But whatever we may be told concerning the intention of _Shakespeare_ to extend this character farther, there is a manifest preparation near the end of the second part of Henry IV. for his disgrace: The disguise is taken off, and he begins openly to pander to the excesses of the Prince, intitling himself to the character afterwards given him of being _the tutor and the feeder of his riots_. “_I will fetch off_,” says he, “_these Justices.—I will devise matter enough out of this __SHALLOW__ to keep the Prince in continual laughter the wearing out of six fashions.—If the young __DACE__ be a bait for the old __PIKE__,_” (speaking with reference to his own designs upon _Shallow_) “_I see no reason in the law of nature but I may snap at him._”—This is shewing himself abominably dissolute: The laborious arts of fraud, which he practises on _Shallow_ to induce the loan of a thousand pound, create _disgust_; and the more, as we are sensible this money was never likely to be _paid back_, as we are told that _was_, of which the travellers had been robbed. It is true we feel no pain for _Shallow_, he being a very bad character, as would fully appear, if he were unfolded; but _Falstaff_’s deliberation in fraud is not on that account more excusable.—The event of the old King’s death draws him out almost into detestation.—“_Master __ROBERT SHALLOW__, chuse what office thou wilt in the land,—’tis thine.—I am fortune’s steward.—Let us take any man’s horses.—The laws of England are at my commandment.—Happy are they who have been my friends;—and woe to my __LORD CHIEF JUSTICE__._”—After this we ought not to complain if we see Poetic justice duly executed upon him, and that he is finally given up to shame and dishonour. But it is remarkable that, during this process, we are not acquainted with the success of _Falstaff_’s designs upon _Shallow_ ’till the moment of his disgrace. “_If I had had time_,” says he to _Shallow_, as the King is approaching, “_to have made new liveries, I would have bestowed the thousand pounds I borrowed of you_”;—and the first word he utters after this period is, “_Master __SHALLOW__, I owe you a thousand pounds_”: We may from hence very reasonably presume, that _Shakespeare_ meant to connect this fraud with the punishment of _Falstaff_, as a more avowed ground of censure and dishonour: Nor ought the consideration that this passage contains the most exquisite comic humour and propriety in another view, to diminish the truth of this observation.