spacious times when Shakespeare himself trod the boards. An abridgment of King Henry the Fourth, Part I, based on the Falstaff scenes, was published under the title of The Bouncing Knight in Francis Kirkman's Wits or Sport upon Sport (1662), and professed to be a version performed surreptitiously when the Puritans were in power. After the Restoration, King Henry the Fourth, Part I, seems to have been popular on the stage. The first representative of Falstaff on the re-opening of the theatres was one Cartwright, who had been a bookseller in Holborn. Pepys has several references to the play which he saw for the first time on the last night of the year, 1660. He says that he had bought a book of the play and wished to see it acted, "but my expectation being too great, it did not please me, as otherwise I believe it would: and my having a book I believe did spoil it a little." Seven years later he saw the play again and comments on it and the audience characteristically: To the King's playhouse and there saw Henry the Fourth; and, contrary to expectation, was pleased in nothing more than in Cartwright's speaking of Falstaff's speech about "What is Honour ?" The house full of Parliament-men, it being holyday with them: and it was observable how a gentleman of good habit sitting just before us, eating of some fruit in the midst of the play, did drop down as dead, being choked; but with much ado Orange Mall did thrust her finger down his throat, and brought him to life again. Thomas Betterton (1635-1710), the great Shakespeare actor of the Restoration, in his younger days played Hotspur with distinction, and his contemporary Colley Cibber describes the "wild impatient starts, that fierce and flashing fire," which he threw into the part. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY In 1700 Betterton, finding himself too old to take the part of Hotspur, exchanged it for that of Falstaff and won the supreme success of his career, acting in both parts of King Henry the Fourth and in The Merry Wives of Windsor. His Falstaff is said to have been influenced by the 'business' of a Dublin actor called Baker, who from being a master-paver took to play-acting and became noted for such comedy parts as Sir Epicure Mammon (Ben Jonson's The Alchemist) and Falstaff. Genest in his Account of the English Stage mentions among the Falstaffs, from 1700 to 1775, Estcourt, Harper, Jack Evans, Powell, Booth, Bullock, Hall, and Mills. Perhaps the most notable performance of the play in these years was given at Covent Garden, December 6, 1746, when David Garrick played Hotspur to the Falstaff of James Quin, who had come to be recognized as the supreme interpreter of the part. The last noteworthy Falstaff of the eighteenth century was Henderson, who excelled particularly in the soliloquy in which Falstaff describes his ragged recruits. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY In 1802-1803 the play, revised for ståge purposes, was produced by the Kembles at Covent Garden, with John Philip Kemble himself as Hotspur. At later performances Fawcett, Dowton, Stephen Kemble, and even Charles Kemble, known as "the elegant," all essayed the part of Falstaff. Elliston's Falstaff and Macready's Hotspur were the features of a famous performance at Drury Lane in 1826; and a quarter of a century later, at the Princess's Theatre, when Bartley, who had become known as a most unctuous and humorous impersonator of the fat knight, took his leave of the stage, Charles Kean was Hotspur. America gave the world a most noteworthy Falstaff in the interpretation by James Henry Hackett, who was identified with the part from 1832 to 1872. More recent years have seen noteworthy revivals of King Henry the Fourth under the direction of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Sir Frank R. Benson, and the play is one of those staged with success at the annual Shakespeare Festivals at Stratfordon-Avon. AUTHORITIES (With the more important abbreviations used in the notes) Steevens = Globe Clar = Steevens's edition, 1793. Globe edition (Clark and Wright), 1864. Dyce Dyce's (third) edition, 1875. = = Camb= Cambridge (third) edition (W. A. Wright), 1891. Herford C. H. Herford's The Eversley Shakespeare, 1903. Abbott E. A. Abbott's A Shakespearian Grammar. Cotgrave Schmidt Skeat = = Cotgrave's Dictionarie of the French and English Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon. Skeat's An Etymological Dictionary. Murray = A New English Dictionary (The Oxford Dictionary). Century = The Century Dictionary. Holinshed = Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Ireland, and Scotland (second edition), 1586-1587. Scot = Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584. |