From The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, ed. Charles Wells Moulton, 8 vols. (London: Moulton Publishing, 1901), 1: 491.
HENRY IV., PART II
1597-98
THE | Second part of Henrie | the fourth, continuing to his death, | and coronation of Henrie | the fift. | With the humours of sir Iohn Fal- | staffe, and swaggering | Pistoll. | As it hath been sundrie times publikely | acted by the right honourable, the Lord | Chamberlaine his seruants. | Written by William Shakespeare. | LONDON | Printed by V. S. for Andrew Wise, and | William Aspley. | 1600. -- TITLE PAGE OF FIRST EDITION, 1600.
I fancy every reader, when he ends this play, cries out with Desdemona, "O most lame and impotent conclusion!" None of Shakspeare's plays are more read than the First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. Perhaps no author has ever in two plays afforded so much delight. The great events are interesting, for the fate of kingdoms depends upon them, the slighter occurrences are diverting, and except one or two, sufficiently probable the incidents are multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention, and the characters diversified with the utmost nicety of discernment, and the profoundest skill in the nature of man. -- JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1768, General Observations on Shakspeare's Plays.
It having been written, as the external and internal evidence concur in showing, not very long after the first part, when the author's mind was filled with the characters, story, and the spirit of that, the two together have the unity of a single drama. It is, however, inferior to its predecessor as a work of dramatic art, though, in my judgment, not at all so as a work of genius. It is not as perfect as the other as an historical tragi-comedy, as on its tragic side it has a less vivid and sustained interest, and approaches in those scenes more to the dramatized chronicle in fact, adhering much more rigidly to historical authority, and deviating from it very little except in compressing into connected continuous actions events really separated by years. -- VERPLANCK, GULIAN CROMMELIN, 1844-47, ed. The Illustrated Shakespeare.
The character of Sir John Falstaff is, I should think, the most witty and humorous combined that ever was portrayed. So palpably is the person presented to the mind's eye, that not only do we give him a veritable location in history, but the others, the real characters in the period compared with him, appear to be the idealised people, and invented to be his foils and contrasts. As there is no romance like the romance of real life, so no real-life character comes home to our apprehensions and credulities like the romance of Sir John Falstaff. He is one grand identity. His body is fitted for his mind -- bountiful, exuberant, and luxurious and his mind was well appointed for his body -- being rich, ample, sensual, sensuous, and imaginative. The very fatness of his person is the most felicitous correspondent to the unlimited opulence of his imagination.-- CLARKE, CHARLES COWDEN, 1863, Shakespeare-Characters, p. 431.
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