Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit,
To welcome him!"

This passage undoubtedly refers to the Earl of Essex, who
set forth on his expedition against the Irish rebels in the
latter part of March, 1599, and returned September 28,
the same year.
Which makes it certain that this Chorus,
and probable that the other Choruses were written before
September 28, 1599. The most reasonable conclusion,
then, seems to be, that the first draught of the play was
made in 1598, pretty much as it has come down to us in
the quarto editions; that the whole was carefully rewritten,
greatly enlarged, and the Choruses added, during the ab-
sence of Essex, in the summer of 1599; and that a copy
of the first draught was fraudulently obtained for the press,
after it had been displaced on the stage by the enlarged
and finished copy of the play, as we have it in the folio of
1623.

The historical matter of this drama was taken, as usual, from the pages of Holinshed; and a general outline thereof may be presented in a short space, leaving the particular obligations to appear in the form of notes.-Henry V came to the throne in March, 1413, being then at the age of twenty-six. The civil troubles that so much harassed his father's reign naturally started him upon the policy of busying his subjects' minds in foreign quarrels. And in his second parliament a proposition was made, and met with great favor, to convert a large amount of church property to the uses of the state; which put the clergy upon adding the weighty arguments of their means and counsel in furtherance of the same policy. In effect the king was easily persuaded that the Salique law had no right to bar him from the throne of France; and ambassadors were sent over to demand the French crown and all its dependencies: the king offering, withal, to take the Princess Katharine in marriage, and endow her with a part of the possessions claimed; and at the same time threatening that, if this were refused, "he would recover his right and inheritance with

mortal war, and dint of sword." An embassy being soon after received from France, the same demand was renewed, and peremptorily insisted on. The French king being then incapable of rule, the government was in the hands of the Dauphin, who having seen fit to play off some merry taunts on the English monarch, the latter dismissed his ambassadors with the following speech: "I little esteem your French brags, and less set by your power and strength: I know perfectly my right, which you usurp, as yourselves also do, except you deny the apparent truth. The power of your master you see; mine you have not yet tasted. If he have loving subjects, I am not unstored of the same; and before a year pass I trust to make the highest crown of your country stoop. In the mean time, tell your master that within three months I will enter France as my own true and lawful patrimony, meaning to acquire the same, not with brag of words, but with deeds of men. Further matter I impart not to you at present, save that with warrant you may depart safely to your country, where I trust sooner to visit you than you shall have cause to bid me wel

This took place in June, 1415, and before the end of July the king's preparations were complete, and his army assembled at Southampton; and as he was just on the eve of embarking he got intelligence of a conspiracy against his life by the earl of Cambridge, the lord Scroop of Marsham, and Sir Thomas Grey; who being soon convicted in due course and form of law, and executed, the king set forth with a fleet of fifteen hundred sail, carrying six thousand men-at-arms, and twenty-four thousand archers, and landed at Harfleur August 15. By September 22 the town was brought to an unconditional surrender, and put under the keeping of an English garrison. The English army was now reduced to about half its original numbers; nevertheless, the king, having first sent a personal challenge to the Dauphin, to which no answer was returned, took the bold resolution of marching on through several hostile provinces to Calais. After a slow and toilsome march,

during which they suffered much from famine and hostile attacks, the English army came, on October 24, within sight of Agincourt, where the French were strongly posted in such sort that Henry must needs either surrender or else cut his way through them. The French army has been commonly set down as not less than a hundred thousand; and they, never once doubting that the field would be theirs, spent the following night in revelry and debate, and in fixing the ransom of King Henry and his nobles. The night being cold, dark, and rainy, numerous fires were kindled in both camps; and the English, worn out with labor, want, and sickness, passed the hours in anxious preparation, making their wills and saying their prayers, and hearing every now and then peals of laughter and merriment from the - French lines. During most of the night the king was moving about among his men, scattering words of comfort and hope in their ears, and arranging the order of battle, and before sunrise had them called to matins, and from prayer led them into the field. From the confident bearing of the French, it was supposed that they would hasten to begin the fight, and the purpose of the English was to wait for the attack; but when it was found that the French kept within their lines, the king gave order to advance upon them, and Sir Thomas Erpingham immediately made the signal of onset by throwing his warder into the air. The battle was kept up with the utmost fury for three hours, and resulted in the death of ten thousand Frenchmen, of whom a hundred and twenty-six were princes and nobles bearing banners, eight thousand and four hundred were knights, esquires, and gentlemen, five hundred of whom had been knighted the day before, and sixteen were mercenaries. Some report that not above twenty-five of the English were slain; but others affirm the number to have been not less than five or six hundred.

The news of this victory caused infinite rejoicing in England, and the king soon hastened over to receive the congratulations of his people. When he arrived at Dover, the crowd plunged into the waves to meet him, and carried

him in their arms from the vessel to the beach: all the way to London was one triumphal procession: lords, commons, clergy, mayor, aldermen, and citizens flocked forth to welcome him: pageants were set up in the streets, wine ran in the conduits, bands of children sang his praise; and, in short, the whole population were in a perfect ecstasy of joy.

During his stay in England, the king was visited by several great personages, and among others by the Emperor Sigismund, who came to mediate a peace between him and France, and was entertained with great magnificence, but his mission effected nothing to the purpose. After divers attempts at a settlement by negotiation, the king renewed the war in 1417, and in August landed in Normandy, with an army of sixteen thousand men-at-arms, and about the same number of archers. From this time he had

an almost uninterrupted career of conquest till the spring of 1420, when all his demands were granted, and himself publicly affianced to the Princess Katharine.

From this sketch it may well be gathered that the subject was not altogether fitted for dramatic representation, as it gave little scope for those developments of character and passion, wherein the interest of the serious drama mainly consists. And perhaps it was a sense of this defect that led the Poet, upon the revisal, to pour through the work so large a measure of the lyrical element, thus penetrating and filling the whole with the efficacy of a great national song of triumph. Hence comes it that the play is so thoroughly charged with the spirit and poetry of a sort of jubilant patriotism, of which the king himself is probably the most eloquent impersonation ever delineated. Viewed in this light, the play, however inferior to many others in dramatic effect, is as perfect in its kind as any thing the Poet has given us. And it has a peculiar value as indicating what Shakespeare might have done in other forms of poetry, had he been so minded; the Choruses in general, and especially that to Act IV, being unrivaled in epic spirit, clearness, and force.—Of course the piece has

its unity in the hero, who is never for a moment out of our feelings: even when he is most absent or unseen, the thought and expression still relish of him, and refer us at once to his character as the inspirer and quickener thereof; and the most prosaic parts are transfigured and glorified into poetry with a certain grace and effluence from him.

It is quite remarkable, that for some cause or other the Poet did not make good his promise touching Falstaff. Sir John does not once appear in the play. Perhaps any speculation as to the probable reason of this were more curious than profitable; but we must needs think that when the Poet went to planning the drama he saw the impracti cability of making any thing more out of him. Sir John's dramatic office and mission were clearly at an end, when his connection with Prince Henry was broken off; the purpose of the character being to explain the unruly and riotous courses of the prince. Besides, he must needs have had so much of manhood in him as to love the prince, else he had been too bad a man for the prince to be with; and how might his powers of making sport be supposed to survive the shock of being thus discarded by the only person on earth whom he had the virtue to love? To have reproduced him with his wits shattered, had been injustice to him; to have reproduced him with his wits sound and in good repair, had been unjust to the prince.

Falstaff repenting and reforming was indeed a much better man; but then in that capacity he was not for us. So that Shakespeare did well, no doubt, to keep him in retirement where, though his once matchless powers no longer give us pleasure, yet the report of his sufferings gently touches our pity, and recovers him to the breath of our human sympathies. To our sense, therefore, of the matter, the Poet has here drawn the best lesson from him that the subject might yield. We have already seen that Falstaff's character grows worse and worse up to the close of the preceding play; and it is to be noted how in all that happens to him the being cast off by the prince at last is