ページの画像
PDF
ePub

For competence of life, I will allow you;
That lack of means enforce you not to evil :
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strength, and qualities,-
Give you advancement.-Be it your charge, my lord,
To see perform'd the tenor of our word.-

Set on. [Exeunt King, and his train. Fal. Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound. Shal. Ay, marry, sir John; which I beseech you to let me have home with me.

Fal. That can hardly be, master Shallow. Do not you grieve at this; I shall be sent for in private to him: look you, he must seem thus to the world. Fear not your advancement; I will be the man yet, that shall make you great. Shal. I cannot perceive how; unless you give me your doublet, and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good Sir John, let me have five hundred of my thousand. Fal. Sir, I will be as good as my word: this that you heard, was but a colour.

Shal. A colour, I fear, that you will die in, Sir John. Fal. Fear no colours; go with me to dinner.-Come, lieutenant Pistol ;-come, Bardolph :-I shall be sent for soon at night.

Re-enter the Chief Justice, Prince JOHN, &c.
Ch. Just. Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet;
Take all his company along with him.

Fal. My lord, my lord

Ch. Just. I cannot now speak: I will hear you soon.--Take them away.

Pist. Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta.

[Exe. FAL. SHAL. PIST. BARD. Page, and Officers. P. John. I like this fair proceeding of the king's; He hath intent, his wonted followers

Shall all be very well provided for;

But all are banish'd, till their conversations

Appear more wise and modest to the world.

Ch. Just. And so they are.

P. John. The king hath call'd his parliament, my lord.
Ch. Just. He hath.

P. John. I will lay odds,-that, ere this year expire, We bear our civil swords, and native fire,

As far as France: I heard a bird so sing,

Whose music, to my thinking, pleas'd the king.
Come, will you hence?

[Exeunt

EPILOGUE.

SPOKEN BY A DANCER.

FIRST, my fear; then, my court'sy: last, my speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my court'sy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me for what I have to say, is of mine own making; and what, indeed, I should say, will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture. Be it known to you, (as it is very well,) I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it, and to promise you a better. I did mean, indeed, to pay you with this; which, if, like an ill venture, it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here, I promised you, I would be, and here I commit my body to your mercies : bate me some, and I will pay you some, and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely.

If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? and yet that were but light payment,--to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so will I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me; if the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly.

One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France, where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night: and so kneel down before you ;-but, indeed, to pray for the queen.

I fancy every reader, when he ends this play, cries out with Desdemona, "O most Jame and impotent conclusion!" As this play was not, to our knowledge, divided into Acts by the author, I could be content to conclude it with the death of Henry the Fourth:

"In that Jerusalem shall Harry die."

These scenes, which now make the fifth Act of Henry the Fourth, might then be the first of Henry the Fifth; but the truth is, that they do not unite very commodiously to either play. When these plays were represented, I believe they ended as they are now ended in the books; but Shakespeare seems to have designed that the whole series of action, from the beginning of Richard the Second, to the end of Henry the Fifth, should be considered by the reader as one work upon one plan, only broken iuto parts by the necessity of exhibition. JOHNSON.

[blocks in formation]

WITH NOTES BY JOHNSON, STEEVENS, AND OTHERS.

STEREOTYPE EDITION.

THE

DRAMATIC WORKS

OF

William Shakespeare,

IN TEN VOLUMES.

WITH

THE CORRECTIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

OF

DR JOHNSON, G. STEEVENS, AND OTHERS

REVISED BY

ISAAC REED, ESQ.

VOLUME VI.

Time, which is continually washing away the dissoluble Fabrics of other Poeta passes without Injury by the Adamant of Shakespeare.

Dr. Johnson's Preface.

NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY COLLINS & HANNAY,

No. 230 Pearl-street.

1826

« 前へ次へ »