trated through and through with dramatic invention; and Shakespeare's boldest innovations in the political story are here concentrated. Here the prince reveals his noble quality as at once a great warrior, a loyal son, and a generous foe,-in the duel with Hotspur, the rescue of his father, and the ransomless release of Douglas ;-all incidents unknown to the Chronicles. Here Hotspur falls a victim to his infatuated disdain of the rival whose valour had grown 'like the summer grass, fastest by night.' And here Falstaff, the mocker at honour, lies motionless side by side with its extravagant devotee,-not like him dead, but presently to conjure up the wonderful phantom of the fight for a good hour by Shrewsbury clock. Falstaff. No fictitious character approaching Falstaff in The name of importance had figured in any of the earlier Histories, and it was not unnatural that Shakespeare should seek to give him an apparent locus standi on the historic stage by means of a historic name. The attempt was not very fortunate. In the original version of the play, as is well known, he bore the name of Sir John Oldcastle. This was taken directly from the Famous Victories, where Sir John Oldcastle is a wild companion of the prince, but devoid of any other trait of the Shakespearean Falstaff. The public insisted on identifying the disreputable knight with the Lollard martyr; and the supposed degradation of a Protestant hero aroused loud resentment. The Cobham family (his descendants) entered an effective protest at court, and a group of playwrights, attached to the rival (Admiral's) company,1 turned the wave of public indignation to 1 These were Drayton, Munday, Wilson, and Hathaway. Mr. Fleay adduces some grounds for suspecting that Drayton conceived a special account by producing a counterblast to Shakespeare's play - Sir John Oldcastle (in two parts). This play was acted in 1599, and licensed August 11, 1600, under the title, History of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, with his Martyrdom. Only the First Part is extant. The Prologue makes its animus sufficiently clear It is no pampered glutton we present, Nor aged counsellor to youthful sin, But one whose virtue shone above the rest. There are faint and somewhat dubious traces of other plays in which a Sir John Oldcastle was introduced; but they look more like imitations of Falstaff than vindications of the Lollard martyr.1 Shakespeare took the course (perhaps under pressure from court) of excising the name of Oldcastle 2 and attaching the character to another historic 'Sir John.' In the Epilogue to the Second Part all connexion between Falstaff and Oldcastle is expressly repudiated: 'for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man.' Sir John Fastolfe (c. 1378-1459) was 1 Halliwell (followed by Mr. Fleay) quotes from Hey for Honesty: The rich rubies and incomparable carbuncles of Sir John Oldcastle's nose'; and Mr. Fleay from Howell's Letters, ii. 71:. 'All is thought to be much adulterated, and nothing so good as Sir John Oldcastle and Smug the Smith was used to drink.' A Sir John' (a priest) and Smug the Smith drink ale in the Merry Devil of Edmonton. In both cases there may be nothing more than a blundering allusion to Shakespeare's Sir John. 2 One or two tell-tale instances, however, escaping de tection, as in 2 Henry IV. i. 2. 137, where 'Old' is prefixed in Q1 to Falstaff's speech. Similarly, the prince's apparently pointless phrase 'my old lad of the castle' was originally a quibble on the knight's name. An unmetrical line or two may perhaps be explicable from the substitution of Falstaff for Oldcastle, as 1 ii. 2. 115: 'Away, good Ned. Falstaff sweats to death.' On the other hand, the allusion in 2 Henry IV. iii. 2. 28, to Falstaff's having been page to the Duke of Norfolk is of little importance, for Fastolfe as well as Oldcastle had close relations with the duke. a Norfolk landowner and soldier, highly distinguished in the French wars, and lieutenant of Harfleur under Henry V. The change was not accepted without demur. So late as 1647 a Royalist poetaster, George Daniel, took Shakespeare sharply to task for 'throwing scandal upon a name of honour'; and Fuller pronounced a weightier condemnation: The stage,' he declares in the Worthies ('Norfolk') 'hath been overbold with [Fastolfe's] memory, making him a thrasonical puff, and emblem of mock-valour. Now as I am glad that Sir John Oldcastle is put out, so I am sorry that Sir John Fastolfe is put in, to relieve his memory in this base service, to be the anvil for every dull wit to strike upon. Nor is our comedian excusable, by some alteration of his name, writing him Sir John Falstafe, . . . few do heed the inconsiderable difference of spelling of their name.' The historical Fastolfe had in fact as little as Oldcastle in common with Falstaff. In war he deserved the hearty praise which Fuller gives to Oldcastle, as ‘a man of arms every inch of him, and as valiant as any in his age.' In private life (as displayed in the Paston Letters) he was a hard and grasping man of business, whose means,' unlike Falstaff's, much exceeded his 'waste.' Shakespeare doubtless knew from Holinshed that the charge of cowardice brought against Fastolfe after Patay had been promptly withdrawn and all his honours restored. But the author of 1 Henry VI. had ignored the withdrawal of the charge; and it seems probable that Shakespeare intended to hint a connexion with this dramatic misbirth, while protecting himself by the 'inconsiderable difference in spelling' from the charge of defamation.1 This, however, availed nothing. The 1 It may be noted that the printers of the First Quarto of the First Part throughout printed the name Falstalffe (cf. the title public insisted on identifying the Falstaff who masqueraded at Shrewsbury with the Fastolfe who ran away at Patay, and in the first printed text of I Henry VI. it is by the name 'Falstaff' that he is known.1 Nevertheless the name by which Falstaff first became famous did not at once die out. Twenty years after the production of the play Nathaniel Field in his Amends for Ladies (1618) could ask :Did you never see ་ The Play where the fat knight, hight Oldcastle, page above, p. 249). Shakespeare may have sought to make the inconsiderable difference' more considerable by dropping the l L. 1 If the Epilogue to 2 Henry IV. is Shakespeare's, it would seem that he designed to make Falstaff, like the historical Fastolfe, figure in Henry V.'s wars in France. In that case he may have been led finally to exclude him from Henry V. by the wish to check that identification. But the authenticity of the Epilogue is very doubtful, and it is hardly credible that Shakespeare seriously intended to revoke the banished Falstaff merely in order to make his audience merry. THE FIRST PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH ACT I. SCENE I. London. The palace. Enter KING HENRY, LORD JOHN OF LANCASTER, the EARL OF WESTMORELAND, SIR WALTER BLUNT, and others. King. So shaken as we are, so wan with care, Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood; 4. stronds, strands, shores. thy brother's blood from thy hand.' 9. those opposed eyes, the eyes of contending armies; the intent gaze of two forces as they rush together being vividly put for the forces themselves. |