supplied Shakespeare with the traditional stories of Prince Hal in addition to such names as Oldcastle and Gadshill; it contained the inspiration of the great scene where Falstaff and Prince Hal take the parts of the king and his son; and, chief of all, its account of the highway and tavern escapades of Oldcastle and the prince is the germ of the merrymaking at the Boar's Head Tavern.

The play of Henry IV is the middle portion of a great dramatic epic, which opens with Richard II and culminates in Henry V. While Richard II, however, partakes of the common theme, it differs very greatly in respect of style from the rest of the trilogy. In fact the difference between Richard II and the First Part of Henry IV is one of the most striking instances of the rapid development of Shakespeare's art. For Richard II is clearly related to Marlowe's Edward II, while in Henry IV Shakespeare found his inspiration in the older order of chronicle play which he refashioned into a new and brilliant dramatic form.

The underlying unity of the trilogy may be easily seen by references to a few familiar passages. On the news of the return of the

banished Bolingbroke, Richard seeks comfort in the thought of the sanctity of the throne:

Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm from an anointed king;
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord.

Similarly on Bolingbroke's seizure of the crown, the Bishop of Carlisle prophesies :

The blood of English shall manure the ground
And future ages groan for this foul act...
O! if you rear this house against this house,
It will the woefullest division prove
That ever fell upon this cursed earth.

And in Richard II we find Hotspur and Prince Hal implicitly contrasted. When Bolingbroke enquires about his unthrifty son (“If any plague hang over us, 'tis he"), it is Hotspur to whom it falls to confirm the new king's suspicions of his son's weakness for the taverns and “unrestrained loose companions." Henry IV opens with the report of new "intestine shocks" which rudely puts an end to the king's dreams of a crusade. Henry is depicted as the victim of an ever-growing suspicion, imputing to others the arts by which he himself has risen. He is jealous of Hotspur at the very moment he

praises him as "the theme of honour's tongue,' while of his son (“riot and dishonour stain the brow of my young Harry ") he thinks that God has bred "revengement and a scourge." The king's suspicions of the prince are lulled only to reawake again, and his death-bed is haunted by the thought,

therefore my grief

Stretches itself beyond the hour of death:

The blood weeps from my heart when I do shape
In forms imaginary the unguided days

And rotten times that you shall look upon
When I am sleeping with my ancestors.

Finely in keeping with his character as a "politician," the king, at last reconciled to Prince Hal, leaves him the parting advice to embark on "foreign quarrels" so as to withdraw attention from the turmoils at home. And even in the height of his power and just before the triumph of Agincourt, the son, mindful of his father's fear of the penalty of usurpation, prays,

Not to-day, O Lord!

O! not to-day, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown.
I Richard's body have interred anew,
And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears
Than from it issu'd forced drops of blood.

When we pass from the First to the Second Part of Henry the Fourth, we are quickly conscious of a changed atmosphere. The Induction and the opening scene are concerned only with "fearful musters and prepar'd defence," and it is not Morton's brow alone that

like to a title-leaf,

Foretells the nature of a tragic volume.

And

13

Almost at the beginning of the First Part we encounter Prince Hal asking "Where shall we take a purse to-morrow, Jack?" In the Second Part his first and ominous words are "Before God, I am exceeding weary." His heart", "bleeds inwardly that my father is so sick," and to the ill-timed banter of Poins he replies with acerbity that "keeping such vile company as thou art hath in reason taken from me all ostentation of sorrow." Shakespeare's opening scenes are always important, and it is significant that though Falstaff reappears with unabated wit his first verbal duel is with the Lord Chief Justice. There is a dreadful suggestion of impending Justice and Reformation. Even Falstaff's resourcefulness was never set a harder task than to try to avert our eyes from

approaching trouble. From the beginning of the play to the end his wit is fighting a splendid but losing battle. Ever the "posts come tiring on" with news of disaster. The King is sick unto death. Prince Hal is conscience-smitten and ashamed.

To accuse Shakespeare in his drawing of Prince Hal and Falstaff of making use of a sudden "conversion" is wilfully to ignore the most carefully forged link in the plot. At the very earliest opportunity in the First Part Prince Hal, in soliloquy, discloses his policy :

I know you all, and will a while uphold
The unyok'd humour of your idleness;
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at. Thus, grandiloquently, does the young Prince lay a flattering unction to his soul, and dignify his "loose behaviour" with the name of policy. Until he was "wanted," he intended to enjoy the sweets of irresponsibility, and all his talk of policy is but a youthful and very natural sophistry. Shakespeare is at pains to show that it deceived nobody. Warwick, indeed,