*KING HENRY IV. PART I.] The tranfactions contained in this historical drama are comprised within the period of about ten months; for the action commences with the news brought of Hotspur having defeated the Scots under Archibald earl of Douglas at Holmedon, (or Halidown-hill,) which battle was fought on Holy-rood day, (the 14th of September,) 1402; and it closes with the defeat and death of Hotfpur at Shrewsbury; which engagement happened on Saturday the 21ft of July, (the eve of Saint Mary Magdalen,) in the year 1403. THEOBALD.

This play was first entered at Stationers' Hall, Feb. 25, 1597, by Andrew Wise. Again, by M. Woolff, Jan. 9, 1598. For the piece fupposed to have been its original, fee Six old Plays on which Shakspeare founded, &c. published for S. Leacroft, Charing-Crofs. STEEVENS.

Shakspeare has apparently defigned a regular connection of these dramatick hiftories from Richard the Second to Henry the Fifth. King Henry, at the end of Richard the Second, declares his purpofe to vifit the Holy Land, which he refumes in the first speech of this play. The complaint made by King Henry in the last Act of Richard the Second, of the wildness of his fon, prepares the reader for the frolicks which are here to be recounted, and the characters which are now to be exhibited. JOHNSON.

This comedy was written, I believe, in the year 1597. See An Attempt to afcertain the Order of Shakspeare's Plays, Vol. II. MALONE,

King Henry the Fourth.

Henry, Prince of Wales,

Prince John of Lancafter,} Sons to the King.

Earl of Weftmoreland,

Sir Walter Blunt,

} Friends to the King.

Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester.

Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland :
Henry Percy, furnamed Hotfpur, his Son.
Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March.
Scroop, Archbishop of York.

Archibald, Earl of Douglas.

Owen Glendower.

Sir Richard Vernon.

Sir John Falstaff.

Poins.

Gadshill.

Peto. Bardolph.

Lady Percy, Wife to Hotfpur, and Sifter to Mor

timer.

Lady Mortimer, Daughter to Glendower, and Wife to Mortimer.

Mrs. Quickly, Hoftefs of a Tavern in Eastcheap. Lords, Officers, Sheriff, Vintner, Chamberlain, Drawers, Two Carriers, Travellers, and Attendants. SCENE, England.

Prince John of Lancafter.] The perfons of the drama were originally collected by Mr. Rowe, who has given the title of Duke of Lancafter to Prince John, a mistake which Shakspeare has been no where guilty of in the first part of this play, though in the fecond he has fallen into the fame error. King Henry IV. was himself the last person that ever bore the title of Duke of Lancafier. But all his fons (till they had peerages, as Clarence, Bedford, Gloucefter,) were diftinguifhed by the name of the royal houfe, as John of Lancaster, Humphrey of Lancaster, &c. and in that proper ftyle, the prefent John (who became afterwards fo illuftrious by the title of Duke of Bedford,) is always mentioned in the play before us. STEEVENS.

FIRST PART OF

KING HENRY IV.

ACT I. SCENE I.

London. A Room in the Palace.

Enter King HENRY, WESTMORELAND, Sir WALTER BLUNT, and Others.

K. HEN. So fhaken as we are, fo wan with care, Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,

And breathe short-winded accents of new broils 2 To be commenc'd in ftronds afar remote.

No more the thirfty Erinnys of this foil

Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood ;3

2 Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,

And breathe Short-winded accents of new broils] That is, let us foften peace to reft a while without disturbance, that the may recover breath to propofe new wars.

3 No more the thirsty Erinnys of this foil

JOHNSON.

Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood;] See Mr. M. Mafon's note, p. 181. The old copies read-entrance. Perhaps the following conjecture may be thought very far fetched, and yet I am willing to venture it, because it often happens that a wrong reading has affinity to the right. We might read: the thirsty entrants of this foil;

i. e. those who fet foot on this kingdom through the thirft of power or conqueft, as the speaker himself had done, on his return to England after banishment.

No more fhall trenching war channel her fields,

Whoever is accustomed to the old copies of this author, will generally find the words confequents, occurrents, ingredients, fpelt confequence, occurrence, ingredience; and thus, perhaps, the French word entrants, anglicized by Shakspeare, might have been corrupted into entrance, which affords no very apparent meaning.

By her lips Shakspeare may mean the lips of peace, who is mentioned in the fecond line; or may use the thirsty entrance of the foil, for the porous furface of the earth, through which all moisture enters, and is thirftily drank, or soaked up.

So, in an Ode inferted by Gascoigne in his and Francis Kinwelmerfh's tranflation of the Phoeniffe of Euripides :

"And make the greedy ground a drinking cup,
"To fup the blood of murdered bodies up.'

STEEVENS.

If there be no corruption in the text, I believe Shakspeare meant, however licentiously, to fay, No more fhall this foil have the lips of her thirsty entrance, or mouth, daubed with the blood of her own children.

Her lips, in my apprehenfion, refers to foil in the preceding line, and not to peace, as has been fuggefted. Shakspeare seldom attends to the integrity of his metaphors. In the second of these lines he confiders the foil or earth of England as a perfon; (So, in King Richard II:

66

Tells them, he does beftride a bleeding land, Gafping for life under great Bolingbroke.") and yet in the first line the foil must be understood in its ordinary material sense, as also in a subsequent line in which its fields are faid to be channelled with war. Of this kind of incongruity ourauthor's plays furnish innumerable instances.

Daub, the reading of the earliest copy, is confirmed by a paffage in King Richard II. where we again meet with the image , prefented here:

"For that our kingdom's earth fhall not be foil'd "With that dear blood which it hath foftered." The fame kind of imagery is found in King Henry VI. P. III: Thy brother's blood the thirsty earth hath drunk :" In which paffage, as well as in that before us, the poet had perhaps the facred writings in his thoughts: "And now art thou curfed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand." Gen. iv. 2. This laft ob fervation has been made by an anonymous writer. Again, in King Richard II:

"Reft thy unreft on England's lawful earth,
"Unlawfully made drunk with innocent blood."

Nor bruife her flowrets with the armed hoofs

The earth may with equal propriety be faid to daub her lips with blood, as to be made drunk with blood.

A paffage in the old play of King John, 1591, may throw fome light on that before us:

Is all the blood y-fpilt on either part,
Clofing the crannies of the thirsty earth,
"Grown to a love-game, and a bridal feast ?"

MALONE.

The thirsty entrance of the foil is nothing more or lefs, than the face of the earth parch'd and crack'd as it always appears in a dry fummer. As to its being perfonified, it is certainly no fuch unusual practice with Shakspeare. Every one talks familiarly of Mother Earth; and they who live upon her face, may without much impropriety be called her children. Our author only confines the image to his own country. The allufion is to the Barons' wars. RITSON.

The amendment which I fhould propofe, is to read Erinny's, inftead of entrance.-By Erinnys is meant the fury of difcord. The Erinnys of the foil, may poffibly be confidered as an uncommon mode of expreffion, as in truth it is; but it is justified by a paffage in the fecond Æneid of Virgil, where Æneas calls Helen

66

Troja & patriæ communis Erinnys." And an expreffion fomewhat fimilar occurs in The First Part of King Henry VI. where Sir William Lucy fays:

"Is Talbot flain? the Frenchman's only fcourge,

"Your kingdom's terror, and black Nemefis ?" It is evident that the words, her own children, her fields, her flowrets, muft all neceffarily refer to this foil; and that Shakspeare in this place, as in many others, ufes the perfonal pronoun inftead of the imperfonal; her instead of its; unlefs we suppose he means to perfonify the foil, as he does in King Richard II. where Bolingbroke departing on his exile says:

66

fweet foil, adieu!

My mother, and my nurse, that bears me yet." M. MASON. Mr. M. Mafon's conjecture (which I prefer to any explanation hitherto offered refpecting this difficult paffage,) may receive fupport from N. Ling's Epiftle prefixed to Wit's Commonwealth, 1598 : -I knowe there is nothing in this worlde but is subject to the Erynnis of ill-disposed persons."-The fame phrase also occurs in the tenth Book of Lucan:

"Dedecus Ægypti, Latio feralis Erinnys."