This is a play which all men admire, and which most women dislike. Many revolting
expressions in the comic parts, much boisterous courage in some of the graver scenes,
together with Falstaff's unwieldy person,
offend every female auditor; and whilst a facetious Prince of Wales is employed in
taking purses on the highway, a lady would rather see him stealing hearts at a ball,
though the event might produce more fatal consequences.

The great Percy, they confess, pays some
attention to his wife, but still more to his horse: and, as the king was a rebel
before he mounted the throne,² and all women are naturally loyal, they shudder at a crowned
head leagued with a traitor's heart.

With all these plausible objections, infinite entertainment and instruction, may be
received from this drama, even by the most delicate readers. They will observe the
pen of a faithful historian, as well as of a great poet; and they ought, surely, to
be charmed with every character, as a complete copy of nature; admiring even the
delinquency of them all, far beyond that false display of unsullied virtue, so easy
for a bard to bestow upon the creatures of his fancy, when b 2[Page 4]truth of description is sacrificed
to brilliant impossibilities.

The reader, who is too refined to laugh at the wit of Sir John, must yet enjoy Hotspur's picture of a coxcomb; and receive
high delight from those sentences of self-reproach, and purpose of amendment, which
occasionally drop from the lips of the youthful and royal profligate.

If the licentious faults of old fashioned dialogue should here too frequently offend
the strictly nice, they must, at least, confer the tribute of their praises upon
every soliloquy. It is impossible for puritanism not to be merry, when Falstaff is ever found talking to himself; or
holding discourse over the honoured dead. It is nearly as im possible [sic] for stupidity to be insensible of the merit of
those sentiments, delivered by the prince, over the same extended corse; or, to be
unmoved by various other beauties, with which this work abounds.

In order to form a proper judgment of the manners and conversations of the characters
in this play, and, to partake of their genuine spirit, the reader must keep in mind
that the era, in which all those remarkable personages lived, thought, spoke, and
acted, has now been passed more than four hundred years.—The play begins with
the news of Hotspur having defeated the
Scots, under the Earl of Douglas,
which battle was fought on the fourteenth of September, 1402;³ and it closes with the
defeat and death of Hotspur, which
happened on the twenty-first of July, 1403⁴ —thus comprising every event here introduced, within the time of
ten months.

[Page 5]

It will be vain to endeavour to prevent many tender-hearted readers, who sigh over
the horrors of a battle, from wishing, that the prince's challenge to Hotspur had produced the single combat he
desired; and that the victory of the day had been so decided.

Such tender and compassionate persons should not suffer their estimation of honour
thus to sink into an equality with the cowardly Falstaff's; but they should call to mind—that, though it was, in
ancient times, considered as a token of valour, for a prince at the head of an army,
to challenge to single contest the chief warrior on the opposite side; yet, in modern
days, when a powerful monarch threw his gauntlet down,⁵ to save the effusion
of blood, this act of self-sacrifice was considered as a token of mere madness.

b 3