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P. Hen. This is the strangest fellow, brother
John.

Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back;
For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,
I'll gild it with the happiest terms I have.

[A Retreat is sounded.
The trumpet sounds retreat, the day is our's.
Come, brother, let's to the highest of the field,
To see what friends are living, who are dead.
[Exeunt Prince HENRY and Prince JOHN.
Fal. I'll follow, as they say for reward. He
that rewards me, God reward him! If I do
grow great, I'll grow less; for I'll purge, and
leave sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman
should do.
[Exit, bearing off the body.

SCENE V.-Another part of the Field. The Trumpets sound.-Enter King HENRY, Prince HENRY, Prince JOHN, WESTMORELAND and others, with WORCESTER and VERNON, prisoners.

P. Hen. Thus ever did rebellion find re-
buke.-

Ill-spirited Worcester! did we not send grace,
Pardon, and terms of love to all of you!
And would'st thou turn our offers contrary ?
Misuse the tenor of thy kinsman's trust?
Three knights upon our party slain to-day,
A noble earl, and many a creature else,

Had been alive this hour,

If, like a Christian, thou hadst truly borne
Betwixt our armies true intelligence.

K. Hen. Bear Worcester to the death, a
Vernon too :

Other offenders we will pause upon.-
[Exeunt WORCESTER and VERNON, guarded
How goes the field ?

P. Hen. The noble Scot, lord Douglas, when
he saw

The fortune of the day quite turn'd from him,
The noble Percy slain and all his men
Upon the foot of fear,-fled with the rest;
And, falling from a hill, he was so bruis'd,
That the pursuers took him.
The Douglas is; And I beseech your grace,
I may dispose of him.

K. Hen. With all my heart.

At my tent

[you

P. Hen. Then, brother John of Lancaster to
This honourable bounty shall belong:
Go to the Douglas and deliver him
Up to his pleasure, ransomless, and free:
His valour, shown upon our crests to-day,
Hath taught us how to cherish such high deeds,
Even in the bosom of our adversaries.

K. Hen. Then this remains, that we divide
our power.-

You, son John, and my cousin Westmoreland,
Towards York shall bend you, with your dearest
speed,
the prelate

Το

meet Northumberland and
Scroop,

Who, as we hear, are busily in arms:

Myself and you, son Harry, will towards Wales,
To fight with Glendower and the earl of March.
Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway,

Wor. What I have done, my safety urged me Meeting the check of such another day:

to;

And I embrace this fortune patiently,

Since not to be avoided it fails on me.

And since this business so fair is done,
Let us not leave till all our own be won.

[Exeunt.

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SECOND PART

OP

KING HENRY IV.

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL NOTICE.

SHAKSPEARE 18 supposed to have written this play in 1598. Its action comprehends a period of nine years, com mencing with Hotspur's death, 1403, and terminating with the coronation of Henry V. 1412-13. Many of th tragic scenes in this second portion of the history are forcible and pathetic; but the comedy is of a much looser and more indecent character, than any in the preceding part. Shallow is an odd though pleasing por trait of a brainless magistrate; and a character, it is to be feared, not peculiar to Glostershire only. In thu exhibiting his worship to the ridicule of an audience, Shakspeare amply revenged himself on his old War. wickshire prosecutor. On the character of Falstaff, as exhibited in the two plays, Dr. Johnson makes the following admirable remarks: "Falstaff! unimitated, unimitable Falstaff, how shall I describe thee; thou compound of sense and vice; of sense which may be admired, but not esteemed; of vice which may be despised, but hardly detested. Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with those faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief and a glutton, a coward and a boaster; always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous, and insult the defenceless. At once obsequious and malignant, he satirizes in their absence those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar with the prince, only as an agent of vice; but of this familiarity he is so proud, as not only to be supercilious and haughty with common men, but to think his interest of importance to the Duke of Lancaster. Yet the man thus corrupt, thus despicable, makes himself necessary to the prince that despises him, by the most pleasing of all qualities, perpetual gaity; by an unfailing power of exciting laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his wit is not of the splendid or ambitious kind, but consists in easy scapes and sallies of levity, which make sport, bas raise no envy. It must be observed, that he is stained with no enormous or sanguinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not so offensive but that it may be borne for his mirth."

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Make fearful musters and prepar'd defence;
Whilst the big year, swoll'n with some other

grief,

Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war,
And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures;
And of so easy and so plain a stop,

That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wavering multitude,
Can play upon it. But what need I thus
My well-known body to anatomize

Among my household? Why is Rumour here ?
I run before king Harry's victory;

Who, in a bloody field by Shrewsbury,

North. Here comes my servant, Travers whom I sent

On Tuesday last to listen after news.

Bard. My lord, I over-rode him on the way;
And he is furnish'd with no certainties,
More than he haply may retain from me.
Enter TRAVERS.

North. Now, Travers, what good tidings come
with you?

Tra. My lord, Sir John Uinfrevile turn'd me
back

With joyful tidings; and, being better hors'd,
Out-rode me. After him, came spurring hard,

Hath beaten down young Hotspur, and his A gentleman almost forspent with speed,

troops,

Quenching the flame of bold rebellion

Even with the rebel's blood. But what mean I
To speak so true at first? my office is
To noise abroad,-that Harry Monmouth fell
Under the wrath of noble Hotspur's sword;
And that the king before the Douglas' rage
Stoop'd his anointed head as low as death.
This have I rumour'd through the peasant

towns

Between that royal field of Shrewsbury
And this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone,
Where Hotspur's father, old Northumberland,
Lies crafty-sick: the posts come tiring on,
And not a man of them brings other news
Than they have learn'd of me; From Rumour's
tongues

They bring smooth comforts false, worse than
true wrongs.
[Exit.

ACT I.

SCENE 1.-The same -The PORTER before
the Gate; Enter Lord BARDOLPH.
Bard. Who keeps the gate here, ho?-
Where is the earl?

Port. What shall I say you are?
Bard. Tell thou the earl,

That the lord Bardolph doth attend him here.
Port. His lordship is walk'd forth into the
orchard;

Please it your honour, knock but at the gate,
And he himself will answer.

Enter NORTHUMBERLAND.

Bard. Here comes the earl.

That stopp'd by me to breathe his bloodied

horse:

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Fortells the nature of a tragic volume:

So looks the strond, wheron the imperious flood
Hath left a witness'd usurpation . ↑-

Say, Morton, didst thou come from Shrews-
bury?

Mor. I ran from Shrewsbury, my noble lord; Where hateful death put on his ugliest mask,

North. What news, lord Bardolph ? every To fright our party.

minute now

Should be the father of some stratagem: t
The times are wild; contention, like a horse
Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose,
And bears down all before him.

Bard. Noble earl,

I bring you certain news from Shrewsbury.
North. Good, an heaven will !
Bard. As good as heart can wish :---
The king is almost wounded to the death;
And, in the fortune of my lord your son,
Prince Harry slain outright; and both the
Blunts

Kill'd by the band of Douglas: young prince
John,

And Westmoreland, and Stafford, fled the field;
And Harry Monmouth's brawn, the hulk Sir John,
Is prisoner to your son: O such a day,
So fought, so follow'd, and so fairly won,
Came not, till now, to dignify the times,
Since Cæsar's fortunes!

North. How is this deriv'd?

Saw you the field? came you from Shrewsbury?
Bard. I spake with one, my lord, that caine
from thence;

A gentleman well bred, and of good name,
That freely render'd me these news for true.

Northumberland castle.

+ Important or dreadful event.

North. How doth my son and brother?
Thou tremblest; and the whiteness in thy cheek
Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night,
And would have told him, half his Troy was
burn'd:

But Priam found the fire, ere he his tongue,
And I my Percy's death, ere thou report'st it.
This thou would'st say,-Your son did thus and

thus,

Your brother, thus; so fought the noble Doug.
las;

Stopping my greedy ear with their bold deeds:
But in the end, to stop mine ear indeed,
Thou hast a sigh to blow away this praise,
Ending with-brother, son, and all are dead.
Mor. Douglas is living, and your brother, yet:
But, for my lord your son,-

North. Why, he is dead.

See, what a ready tongue suspicion hath?
He that but fears the thing he would not

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