228 FIRST PART OF KING HENRY VI.

That Margaret shall be Queen, and none but she. K. Hen. Whether it be through force of your

report,

My noble Lord of Suffolk; or for that
My tender youth was hever yet attaint
With any passion passion of inflaming love,
I cannot tell; but this I am assur'd,
I feel such sharp dissention in my breast,
Such fierce alarums both of hope and fear,
As I am sick with working of my thoughts.
Take, therefore shipping; post, my Lord to

France;

Agree to any covenants; and procure
That Lady Margaret do vouchsafe to come
To cross the seas to England, and be crown'd
King Henry's faithful and anointed Queen:
For your expences and sufficient charge,
Among the people gather up a tenth.
Be gone, I say; for, till you do return,
I rest perplexed with a thousand cares. -
And you, good uncle, banish all offence:
If you do censure me by what you were,
Not what you are, I know it will excuse
This sudden execution of my will.
And so conduct me where from company,
I may revolve and ruminate my grief.

1

Exit.

Glo. Ay, grief, I fear me, both at first and last. [Exeunt GLOSTER and EXETER. Suf. Thus Suffolk hath prevail'd; and thus he

goes,

As did the youthful Paris once to Greece;
With hope to find the like event in love,
But prosper better than the Trojan did.

Margaret shall now be Queen, and rule the King;
But I will rule both her, the Kings and realm.

[Exit.

f

A

SELECTION

OF THE

MOST IMPORTANT NOTES

EXTRACTED

FROM

THE BEST COMMENTATORS

TO THE PLAYS

OF

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.

VOLUME X.

NOTES TO

KING HENRY V

***This play was writ (as appears from a passage in the chorus to the fifth Act) at the time of the Earl of Essex's commanding the forces in Ireland in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and not till after Henry the Sixth had been played, as may be seen by the conclusion of this play. POPE.

The transactions comprised in this historical play commence about the latter end of the first, and terminate in the eigth year of this King's reign: when he married Katharine Princess of France, and closed up the differences betwixt England and that crown. THEOBALD.

This play, in the quarto edition, 1608, is styled The Chronicle History of Henry, &c. which seems to have been the title anciently appropriated to all Shakspeare's historical dramas. So, in The Antipodes, a comedy, by R. Brome, 1638: "These lads can act the Emperors' lives all

over,

"And Shakspeare's Chronicled Histories to boot."

The players likewise in the folio edition, 1623, rank these pieces under the title of Histories.

It is evident, that a play on this subject had been performed before the year 1592. Nash, in

:

Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the Devil,
dated 1592, says:
what a glorious thing
it is to have Henry the Fift represented on the
stage, leading the French King prisoner, and
forcing both him and the Dolphin to sweare fealte."
STEEVENS.

The piece to which Nash alludes, is the old anonymous play of King Henry V. which had been exhibited before the year 1589, Tarlton, the comedian, who performed in it both the parts of the Chief Justice and the Clown, having died in that year. It was entered on the Stationers' books in 1594, and, I believe, printed in that year, though I have not met with a copy of that date. An edition of it printed in 1598, was in the valuable collection of Dr. Wright.

The play before us appears to have been writ-ten in the middle of the year 1599. See An Attempt to ascertain the Order of Shakespeare's Plays.

The old King Henry V. may be found among Six old Plays on which Shakspeare founded, &c. printed for S. Leacroft, 1778. MALONE.

Page 3, line 2.3. O, for a muse of fire, that

would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention! This goes upon the notion of the Peripatetic system, which imagines several heavens one above other; the last and highest of which was on fire.

an

WARBURTON.

It alludes likewise to the aspiring nature of fire, which, by its levity, at the separation of the chaos, took the highest seat of all the elements, JOHNSON.