Shakespeare's Lost Years in London by Arthur Acheson (top inspirational books TXT) 📖

scandal intended by Roydon in 1594, and probable that he altered the characterisation of the hostess to the old and widowed Mistress Quickly in the _Second Part of Henry IV._ for this reason.

Believing that _Love's Labour's Won_--i.e. _All's Well that Ends Well_ in its earlier form--reflects Southampton in the person of Bertram, and Florio as Parolles, I have suggested that the military capacity of the latter character infers a temporary military experience of Florio's in the year 1592. It is evident that most of the matter in this play following Act IV. Scene iii. belongs to the period of revision in 1598. In Act IV. Scene iii. we have what was apparently Parolles' final appearance in the old play of 1592; here he has been exposed, and his purpose in the play ended.

FIRST SOLDIER. You are undone, Captain, all but your scarf; that has
a knot on't yet.

PAROLLES. Who cannot be crushed with a plot?

FIRST SOLDIER. If you could find out a country where women were that
had received so much shame, you might begin an impudent nation. Fare
ye well, Sir; I am for France too; we shall speak of you there.

[_Exit Soldiers._

PAROLLES. Yet am I thankful: if my heart were great,
'Twould burst at this. Captain, I'll be no more;
But I will eat and drink, and sleep as soft
As captain shall: simply the thing I am
Shall make me live. Who knows himself a braggart,
Let him fear this, for it will come to pass
That every braggart shall be found an ass.
Rust sword! cool blushes! and, Parolles, live
Safest in shame, being fool'd, by foolery thrive.
There's place and means for every man alive.
I'll after them.

[_Exit._

The resolution he here forms augurs for the future a still greater moral deterioration. He resolves to seek safety in shame; to thrive by foolery; and, though fallen from his captaincy, to

"eat and drink, and sleep as soft as captain shall."

When Shakespeare resumed his plan of reflecting Florio's association with Southampton, in the _First Part of Henry IV._ he recalled the state of mind and morals in which he had left him as Parolles in _Love's Labour's Won_, and allowing for a short lapse of time, and the effects of the life he had resolved to live, introduces him in _Henry IV._, Part I. Act 1. Scene ii., as follows:

FAL. Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?

PRINCE. Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack and
unbuttoning thee after supper and sleeping upon benches after noon,
that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou would'st
truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day?
Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the
tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the
blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see
no reason why thou should'st be so superfluous to demand the time of
day.

In Parolles and Falstaff we have displayed the same lack of moral consciousness, the same grossly sensuous materialism, and withal, the same unquenchable optimism and colossal impudence.

When we remember that though Shakespeare based his play upon the old _Famous Victories of Henry V._ and took from it the name Oldcastle, that the actual characterisation of his Oldcastle--Falstaff--has no prototype in the original, the abrupt first entry upon the scene of this tavern-lounger and afternoon sleeper-upon-benches, as familiarly addressing the heir apparent as "Hal" and "lad," supplies a good instance of Shakespeare's method--noticed by Maurice Morgann--of making a character _act and speak from those parts of the composition which are inferred only and not distinctly shown_; but to the initiated, including Southampton and his friends, who knew the bumptious self-sufficiency of Shakespeare's living model, and who followed the developing characterisation from play to play, the effect of such bold dramatic strokes must have been irresistibly diverting.

It is difficult now to realise the avidity with which such publications as Florio's _First_ and _Second Fruites_ were welcomed from the press and read by the cultured, or culture-seeking, public of his day. Italy being then regarded as the centre of culture and fashion a colloquial knowledge of Italian was a fashionable necessity. A reference in a current play to an aphorism of Florio's or to a characteristic passage from the proverbial philosophy of which he constructs his Italian-English conversations, which would pass unnoticed now, would be readily recognised by a fashionable Elizabethan audience.

When Shakespeare, through the utterances of the prince, characterises Falstaff by suggestion upon his first appearance in the play in the following lines:

"Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack and unbuttoning
thee after supper and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou
hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou would'st truly know,"
for the benefit of his initiated friends he links up and continues
Florio's characterisation as Parolles and Falstaff, and in the remainder
of the passage,

"What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? Unless hours
are cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of
bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun
himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta,"

suggests Florio's character from his own utterances in the _Second Fruites_, where one of the characters holds forth as follows:

"As for me, I never will be able, nor am I able, to be willing but to
love whatsoever pleaseth women, to whom I dedicate, yield, and
consecrate what mortal thing soever I possess, and I say, that a
salad, a woman and a capon, as yet was never out of season."

A consideration of certain of the divergences between the _dramatis personae_ of the _First Part of Henry IV._ and the _Second Part of Henry IV._, made in the light of the thread of subjective evidence in the plays of the Sonnet period, may give us some new clues in determining the relative periods of their original composition.

In the _First Part of Henry IV._ the hostess of the tavern is referred to as a young and beautiful woman in Act I. Scene ii., as follows:

FALSTAFF.... And is not my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench?

PRINCE. As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle. And is not a
buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance?

FAL. How now, how now, mad wag! what, in thy quips and quiddities?
What a plague have I to do with a buff jerkin?

PRINCE. Why, what a pox have I to do with my hostess of the tavern?

FAL. Well, thou hast called her to a reckoning many a time and oft.

PRINCE. Did I ever call for thee to pay thy part?

FAL. No, I'll give thee thy due, thou hast paid all there. */

PRINCE. Yes, and elsewhere, so far as my coin would stretch; and
where it would not, I have used my credit.

FAL. Yea, and so used it that, were it not here apparent that thou
art heir apparent--but, I prithee, sweet wag, shall there be
gallows standing in England when thou art king? And resolution
thus fobbed as it is with the rusty curb of old father antic
the law? Do not thou, when thou art king, hang a thief.

Falstaff's impertinent and suggestive reference to the prince's intimacy with the hostess, not being taken well, he quickly gives the conversation a turn to cover up the mistake he finds he has made. It is palpable that the characterisation of the hostess in the _First Part of Henry IV._, in its original form, was not the same as that presented in the _Second Part_ of this play in which she is represented as Mistress Quickly, an old, unattractive, and garrulous widow. In the _First Part of Henry IV._ she is mentioned only once as Mistress Quickly. In Act III. Scene iii. the prince addresses her under this name and inquires about her husband.

PRINCE. What sayest thou, Mistress Quickly? How doth thy husband? I
love him well; he is an honest man.

This single mention of the hostess as Mistress Quickly is evidently an interpolation made at the period of the revision of this play late in 1597, or early in 1598. It is also probable that the revision at this time was made with the intention of linking the action of the _First Part_ to the _Second Part_ of the play, the outline of which Shakespeare was probably planning at that time.

The dramatic time of the _First Part_ of the play has been estimated as at the outside covering a period of three months, and of the _Second Part_, a period of two months. No long interval is supposed to have elapsed between the action of the two parts; yet, in the _First Part_ of the play the hostess is young, attractive, and has a husband. In the _Second Part_, she is old, unattractive, and is a widow. This divergence is evidently to be accounted for by the fact that the _First Part of Henry IV._ in its earliest, and unrevised, form was written, not long after the composition of _Love's Labour's Won_ (_All's Well that