forbids his bruised helmet and his bended sword' to be borne before him through the city: "Giving full trophy, signal, and ostent, Intermingled with the stately battle scenes are humorous episodes, falling however very far short of the brilliant comedy of Henry IV. The insipid dialogue between Pistol and his prisoner, of which the sole object seems to be the ridicule of French pronunciation, is perhaps the feeblest which the dramatist ever penned. More interesting are the scenes which develop the character of Fluellen and increasingly reveal the good sense and good heart which underlie the Welshman's uncouth forms of speech. The comparison between Alexander the Great and Henry is ludicrous, on the score that there is a river in Macedon and a river at Monmouth, and there are salmons in both; but there is wonderful shrewdness in the observation that as Alexander killed his friend Cleitus, being in his ales and his cups; so also Henry Monmouth, being in his right wits and his good judgements, turned away the fat knight with the great belly-doublet.' The sturdy Welshman is irresistibly attracted by the integrity of the king, whom he claims to be of his own blood. 'By Jeshu, I am your majesty's countryman. I care not who know it. I will confess it to all the 'orld. I need not be ashamed of your majesty, praised be God, so long as your majesty is an honest man.' Such a declaration, however 'out of fashion' in its form, is a sterling diploma of merit which Henry is the very man to appreciate, and he soon turns this free-spoken loyalty to humorous account by persuading Fluellen to wear Williams' glove, on the plea that it was plucked from Alençon, and that any one who challenges it is an enemy of the king. The Welshman receives Williams' blow, and plumes himself upon having brought to light 'a most contagious treason,' but as soon as the situation is explained, he bears no malice against an assailant who has 'mettle enough in his belly'; and when Henry fills the soldier's glove with crowns, he follows with an offer of twelve pence, and the precept to serve God and keep out of 'prawls and prabbles.' How differently does he deal afterwards with Pistol, when he makes the swaggerer, who on Davy's day has given him bread and salt wherewith to eat his leek, himself swallow the despised vegetable, with a good cudgelling as sauce. And what characteristic breadth of mind does Shakspere show, what superiority to petty racial prejudices, when, in this play, devoted above all others to the glorification of England, he defends an ancient Welsh tradition, begun upon an honourable respect, and through the mouth of Gower warns the mocker to henceforth let a Welsh correction teach you a good English condition.' If in Glendower the dramatist portrayed the weaknesses of the Celts, he has redressed the balance in Fluellen, who is a type of their shrewd mother-wit, their loyalty to a leader, and their martial valour. Thus even the humorous episodes have an underlying seriousness of purpose, and it is therefore disappointing to find that, in the final scene of the drama, Shakspere, by an unseasonable display of his comic power, lowers in some degree the dignity of his hero. The Princess Katharine of France had already been introduced in an unpleasantly suggestive dialogue in broken English with her waiting-woman, and we now find Henry paying her court in terms that remind us of Hotspur's conversations with his wife. One does not expect Henry to indulge in the ardent protestations of a Romeo, to 'look greenly nor gasp out his eloquence,' but there is a mean between amorous rhapsodies and the 'down-right oaths' of this very 'plain soldier' manner of wooing. Simplicity and sincerity are the basis of Henry's character, but these alone do not give his figure its massive proportions. For this there is something more needed -a grandeur and glow of soul which shine forth in him as king, warrior, and judge, but which fail him as a lover. In wooing Katharine, Henry is wooing France, which he loves so well that he will not part with a village of it, and in the midst of his somewhat highly flavoured banter, he keeps a vigilant eye on the articles of alliance. This mixture of jocoseness and shrewdness is scarcely the fitting final attitude of the hero of the great historical trilogy, the character whose development from youth to manhood Shakspere has traced with such loving care. But the dramatist in this closing scene is perhaps occupied less with personal than with national considerations; and from the latter point of view there could be no more appropriate climax to the historical plays than this marriage treaty, whereby England, at unity with herself, is joined in 'incorporate league' to France, and the enemies of a hundred years are brought together-though for but a short time, as Henry VI had already shown-under one imperial sway. CHAPTER XII. THE GOLDEN PRIME OF COMEDY. THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR forms the obvious link between the main historical group and the brilliant comedies of Shakspere's maturity. Its date cannot be fixed with absolute certainty, but in all probability it followed closely upon Henry V. It is not mentioned by Meres in 1598, but a quarto edition appeared in 1602, which is, however, very imperfect when compared with the folio text of 1623. Analogies to incidents in the drama have been found in a story from the Pecorone, in The Two Lovers of Pisa, and other works, but in dealing with stock comic situations it is not necessary to suppose that Shakspere borrowed them. The bulk of the play, in any case, is of Shakspere's own invention, and consists in large part of characters and themes which had already done duty, but are here further developed. Falstaff and Shallow are taken from Henry IV, Part II, Nym and Pistol appear in much the same light as in Henry V, and, what has perhaps not been so fully noticed, Dr. Caius and Sir Hugh Evans, with their broken English, are the counterparts of the Princess Alice and Fluellen. But while there is this obvious general correspondence between The Merry Wives and the immediately preceding historical plays, all attempts to dovetail them in particulars prove unsatisfactory. Apart from the problem of the relation of Falstaff in this play to the earlier Falstaff, there are numerous minor difficulties. As Sir John still seems to maintain his credit at the court, we are forced to put his amorous adventures before his banishment by Henry V, and we think of them as taking place during the period of his intercourse with Shallow after the northern war. But while in Henry IV, Part II, Shallow treats Falstaff with effusive cordiality, here we find him and his nephew Slender abusing the knight and his followers for all manner of trespasses. Again, if the withered serving-man Bardolph is dismissed in this play by Falstaff to become tapster to mine host of the Garter, how is it that in Henry V he is sufficiently vigorous to take part in the French campaign? And, strangest of all, the Mrs. Quickly of the play, the servant of Dr. Caius, is evidently an entirely different personage from the genial hostess of the Boar's Head tavern. It is thus clear that Shakspere was by no means at pains to secure harmony of detail between The Merry Wives and the kindred scenes in the historical plays, and this may be partly due to the fact that the piece was apparently written in haste. The wellknown tradition mentioned by Dennis in 1702 asserts that it was composed in fourteen days to please Elizabeth, who wished to see Falstaff in love; and this is supported by the unique preponderance of prose over poetry in the play. Almost the only scenes written in blank verse are those in which Fenton appears, while rhyme is not used except for the dialogue of the counterfeit elves in Act v. Even the prose approaches more nearly to a purely conversational level than in any other of Shakspere's works. Apart, however, from this lack of elevation in style, and from a certain slenderness in the drawing of characters, The Merry Wives of Windsor is an admirable farcical comedy, breezy in its movement, full of capital situations, and, at the same time, satisfying strict literary requirements with a skilfully interwoven major and minor plot. It deals purely with bourgeois life, and critics have seen in this an additional evidence that it was prepared for the special benefit of Elizabeth and her train, who would relish this vigorous sketch of middle-class society, with its manners and morals so entirely at variance with those of a refined and dissolute court. The allusions in Act v. to Windsor Castle, and to the chairs and insignia of the Knights of the Garter, seem even to suggest the scene of the first performance, though it is questionable whether Elizabethan |