of historic tragedy, so the two parts of Henry IV., and espe cially this first part, which is a drama complete in itself, without its sequel, must be regarded as a splendid and varied historic tragi-comedy-historic in its personages and its spirit, yet blending the high heroic poetry of chivalry with the most original inventions of broad comic humour.

The principal events of Henry the Fourth's reign are rapidly presented in this play and its sequel; so that we are made familiar with the king's cold policy and his talent, the rebellions against him and his triumphs over them. But all this is so presented as to be subservient to the main object of interest, and to conduce to that unity of effect which distinguishes a work of dramatic art from the chronicle or story thrown into dialogue. That main central interest is, of course, the remarkable story—now familiar to young and old through this play, and as familiar before it in the poet's times by traditional anecdote and by rude theatrical representation of youthful Harry Monmouth's "unyoked humours and loose behaviour," and of his heroic "reformation glittering o'er his fault," when his noble nature emerged from its eclipse, no longer permitting

"the base contagious clouds

To smother up its beauty from the world."

The character of the reformed rake, in its coarsest form, has always something of interest in it, as it addresses the sympathies alike of the frailer and the better parts of human nature; but here the fascination of the character is far stronger when it is not the mere sobering down of vulgar debauchery that addresses these sympathies, but the gay and witty youth of idle pleasure passing at once into wise counsel, magnanimous sentiment, and heroic action. The first part of the prince's character, and the traditionary associations that belonged to it, at once suggested and demanded the comic portion of the drama. In surrounding him with

the companions and the subjects of his amusemens and pleasures, the poet's own rare knowledge of Se must have readily supplied him with living models of it personages and they rush on the scene in a joyous crowd-Bardolph, Pistol, Pets, and the more gentlemanly Poins with Daze Quickly and the rest. Yet it would be but a dull and vel gar mind that could long find enjoyment in such associates alone. The poet saw that it was necessary to preserve his young hero from intellectual degradation without raising the moral tone of his associations, and the inimitable Falstad ap peared as the lord of the mirthful scene. In one serse. Fil staff is strictly an historic personage; for the poet must have felt, what all must see by his light, that the dissolute pleas ures and idle humours of a young prince of ardent ambition, high thoughts, and eminent talent, such as Henry the Fifth afterwards approved himself, would soon cease to have ary charms for him without the companionship of wit and talent as well as sheer profligacy. There can be no question that the real Harry of Monmouth must have had about him prof ligates resembling Falstaff in the sort of entertainment they afforded this prince, however inferior to Shakespeare's "villainous, abominable misleader of youth," either in intellect or in bulk. In a more literal sense, he is the most original as well as the most real of all comic creations—a character of which many traits and peculiarities must have been gleaned, as their air of reality testifies, from the observation of actual life; and yet, with all his tangible and ponderous reality, as much a creature of the poet's "forgetive" fancy as the delicate Ariel himself. In his peculiar originality, Falstaff is to be classed only with the poet's own Hamlet and the Spanish Don Quixote, as all of them personages utterly unlike any of those whom we have known or heard of in actual life, who, at the same time, so impress us with their truth that we inquire into and argue about their actions, motives, and qualities as we do in respect to living persons who

B

anomalies of conduct perplex observers. Thus Falstaff's cowardice or courage, as well as other points of his character, have been as fruitful subjects for discussion as the degree and nature of Hamlet's or Don Quixote's mental aberration.

Thus it is that all the comic side of this drama, while it is of the boldest and gayest invention, is throughout impregnated with the very spirit of history, as exhibiting the very form and tone of such a society as Harry of Monmouth must have revelled in when he and his comrades "doff'd the world aside and bade it pass," and when, to use old Holinshed's humbler prose," he passed his youth in wanton pastime and riotous misorder with a sort of misgoverned mates and unthrifty play-feers."

On the other side of the varied and animated picture, Shakespeare has brought out the prince's heroic character by a bold and free paraphrase of his actual history, giving him a maturer age than he had in fact at the battle of Shrewsbury, and there making "the child of honour and renown, the gallant Hotspur, that all-praised knight," render "all his glory up" to his youthful rival, "the unthought-of Harry." Hotspur, on the other hand, who is recorded by the chroniclers to have been of the same age with Henry the Fourth himself, is thrown back to the prince's own age with such admirable poetic and moral effect that he must be a very bigoted worshipper of chronological and biographical accuracy who can object to the alteration of the record. Percy, in the old historians, has little to distinguish him. from the other warlike, brave, and turbulent barons described by Froissart and the chroniclers. His personal valour, his military activity, his resentment of the king's ingratitude, his rebellion and death, are all historical; but history gives us no more of him. The poet has placed him in a living and brilliant contrast to the other "young Harry," and made him the very Achilles of feudal chivalry. So

striking and impressive are the individuality and life of the character that it has been suggested that the poet had the aid of traditionary knowledge to fill up the meagre outline of the chroniclers. It may be so; but I rather think that he drew the young baron from his personal observation of some of the more conspicuous men of that class, and has thus given us, if not the precise historical portrait of the very Harry Percy, a very true and living portrait of the higher minds of his class and order, under the influence of feudal manners and ideas, individualized by some personal peculiarities (such as the "speaking thick" and many others), to aid in the dramatic illusion. Indeed, I have been recently struck with the strong resemblance of the dramatic Hotspur to the character of one of the poet's own contemporaries, Charles Gontaut-Biron, as it is given by the contemporary French writers. (See Capefigue's Hist. de la Réf., “Henri IV.") They describe him as the very counterpart of Hotspur in impetuous bluntness, unwearied activity of mind and body, courage, ambition, generosity, and even in horsemanship. Like his English counterpart, he had helped to elevate to the throne his own Henry the Fourth, who repaid him with ingratitude and death. The parallel is so perfect that I had almost thought that the poet had these contemporary circumstances in his mind; for, though occurring in another kingdom, they must have been well known as the familiar news of the times. Had this play been written a few years later, it would not be easy to refute the conjecture. But the judicial murder of Marshal Biron occurred in 1602, and this play had been printed four years before. I therefore mention this parallel, not only as a curious coincidence, but as confirming the wonderful general truth of this strongly individualized character. Glendower and the other personages are also historic names embodied in forms of the poet's creation, and most true to the spirit of their age.

Of all the strictly historical personages of this first part, Henry the Fourth himself alone seems drawn entirely and scrupulously from historical authority; and his is a portrait rivalling, in truth and discrimination, the happiest delineations of Plutarch or of Tacitus. He is contrasted alike to the frailties and to the virtues of his son; his talent, and the dignity with which it invests his cold and crafty policy, the absence of all nobler sentiment from the sagacious worldly wisdom of his counsels and opinions, his gloom, melancholy, and anxiety-all combine to form a portrait of a great and unhappy statesman, as true and as characteristic, though not as dark, as Tacitus has left us of Tiberius.

Thus has been produced a drama historical in the highest sense of the term, as being imbued throughout, penetrated, with the spirit of the times, and of the men and scenes it represents; while in a more popular sense of the epithet historical, it is so chiefly in its subjects and main incidents. Though boldly deviating from chronological exactness, and freely blending pure invention with recorded facts, yet in all this the author neither designs nor effects any real distortion of history; but, while he impresses upon the bare succession of events the unity of feeling and purpose required for dramatic interest, he converts the dead, cold record of past occurrences into the very tragi-comedy which those occurrences must have exhibited as they arose, and thus reflects "the very age and body of those times, their form and pressure."

[From Dowden's "Shakspere."*]

Bolingbroke utters few words in the play of Richard II.; yet we feel that from the first the chief force centres in him. He possesses every element of power except those which are spontaneous and unconscious. He is dauntless, but his courage is under the control of his judgment; it never be

* Shakspere: a Critical Study of his Mind and Art, by Edward Dowden (2d ed. London, 1876), p. 204 fol. (by permission).