t of Shakespeare's thought--is presented, of course, in general
outline, as an impersonation of "surviving force:" he has a certain
amount of kingcraft also, a real fitness for great opportunity. But
still true to his leading motive, Shakespeare, in King Henry the
Fourth, has left the high-water mark of his poetry in the soliloquy
which represents royalty longing vainly for the toiler's sleep; while
the popularity, the showy heroism, of Henry the Fifth, is used to give
emphatic point to the old earthy commonplace about "wild oats." The
wealth of homely humour in these plays, the fun coming straight home to
all the world, of Fluellen especially in his unconscious interview with
the king, the boisterous earthiness of Falstaff and his companions,
contribute to the same effect. The keynote of [190] Shakespeare's
treatment is indeed expressed by Henry the Fifth himself, the greatest
of Shakespeare's kings.--"Though I speak it to you," he says incognito,
under cover of night, to a common soldier on the field, "I think the
king is but a man, as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me:
all his senses have but human conditions; and though his affections be
higher mounted than ours yet when they stoop they stoop with like
wing." And, in truth, the really kingly speeches which Shakespeare
assigns to him, as to other kings weak enough in all but speech, are
but a kind of flowers, worn for, and effective only as personal
embellishment. They combine to one result with the merely outward and
ceremonial ornaments of royalty, its pageantries, flaunting so naively,
so credulously, in Shakespeare, as in that old medieval time. And
then, the force of Hotspur is but transient youth, the common heat of
youth, in him. The character of Henry the Sixth again, roi faineant,
with La Pucelle* for his counterfoil, lay in the direct course of
Shakespeare's design: he has done much to fix the sentiment of the
"holy Henry." Richard the Third, touched, like John, with an effect of
real heroism, is spoiled like him by something of criminal madness, and
reaches his highest level of tragic expression [191] when circumstances
reduce him to terms of mere human nature.--

A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!

The Princes in the Tower recall to mind the lot of young Arthur:--

I'll go with thee,
And find the inheritance of this poor child,
His little kingdom of a forced grave.

And when Shakespeare comes to Henry the Eighth,