Henry IV Part First Author:William Shakespeare Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: speakers; as if on purpose to set and gauge our feelings aright towards them; to forestall and prevent an overmuch rising of contempt for them; which is probably... more » about the worst feeling we can cherish. Concluding Remarks. The drama of King Henry the Fourth, taking the two Parts as artistically one, is deservedly ranked among the very highest of Shakespeare's achievements. The characterization, whether for quantity or quality or variety, or again whether regarded in the individual development or the dramatic combination, is above all praise. And yet, large and free as is the scope here given to invention, the parts are all strictly subordinated to the idea of the whole as an historical drama; insomuch that even Falstaff, richly ideal as is the character, everywhere helps on the history; a whole century of old English wit and sense and humour being crowded together and compacted in him. And one is surprised withal, upon reflection, to see how many scraps and odd minutes of intelligence are here to be met with. The Poet seems indeed to have been almost everywhere, and brought away some tincture and relish of the place ; as though his body were set full of eyes, and every eye took in matter of thought and memory: here we have the smell of eggs and butter; there we turn up a fragment of old John of Gaunt; elsewhere we chance upon a pot of Tewks- bury mustard; again we hit a bit of popular superstition, how Earl Douglas " runs o' horseback up a hill perpendicular ": on the march with Falstaff, we contemplate " the cankers of a calm world and a long peace " ; at Clement's Inn we hear "the chimes at midnight"; at Master Shallow's we " eat a last year's pippin of my own grafting, with a dish of caraways and so forth " : now we are amidst the poetries of chivalry and the felicities of...« less