KING HENRY THE FIFTH. 'King Henry V> is the last of the group of history plays to which were devoted so large a part of Shakespeare's energies during the first decade of his career. It brings to culmination the exposition of national issues which eight earlier adaptations of chronicle history had essayed with steadily increasing power. After 'Henry V,> Shakespeare entered this field only once again—when (Henry VIII> was produced a dozen years later; but the nature of Shake speare's concern in this last play is proble matical and it should not be considered among the earlier group of histories, (Henry V> is the final fanfare of Elizabethan patriotic, exul tation and marks the close of the dramatic epoch inaugurated in the time of the Armada by (Tamburlaine) and 'The Spanish
From this play Shakespeare himself passed to the treatment of more philosophic questions in the subsequent dramas of
'Henry V' was printed in 1600, and was clearly popular. A second quarto edition, of which only two copies seem now extant, ap peared in 1602, and a third (falsely dated 1608) in 1619. Modern texts, however, are not based upon any of these, but upon the much more complete and accurate version of the folio of 1623. Composition of the play apparently pre ceded the publication of the first quarto by a very short interval, for the allusion by the Chorus at the opening of Act V to ((the gen eral of our gracious empress . . . from Ire land coming, Bringing rebellion broached on his sword') must from the context have been written during the absence of the Earl of Es sex in Ireland (15 April-28 Sept. 1599). The fact that this passage and all the other speeches of the Chorus are wanting in the quarto ver sions is probably of no significance except to show the imperfectness of those versions.
It is likely that (Henry V' was one of the very first plays acted at the Globe Theatre (constructed in the spring of 1599) and that the first speech of the play alludes snecifically to the new playhouse: While not one of the most permanent fa vorites, the play has been frequently revived.
The most memorable performances in America were those of Richard Mansfield in 1900. By the reading public
V' has been gen erally beloved as one of the heartiest and sin cerest of the poet's works. Recently, however, the king's character, as Shakespeare depicts it in this play and in the two parts of (Henry IV,' has been subjected to unsympathetic scrutiny by three very distinguished critics: W. B. Yeats
of Good and Evil,' 1903), Prof. A. C. Bradley
Rejection of Falstaff,' 1902, in (Oxford Lectures on Poetry') and John Masefield ((William Shakespeare,' Home University Library, 1911). They all protest against the strain of callous selfishness in Henry, finding distinct discomfort in the idea that Shakespeare could have intended him as a hero. The limitations in the king, when com pared with such characters as Hamlet and Brutus, are undeniable, and perhaps they ex plain in part why Shakespeare abandoned the patriotic history play for works of greater moral depth. Yet it certainly appears that in (Henry V' the dramatist accepted in good faith the encomiums of Holinshed and permit ted his satisfaction in the performances of the conquering hero to blind him to the lack of qualities with which he regularly endowed his great ideal figures. As in the case of most of Shakespeare's ((errors,'" the matter is a ques tion for academic speculation only; the ordi nary reader or spectator is too much fired by the lambent brilliance of the piece to admit any qualification of his hero-worship. The sub ject has been judicially treated by Prof. J. W. Cunliffe (