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The Plays of William Shakespeare: King Henry IV. Parts 1-2; King Henry V.
The Plays of William Shakespeare King Henry IV Parts 1-2 King Henry V 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: KING HENRY IV. PART II. WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. VOL. VII. SECOND PART OF HENRY IV. The transactions, comprised in this history, take lip about nine ye... more »ars. The action commences with the account of Hotspur's being defeated and killed, and closes with the death of K. Henry IV. and the coronation of Henry V. THEOBALD. Mr. Upton thinks these two plays improperly called The First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. The first play ends, he says, with the peaceful settlement of Henry in the kingdom, by the defeat of the rebels. This is hardly true, for the rebels are not yet finally suppressed. The second, he tells us, shews Henry the Fifth in the various lights of a good- natured rake, till, on his father's death, he assumes a more manly character. This is true, but this representation gives us no idea of a dramatic action. These two plays will appear to every reader, who shall peruse them without ambition of critical discoveries, to be so connected that the second is merely a sequel to the first; to be two only because they arc too long to be one. None of Shakspeare's plays are more read than the First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. Perhaps no author has ever in two plays afforded so much delight. The great events are interesting, for the fate of kingdoms depends upon them; the slighter occurrences are diverting, and, except one or two, sufficiently probable; the incidents are multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention, and the characters diversified with the utmost nicety of discernment, and the profoundest skill in the nature of man. The prince, who is the hero both of the comic and tragic part, is a young man of great abilities and violent passions, whose sentiments are right, though his iictions are wrong; whose virtues are obscured by negligence, ...« less