Page images
PDF
EPUB

SECOND PART OF KING HENRY IV.] The transactions comprized in this hiftory take up about nine years. The action commences with the account of Hotspur's being defeated and killed [1403]; and clofes with the death of King Henry IV. and the coronation of King Henry V. [1412-13.] THEOBALD.

This play was entered at Stationers' Hall, Auguft 23, 1600.

STEEVENS. The Second Part of King Henry IV. I fuppofe to have been written in 1598. See An Attempt to afcertain the Order of Shakspeare's Plays, Vol. I. MALONE.

Mr. Upton thinks these two plays improperly called The First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. The firft play ends, he fays, with the peaceful fettlement of Henry in the kingdom by the defeat of the rebels. This is hardly true; for the rebels are not yet finally fuppreffed. The fecond, he tells us, fhows Henry the Fifth in the various lights of a good-natured rake, till, on his father's death, he affumes a more manly character. This is true; but this representation gives us no idea of a dramatic action. These two plays will appear to every reader, who fhall peruse them without ambition of critical difcoveries, to be fo connected, that the fecond is merely a fequel to the firft; to be two only because they are too long to be one. JOHNSON.

King Henry the Fourth:

Henry, Prince of Wales, afterwards King
Henry V.

Thomas, Duke of Clarence.

Prince John of Lancaster, afterwards his fons. (2 Henry V.) Duke of Bedford.

Prince Humphrey of Glocefter, afterwards (2 Henry V.) Duke of Glocefter.

Earl of Warwick.

Earl of Weftmoreland.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench.
A Gentleman attending on the Chief Justice.
Earl of Northumberland;

Scroop, Archbishop of York;

Lord Mowbray ; Lord Haftings;

Lord Bardolph; Sir John Colevile;

enemies to the

king.

Travers and Morton; domefticks of Northumberland.

Falstaff, Bardolph, Pistol, and Page.

Poins and Peto; attendants on Prince Henry.

Shallow and Silence; country Juftices.

Davy, fervant to Shallow.

Mouldy, Shadow,Wart, Feeble, and Bullcalf; recruits.

Fang and Snare; Sheriff's officers.

Rumour. A Porter.

A Dancer; Speaker of the Epilogue.

Lady Northumberland. Lady Percy.

Hoftefs Quickly. Doll Tear-fheet.

Lords and other Attendants; Officers, Soldiers, Meffenger, Drawers, Beadles, Grooms, &c.

SCENE, England.

2 See note under the Perfona dramatis of the First Part of this play. STEEVENS.

INDUCTIO

N.

STANTOOD UPMARY

Warkworth. Before Northumberland's Cafile.

Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.'

RUM. Open your ears; For which of you will stop

The vent of hearing, when loud Rumour speaks ?

2 Enter Rumour,] This fpeech of Rumour is not inelegant or unpoetical, but it is wholly useless, fince we are told nothing which the first scene does not clearly and naturally difcover. The only end of fuch prologues is to inform the audience of fome facts previous to the action, of which they can have no knowledge from the perfons of the drama. JOHNSON.

3 Rumour, painted full of tongues.] This the author probably drew from Holinfhed's Description of a Pageant, exhibited in the court of Henry VIII. with uncommon coft and magnificence: "Then entered a perfon called Report, apparelled in crimson fattin, full of toongs, or chronicles." Vol. III. p. 805. This however might be the common way of reprefenting this perfonage in mafques, which were frequent in his own times. T. WARTON. Stephen Hawes, in his Paftime of Pleafure, had long ago exhi bited her (Rumour) in the fame manner :

[ocr errors]

"A goodly lady, envyroned about
"With tongues of fire.-

And fo had Sir Thomas Moore, in one of his Pageants:
"Fame I am called, mervayle you nothing

"Thoughe with tonges I am compaffed all rounde." Not to mention her elaborate portrait by Chaucer, in The Booke of Fame; and by John Higgins, one of the affiftants in The Mirror for Magiftrates, in his Legend of King Albanacle. FARMER.

In a mafque prefented on St. Stephen's night, 1614, by Thomas Campion, Rumour comes on in a fkin-coat full of winged tongues. Rumour is likewife a character in Sir Clyomon Knight of the Golden Shield, &c. 1599.

So alfo, in The whole magnificent Entertainment given to King James, and the Queen his Wife, &c. &c. 15th March, 1603, by

I, from the orient to the drooping weft,+
Making the wind my pofthorfe, ftill unfold
The acts.commenced on this ball of earth:
Upon my tongues continual flanders ride;
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
I fpeak of peace, while covert enmity,
Under the smile of fafety, wounds the world:
And who but Rumour, who but only I,
Make fearful mufters, and prepar'd defence;
Whilft the big year, fwol'n with fome other grief,
Is thought with child by the ftern tyrant war,
And fo fuch matter? Rumour is a pipes
Blown by furmifes, jealoufies, conjectures;
And of fo easy and so plain a stop,

That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The ftill-difcordant wavering multitude,
Can play upon it. But what need I thus

Thomas Decker, 4to. 1604: " Directly under her in a cart by herfelfe, Fame ftood upright: a woman in a watchet roabe, thickly fet with open eyes and tongues, a payre of large golden winges at her backe, a trumpet in her hand, a mantle of fundry cullours traverfing her body: all thefe enfignes difplaying but the propertie of her swiftnesse and aptneffe to difperfe Rumoure." STEEVENS.

-painted full of tongues.] This direction, which is only to be found in the first edition in quarto of 1600, explains a paffage in what follows, otherwife obfcure. POPE.

4the drooping weft,] A paffage in Macbeth will beft explain the force of this epithet:

"Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
"And night's black agents to their preys do roufe."

MALONE.

Rumour is a pipe-] Here the poet imagines himself defcribing Rumour, and forgets that Rumour is the speaker.

JOHNSON.

-fo eafy and fo plain a stop,] The ftops are the holes in a

flute or pipe. So, in Hamlet: "Govern thefe ventages with your finger and thumb:-Look you, these are the ftops."Again,You would feem to know my flops." STEEVENS.

« PreviousContinue »