the scene in The Famous Victories where Derick and John Cobler rehearse the incident of Prince Henry's misconduct in the Chief Justice's court (pp. lii, liii post). (vi) The Prince's quibbling retort to Falstaff's admonition, "Do not thou, when thou art king, hang a thief" (I. ii. 58 ff.), is evidently a reminiscence of the Prince's promise in The Famous Victories to make Ned1 Chief Justice (p. liv post). (vii) In The Famous Victories the Prince and his companions frequent the "olde Tauerne in Eastcheape". (viii) Lastly, it is noticeable that the old play contains a Ned, who may have supplied Shakespeare with a name for Poins. V. Elyot, The Governour.-Reference has already been made (p. xvi ff. ante) to the indirect debt to Sir Thomas Elyot's The Governour, which contains the story of the Prince's flouting the Chief Justice's authority. To some possible reminiscences of The Governour attention is drawn in the notes. VI. Lastly, in connection with the sources of the play, it remains to refer to the many passages which reflect literary fashions or affectations of Shakespeare's time, and to reminiscences of contemporary literature. (a) First, there are the many instances in which the Puritan cant is burlesqued or ridiculed. See, for example, "grace thou wilt have none. Fal. . . . not so much as will serve to be prologue to an egg and butter" (I. ii. 17-21); "one of the wicked" (ibid. 96, 97); “be damned” (ibid. 99); “amendment of life" (ibid. 103); "vocation" (ibid. 106); "God give thee the spirit of persuasion," etc. (ibid. 151). Also "I would I were a weaver; I could sing psalms" (II. iv. 133); and "violently carried away from grace" (ibid. 445, 446). (6) Examples of literary parody are to be found in the two well-known passages in II. iv. in which Falstaff ridicules the "King Cambyses' vein" of the writers of early Elizabethan tragedy (ll. 390-393), and the preciosity of the Euphuists (11. 397-431). See the notes to these passages. (c) Furthermore, there are several references to the stock properties and characters of the then old-fashioned stage-plays of an earlier generation in II. iv. 137 (“a dagger of lath") and ibid. 452, 453 ("that reverend vice, that grey iniquity," etc.). (d) Reminiscences of and obligations to contemporary literature are noted in the commentary, and need 1 This Ned gave Shakespeare hints for the character of his Falstaff. not be enumerated here; but it may be worth while referring to the numerous passages which exhibit a knowledge of the Bible; many of these were apparently written in ridicule of the Puritans, who were given to scriptural quotation. We may instance: "wisdom cries out in the streets, and no man regards it" (I. ii. 90, 91); "amendment of life" (ibid. 103); "'tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation" (ibid. 105, 106); "Redeeming time" (ibid. 216); "sons of darkness" (II. iv. 174); "the tree may be known by the fruit" (ibid. 426, 427); "Pharaoh's lean kine" (ibid. 472); "Dives that lived in purple" (III. iii. 32); “fire, that's God's angel" (ibid. 35); "son of utter darkness" (ibid. 37); "The king himself is to be feared as the lion" (ibid. 150); "in the state of innocency Adam fell " (ibid. 165, 166); perhaps, " with unwashed hands" (ibid. 185); and "Lazarus in the painted cloth" (IV. ii. 25, 26). THE IDENTITY OF FALSTAFF We have already referred to the substitution of the name Falstaff for that of Oldcastle in dealing with the evidence for the date of the play, but there are a few more points to be considered in this connection. That the original name was Sir John Oldcastle seems clear (see pp. x-xii ante). The question then arises whether Shakespeare intended in his Sir John to satirize the Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, whose life and martyrdom are historical. As already stated, the Lollard knight, virtuous and brave though he was, suffered traduction at the hands of successive generations of his religious opponents. Sixteenth century tradition represented him as a man whose youth had been dissolute. In The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth he appears as a cynical associate of the Prince of Wales. From this play, which is one of the sources of 1 Henry IV., Shakespeare borrowed Sir John Oldcastle's name and gave it to the knight who was to be the central figure in his tavern scenes. Shakespeare owes the older dramatist little more, so far as Falstaff is concerned. The Sir John Oldcastle of The Famous Victories is but slightly drawn, and the Sir John of Henry IV. is virtually a new creation. But even if the Sir John of Shakespeare owes little more than the name to The Famous Victories, it is possible that the character may embody traditions respecting the real Sir John Oldcastle. Members of the Cobham family of Shakespeare's day resented, we are told, the Oldcastle of Henry IV. as an affront to the memory of their ancestor. And Shakespeare is clearly one of those dramatists whose imputations upon the character of the noble martyr are so warmly refuted by Fuller in the oft-quoted passage in the Church History of Britain (xv. Cent., Book iv., § 40, p. 168, ed. 1655): "StagePoets have themselves been very bold with, and others very merry at, the Memory of St John Oldcastle, whom they have fancied a boon Companion, a jovial Royster, and yet a Coward to boot, contrary to the credit of all Chronicles, owning him a Martial man of merit. The best is, St John Falstaffe hath relieved the Memory of St John Oldcastle, and of late is substituted Buffoone in his place, but it matters as little what petulant Poets, as what malicious Papists have written against him.” An attempt has been made to identify Shakespeare's Falstaff with the historical Sir John Oldcastle on the evidence of a speech in the Second Part of Henry IV. III. ii. 28, 29 (v. p. xii ante), where it is said that Falstaff, as a boy, was page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. But, as we have seen, it has been shown by Dr. Aldis Wright that the ultimate authority for the statement that Sir John Oldcastle had been Sir Thomas Mowbray's page is the play itself. Whether Shakespeare did or did not intend to disparage the good Lord Cobham, it would seem that contemporary dramatists read a satirical intention into the character of Falstaff. In 1600 appeared The First Part of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle and The Second Part of Sir John Oldcastle. The latter play is not extant, but the former seems to have been written with the definite object of profiting by the popularity of Shakespeare's play and, at the same time, of pleasing those, whom Shakespeare had offended, by presenting an image of the true Sir John Oldcastle. The authors, Munday, Drayton, Wilson, and Hathaway (according to Henslowe's Diary), stated their purpose plainly in their prologue : The doubtful Title (Gentlemen) prefixt Your fauours merite. Let fair Truth be grac'te, Pamperd glutton" and "aged Councellor" do not describe the Sir John Oldcastle of The Famous Victories. But if evidence is needed to show that the Life of Sir John Oldcastle was written as an answer to Shakespeare's Henry IV. we may quote two passages from the third act and fourth scene, in which Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff is referred to, and by name, in contemptuous terms. In III. iv. Henry V. says: "Where the diuel are all my old theeues, that were wont to keepe this walke? Falstaffe, the villaine, is so fat, he cannot get on's horse, but me thinkes Poines and Peto should be stirring here abouts." And later in the same scene Sir John of Wrotham says of the King: "he once robde me before I fell to the trade my selfe; when that foul villainous guts, that led him to all that rogery, was in's company there, that Falstaffe." If, as Shakespeare assures us (2 Henry IV., Epilogue), Falstaff is not Sir John Oldcastle, the martyr, is it possible to identify him with the valiant knight, Sir John Fastolfe, whose name he bears? Sir John Fastolfe is an historical character, but Shakespeare borrowed the name from the stage and not from history. In the First Part of Henry VI. Fastolfe is represented as a coward who fled from battle in shameful fashion (III. ii. 104-109); after being disgraced by Talbot, who plucked off his garter of knighthood, he was banished by the king (IV. i. 12-47). The difference between "Fastolfe" and "Falstaff" is merely orthographical: in the First Part of Henry VI. the Folios read "Falstaffe" or "Falstaff"; and in the Quartos of the First Part of Henry IV. "Falstaff" is spelt "Falstaffe" or "Falstalffe ". In choosing the name Falstaff, Shakespeare was doubtless influenced by considerations of historical reality. All the characters who are engaged in the main action of Henry IV. are well-known historical persons, and therefore the fat knight, inasmuch as he is introduced into historical events, required to have a known historical name. The name Falstaff was familiar to playgoers as that of a real knight without honour or reputation. 253), writes: "John He was a But Shakespeare was as unfortunate in his second as he had been in his first choice of a name. For as Fuller in his Worthies of England, Norfolk (1662, p. Fastolfe Knight, was a native of this County. Ward (and that the last) to John Duke of Bedford. . . . To avouch him by many arguments valiant, is to maintain that the sun is bright, though since the Stage hath been over bold with his memory, making him a Thrasonical Puff, and emblem of Mock-valour. Το "True it is Sir John Oldcastle did first bear the brunt of the one, being made the make-sport in all plays for a coward. . . Now as I am glad that Sir John Oldcastle is put out, so I am sorry that Sir John Fastolfe is put in, to relieve his memory in this base service, to be the anvil for every dull wit to strike upon. Nor is our Comedian excusable, by some alteration of his name, writing him Sir John Falstafe, (and making him the property of pleasure, for King Henry the fifth, to abuse), seeing the vicinity of sounds intrench on the memory of that worthy Knight, and few do heed the inconsiderable difference in spelling of their name.” And indeed Sir John Fastolfe was no more a coward than Sir John Oldcastle was a profligate. Holinshed in fact records that Fastolfe was eventually cleared of the charges that had been made against him. But Shakespeare was indifferent to historical niceties of this kind. He was content to borrow from stage tradition his conception of familiar historical characters. And it is remarkable that it is the very passage cited by some to prove that Sir John Oldcastle was definitely Shakespeare's original in Henry IV. (viz. 2 Henry IV. III. ii. 28, 29, where Falstaff is said to have been Mowbray's page), that is adduced in evidence by those who would identify Falstaff with the historical Fastolfe. For it is said, on the |