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Send danger from the east unto the west,
So honour cross it from the north to south,
And let them grapple.

For one so covetous of honour

it were an easy leap,

-I. iii. 195-197 post.

To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned honour by the locks.

-Ibid. 201-205.

4. Minor Characters.-A striking contrast to the Prince is his brother John of Lancaster. Prince John, "this same young sober-blooded boy" who did not love Falstaff,1 was as far removed from his wilder brother as was the impetuous Percy. But whereas Hotspur was passionate and heady, Lancaster seems to have inherited his father's character. He is early given responsibility, for he is old beyond his years. Whilst Harry has been wasting his youth in folly, John has been studying statecraft under his father's tuition. He will become a practical man of affairs who will avoid excesses of all sorts, and will rest content in a mediocre, negative virtue.

Crafty and cunning in a base sense are Northumberland and Worcester. Northumberland malingers at home while his son is rushing to almost certain defeat, if not destruction. And Worcester can, for merely selfish ends, pervert the message which has been entrusted to him, and so plunge his country into civil strife and bloodshed.

5. Falstaff-Lastly, there remains for consideration the character of Falstaff, one of the subtlest of all Shakespeare's creations. It does not suffice to study the character as depicted in this play only. Falstaff appears again in the Second Part of Henry IV. and in the Merry Wives of Windsor; the latter play, however, may he neglected, for the Falstaff of that play is not a true re-embodiment of the old knight. Devoid of wit or humour, he is there haled about like any "head-lugged bear," to make sport for the vulgar court which is said to have commanded his resurrection.

12 Henry IV. IV. iii. 94, 95.

The chief point of contention with regard to Falstaff's character concerns his personal courage. It would be impossible to traverse the whole of this well-threshed subject. Falstaff has been warmly defended against the charge of cowardice by his eighteenth century champion, Maurice Morgann.1 Morgann collects with the utmost care every scrap of available evidence in the two parts of Henry IV., weighing impartially the evidence for and against Falstaff; and, with subtle argument and ingenious reasoning, he contends that Falstaff is not a coward. If, however, he

is not cowardly, his behaviour is often disgraceful. What, according to ordinary standards, could be more indecent than his treatment of Percy's corpse, or more inglorious than his feigning death when the Douglas confronts him, or more unknightly than his famous soliloquy on "that word honour"?

To do justice to the character of Falstaff one must conceive of him as a good-humoured cynic, "a kind of military free-thinker." He belongs to the world of comedy in which there are no moral laws, or in which they may be in abeyance for the nonce.

It is interesting to note the stress laid by Shakespeare in this play on various conceptions of honour. There is the mocking attitude of Falstaff, who dismisses honour as useless alike to the living and to the dead. There is Hotspur, on the other hand, who pursues honour with a rash fury that regards no consequences. In the Prince, Shakespeare embodies a nobler and saner ideal of honour. Not to fly madly in the face of circumstance; but with never-failing kindliness and humour, without too conscious a seeking after reputation, to act courageously when the call of duty comes: such is the conception of honour presented in the person of Prince Henry.

Falstaff wins our affection, if not our regard: he charms us, he carries us away, even despite ourselves, by the very enormity of his humour, his nimble wit and imperturbable good nature. Even in the scene at Gadshill and its sequel in the tavern, we are so bewitched that it is impossible to feel dislike or resentment. Yet towards the end of the play

1 M. Morgann, Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff, 1777. See W. A. Gill's (fourth) ed., 1912.

21 Henry IV. 11. iv.

Falstaff's jesting seems to us, as it did to Prince Henry, to be like the crackling of thorns under a pot. He shows a complete lack of honour and self-respect by his words and actions on the battle-field. It is doubtful, perhaps, whether we are to believe his own account of his leading his hundred and fifty ragamuffins to their death;1 but he was sufficiently unscrupulous to have done so had it suited his pocket or his whim.

The key to Falstaff's outlook on life is his keen sense of humour. We can understand his counterfeiting death at the Battle of Shrewsbury if we realise that to him his performance was eminently sensible and immensely humorous in the acting. "Falstaff falls," says Morgann, "Douglas is cheated, and the world laughs. But does he fall like a coward? No, like a buffoon only." Here, as in every other instance in which Falstaff is the object of laughter, he is but achieving his purpose. He has neither modesty nor self-respect. All his boasting, so utterly absurd, and never intended to be believed, is but to evoke laughter. He never makes himself ridiculous to any but his friends; he never tells his gross, palpable lies but to his acquaintances, who, he knows, will not for one moment believe them. He seems to love putting himself into a difficult pass for the very joy of extricating himself by the dexterity of his wit. Even in the famous tavern scene (II. iv.) we do not think of Falstaff as a coward; we laugh at and love him for his portly presence and unblushing effrontery. When he bursts into the tavern, tingling with the expectancy of a trial of wit, which he will need to ply so skilfully after his flight at Gadshill, he breaks out with, "A plague of all cowards! Give me a cup of sack, rogue, Is there no virtue extant?' As Morgann joyfully exclaims, "We are at once in possession of the whole man, and are ready to hug him, guts, lies and all, as an inexhaustible fund of pleasantry and humour."

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Though we may be repelled by Falstaff's villainy, it is impossible not to enjoy the sallies of his inventive wit. It'is, perhaps, as Morgann points out, because this charactermade up" wholly of incongruities;-a man at once young and old, enterprising and fat, a dupe and a wit, harmless and wicked, weak in principle and resolute by constitution, cowardly in

11 Henry IV. v. iii. 36-38.

appearance and brave in reality; a knave without malice, a liar without deceit; and a knight, a gentleman, and a soldier, without either dignity, decency, or honour"-appeals to our minds and hearts in this way that we cannot receive any impression but a sympathetic one. Vice is there, but "vice, divested of disgust and terror, is . . . in its own nature ridiculous." So instead of condemning the old rogue for his villainy, we relish hugely his exuberant humour and resourceful wit. Truly he says of himself: "The brain of this foolishcompounded clay, man, is not able to invent any thing that tends to laughter, more than I invent or is invented on me: I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men." " 1

DURATION OF ACTION

According to Mr. P. A. Daniel, who published his time analysis of 1 Henry IV. in the Transactions of the New Shakespeare Society, 1877-79, the play covers ten "historic" days with three extra Falstaffian days, and intervals. The total dramatic time is three months at most :—

Day I.

[Day 1a.

Day 2.

Act I. i. London. News of the battle of Holme-
don, etc. Interval: a week (?). Hotspur
comes to Court.

Act I. ii. London. Falstaff, Prince Hal, etc.
The robbery at Gadshill planned.]

Act I. iii. Rebellion of the Percys planned. In-
terval: some three or four weeks.

Day 3. Act II. iii. Hotspur resolves to join the conInterval: a week. Hotspur and Worcester reach Bangor.

federates at Bangor.

[Days 2a, 3a. Act II. i. ii. iv. ; Act II. iv.; (Act III. ii.).] Day 4. Act III. i. Bangor. Interval: about a fortnight.

Day 5. Act III. ii.

is also a
a day.

Prince Hal and his father. Day 5 continuation of Day 3a. Interval:

Day 6. Act III. iii. Prince Hal informs Falstaff of his

appointment to a charge of foot for the wars. Interval: a week.

Day 7. Act IV. i.
Act IV. i.

Rebel camp near Shrewsbury. In

terval: a few days.

12 Henry IV. 1. ii. 7-12.

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The historic period covered begins with the defeat of Mortimer by Glendower, June 22, 1402, and ends with the Battle of Shrewsbury, July 21, 1403.

PASSAGES FROM HOLINSHED's Chronicles ON WHICH SHAKESPEARE BASED THE HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE FIRST PART OF HENRY IV. :

(I) The Percys' Rebellion.

"Owen Glendouer, according to his accustomed manner, robbing and spoiling within the English borders, caused all the forces of the shire of Hereford to assemble togither against them, vnder the conduct of Edmund Mortimer earle of March. But coming to trie the matter by battell, whether by treason or otherwise, so it fortuned, that the English power was discomfited, the earle taken prisoner, and aboue a thousand of his people slaine in the place. The shamefull villanie vsed by the Welshwomen towards the dead carcasses, was such, as honest eares would be ashamed to heare, and continent toongs to speake thereof. The dead bodies might not be buried, without great summes of monie giuen for libertie to conueie them awaie.

"The king was not hastie to purchase the deliuerance of the earle March, bicause his title to the crowne was well inough knowen, and therefore suffered him to remaine in miserable prison, wishing both the said earle, and all other of his linage out of this life, with God and his saincts in heauen, so they had beene out of the waie, for then all had beene well inough as he thought. ... About mid of August, the king to chastise the presumptuous attempts of the Welshmen, went with a great power of men into Wales, to pursue the capteine of the Welsh rebell Owen Glendouer, but in effect he lost his labor; for Owen conueied himselfe out of the waie, into his knowen lurking places, and (as was thought) through art magike, he caused such foule weather of winds, tempest, raine, snow, and haile to be raised, for the annoiance of the kings armie, that the like had not beene heard of; in such sort, that the king was constreined to returne home, hauing caused his people yet to spoile and burne first a great

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