Chapter XIII: Book THE FOURTH: , 1410--1413 (6)

Henry the Fifth was certainly a great man. The opportunity for exercising his “passing swiftness in running” failing him, he was fain to fall back upon his “marvellous great strength” of moral assurance, and appear to deny all knowledge of his former associates. He drew himself up to his full height, “exceeding the mean stature of men,” and, turning to the illustrious dignitary at his side, said coldly--

“My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man.”

Which of course my Lord Chief Justice was only too eager to do, in his own chosen terms.

“Have you your wits? know you what ‘tis you speak?” his lordship inquired, in his most withering, commit-you-three-months-for-contempt-of-court tones.

“My king! my Jove!” Falstaff had eyes and ears for the monarch alone. “I speak to thee, my heart.”

It was no easy matter “to cut” Sir John Falstaff. He would make himself heard; and nature had provided him with the amplest resources for making himself seen. The future conqueror of Agincourt was for a moment nonplussed. But, with characteristic promptness, he rapidly decided on the part he should play. Taking Sir John’s last greeting as his cue to speak, he gave utterance to one of the most remarkable royal speeches on record. The only assumed verbatim report of this oration extant is from the pen of Shakspeare, by whom it was, doubtless, slightly modified, as to verbal construction, in obedience to the rules of versification usually observed by writers of his school and epoch. But there is no reason to believe that any undue advantage of the reporter’s prescriptive licence to correct, harmonise, and embellish, was taken on the occasion. That the substance of the speech was as follows we have the amplest corroborative evidence in the pages of various contemporary historians:--

“I know thee not, old man! Fall to thy prayers.
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dreamed of such a kind of man,
So surfeit swell’d, so old, and so profane;
But, being awake, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body, hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandising; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.”

As one entertaining an excusable professional jealousy on behalf of the much-maligned and decidedly unprofitable calling of “fool and jester”--(which I was so injudicious as to take up with, very early in life, and have already an “ill-becoming” sprinkling of premature “white hairs” amongst my black ones, to show as a natural consequence of that error)--I dwell with malicious pleasure on the fact that, at this juncture of his homily, his no longer jocular majesty, Henry the Fifth, was suddenly “pulled up” by a reminder, on the countenance of his senior whom he had presumed to lecture, that he, the king, had unconsciously slipped back into his old habits, and, while reprimanding levity, had committed himself by making a joke upon Falstaff’s bulk, as in the jolly old days of the Boar’s Head fraternisation. In the words of an able commentator upon this historical passage:--“He saw the rising smile and smothered retort upon Falstaff’s lip, and he checks him with--‘Reply not to me with a fool-born jest.’”

The very thing he was afraid of! He had rashly challenged old Jack with the knight’s own weapons, and was fain to plead benefit of royalty to sneak out of the combat in which he knew he must be worsted. To impose silence on his adversary was his only chance.

He continued:--

“Presume not that I am the thing I was:
For Heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn’d away my former self,
So will I those that kept me company.

When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me; and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots;
Till then, I banish thee on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
_Not to come near our person by ten mile._

For competence of life I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil;
And as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strength and qualities,
Give you advancement.--Be it your charge, my lord,
To see perform’d the tenor of our word.
Get on.”

And then King Henry the Fifth, with his crown on, followed by his brothers, cousins, nobles, ambassadors, clergy, mace-bearers, sword-bearers, pages, retainers, and what not--by no means forgetting James the First, poet and King of Scotland (who, I am sure, cast a glance of sympathy at the paralysed figure of Sir John Falstaff, kneeling aghast and open-mouthed among the damp rushes of the courtyard), and Master John Lydgate, the laureate monk of Bury (who also, I am willing to believe, was rather distressed at the turn things had unfortunately taken)--took the arm of the triumphant Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne, and proceeded to dinner in the hall of Richard the Second, as though such a person as John Falstaff had never had existence. .

Sir John, after a moment’s stupefaction, started to his feet. He pressed his hand over his burning eyeballs. A convulsive shudder passed through his entire system; and one brief sob escaped him. It was over. Sir John relieved his oppressed lungs of a long-pent-up breath; wiped his smoking forehead, and looked composedly at Justice Shallow. Justice Shallow looked at Sir John Falstaff. Not composedly though, by any means.

“Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pounds,” said Sir John Falstaff. It was a fact at all events, and, therefore, worthy of mention.

“Ay, marry Sir John,” the justice faltered, “which I beseech you to let me have home with me.”

“That can hardly be, Master Shallow,” was the reply. “Do not you grieve at this; I shall be sent for in private to him! Look you, he must seem thus to the world. Fear not your advancement; I will be the man yet that shall make you great.”

“I cannot well perceive how, unless”--imminent pecuniary danger had lent the worthy justice unwonted smartness,--“you should give me your doublet and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good Sir John, let me have five hundred of my thousand.”

“Sir, I will be as good as my word: this that you heard was but a colour.”

“A colour, I fear, that you will die in, Sir John.”

“Fear no colours; go with me to dinner. Come, Lieutenant Pistol *; come, Bardolph; I shall be sent for to-night.”

* A spontaneous promotion of the worthy Ancient, as it would
seem, upon the brevet principle.

Sir John Falstaff had not to wait until nightfall ere he was sent for. Scarcely had he spoken when the Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne, accompanied by Prince John of Lancaster (whose grudge against our knight, for the Gualtree affair, was, if possible, stronger than that of the justice himself), reappeared on the scene with a posse of constables. These men had even quitted a royal dinner table for the gratification of private vengeance. Could the force of malignity go further?

The lord chief justice, not trusting himself to an accusation which might have led to discussion, wherein he would inevitably have been discomfited, ordered Sir John Falstaff and his companions to be conveyed to the Fleet Prison!

Sir John naturally attempted to protest against a persecution so unprecedented.

“My lord, my lord,----”

“I cannot now speak,” said the chief justice. “I will hear you soon. Take them away.”

And they _were_ taken away--Bardolph, Pistol, and poor little Robin included--aye, and even Master Robert Shallow, of Gloucestershire, in the commission of the peace, _custos rotulorum_, whose only offence was one against the laws of ordinary human judgment; to wit, that he had lent Sir John Falstaff the sum of one thousand pounds under the impression that he would one day get it back again.

Now I should be very much obliged to any individual learned in the antiquities of English law, who will inform me by what then existing statute Sir John Falstaff, with his friend and retainers, were committed to the Fleet Prison? If, after all I have been at the pains of writing in the course of this publication,--since the acknowledged failure of my attempt to make out a case in favour of the Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne--there should remain any apologists for the character and conduct of that eminent justiciary, I should also feel thankful to them if they can inform me how they intend reconciling the behaviour of their _protégé_, on this occasion, with his hitherto established reputation as an upright judge. With regard to Prince John of Lancaster, afterwards Duke of Bedford, I trouble myself but little. History can have left him no friends. No amount of apologetic whitewash would serve to frost over the thick coating of smut from the funeral pyre of Joan of Arc, by which his memory must stand blackened to all eternity.

_Apropos des bottes_. I am happy to be able to convict Henry the Fifth in a glaring falsehood. He did _not_ banish, “on pain of death,” the whole of his early associates in debauchery and misdemeanour, nor forbid them all “to come near his person by ten mile.” Master Edward Poins, a discreet, timeserving young gentleman, continued in the enjoyment of court favour, and received the dignity of knighthood on the very day of his majesty’s coronation.