close upon the chronicler: And so Montjoy king at armes was sent to the King of England, to defie him as the enemie of France, and to tell him that he should shortlie have battell. King Henrie answered, 'Mine intent is to doo as it pleaseth God: I will not seeke your master at this time; but if he or his seeke me, I will meet with them, God willing. If anie of your nation attempt once to stop me in my journie now towards Calis, at their jeopardie be it; and yet I wish not anie of you so unadvised, as to be the occasion that I die your tawnie ground with your red bloud!' When he had thus answered the herald, he gave him a princelie reward, and licence to depart." It was customary thus to reward heralds, whatever might be the nature of their message. Scene VII. 15. Pegasus:-The famous flying horse in old Greek tales. Bellerophon used it to aid him in killing the chimera, a firebreathing monster, which, according to the myth, he slew by shooting arrows at it as he rode through the air on the horse. 22. Perseus:-Another hero of the Greek tales, who, as the story has it, slew the terrible Gorgon Medusa, and also saved the life of the maid Andromeda, when she had been left chained to a rock, to be the prey of a sea-monster. ACT FOURTH. [Chorus.] Only one other drama entirely Shakespeare's-The Winter's Tale-contains a chorus; and there it serves to announce an interval of dramatic time far greater than the Poet has anywhere else approached. Except in this Act, the Chorus in Henry V. announces only intervals of space or time-as a journey from London to Southampton, from Southampton to Harfleur—and other incidental matters. But the Chorus to Act IV. has no such rôle to perform; and this Chorus, splendid and high-wrought, serves to show that Shakespeare introduced this machinery, not for the sake of bridging intervals of time and space-which elsewhere his audience unconcernedly crossed" with imagined wing -but as the most obvious means of bringing home the outward semblance of an event of absorbing interest. In Coriolanus, in Antony and Cleopatra, there are brief bursts of battle-poetry exceeding in sublimity anything in Henry V.; but that is chiefly because they are penetrated with a dramatic passion for which in Henry V. there was simply no room. The subject was epic, and Shakespeare fell back upon the epic poet's method. No scene in the drama paints so vividly as a few lines in this Chorus the transforming spell of the master presence, which made the handful of worn-out men a weapon of adamant against the serried ranks of chivalry. 13. closing rivets up :-This does not solely refer to the riveting the plate armour before it was put on, but also to a part when it was on. The top of the cuirass had a little projecting bit of iron that passed through a hole pierced through the bottom of the casque. When both were put on, the smith or armourer presented himself, with his riveting hammer, to close the rivets up; so that the wearer's head should remain steady, notwithstanding the force of any blow that might be given on the cuirass or helmet. 19. play at dice:-The Poet took this from Holinshed: "The Frenchmen in the meane while, as though they had beene sure of victorie, made great triumph; for the capteins had determined how to divide the spoile, and the soldiers the night before had plaid the Englishmen at dice." Scene I. [King Henry.] Kenny, in treating upon the view which Shakespeare's portrait of Henry V. gives us of the Poet's own character, says: Some of the continental critics think they can see that not only was Henry V. Shakespeare's favourite hero, but that this is the character, in all the Poet's dramas, which he himself most nearly resembled. Many people will, perhaps, hardly be able to refrain from a smile on hearing of this conjecture. We certainly cannot see the slightest ground for its adoption. The whole history of Shakespeare's life, and the whole cast of Shakespeare's genius, are opposed to this extravagant supposition. We have no doubt that the Poet readily sympathized with the frank and gallant bearing of the King. But we find no indication in all that we know of his temperament, or of the impression which he produced upon his contemporaries, of that firm, rigid, self-concentrated personality which distinguishes the born masters of mankind. Henry V. was necessarily peremptory, designing, unwavering, energetic, and self-willed; Shakespeare was flexible, changeful, meditative, sceptical, and self-distrustful. This was clearly the temperament of the author of the sonnets; it was too, we believe, not less clearly the character of the wonderful observer and delineator of all the phases of both tragic and comic passion, and it was, perhaps, in no small degree, through the very variety of his emotional and imaginative sensibility, and the very absence of that completeness and steadfastness of nature which his injudicious admirers now claim for him, that he was enabled to become the great dramatic poet of the world." 66 239 et seq. Johnson finds something very striking and solemn in this soliloquy of King Henry, beginning as soon as he is left alone. Something like this," says Johnson, every breast has felt. Reflection and seriousness rush upon the mind upon the separation of gay company, and especially after forced and unwilling merriment." Scene II. [The French camp.] The one formidable rival of the King is no single figure, but the "bad neighbour" at whom he dashes his little force, the assembled power of France. And the French are drawn collectively, in slightly modulated shades of the same conventional hue. The brush which had painted the rival of Henry's youth now dashes off with far less care and delicacy the foes of his manhood. The vapouring chivalry, the fantastic self-conceit which so fatally alloyed Hotspur's sturdy Saxon strength, reappear with more of blatant flourish in men of finer wit but weaker fibre. 16. yon poor and starved band:-Holinshed gives the following account of the march from Harfleur to Agincourt: "The Englishmen were brought into some distresse in this journie, by reason of their vittels in maner spent, and no hope to get more; for the enemies had destroied all the corne before they came. Rest could they none take, for their enemies with alarmes did ever so infest them: dailie it rained, nightlie it freezed: of fuell there was great scarsitie, of fluxes plentie: monie inough, but wares for their releefe to bestowe it on had they none." 60, 61. I stay but for my guidon, etc.:-Thus in Holinshed: "They thought themselves so sure of victorie, that diverse of the noblemen made such hast toward the battell, that they left manie of their servants and men of warre behind them, and some of them would not once staie for their standards; as amongst other the Duke of Brabant, when his standard was not come, caused a banner to be taken from a trumpet, and fastened to a speare, the which he commanded to be borne before him, instead of his standard." Scene III. 21. To do our country loss:-Here again the Poet found something in the chronicler to work upon: "It is said that as he heard one of the host utter his wish to another thus, 'I would to God there were with us now so manie good soldiers as are at this houre within England!' the King answered, I would not wish a man more here than I have: we are indeed in comparison of the enemies but a few, but, if God of his clemencie doo favour us and our cause, as I trust he will, we shall speed well inough. And if so be that for our offenses sakes we shall be delivered into the hands of our enemies, the lesse number we be, the lesse damage shall the realme of England susteine." 63. shall gentle his condition:-King Henry V. inhibited any person, but such as had a right by inheritance or grant, from bearing coats of arms, except those who fought with him at the battle of Agincourt. 90 et seq. Of this second proposal for ransom Holinshed speaks thus: "Here we may not forget how the French in their jolitie sent an herald to King Henrie, to inquire what ransom he would offer. Whereunto he answered, that within two or three houres he hoped it would so happen that the Frenchmen should be glad to common rather with the Englishmen for their ransoms, than the English to take thought for their deliverance, promising for his owne part, that his dead carcasse should rather be a prize to the Frenchmen, than that his living bodie should paie anie ransome." 129. [York.] This Edward Duke of York has already appeared in Richard II. as Duke of Aumerle. He was the son of Edmund of Langley, the Duke of York of the same play, who was the fourth son of King Edward III. Scene IV. I et seq. It is consistent enough with the national and popular design of the play that not a little of it should seem to be addressed to the common, uneducated public, as in this Scene, wherein the miserable blusterer Pistol makes prisoner a French nobleman whom he has succeeded in overawing. Scene V. 3. Mort de ma vie !-Coleridge says: "Ludicrous as these introductory scraps of French appear, so instantly followed by good nervous mother-English, yet they are judicious, and produce the impression which Shakespeare intended-a sudden feeling struck at once on the ears, as well as the eyes, of the audience, that 'here come the French, the baffled French braggards!' And this will appear still more judicious, when we reflect on the scanty apparatus of distinguishing dresses in Shakespeare's trying-room." Scene VI. 35. new alarum :-" The multiplicity of battles in Henry V.” says Campbell, “is a drawback on its value as an acting play; for battles are awkward things upon the stage. We forget this objection, however, in the reading of the play." Scene VII. 6-10. the cowardly rascals .. throat:-This matter is thus related by Holinshed: "While the battell thus continued, certeine Frenchmen on horsseback, to the number of six hundred, which were the first that fled, hearing that the English tents and pavillions were without anie sufficient gard, entred upon the King's campe, and there spoiled the hails, robbed the tents, brake up chests, and carried awaie caskets, and slue such servants as they found to make anie resistance. But when the outcrie of the lackies and boies, which ran awaie for feare of the Frenchmen, came to the King's eares, he, doubting least his enemies should gather togither againe, and begin a new field, and mistrusting further that the prisoners would be an aid to his enemies, or the verie enemies to their takers in deed, if they were suffered to live, contrarie to his accustomed gentleness, commanded by sound of trumpet, that everie man, upon paine of death, should incontinentlie slaie his prisoner." It appears afterwards, however, that the King, finding the danger to be less than he at first thought, stopped the slaughter, and was able to save a great number. It |