KING HENRY THE FIFTH.

SHAKESPEARE fulfilled the promise made at the close of the Second Part of King Henry the Fourth, that he would introduce the wars of King Henry the Fifth upon the stage, and make the audience merry with fair Catherine of France. The adherence of the Poet to the party of the Earl of Essex, is shewn in nothing more decisively than in his allusion to the Earl's campaign in Ireland, and his hoped-for return with victory.

As, by a lower but a loving likelihood,

Were now the general of our gracious Empress
(As in good time he may) from Ireland coming,
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit,

To welcome him!

This, also, seems to fix the date of the play. The Earl joined the army in Ireland in April, and returned in September, 1599. But he did not return in triumph, as was here promised for him.

I have already remarked on Shakespeare's introduction of Welsh characters in his plays; and its probable origin in his early acquaintance with several persons of that nation who were settled, we know not by what means, at Stratford. The name, Fluellin, given to the Welsh soldier in this play, was, probably, taken from the name of one of these people, William Fluellin, who was buried at Stratford July 9, 1595.

For, once the eagle England being in prey,

To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot
Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs,
Playing the mouse in absence of the cat,

To spoil and havoc more than she can eat.

Westmoreland was one of the lords of the northern border, which is another proof that this speech belongs to him, and not, as others represent it, to the Duke of Exeter or the Bishop of Ely. Perhaps the Poet intended, by making Westmoreland speak according to the wisdom of Proverbs, and reason from the habits of wild animals, to exhibit a specimen of the native and natural eloquence of one born and brought up far from the court and city. He makes the Archbishop afterwards adopt the same style of oratory to give utterance to refined and just sentiments, to shew how a highly cultivated mind can, on occasion given, beat the less cultivated, even at their own peculiar eloquence. There is the most splendid affluence of illustration—

So work the honey bees;

Creatures that, by a rule in nature, teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.

They have a king, and officers of sorts;

Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad ;

Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,

Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;

Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor :

Who, busied in his majesty, surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors pale

The lazy yawning drone.

As to the sentiment itself, it is but a reflection of what was a very common notion in England at that time of the

Scottish nation.

Thus wrote James Rither of Harewood to Lord Burghley, in 1588:-" It is needful to give an eye to the back-door; if the Scots be our friends, we may well call them our back-friends; for we have seldom had to do with our foes before, but they have stricken at us behind: an old English adage, omne malum ab Aquilone." Wright's Queen Elizabeth and her Times, vol. ii. p. 377.

I. 2. K. HENRY.

Either our history shall, with full mouth,

Speak freely of our acts; or else our graves,

Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,
Not worshipped with a paper epitaph.

There is not the slightest difficulty in this passage, if we consider "worshipped" as used in the sense of "honoured." Henry says, that either he will do deeds worthy of renown, or find a mean grave without any inscription-not even honoured with one of the epitaphs written on paper, with which it was usual to decorate the herses of famous persons. Shakespeare appears himself to have substituted "waxen" for paper. In this case "a waxen epitaph" means an epitaph written on paper and affixed by wax to the herse. The sense is the same: a grave without any inscription, not even one of the meanest and most fugitive.

II. 3. QUICKLEY.

A made a finer end, and went away, an it had been any chrisom child. Shakespeare in this speech gives to Mrs. Quickley the sentiments and language of an old nurse of the time. The signs of approaching death which she describes are still those which are so regarded by the common people, and the phrase used above was one of the popular and stock comparisons of that class of people in Shakespeare's age. Thus in a manuscript of Alexander Cooke, who was the vicar of Leeds in the time of James the First, (Harl. 5247,) one of

the treatises is intitled "Country Errors, commonly received and allowed, disproved by the Scriptures." The ninth error is this," He who dieth quietly, without ravings or cursings, much like a chrysom child, as the saying is; he that giveth up the ghost with 'Lord receive my soul,' or some such like good speech, must needs be thought to make a good end, and, undoubtedly, to be saved, if country divinity be not false divinity."

I. 4. FR. KING.

Witness our too much memorable shame,
When Cressy battle fatally was struck,
And all our princes captiv'd, by the hand

Of that black name, Edward, black prince of Wales;
Whiles that his MOUNTAIN SIRE,-on mountain standing,
Up in the air, crown'd with the golden sun,-

Saw his heroical seed, and smil'd to see him

Mangle the work of nature, and deface

The patterns, that by God and by French fathers
Had twenty years been made.

Various attempts have been made to amend this passage. Theobald and others would read "mounting sire." Mr. Coleridge proposed "monarch sire." I think the text exhibits what Shakespeare wrote. The idea of Edward the Third seated on a hill watching the conduct of his son at the battle of Cressy, had taken possession of his mind when he wrote this play, as is evident from there being an unquestionable allusion to it in the second scene of the third act.

Whiles his most mighty father on a hill
Stood smiling, to behold his lion whelp
Forage in blood of French nobility.

Speaking again of the same battle, he calls Edward his "mountain sire," merely as having at Cressy stood upon a mountain; but, thinking that this might not be intelligible to the audience, he adds the next clause as explanatory of it. However, if this is the true explanation, the line must be

regarded as one of those unfiled expressions, thrown off at once from his mind, which he would have corrected had he condescended to blot.

IV. CHORUS.

From camp to camp through the foul womb of night
The hum of either army STILLY sounds.

This rare word, here so happily used by Shakespeare, occurs in Palsgrave's Table of Adverbs in his French Dictionary, 1530, "Stylly; quoyement." It has the air of having been a word of his own formation invented for the occasion, which may excuse this remark.

IV. 3. SALISBURY.

And my kind kinsman.

Ritson's notes are, in general, intelligent and correct; but it would be well to withdraw his note on this passage from any future edition, as it leaves an impression that Shakespeare is incorrect in making Salisbury address Westmoreland with the appellation "kinsman." Salisbury was related to Westmoreland's wife, who was a Beaufort, daughter of John of Gaunt, either in virtue of his own descent from Joan of Acre, or by his wife, whose grandmother was the Fair Maid of Kent.