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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 THE FOURTH. JOHNSON rightly observes that the First and Second Parts of King Henry the Fourth are substantially one drama, the whole being arranged as two only because too long to be one. For this cause it seems best to regard them as one in the introductory matter, and so dispose of them both together. The writing of them must be placed at least as early as 1597, when the author was thirty-three years old. The First Part was registered at the Stationers' for publication in February, 1598, and was published in the course of that year. It was reprinted in 1599, and again in 1604; also a fourth time in 1608, and a fifth in 1613. In the first issue the authorship was not stated; but each later issue has the name of W. Shakespeare printed in the title-page as the author. The Second Part was first published in 1600, and there is not known to have been any other edition of it till it reappeared along with the First Part in the folio of 1623. It is beyond question that the original name of Sir John Fal- staff was Sir John Oldcastle; and a curious relic of that name survives in Act i. scene 2, where the Prince calls Falstaff my old lad of the castle. And we have several other strong proofs of the fact; as in the Epilogue to the Second Part: For anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. Also, in Amends for Ladies, a play by Nathaniel Field, printed in 1618: Did you never see the play where thefai Knight, hight Oldcastle, did tell you truly what this honour was? which clearly alludes to Falstaffs soliloquy about honour in Part First, Act. v. scene i. Yet it is certain that the change from Oldcastle to Falstaff was made before the play was entered at ...
