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NOTES.

SIR WILLIAM GASCOIGNE.

Although you and I no doubt unite in the admiration, which all our
fellow-countrymen profess, and some of them feel, for our immortal bard,
yet I do not think that our zeal as Shakspearians will extend so far as
to receive him as an unquestionable authority for the facts introduced
into his historical plays. The utmost, I apprehend, that we should admit
is, that they represent the tradition of the time in which he wrote, and
even that admission we should modify by the allowance, to which every
poet is entitled, of certain changes adopted for dramatic effect, and
with the object of enhancing our interest in the character he is
delineating.

Two facts in his Second Part of _Henry IV_, always referred to in
connection with each other, notwithstanding the ingenious remarks on
them made by Mr. Tyler in his _History of Henry V._, are still accepted,
and principally by general readers, on Shakspeare's authority, as
undoubtedly true. The one is the incident of Prince Henry's committal to
prison by Chief Justice Gascoigne; and the other is the magnanimous
conduct of the Prince on his accession to the throne, in continuing the
Chief Justice in the office, which he had shown himself so well able to
support.

The first I have no desire to controvert, especially as it has been
selected as one of the illustrations of our history in the House of
Lords. Frequent allusion is made to it in the play. Falstaff's page says
to his master, on seeing the Chief Justice:

"Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the prince for
striking him about Bardolph."

And Falstaff in the same scene thus addresses Gascoigne:

"For the box of the ear that the prince gave you,--he gave it
like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have
checked him for it, and the young lion repents."

And Gascoigne, when Henry refers to the incident in these words:

"How might a prince of my great hopes forget
So great indignities you laid upon me?
What! rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison
The immediate h