In Measure for Measure we have seen that Shakespeare compressed Whetstone's two plays into one, but he expanded the single play of The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth1 over three performances, inserting hints from it in his two parts of Henry IV and in his Henry V. He, however, also resorted to the chroniclers, and especially to Holinshed, for other circumstances of an historical kind, while he seems to have trusted to his own resources for most of the comic characters, scenes, and incidents. The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth opens with a robbery committed by Prince Henry (throughout called Henry V) and some of his wild companions, among whom is Sir John Oldcastle, a fat knight, who also goes by the familiar name of Jockey. The question whether Shakespeare did or did not take the hint of his Falstaff from this corpulent personage, and whether in fact Falstaff was not, in the first instance, called Sir John Oldcastle, is argued at length in Malone's Shakespeare by Boswell, xvi, 410,2 etc.

1 Malone (Shakespeare by Boswell, iii, 307) inserts, from Henslowe's Diary, a notice, under the date of the 26th of May, 1597, of a play called Harey the 'fifte' Life and Death, and in a note he adds, 'This could not have been the play already mentioned, because in that Henry does not die; nor could it have been Shakespeare's play.' His difficulty upon this point arose simply from his having mis-read the MS. of Henslowe, where it stands, as all must acknowledge who know anything of the handwriting of the time, not Harey the fifte' but Harey the 'firste', showing that there was an old historical play upon the life and death of Henry I. The play of Harey the Vis entered in Henslowe's Diary as performed on the 28th of November 1595, being then, no doubt, a revival, with improvements, of the piece now under consideration-The famous Victories of Henry the Fifth.

2 Dr. Farmer (founding himself on a passage in Nathaniel Field's. Amends for Ladies, 1618) was the first to broach this notion, and the balance of evidence seems to be decidedly in his favour: supposing the fact to be so, another question has arisen out of it, why Shakespeare subsequently made the change? It has been suggested that he did so to

This point is only important, as it relates to the obligation of Shakespeare for the bare hint of such a delightful creation as Falstaff. If Shakespeare were indebted thus far, he owed little else to the old Henry the Fifth that can now be traced, and it certainly has not come down to us in a shape to make it probable that he would avail himself of much that he found in it. Here and there lines more or less remotely resemble; and the strongest likeness that has yet been discovered is where, in Shakespeare (Act v, sc. 2), Katherine asks, 'Is it possible dat I should love the enemy of France?' which runs. thus in the older play, 'How should I love thee, which is my father's enemy?'

The play of The famous Victories of Henry the Fifth was entered on the Stationers' books in 1594, and although no copy of that date has been found, it was probably, as we have already remarked, then printed: the date of its authorship was, however, more remote, and it is unquestionable that it was acted prior to 1588, because Tarleton, who is recorded to have played the two parts of the Judge, who was struck by Prince Henry, and Derrick, the clown, died in that year. We should be inclined to fix it not long after 1580, and it was

avoid confounding the two characters, the Sir John Oldcastle of the old Henry the Fifth being 'a mere pampered glutton'. The point, when he made the change, does not seem to have been examined; and at all events it is quite evident from Field's comedy that, even after the change was made, Falstaff was still known to the multitude by the name of Oldcastle. Amends for Ladies could not have been written before 1611; yet there Falstaff's description of honour is mentioned by a citizen of London as if it had been delivered by Sir John Oldcastle, not by Falstaff.

1 The play had, perhaps, been revived about 1592 or 1593, as Nash mentions it in his Pierce Pennilesse. That revival may have led Shakespeare to take up and improve the same subject; and the success of Shakespeare's play might occasion the printing of the old Henry the Fifth, either in opposition to it, or to take advantage of temporary popularity.

perhaps played by the Queen's players who were selected from the companies of several noblemen in 1583, and of whom Tarleton was one. The circumstance that the whole of it is in prose deserves observation: it might be thought in 1583, or soon afterwards, that the jingle of rhyme did not well suit an historical subject on the stage; and we have learnt from Stephen Gosson, that, prior to 1579, prose plays had been acted at the Belsavage: the experiment, therefore, by the author of the old Henry the Fifth, was not a new one, although the present may be the earliest extant instance of an heroic story so treated. Nevertheless, by the time it was printed, blank-verse had completely superseded both rhyme and prose: the publisher seems, on this account, to have chopped up much of the original prose into lines of various lengths, in order to look like some kind of measure, and now and then he has contrived to find lines of ten syllables each, that run with tolerable smoothness, and as if they had been written for irregular blank-verse. The following is a short example, the passage commencing with a regular verse terminated by a trochee it is Prince Henry's speech in excuse for taking away the crown while his father slept—

'Most soveraigne lord, and welbeloved father,

I came into your chamber to comfort the melancholy
Soule of your body, and finding you at that time

Past all recovery and dead, to my thinking,

God is my witnesse; and what should I doo

But with weeping teares lament the death of you, my father;

And after that seeing the crown, I took it.

And tell me, father, who might better take it then I,

After your death? but seeing you live,

1 Gascoigne's Supposes, translated from Ariosto, we have seen, was in prose; but that was only a comedy, and it was acted, not at a public theatre, but before the Society of Gray's Inn.

.

I most humbly render it into your majesties hands,
And the happiest man alive that my father live :

And live, my lord and father, for ever.'

The excuse of the Prince is the same in Shakespeare (Henry IV, Part ii, Act iv, scene 4), but it is not necessary to show here how differently it is urged and enforced. Among minor resemblances, which prove that Shakespeare had the old Henry the Fifth before him when he wrote his play upon the events of that reign, may be noticed the refusal of the French King to allow his son, the Dauphin, to endanger his person with the English.1 Little as Shakespeare, in the serious part of his composition, has derived from the older historical play, his obligations are still lighter with reference to the comic portions. After Prince Henry has struck the Chief Justice, and has been liberated from prison, in the old Henry the Fifth he has a conversation with Sir John Oldcastle, Ned and Tom, his companions in his robberies at Gads-hill: Sir John Oldcastle, speaking of Henry IV, says, 'He is a good old man: God take him to his mercy'; and the Prince addressing Ned, observes, 'So soon as I am King, the first thing I will do shall be to put my Lord Chief Justice out of office, and thou shalt be my Lord Chief Justice of England.' The reply of Ned resembles, even verbally, that of Falstaff when the Prince of Wales tells him (Henry IV, Part i, Act i, scene 2) that when he is King he shall have the hanging of the thieves: Ned says, in the older play

'Shall I be Lord Chief Justice?

By Gog's wounds, I'll be the bravest Lord Chief Justice
That ever was in England.'-

The character of Derrick, the clown, runs through the whole piece, and that Tarleton was able to make anything out of such

1 Henry V, Act iii, scene 6, and Six Old Plays, ii, 357.

unpromising materials affords strong evidence of the original resources of that extraordinary comedian.

The old Troublesome Reign of John, King of England, is in two parts, and bears the marks of more than one hand in its composition: the first part, and especially the earlier portion of it, is full of rhymes, while in the second part they comparatively seldom occur; which may be adduced to establish that the one was written nearer the date when rhyme was first discarded. The blank-verse of the second part is also a decided improvement upon that of the first part: it is less cumbrous and more varied, though still monotonous in its cadences. Malone, upon conjecture only, attributed the old King John to Greene or Peele,1 and some passages in the second part would do credit to either. In the opening of it is a beautiful simile, which Shakespeare might have used, had he not been furnished, on the same occasion, with another from the abundant store of his own fancy: that which he employs has, perhaps, more novelty, but assuredly less grace, and both are equally appropriate. Arthur has thrown himself from the tower, and is found dead : Shakespeare calls his body

'An empty casket, where the jewel of life

By some damn'd hand was robb'd and ta'en away.'

The author of the second part of the old King John describes the dead body as a

'Withered flower,

Who in his life shin'd like the morning's blush,

Cast out of door.'

1 In a note on Act v, scene 7 of King John, Malone cites a corresponding passage from Lust's Dominion; and if his reasoning were founded on fact, we might infer that Marlow, as well as Greene and Peele, was concerned in the production of the old King John. The truth, however, is that Marlow had nothing to do with the authorship of Lust's Dominion, although it had been invariably assigned to him, until in the