"For once the eagle England being in prey, To her unguarded nest the weazel Scot Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs." It is worth observing that in all these plays, which give an admirable picture of the spirit of the good old times, the moral inference does not at all depend upon the nature of the actions, but on the dignity or meanness of the persons committing them. "The eagle England" has a right "to be in prey," but "the weazel Scot" has none 66 to come sneaking to her nest," which she has left to pounce upon others. Might was right, without equivocation or disguise, in that heroick and chivalrous age. The substitution of right for might, even in theory, is among the refinements and abuses of modern philosophy. A more beautiful rhetorical delineation of the effects of subordination in a commonwealth can hardly be conceived than the following: "For government, though high and low and lower, Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, Congruing in a full and natural close, Like musick. Therefore heaven doth divide Where some, like magistrates, correct at home; Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, To the tent-royal of their emperour; The lazy yawning drone. I this infer, Come to one mark; as many ways meet in one town ; As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea; As many lines close in the dial's centre; So may a thousand actions, once a foot, HENRY V. is but one of Shakspeare's second rate plays. Yet by quoting passages, like this, from his second rate plays alone, we might make a volume "rich with his praise," "As is the oozy bottom of the sea With sunken wrack and sumless treasuries." Of this sort are the king's remonstrance to Scroop, Grey, and Cambridge, on the detection of their treason, his address to the soldiers at the siege of Harfleur, and the still finer one before the battle of Agincourt, the description of the night before the battle, and the reflections on ceremony put into the mouth of the king. "O hard condition; and twinborn with greatness, Whose sense no more can feel but his own wringing! That private men enjoy? and what have kings, That privates have not too, save ceremony? And what art thou, thou idol ceremony? What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more What is thy soul, O adoration? Art thou ought else but place, degree, and form, Wherein thou art less happy, being feared, Than they in fearing. What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness, And bid thy ceremony give thee cure! Think'st thou, the fiery fever will go out With titles blown from adulation ? Will it give place to flexure and low bending? Can'st thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee, I am a king, that find thee: and I know, But, like a lacquey, from the rise to set, Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep, The slave, a member of the country's peace, What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace, Most of these passages are all well known: there is one, which we do not remember to have seen noticed, and yet it is no whit inferiour to the rest in heroick beauty. It is the account of the deaths of York and Suffolk. "Exeter. The duke of York commends him to your majesty. K. Henry. Lives he, good uncle ? thrice within this hour, I saw him down; thrice up again, and fighting; From helmet to the spur all blood he was. Exeter. In which array (brave soldier) doth he lie, Suffolk first died: and York, all haggled o'er, Upon these words I came, and cheer'd him up : So did he turn, and over Suffolk's neck He threw his wounded arm, and kiss'd his lips; But we must have done with splendid quotations. The behaviour of the king, in the difficult and doubtful circumstances in which he is placed, is as patient and modest as it is spirited and lofty in his prosperous fortune. The character of the French nobles is also very admirably depicted; and the Dauphin's praise of his horse shews the vanity of that class of persons in a very striking point of view. Shakspeare always accompanies a foolish prince with a satirical courtier, as we see in this instance. The comick parts of HENRY V. are very inferiour to those of Henry IV. Falstaff is dead, and without him, Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph, are satellites without a sun. Fluellen the Welchman is the most entertaining character in the piece. He is goodnatured, brave, cholerick, and pedantick. His parallel between Alexander and Harry of Monmouth, and his desire to have "some disputations" with captain Macmorris on the discipline of the Roman wars, in the heat of the battle, are never to be forgotten. His treatment of Pistol is as good as Pistol's treatment of his French prisoner. There are two other remarkable prose passages in this play : the conversation of Henry in disguise with the three sentinels on the duties of a soldier, and his courtship of Katherine in broken French. We like them both exceedingly, though the first savours perhaps too much of the king, and the last too little of the lover. |