KING HENRY IV.

PART II.

SECOND PART OF

KING HENRY

IV.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

THE transactions comprised in this play take up about nine years.

The action commences with the account of Hotspur's being defeated and killed [1403]; and closes with the death of King Henry IV. and the coronation of King Henry V. [1412-13]. 'Upton thinks these two plays improperly called The First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. "The first play ends (he says) with the peaceful settlement of Henry in the kingdom by the defeats of the rebels." This is hardly true; for the rebels are not yet finally suppressed. The second, he tells us, shows Henry the Fifth in the various lights of a good-natured rake, till, on his father's death, he assumes a more manly character. This is true but this representation gives us no idea of a dramatic action. These two plays will appear to every reader, who shall peruse them without ambition of critical discoveries, to be so connected, that the second is merely a sequel to the first; to be two only to be one.'-JOHNSON.

This play was entered at Stationers' Hall, August 23, 1600. There are two copies, in quarto, printed in that year; but it is doubtful whether they are different editions, or the one only a corrected impression of the other.

Malone supposes it to have been composed in 1598.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

KING HENRY THE FOURTH.

HENRY, Prince of Wales, afterwarde King

Henry V.;

THOMAS, Duke of Clarence;

PRINCE JOHN of Lancaster, afterwards his Sons.

(2 Henry V.) Duke of Bedford;

PRINCE HUMPHREY of Gloster, afterwards

(2 Henry V.) Duke of Gloster;

Earl of Warwick;

Earl of Westmoreland;

GOWER; HARCOURT ;

}

of the King's Party.

Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

A Gentleman attending on the Chief Justice.

Earl of Northumberland;

SCROOP, Archbishop of York;

LORD MOWBRAY; LORD HASTINGS;

Enemies to the

King.

LORD BARDOLPH; SIR JOHN COLEVILE;

TRAVERS and MORTON, Domestics of Northumberland,

Falstaff, BarDOLPH, PISTOL, and Page.

POINS and PETO, Attendants on Prince Henry.

SHALLOW and SILENCE, Country Justices.

DAVY, Servant to Shallow.

MOULDY, SHADOW, WART, FEEBLE, and BULLCALF, Recruits.

FANG and SNARE, Sheriff's Officers.

RUMOUR. A Porter.

A Dancer, Speaker of the Epilogue.

LADY NORTHUMBERLAND. LADY PERCY.

Hostess QUICKLY. DOLL TEAR-SHEET.

Lords and other Attendants; Officers, Soldiers, Messenger, Drawers, Beadles, Grooms, &c.

SCENE, England.

INDUCTION.

Warkworth. Before Northumberland's Castle.

Enter RUMOUR, painted full of Tongues1.
Rum. Open your ears; For which of you will stop
The vent of hearing, when loud Rumour speaks?
I, from the orient to the drooping2 west,
Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold
The acts commenced on this ball of earth:
Upon my tongues continual slanders ride;
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
I speak of peace while covert enmity,
Under the smile of safety, wounds the world:
And who but Rumour, who but only I,

Make fearful musters, and prepar'd defence;
Whilst the big ear, swol'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 stop3,

That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wavering multitude,

In a

1 This was the common way of representing this personage, no unfrequent character in the masques of the poet's time. masque on St. Stephen's Night, 1614, by Thomas Campion, Rumour comes on in a skin coat full of winged tongues. Several other instances are cited in the Variorum Shakspeare. 2 The force of this epithet will be best explained by the following passage in Macbeth:

'Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
And night's black agents to their preys do rouse.

3 The stops are the holes in a flute or pipe. So in Hamlet:'Govern these ventages with your finger and thumb; look you, these are the stops.'

Vol. V.

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