[1] This tradition seems in no way improbable, and its probability is not diminished by the fact that an anecdote connected with it has been shown by Halliwell-Phillips to be an old Joe Miller, merely adapted to the case in point. "One day an old townsman, observing the boy running homeward almost out of breath, asked him whither he was posting in that heat and hurry. He answered to see his _god_father Shakespeare. 'There is a good boy,' said the other; 'but have a care that you don't take _God's_ name in vain'" (_Oldys_). [2] A Danish ethical and theological thinker, a Northern Pascal, said to have in some measure suggested to Ibsen the character of Brand. XXV "_KING HENRY IV.," SECOND PART--OLD AND NEW CHARACTERS IN IT--DETAILS--"HENRY V.," A NATIONAL DRAMA--PATRIOTISM AND CHAUVINISM--THE VISION OF A GREATER ENGLAND_ The Second Part of _Henry IV_., which must have been written in 1598, since Justice Silence is mentioned in Ben Jonson's _Every Man out of his Humour_, acted in 1599, abounds, no less than the First Part, in poetic power, but is only a dramatised chronicle, not a drama. In its serious scenes, the play is more faithful to history than the First Part, and it is not Shakespeare's fault that the historical characters are here of less interest. In the comic scenes, which are very amply developed, Shakespeare has achieved the feat of bringing Falstaff a second time upon the stage without giving us the least sense of anticlimax. He is incomparable as ever in his scenes with the Lord Chief-Justice and with the women of the tavern; and when he goes down into Gloucestershire in his character of recruiting-officer, he is still at the height of his genius. As new comrades and foils to him, Shakespeare has here created the two contemptible country Justices, Shallow and Silence. Shallow is a masterpiece, a compact of mere stupidity, foolishness, boastfulness, rascality, and senility; yet he appears a genius in comparison with the ineffable Silence. Here, as in the First Part, the poet evidently drew his comic types from the life of his own day. Another very amusing new personage, who, like Falstaff, was much imitated by the minor dramatists of the time, is Falstaff's Ancient, the braggart Pistol, whose talk is an anthology of playhouse bombast. This inept affectation not only makes him a highly comic personage, but gives Shakespeare an opportunity of girding at the robustious style of the earlier tragic poets, which had become repulsive to him. He parodies Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_ in Pistol's outburst (ii. 4):-- "Shall packhorses, And hollow pamper'd jades of Asia, Which cannot go but thirty miles a-day, Compare with Cæsars and with Cannibals, And Trojan Greeks?" The passage in _Tamburlaine_ (Second Part, ii. 4) runs thus:-- "Holla, ye pamper'd jades of Asia, What? can ye draw but twenty miles a day?"