your mercies: bate me some, and I will pay you some; and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely. If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment, to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so will I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me; if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not gentlewomen, which was never seen an assembly. agree with the before in such If you be not One word more, I beseech you. too much cloy'd with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France: where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be kill'd with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night and so kneel down before but, indeed, to pray for the queen.' you; 1 Most of the ancient interludes conclude with a prayer for the king or queen. Hence, perhaps, the Vivant Rex et Regina, at the bottom of our modern play bills. Fr. Sold. O prenez miséricorde! ayez pitié de moy! INTRODUCTION ΤΟ THE LIFE OF HENRY V. THE LIFE OF HENRY THE FIFTH, as it is called in the folio of 1623, was doubtless originally written in pursuance of the promise given out in the Epilogue of the preceding play: "Our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France." We have seen in the Introductions to the First and Second Parts of Henry IV., that both those plays were probably written before the 25th of February, 1598; and it is but reasonable to suppose that both parts were included in the mention of Henry IV. by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia, which was made that year. Henry V. being so great a favourite with the English people, both historically and dramatically, it is natural to presume that the Poet would not long delay the fulfilling of his promise. We have almost certain proof that Henry V. was not originally written as it now stands. It was seen in our Introduction to Much Ado about Nothing, that this play, along with two others of Shakespeare's and one of Ben Jonson's, was entered in the Stationers' Register, August 4, 1600; and that opposite the entry was an order "to be stayed." It was entered again on the 14th of the same month; and in the course of that year was issued a quarto pamphlet of twenty-seven leaves, with a title-page reading as follows: "The Chronicle History of Henry the Fifth, with his battle fought at Agincourt in France: Together with Ancient Pistol. As it hath been sundry times played by the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlain his servants. London: Printed by Thomas Creede, for Tho. Millington, and John Busby: And are to be sold at his house in Carter Lane. 1600." The same text was reissued in 1602, and again in 1608, both issues being "printed for Thomas Pavier." In none of these editions is the author's name given, and all of them appear to have been published without his sanction: the play, moreover, is but about half as long as we have it, all the Choruses being entirely wanting, as are also the whole of the first scene, more than half of the king's long speech to the conspirators in Act ii. sc. 2, his speech before Harfleur, Act iii. sc. 1, his reflections on ceremony in Act iv. sc. 1, and more than two thirds of Burgundy's fine speech on peace in Act v. sc. 1; besides more or less of enlargement and the marks of a careful finishing hand running through the whole play all which appeared first in the folio of 1623. : That the quarto edition of Henry V. was surreptitious, is on all hands allowed. But much controversy has been had, whether it was printed from a full and perfect copy of the play as first written, or from a mangled and mutilated copy, such as could be made up by unauthorized reporters. Many things might be urged on either side of this question; but as no certain conclusion seems likely to be reached, the discussion probably may as well be spared. Perhaps the most considerable argument for the former position is, that the quarto has in some cases several consecutive lines precisely as they stand in the folio; while again the folio has many long passages, and those among the best in the play, and even in the whole compass of the Poet's writings, of which the quarto yields no traces whatsoever. This, to be sure, is nowise decisive of the point, since, granting that some person or persons undertook to report the play as spoken, it is not impossible that he or they may have taken down some parts very carefully, and omitted others altogether. And the editors of the first folio tell us in their preface that there were "divers stolen and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors, that expos'd them." The only internal evidence as to the date of the writing occurs in the Chorus to Act v.: "Were now the general of our gracious empress To welcome him!" This passage undoubtedly refers to the Earl of Essex, who set forth on his expedition against the Irish rebels in the latter part of March, 1599, and returned the 28th of September the same year. Which makes it certain that this Chorus, and probable that the other Choruses were written before the 28th of September, 1599. The most reasonable conclusion, then, seems to be, that the first draught of the play was made in 1598, pretty much as it has come down to us in the quarto editions; that the whole was carefully rewritten, greatly enlarged, and the Choruses added, during the absence of Essex, in the summer of 1599; and that a copy of the first draught was fraudulently obtained for the press, after it had been displaced on the stage by the enlarged and finished copy of the play, as we have it in the folio of 1623. |