FAL. I will deliver her. [Shouts without, and the trumpets sound. PIST. There roar'd the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds.

Enter the KING, and his train, the Chief Justice among them.

FAL. God save thy grace, king Hal! my royal Hal.

PIST. The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame! FAL. God save thee, my sweet boy!

KING. My lord chief justice, speak to that vain man.

CH. JUST. Have you your wits? know you what 't is 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 man,
So surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane;
But, being awake, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence,a 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 God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self;
So will I those that 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. (3)-Be it your charge, my lord,

To see perform'd the tenor of our word.—
Set on.

[To the Chief Justice.

[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 should give me your doublet, and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good sir John, let me have five hundred of my thousand.

(*) First folio, heaven.

a Hence,-] That is, henceforward.

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; (4) 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. Se fortuna me tormenta, la speranza me contenta.

[Exeunt FAL. SHAL. PIST. BARD. Page, and 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 lord.
CH. JUST. He hath.

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?

[Exeunt.

EPILOGUE.

Spoken by a Dancer.

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 Katharine 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 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. (1)

ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS.

ACT I.

(1) SCENE II.-The Lord Chief Justice.] This was Sir William Gascoigne, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, to whom tradition ascribes the honour of having vindicated the authority of the law, by committing Prince Henry to prison for insulting him in the execution of his office. According to Holinshed, whom Shakespeare copied, the prince on this occasion so far forgot himself and the dignity of the judge, as actually to strike him on the seat of judgment. "Where on a time hee stroke the chiefe justice on the face with his fiste, for emprisoning one of his mates, he was not only committed to straighte prison himselfe by the sayde chief Justice, but also of his father putte out of the privie counsell and banished the courte." The blow was probably an exaggeration, as it is not mentioned in the earliest and most interesting account of the incident which we possess, that by Sir Thomas Elyot, in his collection of moral discourses, entitled "The Governor," which is as follows:

"A good Judge, a good Prince, a good King-The most renouned Prince, King Henry the Fift, late King of Englande, duringe the lyfe of his father was noted to be fierce, and of wanton courage. It happened, that one of his servants, whom he favoured well, was for felony by him committed arreyned at the King's Bench; whereof the prince being advertized, and incensed by light persons about him, in furious rage came hastily to the barre, where his servaunt stood as a prisoner, and commaunded him to be ungived and sette at libertie. Whereat all men were abashed, reserved the chiefe Justice, who humbly exhorted the Prince to be contented that his servaunt might be ordered, according to the aunciente lawes of this realme: or if he would have him saved from the rigour of the lawes, that he should obtayne, if he might, of the king his father his gracious pardon, whereby no Law or Justice should be derogate.

"With which answere the Prince nothing appeased, but rather more inflamed, endeavoured himselfe to take away his servaunt. The Judge, considering the perilous example and inconvenience that might thereby ensue, with a valyant spirite and courage, commaunded the Prince uppon his alleagaunce, to leave the prisoner and depart his way; at which commaundemet the Prince beinge set all in a furve, all chaufed, and in a terrible maner, came up to the place of Judgement, men thinking he would have slain the Judge, or have done to him some domage: But the Judge sitting still without moving, declaring the majestie of the King's place of Judgement, and with an assured and bold countenaunce, had to the Prince these words following: Sir, remember your selfe. I keepe heere the place of the king your sovereigne lord and father, to whom ye owe double obedience: wherefore eftsoones in his name, I charge you to desist of your wilfulnesse and unlawfull enterprise, and from hencefoorth give good example to those which hereafter shall be your proper subjects. And now, for your contempte and disobedience, goe you to the prison of the Kinge's Bench, where unto I commit you, and remaine ye there prisoner until pleasure of the kinge your father be further knowen.' With which words being abashed, and also wondering at the marvailous gravitie of that worshipful Justice, the noble Prince laying his weapone aparte, doing reverence departed and went to the Kinge's Bench as he was commaunded. Whereat his servaunts disdayned, came and shewed to the King al the whole affayre, whereat he a whiles studying, after as a man all ravished with gladnesse, holding his eyes and handes up towards heaven, abrayded with a loud voice: O mercifull 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.'"

For this occurrence, which Shakespeare repeatedly adverts to in the play, he had,

then, historical authority-but in making Henry, upon his accession to the throne, magnanimously forgive and re-appoint the lord chief justice :

"You did commit me:

For which, I do commit into your hand
The unstain'd sword-"

he has rendered himself amenable to the charge of departing from history for the sake of elevating his hero. It is true, indeed, that Sir William Gascoigne survived King Henry, notwithstanding his biographers have fixed his death to have happened the 17th of December, 1412; for Mr. Foss, in his "Judges of England," has shown, first, that he is judge in a case reported in Hilary term, 1413; secondly, that he was summoned to the first parliament of Henry V., in Easter, 1413; and, lastly, that his will has been found in the ecclesiastical court at York, bearing date, December 15th, 1419: but it is equally indisputable that he was not present at the parliament in question, and that the appointment of his successor, Sir William Hankford, took place March 29th, 1413, only eight days after Henry's accession, and ten days before his coronation.

"The peculiar period chosen for this act," Mr. Foss observes, "and its precipitancy in contrast with the delay in issuing the new patents to the other judges, tend strongly to show that it resulted from the king's peremptory mandate, rather than Gascoigne's personal choice; and, consequently, to raise a suspicion that the indignity he had laid upon the prince was not washed in Lethe and forgotten' by the king."

It is just to add that Sir William Gascoigne's claim to the distinction of having punished the wild young prince is not undisputed. In the memorandum book of Sir Robert Markham, preserved in the British Museum, "Add. MSS. 18,721," the first few leaves contain numerous extracts from early historians respecting Sir John Markham, a judge of the Common Pleas, in the time of Henry IV. and Henry V., at the end of which the writer remarks:-"Now, the reason I have thus diligently inquired into the authorities among the historians, concerning the name of the judge that committed Henry V., then Prince of Wales, is, because my own father alwais persisted in it as a tradition in our family, that it was Sir John Markham whom the prince struck, for which he was committed."

(2) SCENE II.-Setting my knighthood and my soldiership aside, I had lied in my throat if I had said so.] To lie in the throat, an expression which is frequently met with in Shakespeare, and other of our early writers, appears to have borne a deeper meaning than is usually supposed. In a curious old treatise on War and the Duello, which has escaped the researches of all the commentators, entitled "VALLO LIBRO Costinente appertenentie ad Capitanii, retenere & fortificare una Citta cō bastioni con noui artificii de fuoco aggioti, come nella tabola appare, & de diuerse sorte poluere, et de expugnare una Citta co poti, scale, argani, trobe, trenciere, artegliare, caue, dare auisa menti senza messo allo amico, fare ordinanze, battaglioni, Et ponti de disfida con lo pingere, opera molto utile con la experientia de l'arte militare," 1524, there is a chapter in the part devoted to the duello, which is headed "DELA DIVISIONE DEL MENTIRE," and which contains the following remarks on giving the lie:

"Eda notare che uno honesto mentire se suole dire tu non dice il uero, anchora ue e laltro mentire dicendo tu ne menti per la gola, & laltro mentire se dice tu ne menti per la gola como ad un tristo, laltro anchora se dice tu ne menti p la gola como ad un tristo che tu sei, siche luno procede dallaltro, & luno e differente dallaltro, prendendo el caso che un dicessi tu, ne menti per la gola como un tristo, no se intede chel sia tristo, ma che lhabia mentito come fa un tristo in ulla uolta, & lui non deue combattere per querela chel sia ditto tristo, ma dicendo tu ne menti per la gola, come un tristo che tu sei la querela e de cobattere che li e ditto tristo per causa che dice tu sei."

ACT II.

(1) SCENE I-For thy walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the prodigal, or the German hunting in water-work, is worth a thousand of these bed-hangings, and these fly-bitten tapestries.] In this, and in another passage where he declares his recruits to be "slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth," Falstaff intimates the subjects usually found in the decoration of houses formerly. The mural-painting referred to, appears to have both preceded and followed the use of tapestry-hangings; and it also became a substitute for them, when it was executed on loose cloths to be suspended