the men of the Middle Ages had enjoyed the popular legends of Reinecke Fuchs and his rogueries.

Falstaff reaches his highest point of wit and drollery in that typical soliloquy on honour, in which he indulges on the battle-field of Shrewsbury (V. i.), a soliloquy which almost categorically sums him up, in contradistinction to the other leading personages. For all the characters here stand in a certain relation to the idea of honour-the King, to whom honour means dignity; Hotspur, to whom it means the halo of renown; the Prince, who loves it as the opposite of outward show; and Falstaff, who, in his passionate appetite for the material good things of life, rises entirely superior to it and shows its nothingness.

66

BRANDES: William Shakespeare.

VI.

Owen Glendower.

Owen Glendower-the "damned Glendower" of the King-the " great Glendower" of Hotspur-" he of Wales," that swore the devil his true liege-man," of the Prince, was among the most bold and enterprising of the warriors of his age. The immediate cause of his outbreak against the power of Henry IV. was a quarrel with Lord Grey of Ruthyn, on the occasion of which the parliament of Henry seems to have treated Owen with injustice; but there can be no doubt that the great object of his ambition was to restore the independence of Wales. In the guerilla warfare which he waged against Henry, he was eminently successful; and his boast in this drama is historically true, that

"Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head
Against my power: thrice from the banks of Wye,
And sandy-bottom'd Severn, have I sent him,
Bootless home, and weather-beaten back."

Shakspere has seized, with wonderful exactness, upon all the features of his history and character, and of the popular superstitions connected with him. They all belonged to the region of poetry. Glendower says:66 at my birth,

The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes."

The old chroniclers say, "the same night he was born all his father's horses were found to stand in blood up to their bellies." His pretensions as a magician, which Shakspere has most beautifully connected with his enthusiastic and poetical temperament, made him a greater object of fear than even his undoubted skill and valour. When the king pursued him into his mountains, Owen (as Holinshed relates) " conveyed himself out of the way into his known lurking-places, and, as was thought, through art magic he caused such foul weather of winds, tempest, rain, snow, and hail to be raised for the annoyance of the king's army that the like had not been heard of." His tedious stories to Hotspur

"of the moldwarp and the ant,

Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies;
And of a dragon, and a finless fish,

A clip-wing'd griffin, and a moulten raven,
A couching lion, and a ramping cat"

were old Welsh prophecies which the people in general, and very likely Glendower himself, devoutly believed. According to Holinshed, it was upon the faith of one of these prophecies in particular that the tripartite indenture of Mortimer, Hotspur, and Glendower was executed. "This was done (as some have said) through a foolish credit given to a vain prophecy, as though King Henry was the moldwarp, cursed of God's own mouth, and they three were the dragon, the lion, and the wolf, which should divide this realm between them." Glendower might probably have

"Believ'd the magic wonders which he sang,"

but he was no vulgar enthusiast. He was "trained up in the English court," as he describes himself, and he was probably "exceedingly well read," as Mortimer describes him, for he had been a barrister of the Middle Temple. When the Parliament, who rudely dismissed his petition against Lord Grey of Ruthyn, refused to listen to "barefooted blackguards," it can scarcely be wondered that he should raise the standard of rebellion. The Welsh from all parts of England, even the students of Oxford, crowded home to fight under the banners of an independent Prince of Wales. Had Glendower joined the Percies before the battle of Shrewsbury, which he was most probably unable to do, he might for a time have ruled a kingdom, instead of perishing in wretchedness and obscurity, after years of unavailing contest.

KNIGHT: Pictorial Shakspere.

VII.

Douglas.

He as

Douglas is a creation that adds wonderful force to the scene, and aids in giving dignity and relief both to the King and to Hotspur. There is somewhat barbarous and uncivilized in his traits that speaks of a nation remoter from refinement than Northumberland. serts and dwells upon his own boldness with as little delicacy as he imputes fear and cold heart to Worcester, and is more petulant and inconsiderate in urging on the battle prematurely than Hotspur himself. Brave and most efficient he is as a soldier even to excite the enthusiastic admiration of his ally, but when he finds himself overmatched he runs away without hesitation, though it be to look for an opponent he can better cope with, and in the rout he is captured by most undignified catastrophe: "upon the foot of fear, fled with the rest," the hero who professed that the word fear was unknown in Scotland:

"And falling from a hill he was so bruised

That the pursuers took him."

This accident is historical, like his military renown, and in the seeming incongruity Shakespeare found the key of the character. The Douglas of this play always reminds me of the Ares of the Iliad-a coarse exponent of the mere animal propensity to pugnacity, delighting in the circumstances of homicide, but when pierced by the spear of Diomed, hastily flying from the conflict and bellowing aloud.

LLOYD: Critical Essays on the Plays of Shakespeare.

VIII.

King Henry.

Of all the strictly historical personages of this first part, Henry the Fourth himself alone seems drawn entirely and scrupulously from historical authority; and his is a portrait rivalling, in truth and discrimination, the happiest delineations of Plutarch or of Tacitus. He is contrasted alike to the frailties and to the virtues of his son; his talent, and the dignity with which it invests his cold and crafty policy, the absence of all nobler sentiment from the sagacious worldly wisdom of his counsels and opinions, his gloom, melancholy, and anxiety-all combine to form a portrait of a great and unhappy statesman, as true and as characteristic, though not as dark, as Tacitus has left us of Tiberius.

VERPLANCK: The Illustrated Shakespeare.

IX.

The Vassalry.

Shakspeare, in his usual masterly style, describes the vassalry in its chief representatives: the noble, hotblooded, ambitious, and foolhardy Percy, who is ever

balancing the world on the point of his sword, who has pleasure only in war and military glory, and would stake the welfare of his country for the sake of a single heroic deed; the brave, noble-hearted Douglas, who is as ready to acknowledge Percy's superior military power, as to bid defiance to all the rest of the world, who, out of pure chivalrous gratitude, joins his victorious enemy in a dangerous and unpromising enterprise, although he is not urged on by any personal interest; the cold, calculating, intriguing, and ambitious Worcester, who is more a statesman than a knight, and again but half a statesman and half a knight; the irresolute Northumberland, who never knows whether he shall uphold his princely dignity, his great estates and the welfare of his house, or, like a knight errant, stake his all upon a single throw; lastly, the double-tongued Archbishop of York, who is half an ecclesiastical prince, and half a vassal, who preaches peace sword in hand, and would like to wed the worldliness of his desires to the holiness of his office;-all these are true Shakspearian characters, full, complete men, and yet, at the same time, but children of their age. In them we have a distinct reflex of the essential elements of vassalry. A state of semi-independence together with a state of semi-dependence; a defiance and arrogance, an ambition and love of dominion which, however, are ever at strife with a feeling of duty towards the kingdom and the King; the endeavour to make themselves strong by alliances, whereas, according to the nature of things, there is no truly uniting bond among them, and all are finally left to do as they please in spite of oaths and treaties; the contradiction in the knight whose sole object is personal honour and military glory, and the same knight who ought likewise to be a commander and a chief, governing country and people, a statesman and a politician; all these characteristic features are set forth in delicate but definite outlines.

ULRICI: Shakspeare's Dramatic Art.