EPILOGUE".

SPOKEN BY A DANCER.

FIRST, my fear; then, my court'sy: last my speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my court'sy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me: for what I have to say, is of mine own making; and what, indeed, I should say, will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture.-Be it known to you, (as it is very well,) I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it, and to promise you a better. I did mean, indeed, to pay you with this; which, if, like an ill venture, it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here, I promised you, I would be, and here I commit my body to 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 agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly. One word more, I beseech you. If you be not

This epilogue was merely occasional, and alludes to some theatrical transaction. JOHNSON.

7 All the GENTLEWOMEN, &c.] The trick of influencing one part of the audience by the favour of the other, has been played already in the epilogue to As You Like It. JOHNSON.

too much cloyed 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 killed 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 you;-but, indeed, to pray for the queen'.

9 — and make you merry with fair KATHARINE of France:] I think this is a proof that the French scenes in King Henry V. however unworthy of our author, were really written by him. It is evident from this passage that he had at this time formed the plan of that play; and how was "fair Katharine to make the audience merry," but by speaking broken English? The conversation and courtship of a great princess, in the usual style of the drama, was not likely to afford any merriment. TYRWHITT.

1- to pray for the queen.] I wonder no one has remarked, at the conclusion of the epilogue, that it was the custom of the old players, at the end of the performance, to pray for their patrons. Thus, at the end of New Custom:

"Preserve our noble Queen Elizabeth, and her councell all." And in Locrine :

"So let us pray for that renowned maid," &c.

And in Middleton's Mad World my Masters: "This shows like kneeling after the play; I praying for my lord Owemuch and his good countess, our honourable lady and mistress." FARMER. Thus, at the end of Preston's Cambyses:

"As duty binds us, for our noble queene let us pray,

"And for her honourable councel, the truth that they may

use,

"To practise justice, and defend her grace eche day;
"To maintaine God's word they may not refuse,
"To correct all those that would her grace and grace's laws

abuse:

"Beseeching God over us she may reign long,

"To be guided by trueth and defended from wrong."
"Amen, q. Thomas Preston."

So, at the end of All for Money, a morality, by T. Lupton,

1578:

"Let us pray for the queen's majesty, our sovereign gover

nour,

"That she may raign quietly according to God's will," &c.

Again, at the end of Lusty Juventus, a morality, 1561 :

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Now let us make supplications together,

"For the prosperous estate of our noble and virtuous king," &c.

Again, at the end of The Disobedient Child, an interlude, by Thomas Ingeland, bl. 1. no date :

"Here the rest of the players come in, and kneel down all togyther, eche of them sayinge one of these verses:

"And last of all, to make an end,

"O God to the we most humblye praye

"That to Queen Elizabeth thou do sende

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Thy lyvely pathe and perfect waye," &c. &c.

Again, at the conclusion of Tom Tyler and his Wife, 1661: "Which God preserve our noble queen,

"From perilous chance which hath been seene;

"And send her subjects grace, say I,

"To serve her highness patiently!"

Again, at the conclusion of a comedy called A Knack to Know a Knave, 1594:

"And may her days of blisse never have an end,
"Upon whose lyfe so many lyves depend."

Again, at the end of Apius and Virginia, 1575:

"Beseeching God, as duty is, our gracious queene to save, "The nobles and the commons eke, with prosperous life I

crave."

Lastly, Sir John Harrington's Metamorphosis of Ajax, 1596, finishes with these words: "But I will neither end with sermon nor prayer, lest some wags liken me to my L. ( > players, who when they have ended a baudie comedy, as though they were a preparative to devotion, kneele down solemnly, and pray all the companie to pray with them for their good lord and

maister."

Almost all the ancient interludes I have met with conclude with some solemn prayer for the king or queen, house of commons, &c. Hence, perhaps, the Vivant Rex et Regina, at the bottom of our modern play-bills. STEEVENS.

"And struck me in my very seat of judgment." p. 210, I do not recollect that any of the editors of our author have thought this remarkable passage worthy of a note. The Chief Justice, in this play, was Sir William Gascoigne, of whom the following memoir may be as acceptable as necessary:

While at the bar, Henry of Bolingbroke had been his client; and upon the decease of John of Gaunt, by the above Henry, his heir, then in banishment, he was appointed his attorney, to sue in the Court of Wards the livery of the estates descended to him. Richard II. revoked the letters patent for this purpose, and defeated the intent of them, and thereby furnished a ground

for the invasion of his kingdom by the heir of Gaunt; who be coming afterwards Henry IV. appointed Gascoigne Chief Justice of the King's Bench in the first year of his reign. In that station Gascoigne acquired the character of a learned, an upright, a wise, and an intrepid judge. The story so frequently alluded to of his committing the prince for an insult on his person, and the court wherein he presided, is thus related by Sir Thomas Elyot, in his book entitled The Governour: "The moste renouned prince king Henry the fyfte, late kynge of Englande, durynge the lyfe of his father, was noted to be fiers and of wanton courage: it hapned, that one of his seruauntes, whom he fauoured well, was for felony by him committed, arrained at the kynges benche: whereof the prince being aduertised and incensed by lyghte persones aboute him, in furious rage came hastily to the barre where his seruante stode as a prisoner, and commaunded him to be vngyued and set at libertie: whereat all men were abashed, reserved the chiefe Justice, who humbly exhorted the prince, to be contented, that his seruaunt mought be ordred, accordynge to the aunciente lawes of this realme: or if he wolde haue hym saued from the rigour of the lawes, that he shulde obteyne, moughte, of the kynge his father, his gratious pardon, wherby no lawe or justyce shulde be derogate. With whiche answere the prince nothynge appeased, but rather more inflamed, endeuored hym selfe to take away his seruant. The iuge considering the perillous example, and inconuenience that mought therby ensue, with a valyant spirite and courage, commanded the prince vpon his alegeance, to leave the prisoner, and depart his way. With which commandment the prince being set all in a fury, all chafed and in a terrible maner, came vp to the place of iugement, men thynking that he wold haue slayne the iuge, or haue done to hym some damage: but the iuge sittynge styll without mouing, declaring the maiestie of the kynges place of iugement, and with an assured and bolde countenaunce, had to the prince, these wordes followyng,

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if he

Syr, remembre yourselfe, I kepe here the place of the kyng your soueraine lorde and father, to whom ye owe double obedience: wherfore eftsoones in his name, I charge you desyste of your wylfulnes and vnlaufull enterprise, & from hensforth give good example to those, whyche hereafter shall be your propre subjectes. And nowe, for your contempte and disobedience, go you to the prysone of the kynges benche, wherevnto I commytte you, and remayne ye there prysoner vntyll the pleasure of the kynge your father be further knowen.'

With whiche wordes being abashed, and also wondrynge at the meruaylous gravitie of that worshypfulle justyce, the noble prince layinge his weapon aparte, doying reuerence, departed, and wente to the kynges benche, as he was commanded. Wherat his servauntes disdaynynge, came and shewed to the kynge all the hole affaire. Whereat he awhyles studyenge, after as a man

all rauyshed with gladnes, holdynge his eien and handes vp towarde heuen, abraided, saying with a loude voice, 'O mercifull God, howe moche am I, aboue all other men, bounde to your infinite goodnes, specially for that ye haue gyuen me a iuge, who feareth nat to minister iustyce, and also a sonne, who can suffre semblably, and obeye iustyce!

And here it may be noted, that Shakspeare has deviated from history in bringing the Chief Justice and Henry V. together, for it is expressly said by Fuller, in his Worthies of Yorkshire, and that on the best authority, that Gascoigne died in the life-time of his father, viz. on the first day of November, 14 Henry IV. See Dugd. Origines Juridic. in the Chronica Series, fol. 54, 56. Neither is it to be presumed but that this laboured defence of his conduct is a fiction of the poet and it may justly be inferred from the character of this very able lawyer, whose name frequently occurs in the year-book of his time, that, having had spirit and resolution to vindicate the authority of the law, in the punishment of the prince, he disdained a formal apology for an act that is recorded to his honour. SIR J. HAWKINS.

:

In the foregoing account of this transaction, there is no mention of the Prince's having struck Gascoigne, the Chief Justice. Holinshed, however, whom our author copied, speaking of the wanton pastime in which Prince Henry passed his youth, says, that where on a time hee stroke the chiefe justice on the face with his fiste, for emprisoning one of his mates, he was not only committed to straighte prison himselfe by the sayde chief justice, but also of his father put out of the privie counsell and banished the courte." Holinshed has here followed Hall. author (as an anonymous writer has observed) [Mr. Ritson] might have found the same circumstance in the old play of King Henry V..

Our

With respect to the anachronism, Sir William Gascoigne certainly died before the accession of Henry V. to the throne, as appears from the inscription which was once legible on his tombstone, in Harwood church, in Yorkshire, and was as follows: "Hic jacet Wil'mus Gascoigne, nuper capit. justic. de banco, Hen. nuper regis Angliæ quarti, qui quidem Wil'mus ob. die domi'ca 17. die Decembris. an dom. 1412, 14. Henrici quarti, factus index, 1491." See Gent. Magazine, vol. li. p. 624.

to

Shakspeare, however, might have been misled on the authority of Stowe, who in a marginal note, 1 Henry V. erroneously asserts that "William Gascoigne was chief justice of the Kings Bench from the sixt of Henry IV. to the third of Henry the Fift:" or, (which is full as probable,) Shakspeare might have been careless about the matter. MALONE.