and his father (ii. 4) may have been suggested by the rehearsing on the part of Derick and John Cobler in The Famous Victories of the scene between the Prince of Wales and the Lord Chief Justice. (See quotation from The Famous Victories given in the notes on ii. 4.)

But when the most is made of these points of resemblance, we cannot fail to recognize the illimitable gulf which separates the two plays. The comic scenes of the earlier work are mere horseplay, the wit consists in the bandying about of such oaths as "sowndes" and "Gogs wounds"; while in order to realize to the full the transcendent greatness of Shakespeare's characterization, we have only to compare Shakespeare's Falstaff with the Sir John Oldcastle (familiarly known as "Jockey") of The Famous Victories.

4. PLOT AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

An interval of three or four years - 1593 to 1596 or 1597 - probably separates 1 Henry IV from its nearest predecessor in the field of the history play - Richard II. During those years Shakespeare's dramatic powers had developed rapidly, he had freed himself from his dependence on Marlowe, and had established his position as an independent playwright. Comedy in its various forms had been his chief concern since he brought his first series of historical plays to an end with Richard III and Richard II, and to these years belong such comedies as The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Taming of the Shrew. Returning to the history play in 1596–1597, he produced in rapid succession 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V; and then, except for his share in Henry VIII at the end of his dramatic career, he relinquished this form of drama entirely.

The two plays of Henry IV, together with Henry V, form a trilogy in which the dominating character is Henry V. Moreover, in spite of the interval of time that separates 1 Henry IV from Richard II, there is a close connection of historic interest between them. The latter play abounds in references to incidents recorded in the earlier play, and the first scene of 1 Henry IV is as much a continuation of the last scenes of Richard II as the first scenes of 2 Henry IV are of its immediate forerunner. It is therefore possible to group the four plays together and regard them as a historic tetralogy, which traces the fortunes of the House of Lancaster from nadir to zenith from the banishment of Bolingbroke and the death of John of Gaunt to the triumph of Agincourt."

Yet, in spite of the historic interest that connects Richard II with 1 Henry IV and its successors, the earlier play has little in common with the later ones when regarded in relation to its plotconstruction or general style. The early history or chronicle plays, such as The Famous Victories of Henry V, or The Troublesome Reign of King John, which were written before the star of Marlowe rose to the ascendant, were more epic than dramatic. In these plays the episodes follow one another in chronological order; scarcely any attempt is made at regular plot-construction or unity of theme, and the action is extended over a considerable number of years. In these plays, too, there is a good deal of boisterous low-life comedy, mixed with the more serious and historical episodes; finally, prose scenes and prose speeches appear intermingled with the poetic portions of the play. Marlowe, however, as Professor Schelling points out in his English Chronicle Play, created a new type of history play with his Edward II (entered for publication in 1593). In this play much more attempt is made at plot-construction and unity of design; there is no comic relief, and no prose. Shakespeare, who was in his youth under Marlowe's influence, follows the Marlowesque or dramatic type of history play in his Richard III, and less closely in Richard II. These plays have throughout the characteristics of Marlowe's Edward II as regards unity of design and absence of prose and of comic relief. They mark, indeed, the consummation of the dramatic and tragic type of history play.1

In 1 Henry IV Shakespeare reverts to the earlier epic form. The play, it is true, has much more unity than 2 Henry IV and Henry V, yet such a scene as the fourth in Act iv, together with the king's speech at the end of the play, indicates that the victory at Shrewsbury does not mark the close of the Percy rebellion, but only of an episode in that rebellion. In 1 Henry IV, too, there is abundant comic relief from the serious interests of the play, and also plenty of prose.2 In these respects, then, 1 Henry IV thus marks a departure from the type of play represented by Richard II, and a reversion to the earlier type of epic play, or rather a development of it.

The fusion of comic and tragic, or at least serious, scenes, which is of the very essence of the romantic drama as opposed to the classic, is nowhere more triumphantly effected than in Henry IV. The historic plot and the Falstaffian comedy are outwardly distinct,

1 King John, the probable date of which is 1595, stands in most of these respects midway between the earlier histories and the later Lancastrian trilogy, 2 In 1 Henry IV there are 1464 lines of prose out of a total of 3170 lines; in 2 Henry IV, 1860 out of 3446; in Henry V, 1531 out of 3379.

1

but neither is simply embedded in the other. Prince Henry, and to a less extent Falstaff himself, have part in the serious as well as in the comic scenes; while toward the close of the play the comic episodes are not allotted to detached and independent scenes, but are introduced into the historical narrative, so that we pass without a pause from the heroic tragedy of Hotspur's death to Falstaff's humorous soliloquy on counterfeits.

There is another and more subtle connection between the serious and comic scenes. Hotspur, and to a less degree many of the other historic characters, give to the play something of a heroic temper. In the place of the tragic woof of such a play as Richard II, Shakespeare presents us with an epic theme to which the quest of honor on the part of Hotspur and Prince Henry lends unity of motive. Viewed thus, the battlefield of Shrewsbury is a tourney-ground as well, and is regarded in this light by the two chief combatants; only there can their equally strong, though differently felt, cravings for honor be satisfied. Honor, with its oblique shadow, reputation, is thus the leitmotiv of the historic plot. To all this the comic scenes and the person of Falstaff offer a foil. The honor so ostentatiously pursued by Hotspur, so quietly by the prince, is in Falstaff's eyes a vain shadow. He orders his life without regard to honor; then, when the preparations for the battle force the consideration of honor upon his mind, he devotes to it his famous catechism, and discovers that honor is but a word. A little later, when he sees Sir Walter Blunt lying dead on the plain of Shrewsbury, honor becomes of even less value: it assumes in his eyes the form of vanity.

The comedy of 1 Henry IV is a new form of Shakespearean comedy, quite distinct from the romantic comedy of gentlemen and gentlewomen in Love's Labour's Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, or of the Belmont scene at the close of The Merchant of Venice, and no less distinct from the clown-play of Launce and Speed, or of Bottom and his fellow-craftsmen, which came to Shakespeare as a heritage from the pre-Elizabethan drama. In 1 Henry IV we have, instead of romantic comedy and clown-play, the realistic comedy of London life which the Elizabethan dramatists knew so well, and which was to play so great a part in the comedies of Ben Jonson and his school. The vis comica and horseplay of the early drama is not absent from 1 Henry IV, but it is purged of its grossness and buffoonery, and enriched by the superb humor of Falstaff.

A consideration of the diction and verse of 1 Henry IV reveals

the fact that Shakespeare had by 1596 thrown off most of those mannerisms which are traceable in his early works. He still shows a certain fondness for word-play even in the serious portions of the drama, but little is left of the florid diction, the tricks of rhetoric, and the fancifulness of his earliest dramas. Above all, we notice how diction and verse are subjected to the exigencies of his dramatic instinct. We gain insight into the characters of the dramatis persona not only by what they say, but by their mode of saying it. "The style is the man." The dignified but stilted and formal language of Henry IV, set to verse that is peculiarly regular and chary of "light endings" and "double endings," indicates the king's character ås the abrupt, colloquial diction and impetuous verse of Hotspur's speeches indicate his nature.1 In like manner, the noble epic style of Vernon in iv. 1. 97-110 and v. 2. 52–69 is made to reflect a heroic element in his character. The dramatic character of the verse of Henry IV is seen in yet another way: not only does it indicate the character of different speakers, but also the different moods of the same speaker at different times. Hotspur's dietion is, as we have seen, usually colloquial, but when he is stirred by noble indignation or chivalrous ardor it loses its prosaic quality and becomes suddenly impassioned and imaginative. (See i. 3. 93–112, and 201-208.)

Looking at the style of the poetic portions of 1 Henry IV as a whole, we cannot fail to be struck by its amplitude and massive strength. Occasionally there is epigrammatic point, as in the Prince's dictum on the seemingly dead Falstaff:

"I could have better spared a better man,"

but for the most part Shakespeare seeks to impress rather than to dazzle. The style of Henry IV (to quote Professor Herford) "has a breadth and largeness of movement, an unsought greatness of manner, which marks the consummate artist who no longer dons his singing-robes when he sings."

When we apply to 1 Henry IV the metrical tests that have so often been adduced to furnish evidence as to the date of composition of Shakespeare's plays, one striking feature comes into prominence - the infrequency of double or feminine endings.2 Referring to the tables given by Professor Dowden in his Primer, and by Pro

1 Compare the king's speeches in i. 1 and iii. 2 with those of Hotspur in iii. 1.

2 For the explanation of these terms, see Dowden's Shakespeare Primer.

fessor Herford in his Introduction to Richard II (Arden Series), we find that the percentage of double endings in 1 Henry IV falls as low as 5.1, but rises to 16.3 in 2 Henry IV, and to 20.5 in Henry V. In Shakespeare's later plays the percentage of double endings steadily rises till in The Tempest it reaches 33. In Richard III the percentage is 19.5, in Richard II, 11, and in King John, 6.3. The infrequency of double endings in 1 Henry IV points to the fact, as Professor Herford states, that Shakespeare was here making experiments as to the rhythmical effects of the different forms of blank verse; it also seems probable that it is intended to give to the blank verse of 1 Henry IV something of an epic character. In epic blank verse, such as that of Milton, double endings are rare; according to Professor Masson the occurrence of such endings in Paradise Lost varies from about 1 per cent in Book i to about 5 per cent in Book x. Whether this attempt to give to the blank verse of 1 Henry IV an epic character, by reducing to a minimum the number of double endings, has anything in common with the fact that in this play he is reverting to the epic type of history play is a matter of speculation; for certain it is that in 2 Henry IV and Henry V, the plots of which are more epic in structure than that of 1 Henry IV, Shakespeare used double endings with greater frequency than he had done in any earlier play with the exception of Richard III.

Turning from outward form to inner meaning, we may briefly consider the political significance of the play. Both parts of Henry IV present a study in the working of Nemesis. The deposition of Richard II was in the interests of the country a necessary act, and the deposer was in every way a man more fit to rule. Yet the stigma of usurpation clings to Bolingbroke, renders his rule insecure, and embitters his life. The prophecy of the aged Bishop of Carlisle (see Richard II, iv. 1) is fulfilled to the letter, and in the two parts of Henry IV we follow the course of those tumultuous wars which "kin with kin and kind with kind confound." Nor is this all not only is there open warfare in the country and discord within the King's family circle, but there is also the working of remorse in his own soul. This is brought home to us most forcibly in the Second Part (see Act iv, scene 5), but it is present already in the First Part. The King sees in his son's "wildness" divine vengeance for his own "mistreadings." That this Nemesis should be called into play here may seem paradoxical. Henry IV is the deliverer of his country from the hands of a weak tyrant, and as such merits reward rather than punishment. But Shakespeare