Sil. And we shall be merry;-now comes in the sweet of the night.

Fal. Health and long life to you, master Silence.
Sil. Fill the cup, and let it come;

Fal. O base Assyrian knight, what is thy news?
Let king Cophetua know the truth thereof.
Sil. And Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John.

[Sings.
Pist. Shall dunghill curs confront the Helicons?
And shall good news be baffled?
Then, Pistol, lay thy head in Furies' lap.

Shal. Honest gentleman, I know not your breed-
ing.

Pist. Why then, lament therefore.

Shal. Give me pardon, sir;-If, sir, you come
with news from the court, I take it, there is but
two ways; either to utter them, or to conceal them.
am, sir, under the king, in some authority.
Pist Under which king, Bezonian? speak, or die.)
Shal. Under king Harry.

I

Harry the fourth? or fifth?

Pist.
Shal. Harry the fourth.
Pist.

A foutra for thine office!—

I'll pledge you a mile to the bottom.
Shal. Honest Bardolph, welcome: If thou want-
est any thing, and will not call, beshrew thy heart. Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is king;
-Welcome, my little tiny thief; [To the Page.] Harry the fifth's the man. I speak the truth:
and welcome, indeed, too.-I'll drink to master When Pistol lies, do this; and fig me, like
Bardolph, and to all the cavaleroes about London. The bragging Spaniard.
Davy. I hope to see London once ere I die.
Bard. An I might see you there, Davy.
Shal. By the mass, you'll crack a quart together.
Ha! will you not, master Bardolph ?

Bard. Yes, sir, in a pottle-pot.

Shal. I thank thee:-The knave will stick by thee, I can assure thee that: he will not out; he is true bred.

Bard. And I'll stick by him, sir.

Fal. What! is the old king dead?

Pist. As nail in door: The things I speak are just. Fal. Away, Bardolph; saddle my horse.-Master Robert Shallow, choose what office thou wilt in the land, 'tis thine.-Pistol, I will double-charge thee with dignities.

Bard. O joyful day!-I would not take a knighthood for my fortune.

Pist. What? I do bring good news?

Shal. Why, there spoke a king. Lack nothing: Fal. Carry master Silence to bed.-Master Shalbe merry. [Knocking heard.] Look who's at door low, my lord Shallow, be what thou wilt, I am forthere: Ho! who knocks? [Exit Davy. tune's steward. Get on thy boots; we'll ride all Fal. Why, now you have done me right. night :-0, sweet Pistol :-Away, Bardolph. [Erit [To Silence, who drinks a bumper. Bardolph.]-Come, Pistol, utter more to me; and, Sil. [Singing.] Do me right, And dub me knight:

Is't not so?

Samingo.

Fal. 'Tis so.

withal, devise something, to do thyself good.-
Boot, boot, master Shallow; I know, the young
king is sick for me. Let us take any man's horses;
the laws of England are at my commandment.
Happy are they which have been my friends; and

Sil. Is't so? Why, then say, an old man can do wo to my lord chief justice! somewhat.

Puff in thy teeth, most recreant coward base!-
Sir John, I am thy Pistol, and thy friend,
And helter-skelter have I rode to thee;
And tidings do I bring, and lucky joys,
And golden times, and happy news of price.
Fal. I pr'ythee now, deliver them like a man of
this world.

Pist. A foutra for the world, and worldlings base!
I speak of Africa, and golden joys.

(1) Apples commonly called russetines.
(2) Sweetheart. (3) Gay fellows.

(4) He who drank a bumper on his knees to the health of his mistress, was dubbed a knight for the ,evening.

Pist. Let vultures vile seize on his lungs also!
Where is the life that late I led ? say they:
Why, here it is; Welcome these pleasant days.
[Exeunt.

SCENE IV-London. A street. Enter Beadles,
dragging in Hostess Quickly, and Doll Tear-
sheet.

Host. No, thou arrant knave; I would I might
die, that I might have thee hanged: thou hast drawn
my shoulder out of joint.

1 Bead. The constables have delivered her over to me; and she shall have whipping-cheer enough, I warrant her: There hath been a man or two lately killed about her.

Doll. Nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie. Come on; I'll tell thee what, thou damned tripe-visaged rascal; an the child I now go with, do miscarry, thou hadst better thou hadst struck thy mother, thou paper-faced villain.

Host. O the Lord, that sir John were come! he would make this a bloody day to somebody. But I pray God the fruit of her womb miscarry!

1 Bead. If it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions' again; you have but eleven now. Come, I charge you both go with me; for the man is dead, that you and Pistol beat among you.

(5) It should be Domingo; it is part of a song
in one of Nashe's plays.

(6) A term of reproach for a catchpoll.
(7) To stuff her out to counterfeit pregnancy.

1

Fal. As it were, to ride day and night; and not to him: look you, he must seem thus to the world. to deliberate, not to remember, not to have pa- Fear not your advancement; I will be the man tience to shift me. yet, that shall make you great.

Shal. I cannot perceive how; unless you give Fal. But to stand stained with travel, and sweat-me your doublet, and stuff me out with straw. I ing with desire to see him thinking of nothing beseech you, good sir John, let me have five hunelse: putting all affairs else in oblivion; as if there dred of my thousand. were nothing else to be done, but to see him. Pist. 'Tis semper idem, for absque hoc nihil est: "Tis all in every part.

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.

the First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. Perhaps no author has ever, in two plays, afforded so much delight. The great events are interesting, for the fate of kingdoms depends upon them; the slighter occurrences are diverting, and, except one

P. John. I will lay odds,-that, ere this year or two, sufficiently probable; the incidents are

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?

EPILOGUE,

SPOKEN BY A DANCER.

[Exeunt.

multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention; and the characters diversified with the utmost nicety of discernment, and the profoundest skill in the nature of man.

The prince, who is the hero both of the comic and tragic part, is a young man of great abilities, and violent passions, whose sentiments are right, though his actions are wrong; whose virtues are obscured by negligence, and whose understanding FIRST, my fear; then, my court'sy; last, my is dissipated by levity. In his idle hours he is speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my court'sy, rather loose than wicked; and when the occasion my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If forces out his latent qualities, he is great without you look for a good speech now, you undo me: for effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is what I have to say, is of mine own making; and roused into a hero, and the hero again reposes in what, indeed, I should say, will, I doubt, prove the trifler. The character is great, original, and just. mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to Percy is a rugged soldier, choleric and quarrelthe venture. Be it known to you, (as it is very some, and has only the soldier's virtues, generosity well,) I was lately here in the end of a displeasing and courage.

play, to pray your patience for it, and to promise But Falstaff! unimitated, unimitable Falstaff! you a better. I did mean, indeed, to pay you with how shall I describe thee? thou compound of sense this; which if, like an ill venture, it come unluck- and vice; of sense which may be admired, but not ily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, esteemed; of vice which may be despised, but lose. Here, I promised you, I would be, and here hardly detested. Falstaff is a character loaded I commit my body to your mercies: bate me some, with faults, and with those faults which naturally and I will pay you some, and, as most debtors do, produce contempt. He is a thief and a glutton, a promise you infinitely. coward and a boaster; always ready to cheat the If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timowill you command me to use my legs? and yet rous, and insult the defenceless. At once obsequithat were but light payment,-to dance out of your ous and malignant, he satirizes in their absence debt. But a good conscience will make any possi-those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar ble satisfaction, and so will I. All the gentlewo- with the prince only as an agent of vice; but of men here have forgiven me; if the gentlemen will this familiarity he is so proud, as not only to be not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gen- supercilious and haughty with common men, but tlewomen, which was never seen before in such an to think his interest of importance to the duke of assembly. Lancaster. Yet the man thus corrupt, thus despiOne word more, I beseech you. If you be not cable, makes himself necessary to the prince that too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author despises him, by the most pleasing of all qualities, will continue the story, with sir John in it, and perpetual gaiety; by an unfailing power of exciting make you merry with fair Katharine of France: laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a wit is not of the splendid or ambitious kind, but sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard consists in easy scapes and sallies of levity, which opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is make sport, but raise no envy. It must be obnot 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.

served, that he is stained with no enormous or sanguinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not so offensive but that it may be borne for his mirth.

The moral to be drawn from this representation is, that no man is more dangerous than he that, with a will to corrupt, hath the power to please; and

I fancy every reader, when he ends this play, that neither wit nor honesty ought to think themeries out with Desdemona, 'O most lame and im-selves safe with such a companion, when they see JOHNSON. potent conclusion!' As this play was not, to our Henry seduced by Falstaff. knowledge, divided into acts by the author, I could| be content to conclude it with the death of Henry called the First and Second Parts of Henry the Mr. Upton thinks these two plays improperly the Fourth: Fourth. The first play ends, he says, with the "In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.' peaceful settlement of Henry in the kingdom by These scenes, which now make the fifth act of the defeat of the rebels. This is hardly true; for Henry the Fourth, might then be the first of Henry the rebels are not yet finally suppressed. The the Fifth; but the truth is, that they do not unite second, he tells us, shows Henry the Fifth in the very commodiously to either play. When these various lights of a good-natured rake, till, on his plays were represented, I believe they ended as they father's death, he assumes a more manly character. are now ended in the books; but Shakspeare seems This is true; but this representation gives us no to have designed that the whole series of action, idea of a dramatic action. These two plays will from the beginning of Richard the Second, to the appear to every reader, who shall peruse them end of Henry the Fifth, should be considered by without ambition of critical discoveries, to be so the reader as one work upon one plan, only broken connected, that the second is merely a sequel to into parts by the necessity of exhibition. the first; to be two, only because they are too JOHNSON.

None of Shakspeare's plays are more read than long to be one.