Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

elsewhere, that-" When friends did meete, and were disposed to be merrie, they wente not to dine or sup in tavernes, but to the cooke's, where they called for what they liked which they always found readie dressed, and at a reasonable rate." There is on contemporaneous record a curious anecdote of an affray on this spot, at one of these houses of public entertainment, in which two of the sons of Henry IV. were actually concerned; and it might very well suggest to a sagacious dramatist, the idea of transferring their revelries to Prince Henry, Falstaff, Mrs. Quickly, and the Boar's Head. The disturbance in question took place June 23d, 1410, the Eve of St. John the Baptist, when, says Stow, "Thomas and John, the king's sonnes, being at London in East Cheape, at supper, after midnight, a great debate happened between their men and men of the court, till the Maior and Sheriffes with other citizens ceased the same.'

[ocr errors]

In the sixteenth century these premises had become established as a tavern, and in the tract entitled Newes

from Bartholomew Fair" the house is mentioned as "the Bore's Head neere London-stone." It continued in the same occupation during the next century and a half. In Mr. J. H. Burn's Descriptive Catalogue of the collection of Tradesmen's Tokens at Guildhall, there are notices of two which were issued from the Boar's Head Tavern, in Great East Cheap, and the same work contains also several interesting memorials relating to the house. One of these tokens is anterior to the Great Fire of 1666, which completely destroyed the whole premises. They were erected two years afterwards, and a carving of the sign in stone, bearing the date with the initials J. T., was inserted between the windows of the first and second floor. The building was subsequently divided into two houses, at which time it probably ceased to be a tavern, and the sign remained in its original situation between them. In 1831, however, the premises were taken down for the London Bridge improvements, and the carved Boar's Head was removed to the Corporation Museum at Guildhall.

re

(1) SCENE I.

I can speak English, lord, as well as you: For I was train'd up in the English court.]

ACT III.

The brave but ill-fated Owen Glendower, who contrived for twelve years to sustain a desultory warfare against the English, often so successfully that his enemies were fain to attribute their defeats to supernatural agency, was descended from Llewellin ap Jorwarth Droyndon, Prince of Wales, and was called Owen-ap-Gryffyth Vaughan. He is said to have inherited a large estate, and to have taken his surname from a lordship of his property, called Glyndourdwy. When a youth, he was sent to London for his education, where he entered himself of the Temple, and subsequently became an esquire of the body to Richard the Second, and was one of the very few who faithfully adhered to the fallen monarch up to the moment when he was captured at Flint Castle.

64

Mr. Tyler, who, in his History of Henry of Monmouth, has paid a just tribute to the unconquerable courage and untiring perseverance of this remarkable man, thus touchingly alludes to the termination of his chequered career. 'Owyn Glyndowr failed, and he was denounced as a rebel and a traitor. But had the issue of the 'sorry fight' of Shrewsbury been otherwise than it was; had Hotspur so devised and digested, and matured his plan of operations, as to have enabled Owyn with his forces to join heart and hand in that hard-fought field; had Bolingbroke and his son fallen on that fatal day;-instead of lingering among his native mountains, as a fugitive and a branded felon, bereft of his lands, his friends, his children, and his wife, waiting only for the blow of death to terminate his earthly sufferings, and, when the blow fell, leaving no memorial behind him to mark either the time or place of his release,-Owyn Glendowr might have been recognised even by England, as he actually had been by France, in the character of an independent sovereign; and his people might have celebrated his name as the avenger of his country's wrongs, the scourge of her oppressors, and the restorer of her independence.

"The anticipations of his own bard, Gryffydd Llydd, might have been amply realized :

"Strike then your harps, ye Cambrian bards!

The song of triumph best rewards

An hero's toils. Let Henry weep

His warriors wrapt in everlasting sleep:

Success and victory are thine,

Owain Glyndurdwy divine!

Dominion, honour, pleasure, praise,
Attend upon thy vigorous days.
And, when thy evening's sun is set,
May grateful Cambria ne'er forget
Thy noontide blaze; but on thy tomb
Never-fading laurels bloom.""

(2) SCENE II.-

A hundred thousand rebels die in this.]

The interview between the King and Prince Henry, upon which the present Scene is founded, was brought about by the anxiety of the latter to disabuse his father of a suspicion which he had been led to entertain, that the prince aspired to the throne, and is thus related by Holinshed; after narrating that the prince came to the court accompanied by many noblemen and others his friends, whom he had commanded to attend him no farther than to the fire in Westminster Hall, and that he himself was then admitted to the presence of his father, the chronicle proceeds :

"The prince, kneeling downe before his father, said: Most redoubted and sovereigne lord and father, I am at this time come to your presence as your liege man, and as your naturall sonne, in all things to be at your commandement. And where I understand you have in suspicion my demeanour against your grace, you know verie well, that if I knew any man within this realme of whom you should stand in feare, my dutie were to punish that person, thereby to remove that griefe from your heart. Then how much more ought I to suffer death, to ease your grace of that greefe which you have of me, being your natural sonne and liege man: and to that end I have this daie made myselfe readie by confession and receiving of the sacrament. And therefore I beseech you, most redoubted lord and deare father, for the honour of God, to ease your heart of all such suspicion as you have of me, and to dispatch me heere before your knees with this same dagger [and withall delivered unto the king his dagger in all humble reverence, adding further, that his life was not so deare to him that he wished to live one daie with his displeasure], and therefore, in thus ridding me out of life, and yourselfe from all suspicion, here, in presence of these lords, and before God at the daie of the generall judgement, I faithfullie protest clearlie to forgive you.

"The king moved herewith, cast from him the dagger, and imbracing the prince, kissed him, and with shedding teares confessed, that in deed he had him partlie in suspicion, though now (as he perceived) not with just cause, and therefore from thenceforth no mis-report should cause him

to have him in mistrust, and this he promised of his honour. So by his great wisedome was the wrongfull suspicion which his father had conceived against him removed, and he restored to his favour. And further, where he could not but grievously complaine of them that had slandered him so greatlie, to the defacing not onelie of his honor, but also putting him in danger of his life, he humblie besought the king that they might answer their unjust accusation; and in case they were found to have forged such matters upon a malicious purpose, that then they might suffer some punishment for their faults, though not to the full of that they had deserved."-HOLINSHED, (1402).

(3) SCENE III.-Norr, as I am a true woman, holland of eight shillings an ell.] Dame Quickly has been suspected

of exaggerating the price of her holland, since, according to this estimate, and making due allowance for the difference in the value of money between her time and ours, each shirt of Falstaff's must have cost as much as would now suffice to clothe a man handsomely from head to foot. But Shakespeare was thinking only of the price of linen in his day; and, at eight shillings an ell, the expense of each shirt would have been about five pounds, -a sum not considered particularly extravagant for this article of apparel in the 16th century; for what says Stubbes upon the subject in his " Anatomie of Abuses"?-"In so much as I have heard of shirtes that have cost some ten shillinges, some twentie, some fortie, some five pound, some twentie nobles, and (which is horrible to heare,) some ten pound apeece, yea, the meanest shirte that commonly is worne of any, doest cost a crowne or a noble at the least; and yet that is scarcely thought fine enough for the simplest person."

(1) SCENE II.—

O, no, my nephew must not know, sir Richard, The liberal and kind offer of the king.]

ACT V.

There is unquestioned evidence to show that the king made advances for the purpose of averting this conflict. He sent both the Abbot of Shrewsbury and the Clerk of the Privy Seal to Hotspur's camp with offers of pardon if his opponents would return to their allegiance. Hotspur is represented as being much moved by this unexpected act of grace, and to have dispatched his uncle, the Earl of Worcester, to negotiate. This nobleman, however, is reported to have addressed the king with such bitterness, and so to have misinterpreted the conversation between them, that both sides resolved to put their cause to the issue of a battle.

(2) SCENE IV.-Stay, and breathe awhile.] "The prince that daie holpe his father like a lustie yong gentleman:

for although he was hurt in the face with an arrow, so that diverse noble men that were about him, would have conveied him foorth of the field, yet he would not suffer them so to do, least his departure from amongst his men might happilie have striken some feare into their harts; and so without regard of his hurt, he continued with his men, and never ceassed either to fight where the battell was most hot, or to incourage his men where it seemed most need. This battell lasted three long houres, with indifferent fortune on both parts, till at length, the king crieng saint George victorie, brake the arraie of his enemies and adventured so farre that (as some write) the earl Douglas strake him downe, and at that instant, slue Sir Walter Blunt and three other, apparelled in the king's sute and clothing, saieng: I marvell to see so many kings thus suddenlie arise one in the necke of an other. The king in deed was raised, and did that daie manie a noble feat of armes, for as it is written, he slue that daie with his owne hands six and thirtie persons of his enimies."

[graphic][subsumed]

THE SECOND PART OF

KING HENRY THE FOURTH.

THE Registers of the Stationers' Company contain the following memorandum relative to this draina

"23rd August, 1600.

And. Wise Wm. Apsley.]-Two books the one called Much Adoe about Nothinge, and the other The Seconde Parte of the History of King Henry the iiii, with the Humors of Sir John Fallstaff: wrytten by Mr. Shakespeare." In the same year Wise and Apsley published the only quarto edition of it known, under the title of "The Second Part of Henrie the fourth, continuing to his death and coronation of Henrie the Fift. With the humours of Sir Iohn Falstaffe, and swaggering Pistoll. As it hath been sundrie times publikely acted by the right honourable, the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. Written by William Shakespeare."

This edition appears to have been printed without proper supervision, for, independently of minor omissions, at the beginning of Act III. a whole scene was left out. Nor does the mistake seem to have been discovered until the greater part of the impression had been worked off: sheet E was then reprinted and the missing scene incorporated. The folio text of the play was printed from an independent and more complete copy than that of the quarto, depraved, however, as usual by playhouse alterations and the negligence of successive transcribers.

Malone assigns the composition of the Second Part of King Henry IV. to 1598; but from the circumstance of one speech of Falstaff's in Act I. Sc. 2, bearing the prefix of Old, i.e. Oldcastle, it is evident that the great humourist retained the name of Oldcastle when this play was written, and as it is known that the name was changed anterior to the entry of Part I. in the Stationers' books, on the 25th of February, 1597-8, we are warranted in assuming that the Second Part was produced before that date.

The historical transactions comprehended in this piece, extend over a period of about nine years; beginning with the account of Hotspur's defeat and death in 1403, and terminating with the decease of Henry IV. and the accession and coronation of Henry V. in 1412-13.

« VorigeDoorgaan »