ea, and so used it that, were it not here apparent that thou
art heir apparent--but, I prithee, sweet wag, shall there be
gallows standing in England when thou art king? And resolution
thus fobbed as it is with the rusty curb of old father antic
the law? Do not thou, when thou art king, hang a thief.

Falstaff's impertinent and suggestive reference to the prince's intimacy
with the hostess, not being taken well, he quickly gives the
conversation a turn to cover up the mistake he finds he has made. It is
palpable that the characterisation of the hostess in the _First Part of
Henry IV._, in its original form, was not the same as that presented in
the _Second Part_ of this play in which she is represented as Mistress
Quickly, an old, unattractive, and garrulous widow. In the _First Part
of Henry IV._ she is mentioned only once as Mistress Quickly. In Act
III. Scene iii. the prince addresses her under this name and inquires
about her husband.

PRINCE. What sayest thou, Mistress Quickly? How doth thy husband? I
love him well; he is an honest man.

This single mention of the hostess as Mistress Quickly is evidently an
interpolation made at the period of the revision of this play late in
1597, or early in 1598. It is also probable that the revision at this
time was made with the intention of linking the action of the _First
Part_ to the _Second Part_ of the play, the outline of which Shakespeare
was probably planning at that time.

The dramatic time of the _First Part_ of the play has been estimated as
at the outside covering a period of three months, and of the _Second
Part_, a period of two months. No long interval is supposed to have
elapsed between the action of the two parts; yet, in the _First Part_ of
the play the hostess is young, attractive, and has a husband. In the
_Second Part_, she is old, unattractive, and is a widow. This divergence
is evidently to be accounted for by the fact that the _First Part of
Henry IV._ in its earliest, and unrevised, form was written, not long
after the composition of _Love's Labour's Won_ (_All's Well that Ends
Well_ in its early form), and during the estrangement between
Southampton and Shakespeare in 1594, caused by the nobleman's relations
with the "dark lady," that "most sweet wench," "my hostess of the
tavern."

I have indicated a certain continuity and link of characterisation
between Parolles, as we leave him in _Al