KING HENRY IV.

PART II.

THE

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.
PRELIMINARY REMAI

HE transactions comprised in this play take up about nine years. The action commences with the account of Hotspur's being de feated and killed [1403]; and closes with the death of King Henry IV. and the coronation of King Henry V. (1412-13]. 'Upton thinks these two plays improperly called The First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. "The first play ends (he says) with the peaceful settlement of Henry in the kingdom by the defeats of the rebels." This is hardly true; for the rebels are not yet finally suppressed. The second, he tells us, shows Henry the Fifth in the various lights of a good-natured rake, till, on his father's death, he assumes a more manly character. This is true but this representation gives us no idea of a dramatic action. shall peruse

them without ambition of critical discoveries, to be so connected that the second is-merely a sequel to the first ; to be two only X to be one JonNON

was entered at Stationers Hall, August 23, 1600.
There are two copies, in quarto, printed in that year; but it is
doubtful whether they are different editions,
or the one only a
corrected impression of the other.

Malone supposes it to have been composed in 1598. weddin?)
Grollade of inamme zyrt

Henry V.

THOMAS, Duke of Clarence;

PRINCE JOHN of Lancaster, afterwards (2 Henry V.)

of

PRINCE HUMPHREY afterwards

of Gloster,

his Sons.

(2 Henry V.) Duke of Gloster; dit an

Earl of Warwick;

Earl of Westmoreland;

Gower; HarcourT

als in 2017-bortis, for betast

of the King's Party. As que cady and Dead da es on rail do sie

Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, 90090 sat

4 Gentleman attending on the Chief Justice.de to

Earl of Northumberland;

SCROOP, Archbishop of York;

LORD MOWBRAY; LORD HASTINGS;\"
LORD BARDOLPH; SIR JOHN COLEVILE

TRAVERS and MORTON, Domestics of Northumberland.

FALSTAFF, BARDOLPH, PISTOL, and Page. T POINS and PETO, Attendants on Prince Henry.

SHALLOW and SILENCE, Country Justices.

DAVY, Servant to Shallow.

MOULDY, SHADOW, WART, FEEBLE, and BULLCALF, Recruits.

FANG and SNARE, Sheriff's Officers.

RUMOUR. A Porter.

A Dancer, Speaker of the Epilogue.

LADY NORTHUMBERLAND. LADY PERCY.

Hostess QUICKLY. DOLL TEAR-SHEET.

Lords and other Attendants; Officers, Soldiers, Messenger, Iawers, Beadles, Grooms, &c.

SCENE, England.

INDUCTION.

Warkworth. Before Northumberland's Castle. Enter RUMOUR, painted full of Tongues1. Rum. Open your ears; For which of you will stop The vent of hearing, when loud Rumour speaks? I, from the orient to the drooping? west, Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold The acts commenced on this ball of earth: Upon my tongues continual slanders ride; The which in every language I pronounce, Stuffing the ears of men with false reports. I speak of peace while I speak of peace Under the smile of safety, wounds the world: Covert enmity, And who but Rumour, who but only I, Make fearful musters, and prepar'd defence; Whilst the big year, swol'n with some othe other grief, Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war, And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures; And of so easy and so plain a stop3, That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, The still-discordant wavering multitude,

In a

1 This was the common way of representing this personage, no anfrequent character in the masques of the poet's time. masque on St. Stephen's Night, 1614, by Thomas Campion, Rumour comes on in a skin coat full of winged tongues. Several other instances are cited in the Variorum Shakspeare.

2 The force of this epithet, will be best explained by the following passage in Macbeth:

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,

And night's black agents to their preys do rouse.

The stops are the holes in a flute or pipe. So in Hamlet:'Govern these ventages with your finger and thumb; look you, these are the stops.'

Vol. V.

11