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 heir of England!  Was this easy? 
  May this be wash’d in Lethe, and forgotten?”

thus justifies himself to the king: 

  “I then did use the person of your father;
  The image of his power lay then in me: 
  And in the administration of his law,
  Whiles I was busy for the commonwealth,
  Your highness pleased to forget my place,—­
  The majesty and power of law and justice,
  The image of the king whom I presented,—­
  And, struck me in my very seat of judgment;
  Whereon, as an offender to your father,
  I gave bold way to my authority,
  And did commit you.” {162}