Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/130

 *tue in reduced circumstances, dropped out of its fashionable quarter to keep a bar and be a procuress,—all the fine phrases pawned clear down to vulgar gossip.

Thus brawling, boasting, tippling, thieving, silly tricks and waggery come strolling behind Falstaff into the company of kings and nobles, no chamberlain to announce them, no crossed halberts to repel.

The second part of "King Henry IV." opens nobly with the conflicting rumors which travel from the lost field of Shrewsbury, where the flame of rebellion was quenched, towards the castle of the Earl of Northumberland, who hopes to hear that it has prospered. There is nothing insignificant in the characters who have ranged themselves on either side of the great question of their times. Rebellion may be a blunder, but it levies on manhood a tax as heavy as loyalty. So we are admitted to the society of great politicians, full of an idea, who blossom on the top of their epoch whence the sap that feeds them is derived. They venture life and fortune upon the moment when their tendency opens and exhales. They are impersonations of that quality in the soil of their country which has grown up to them, to claim and put them forth to triumph or suffer with the ideas which are involved. They risk hereditary honor and estate, send their eldest sons and heirs of titles into the field which two political tendencies select to strive for precedence. The whole spirit of the scene is noble and unselfish: lands, luxuries, and quiet are forsworn; and a preference, be it only of passion, be it a humor of the times mixed of equal parts of honor and vanity, be it