Returning to the plays, we find, between 1597 and 1601, Shakespeare in his second period, with "Henry IV," "The Merry Wives of Windsor," "Henry V," "Much Ado about Nothing," "As You Like It," "Twelfth Night," and "Julius Cæsar". Such was the astonishing harvest of five years. Probably "Henry IV" is the play which we would retain, could we keep but one, so delightful is Falstaff, the fat knight, the embodiment of the richest humour. He "has given us medicines to make us love him," and even the delightful characters of Hotspur, the Mercutio of the history, and of Lady Percy, take a far lower place. We would banish all, and keep honest Jack. Many cannot bear to see Falstaff have much the worse of the jest, as in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," said to have been composed in a fortnight, at the desire of Elizabeth, who wished to see that impossibility, Falstaff in love. The characters of Shallow, Slender, Sir Hugh, even the transient Anne Page, and all the broad humours of life in an English country town, do not console us for the defeat of the hero. It is in "Henry V" that Shakespeare not only emphasizes his love of England, nobly expressed by John of Gaunt in "Richard II," but makes it the mainspring of the drama. The yeomen soldiers in the play frankly tell the disguised king that they doubt the justice of his cause--and well they may, for no man ever had a worse, and Shakespeare must have known it,--but "our country, right or wrong," must be the motto of the playwright, and he puts into Henry's mouth the speeches that still stir the blood like the sound of a trumpet. Much has been written on Henry's hardness to Falstaff, whose heart he broke,--but Henry at least acts in accordance with his actual character, a brave, able, ruthless, and hard man, always convinced of his own righteousness. Pistol's braggart humour is as good as ever, and that learned man of the sword, Fluellen, is a forerunner of Scott's Dugald Dalgetty. "Much Ado about Nothing," "As You Like It," and "Twelfth Night" (1599-1600) are the three central stars in the crown of Shakespeare's comic Muse. More humorous than "Henry IV" they cannot be, but in them is no admixture of history, and the women in the three are ladies, whereas in "Henry IV" Lady Percy is the chief contrast with Falstaff's Mrs. Quickly, and her crew. Shakespeare cannot, we may suppose, have lived in the intimate society of the ladies of Elizabeth's Court; he must have divined and created Beatrice ("a star danced, and under that was she born") and Hero, sweetly bearing the accusations of her intolerable lover, Claudio:-- I have marked A thousand blushing apparitions To start into her face, a thousand shames In angel whiteness beat away these blushes, And in her eye there hath appeared a fire To burn the errors that these princes hold Against her maiden truth.