of verse which Marlow had made so smooth and musical, that his must be a practised ear which can at last detect its monotony and be weary of its sweetness? Upon the whole, we incline to think that the three plays of "KING HENRY VI." were constructed by one man, and that that man was Shakspere; but that, if he were not the author, he put his mending hand to all three. In the present play, Joan of Arc, speaking of her sword, says—. "The which at Touraine, in St. Katharine's churchyard, Out of a great deal of old iron, I chose forth." Who would not wish to know that Shakspere never wrote so poorly? But when she says, shortly afterwards— "Glory is like a circle in the water, Which never ceases to enlarge itself, Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to nought:" Who can readily believe that any other than Shakspere produced so exquisite an illustration? An old writer, denouncing ambition, compares it to the crocodile, which, he says, continues to grow during its whole existence. This will apply as closely to genius, and eminently so to the genius of Shakspere. How much greater are his mature than his early productions! Let us grant that the present and the two succeeding plays are from his hand. This is to be borne in mind—a young author, diffident, perhaps, of his abilities (certainly unacquainted with their extent), anxious to please, observant of the success of others; he could scarce do aught else than cast an historical play in the mould that was familiar to his audience. Marlow, Peele, and Greene had preceded him; men not lightly esteemed: let us add, not undeservedly famous: held, we doubt not (the first especially), in veneration by the young Shakspere. What was he to do?—the not unknowing but the unlearned youth; he, who came out of no university, as the rest had done-what could he do, but follow in their steps? Time, which brought experience; experience, which ripened judgment;-these were present, and lent their aid at the composition of the Master's dramas. After enjoying the great historical productions of Shakspere, printed, as they are, in chronological order, we can conceive and sympathise with the disappointment of the reader, when he lights, for the first time, upon the following play. He will see that it is full of action, but deficient in character; that, with the exception of the Bishop of Winchester and the young King, it scarcely aims at individual portraiture. The rest of the personages are alike prominent; distinguished by their names, but not otherwise discriminated. The whole reminds us of an ancient print, without light or shade or perspective, in which the figures are all more or less alike, yet not one like the person designed to be represented; save that, in common with its original, it possesses all the members of a human body. No edition of this play is known prior to that of the first folio. |
