I had forestalled this dear and deep rebuke.
Ere you with grief had spoke and I had heard
The course of it so far."...
It might be Alfred Austin writing to Lord Salisbury--"the moist
impediments," forsooth--and the daredevil young soldier goes on like
this for forty lines.
The only memorable thing in the fifth act is the new king's contemptuous
dismissal of Falstaff: I think it appalling at least in matter:
"I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dreamed of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swelled, so old and so profane;
But being awake I do despise my dream.
* * * * *
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest,
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
* * * * *
Till then, I banish thee on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile."
In the old play, "The Famous Victories," the sentence of banishment is
pronounced; but this bitter contempt for the surfeit-swelled, profane
old man is Shakespeare's. It is true that he mitigates the severity of
the sentence in characteristic generous fashion: the King says:
"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."
There is no mention in the old play of this "competence of life." But in
spite of this generous forethought the sentence is painfully severe, and
Shakespeare meant every word of it, for immediately afterwards the Chief
Justice orders Falstaff and his company to the Fleet prison; and in
"King Henry V." we are told that the King's condemnation broke
Falstaff's heart and made the old jester's banishment eternal. To find
Shakespeare more severe in judgement than the majority of spectators and
readers is so astonishing, so singular a fact, that it cries for
explanation. I think there can be no doubt that the tradition which
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