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To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little

More than a little is by much too much.

So, when he had occasion to be seen,

He was but as the cuckoo is in June,
Heard, not regarded."

"For all the world,

As thou art to this hour was Richard then,
When I from France set foot at Ravenspurg;
And even as I was then, is Percy now."

The comparison of Prince Henry with Richard the Second is very beautiful, but not appropriate; Henry at no time of his life displayed any want of energy, or suffered his love of pleasure to interfere with the active duties in which the greater part of his life was spent. If the people were familiar with his name, it was chiefly because his martial deeds were in every mouth.

I find no warrant, either in the play or the history, for Schlegel's notion that the king's jealousy of his son's brilliant qualities drove Henry into loose company, in order to avoid the appearance of ambition.* As Shakspeare took from his favourite Chronicles the notion of a difference (to which he has assigned an erroneous date†) between the king and the prince, it is remarkable that he did not dra

• A. W. Schlegel, Cours de Lit. Dram., iii. 97.

↑ The interview, according to Holinshed, took place in 1412, nearly ten years after the battle of Shrewsbury.

matise an incident related by Holinshed as occurring in the interview.

"Whilst these things were a doing in France, the Lord Henry Prince of Wales got knowledge that certain of his father's servants were busy to give information against him, whereby discord might raise betwixt him and his father; for they put into the king's head, not only what evil rule (according to the course of youth) the prince kept to the offence of many, but also what great resort of people came to his house, so that the court was nothing furnished with such a train as daily followed the prince. These tales brought no small suspicion into the king's head, lest his son would presume to usurp the crown, he being yet alive, through which suspicious jealousy it was perceived that he favoured not his son as in times past he had done. The prince, sore offended with such persons, as by slanderous reports sought not only to spot his good name abroad in the realm, but to sow discord also betwixt him and his father, wrote his letters into every part of the realm to reprove all such slanderous devices of those that sought his discredit; and, to clear himself, the better that the world might understand what wrong he had to be slandered in such wise, about the feast of Peter and Paul, to wit the 29th day of June, he came to the court with such a number of noblemen and other his friends that wished him well, as the like train had seldom been seen repairing to the court at any one time in those days. He was apparelled in a gown of blue satin, full of small

eyelet-holes, at every hole the needle hanging by a silk thread, with which it was sewed. About his arm he wore a hound's collar, set full of SS of gold, and the tirets likewise being of the same metal.”*

In this strange dress, not, however, as I believe altogether his own fancy,* the Prince and his companions entered the Royal Hall at Westminster : he commanded his followers to halt in the middle of the Hall (though pressed by the Lords to advance), while he himself was conducted by some officers of the household into the Privy Chamber of the King, then grievously diseased. There, kneeling down before his father, he said

"Most redoubted and sovereign lord and father, I am at this time come to your presence as your liege man, and as your natural son, in all things to be at your commandment. And where I understand you have in suspicion my demeanour against your grace, you know very well that if I knew any man within this realm of whom you should stand in fear, my duty were to punish that person, thereby to remove that grief from your heart. Then how much more ought I to suffer death, to ease your grace of that grief which you have of me, being your natural son and liege man? and to that end I have this day made myself ready by confession and receiving of the sacrament. And, therefore, I beseech you, most redoubted Hol. iii. 53. Stow, 339.

I am sorry that I cannot now refer to the book in which I have seen a dress of this sort described.

lord and dear father, for the honour of God, to ease your heart of all such suspicion as you have of me, and to despatch me here before your knees, with this same dagger :' [and withal he delivered to the King his dagger with all humble reverence, adding further, that his life was not so dear to him that he wished to live one day in his displeasure,] and, therefore, in thus ridding me out of life, and yourself from all suspicion, here in presence of these lords, and before God, at the day of the general judgment I faithfully protest clearly to forgive you.' The King, moved herewith, cast from him the dagger, and, embracing the Prince, kissed him, and with shedding tears confessed that indeed he had him partly in suspicion, though now (as he perceived) not with just cause. Henry requested that his accusers might be punished, but the King said, that he must tarry a parliament, that such offenders might be punished by judgment of their peers.' And so for that time he was dismissed with great signs of love and fatherly affection. Thus were the father and the son reconciled, betwixt whom the said pickthanks had sown division, insomuch that the son, upon a vehement concert of unkindness sprung up in the father, was in the way to be worn out of favour, which was the more likely to come to pass by their informations that privily charged him with riot and other uncivil demeanour unseemly for a prince; indeed, he was youthfully given, grown to audacity, and had chosen him companions agreeable to his age, with whom he spent his time in such recreations, exercises, and delights as he fancied. But yet it should seem, by the report of

some writers, that his behaviour was not offensive, or at least tending to the damage of anybody; sith he had a care to avoid doing of wrong, and to tender his affections within the tract of virtue, whereby he opened unto himself a ready passage of good liking among the prudent sort, and was beloved of such as could discern his disposition, which was in no degree so excessive as that he deserved in such vehement manner to be suspected."

The conference between father and son is interrupted by news of the rising of the Percies brought from the Scottish Lord March;* whereupon the King assigns to his several sons, not excluding Henry, their respective times and lines of march. In fact, young Henry was at this very time in the field, and had not been in London for a considerable time.

The fourth act introduces Douglas in person. Shakspeare makes him a little boastful:

"No man so potent breathes upon the ground,

But I will beard him."

In history he is only brave and unfortunate. The absence of the elder Percy is according to history:

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"His uncle dear was with him there 'deed,

His father came not out of Northumberland,

By a confusion he is called in the play Lord Mortimer of Scotland. He was George Dunbar, tenth Earl of Dunbar and March, who had expatriated himself from Scotland and joined Henry the Fourth.

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