Notes and Queries, Number 41, August 10, 1850

Excerpt

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."

Now this is a relation that we are well content, although unsupported by contemporaneous authority, to receive on tradition; because in the nature of the circumstances we cannot expect to find any authentic evidence of the occurrence. But we should never think of citing these passages as fixing the fact of the blow, as chronicled by Hall, in opposition to the milder representation of the story as told by Sir Thomas Elliott in "The Governour." The bard makes that selection between the two versions which best suits the scene he is depicting....