Page:Henry IV Part 2 (1921) Yale.djvu/158

146

And therefore not vpon paine of deeth to approch my presence

By ten miles space. Then if I heare wel of you,

It may be I will do somewhat for you,

Otherwise looke for no more fauour at my hands

Then at any other mans. And therefore be gone,

We haue other matters to talke on.

Exeunt Knights.

 

The success of Henry IV, Part I, led Shakespeare, apparently, to write the second part as a sequel. The date of its composition may be definitely stated as lying somewhere between 1596 and 1599. The death of Amurath III, to which reference is made in V. ii. 48, occurred in 1596; and in Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour (Act V. sc. ii.), written in 1599, reference is made to Justice Silence. That Henry IV, Part II, was written before Henry V is evidenced by the unfulfilled promise in the Epilogue of the present play (see the note on that passage).

An acting version of the play, the only known contemporary Quarto edition, was printed in 1600 and entered on the Stationers' Register on August 23 of that year. The full text of the play appeared for the first time in the First Folio in 1623. Of the many contemporary allusions to the play of Henry IV and the characters of the play, the following refer unquestionably to Part II.

(1) Sir Charles Percy, third son of the twentieth Earl of Northumberland, Lord of Dumbleton in Gloucestershire, a follower of the Earl of Essex, and