Falstaff is fat and quick of wit; Shanow is lean and slow-witted. They had known each other in their youth, and Falstaff says of Justice Shallow, "I do remember him at Clement's Inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring." His slowness of wit is indicated, not only by the little thought in what he says, but by the beating out of that little with repetitions of words, that make the least thought go the longest way-"Come on, come on, come on, sir; give me your hand, sir, give me your hand, sir;" and in the scene in the Fifth Act, “I will not excuse you; you shall not be excused ; excuses shall not be admitted; there is no excuse shall serve; you shall not be excused.-Why, Davy." [Enter DAVY.] "Here, sir."-" Davy, Davy, Davy, Davy-let me see, Davy; let me see-yea marry, William cook, bid him come hither. Sir John, you shall not be excused." In leanness of body and in feebleness of wit, Justice Shallow is the reverse of Falstaff: but they are one in showing old age without honour. Shallow's glory is in boasting of imagined profligacies of his youth. On the brink of his own grave he hears of dead companions, and joins common-places upon death, empty of thought, to talk of marketing for sheep and oxen. The scene that introduces hi

is one of those in which Shakespeare has put tragic force and depth of earnestness into a dialogue that might pass with the thoughtless for no more than jest.

"Jesu! Jesu! the mad days that I have spent! and to see how many of my old acquaintance are dead!

Silence. We shall all follow, cousin.

Shallow. Certain, 't is certain; very sure, very sure: death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?

Silence. Truly, cousin, I was not there.

Shallow. Death is certain.-Is old Double of your town living yet?

Silence. Dead, sir.

Shallow. Jesu! Jesu! Dead!-he drew a good bow ;-and dead-he shot a fine shoot:-John of Gaunt loved him well, and betted much money on his head. Dead !-he would have clapped in the clout at twelve score, and carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen and a half, that it would have done a man's heart good to see. How a score of ewes now?

Silence. Thereafter as they be; a score of good ewes may be worth ten pounds.

Shallow. And is old Double dead!"

Age and dishonour in Falstaff, coupled with wit, resolve to cheat age and dishonour in Shallow, who is witless, and make profit of his shallowness upon the journey back to London. So the Third Act ends.

The Fourth Act is wholly serious.

Falstaff is

only kept in evidence by Sir John Colevile's surrender to him, which gives occasion for some of his wit in a discourse on courage that has sherrissack for its support. The archbishop and the rebels trust Prince John, into whose hands they are betrayed by a trick that Prince Henry could not have used. The traitors are sent to death. King Henry, dying at Westminster, dreads the riot that will bring all into danger when his eldest son is king. Yet when he bids Thomas of Clarence use his brother's affection for him as a means of doing noble offices of mediation in the dreaded time when he shall become Henry the Fifth, Henry the Fourth recognises one generous feature in his eldest son,

"For he is gracious, if he be observed.

He hath a tear for pity, and a hand
Open as day for melting charity."

Then follow the tidings of subdued rebellion; the king's swoon; Prince Henry's watch by him; his seeming death, the prince's taking up the crown, and the rebuke that pictures vividly what men expected if the rioter became a king. The truehearted answer that draws out the father's trust and counsel in the hour of death, the last word of counsel being

"My Harry,

Be it thy course to busy giddy minds

With foreign quarrels; that action hence borne out
May waste the memory of former days.'

At the close of the Fourth Act King Henry IV. is borne out to die. At the beginning of the Fifth Act Shallow and Falstaff hear in Gloucestershire of the change of reign, and hurry to court, Falstaff having drawn a thousand pounds from Shallow. At Court there is dread of the new king. It is met by him with words straight from the nobler life that follies had obscured :—

"The tide of blood in me

Hath proudly flowed in vanity till now:
Now doth it turn, and ebb back to the sea,
Where it shall mingle with the state of floods,
And flow henceforth in formal majesty."

And when Henry the Fifth after his coronation speaks as a king, as a full man who turns his back upon dishonour, Falstaff seeks in vain to claim him as a comrade.

"Falstaff. My king! my Jove! I speak to thee my heart!
King. I know thee not, old man fall to thy prayers:
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dreamed of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swelled, so old, and so profane;
But, being awake, I do despise my dream."

There is allowed to Falstaff competence of life,

but he is banished until he amend his ways. So ends the play of the triumph of youth gifted and tempted with high animal spirits, but gifted and aided also with high powers and high aims that should give strength for triumph over the merriest enticements to the downward path. Falstaff has wit after his kind; but the best wit is in Wisdom. H. M.