He answers: Peace, good Doll, do not speak like a death's head; do not bid me remember mine end. Falstaff abuses the prince and Poins, who are in the disguises of waiters. On discovering themselves, and confronting the knight with his words, he declares it was no abuse of the prince : I dispraised him before the wicked, that the wicked might not fall in love with him. The prince says, he wrongs the virtuous society present:— Is Doll of the wicked? or is the boy of the wicked? or honest Bardolph, whose zeal burns in his nose, of the wicked? Fal. The fiend hath pricked down Bardolph irrecoverably; and his face is Lucifer's privy kitchen, where he doth nothing but roast malt worms. For the boy, there is a good angel about him; but the devil outbids him too. P. Hen. For the women. Fal. For one of them, she is in hell already, and burns, poor soul! For the other-I owe her money; and whether she be damned for that I know not. Host. No, I warrant you. Fal. No, I think thou art not; I think thou art quit for that. Marry, there is another indictment upon thee, for suffering flesh to be eaten in thy house, contrary to the law, for the which I think thou wilt howl. Host. All victuallers do so: what's a joint of mutton or two in a whole Lent? Doll to P. Hen. What says your grace? Shak Fal. His grace says that which his flesh rebels against. Grace is never introduced except to be laughed at. spere assigns religion not only to the weakest, but the wickedest of his characters. They sometimes use it as a cover to their unbelief, and often in all sincerity join in it their iniquities. Henry IV. is represented by Shakspere as a perjured subject—a murderer and usurper, with a great deal of piety to sugar o'er the devil within and without. Pious sentiments are given to a king, such as Henry VI., who historically requires to be so treated, but Scriptures added to folly, and held up to contempt, eke out the characters. Richard II., beginning with religion, is made an example of its inefficiency for both temporal support and spiritual comfort. Henry IV. is the type of a different description of inconsistency, professiug religious sentiments: he is more a man of the world than the others. Shakspere makes him talk religion and infidelity at the same time, and makes his observations the occasion of answering religion. Having rebuked the dull god' which refused him sleep, Henry IV. thus delivers himself to Warwick: O Heaven! that one might read the book of fate : Make mountains level, and the continent The beachy girdle of the ocean Too wide for Neptune's hips; how chances mock, With divers liquors! [O, if this were seen, Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.] It will be observed that the speech of Warwick, which occasioned the answer of the king, referred to a political event; and one would have supposed the remarks of the king would have been in unison with the subject of the conversation. Instead of which, after having expressed his wish to read the book of fate, and leaving it uncertain at first, by the revolution of the times,' what he meant, he indulges in an episode proper to a geological inquirer, and savouring of the theory of the materialist, with regard to the natural and not providential alteration in the globe. When he returns to politics, and makes them a consequence, as it were, of the preceding philosophical reflections, we do not see the connection except in that materialistic view of things, and necessitarian way of thinking, in which Shakspere so frequently indulges, and which involved all alike, physical and human effects, in the causes and operations of nature. We either see the unavoidable tendency of Shakspere's mind to drag in some of his own thoughts at the expense of situation and probability, or we must admit them so mixed up in his philosophy as not to be divided. When the king does return to the consideration of Northumberland's rebellion, he remembers the words of Richard, which proved a prophecy-that he would ascend the throne to which, Henry observes, he was compelled by necessity through the means of Northumberland, who would fall from Henry, as he had done from Richard. The occasion Shakspere seizes to explain away prophecy, in the way which rationalists do, and continues his essay on the course of nature and the law of necessity, in words and sentiments savouring strongly of having read Lucretius on the nature of things." We have already mentioned one instance to the point, and shall have other passages to give, similar to the one Warwick delivers, which seem to prove that Shakspere must have drawn some of his philosophy from the poet of atheism. Warwick says: There is a history in all men's lives, Such things become the hatch and brood of time; King Richard might create a perfect guess, K. Hen. Are these things, then, necessities? Here we have Lucretius' seeds, and the natural history of creation. Warwick calls a circumstance relating to a man's life, a necessary form,' and would seem to insinuate that Northumberland acted from necessity. Warwick, as well as Hotspur, proceed by induction. From this system of nature seems to follow the system of morals, as explained by Hobbes, Hume, and other materialists who have written on the law of necessity. The king had already talked of fate, chance, and necessity-anything but God; and when he mentions prophecy, he is persuaded by Warwick that it comes under the law of ne cessity, and he will not give way to a fear of it, but will meet it as he had met other necessities. This reminds us of Macbeth cowed by prophecies, yet fighting against necessity. We have mentioned Glendower o'erruled by prophecies to his destruction; and we shall have the legate Pandulph pretending to prophecy what was easy to foresee politically. Fable, when pricked as a recruit, comes out in the style of Hamlet and Julius Cæsar on death:→ I care not; a man can die but once; we owe a death;-if it be my destiny so; if it be not so, let it go which way it will; he that dies this year, is quit for the next. Falstaff adopts Hobbes's idea of the law of nature and morality, as well as necessity-a doctrine of things which Shakspere seems strongly inclined to, as we have before observed. Falstaff, intending to make a prey of Shallow, says: If the young dace be a bait for the old pike, I see no reason in the law of nature, but I may snap at him. Let time shape, and there's an end. In Act iii., Falstaff says of this Shallow : How subject we old men are to this vice of lying. A painful want of sincerity between man and man, father and son, is shown on the occasion of the Prince stealing the king's crown; and the duplicity of his apology is rendered doubly disgusting by the introduction of religion, which in some way or other is made accessory to every villany past, present, and to come. Johnson, commenting on the ejection of some lines by Warburton, expresses his contempt, which the known sincerity of the doctor made him feel for the conduct of these two religious rogues. His words are Who can determine what, so capricious a writer as our poet, might either deliberately or wantonly produce? The line is indeed such as disgraces a few that precede and follow it, but it suits well enough with the style of another; and the answer which the prince makes, and which is applauded by the king for wisdom, is not of a strain much higher than this ejected line.' The father recommends the prince to do what he had done, cut off his enemies. He had intended to lead more to destruction, and, at the same time, reconcile his own guilt to his conscience and his God by conducting them to a crusade; 'a journey which,' Johnson says, 'had two motives, religion and policy.' He durst not wear the ill gotten crown without expiation; but in the act of expiation he contrives to make his wickedness successful. Upon this avowal, on his death-bed, of guilt past and intended, and begging God to forgive him, Johnson justly observes He prays for the prosperity of guilt, while he deprecates its punishment.' We know not whether it occurred to the irreligious mind of Shakspere, but he makes Harry, on his accession to the throne, conduct himself, in words and works, somewhat as Jesus Christ said he would do when he came into the possession of his kingdom at the day of judgment. As the reader knows, Falstaff, and all the old companions of the prince, are waiting to be acknowledged when the trumpet, as the last trump, sounds to announce the presence of the dread king. On their recognising him as usual, and Falstaff calling him his 'Jove,' the king answers, I know thee not,' which it will be recollected are the words Jesus is to use to those who claim acquaintance with him in heaven, on the score of having been admitted to be his greatest friends upon earth. But intending, as our author did, to make the king serious on an occasion when of all others he ought to be-when preaching to his former companions, and showing to his courtiers his own reformation, Shakspere could not, directly he touched upon religion, refrain from jesting, particularly on those solemn subjects, grace and the grave. |