INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

'HENRY V.' was first printed in 1600. This copy differs most materially from the text of the folio. The play runs only to 1800 lines; whilst the lines in the folio edition amount to 3500. Not only is the copy thus augmented by the additions of the choruses and new scenes, but there is scarcely a speech, from the first scene to the last, which is not elaborated. In this elaboration the old materials are very carefully used up; but they are so thoroughly refitted and dovetailed with what is new, that the operation can only be compared to the work of a skilful architect, who, having an ancient mansion to enlarge and beautify, with a strict regard to its original character, preserves every feature of the structure, under other combinations, with such marvellous skill, that no unity of principle is violated, and the whole has the effect of a restoration in which the new and the old are undistinguishable.

"Shakspere," says Frederick Schlegel, "regarded the drama as entirely a thing for the people; and, at first, treated it throughout as such. He took the popular comedy as he found it, and whatever enlargements and improvements he introduced into the stage were all calculated and conceived according to the peculiar spirit of his predecessors, and of the audience in London."* This is especially true with regard to Shakspere's Histories. In the case of the Henry V.' * Lectures on the History of Literature, vol. ii. R 2

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it appears to us that our great dramatic poet would never have touched the subject, had not the stage previously possessed it in the old play of The Famous Victories.' Henry IV.' would have been perfect as a dramatic whole, without the addition of Henry V.' The somewhat doubtful mode in which he speaks of continuing the story appears to us a pretty certain indication that he rather shrunk from a subject which appeared to him essentially undramatic. It is, however, highly probable that, having brought the history of Henry of Monmouth up to the period of his father's death, the demands of an audience who had been accustomed to hail "the madcap Prince of Wales" as the conqueror of Agincourt compelled him to "continue the story." Having hastily met the demands of his audience by the first sketch of Henry V.,' as it appears in the quarto editions, he subsequently saw the capacity which the subject presented for being treated in a grand lyrical spirit. Instead of interpolating an under-plot of petty passions and intrigues,-such, for the most part, as we find in the dramatic treatment of an heroic subject by the French poets,-he preserved the great object of his drama entire by the intervention of the chorus. Skilfully as he has managed this, and magnificent as the whole drama is as a great national song of triumph, there can be no doubt that Shakspere felt that in this play he was dealing with a theme too narrow for his peculiar powers. The subject is altogether one of lyric grandeur; but it is not one, we think, which Shakspere would have chosen for a drama.

And yet how exquisitely has Shakspere thrown his

dramatic power into this undramatic subject! The character of the King is altogether one of the most finished portraits that has proceeded from this masterhand. It could, perhaps, only have been thoroughly conceived by the poet who had delineated the Henry of the Boar's Head, and of the Field of Shrewsbury. The surpassing union, in this character, cf spirit and calmness, of dignity and playfulness, of an ever-present energy, and an almost melancholy abstraction,—the conventional authority of the king, and the deep sympathy, with the meanest about him, of the man,—was the result of the most philosophical and consistent appreciation by the poet of the moral and intellectual progress of his own Prince of Wales. And let it not be said that the picture which he has painted of his favourite hero is an exaggerated and flattering representation. The extraordinary merits of Henry V. were those of the individual; his demerits were those of his times. It was not for the poet to regard the most popular king of the feudal age with the cold and severe scrutiny of the philosophical historian. It was for him to embody in the person of Henry V. the principle of national heroism; it was for him to call forth" the spirit of patriotic reminiscence." Frederick Schlegel says, "The feeling by which Shakspere seems to have been most connected with ordinary men is that of nationality." But how different is his nationality from that of ordinary men! It is reflective, tolerant, generous. It lives not in an atmosphere of falsehood and prejudice. Its theatre is war and conquest; but it does not hold up war and conquest as fitting objects for nationality to