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A consideration of certain of the divergences between the dramatis personæ of the First Part of Henry IV. and the Second Part of Henry IV., made in the light of the thread of subjective evidence in the plays of the Sonnet period, may give us some new clues in determining the relative periods of their original composition.

In the First Part of Henry IV. the hostess of the tavern is referred to as a young and beautiful woman in Act I. Scene ii., as follows:

Falstaff. ... And is not my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench?

Prince. As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle. And is not a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance?

Fal. How now, how now, mad wag! what, in thy quips and quiddities? What a plague have I to do with a buff jerkin?

Prince."Why, what a pox have I to do with my hostess of the tavern?

Fal. Well, thou hast called her to a reckoning many a time and oft.

Prince. Did I ever call for thee to pay thy part?

Fal. "No, I'll give thee thy due, thou hast paid all there.

Prince. Yes, and elsewhere, so far as my coin would stretch; and where it would not, I have used my credit.

Fal. Yea, and so used it that, were it not here apparent that thou art heir apparent—but, I prithee, sweet wag, shall there be gallows standing in England when thou art king? And resolution thus fobbed as it is with the rusty curb of old father antic the law? Do not thou, when thou art king, hang a thief.

Falstaff's impertinent and suggestive reference to the prince's intimacy with the hostess, not being taken well, he quickly gives the conversation a turn to cover up the mistake he finds he has made. It is palpable that the characterisation of the hostess in the First Part of Henry IV., in its original form, was not the same as that presented in the Second Part of this play in which she is represented as Mistress Quickly, an old, unattractive, and garrulous widow. In the First Part of Henry IV. she is mentioned only once as Mistress Quickly. In Act III. Scene iii. the prince addresses her under this name and inquires about her husband.

Prince. What sayest thou, Mistress Quickly? How doth thy husband? I love him well; he is an honest man.

This single mention of the hostess as Mistress Quickly is evidently an interpolation made at the period of the revision of this play late in 1597, or early in 1598. It is also probable that the revision at this time was made with the intention of linking the action of the First Part to the Second Part of the play, the outline of which Shakespeare was probably planning at that time.

The dramatic time of the First Part of the play has been estimated as at the outside covering a period of three months, and of the Second Part, a period of two months. No long interval is supposed to have elapsed between the action of the two parts; yet, in the First Part of the play the hostess is young, attractive, and has a husband. In the Second Part, she is old, unattractive, and is a widow. This divergence is evidently to be accounted for by the fact that the First Part of Henry IV. in its earliest, and unrevised, form was written, not long after the composition of Love's Labour's Won (All's Well that Ends Well in its early form), and during the estrangement between Southampton and Shakespeare in 1594, caused by the nobleman's relations with the "dark lady," that "most sweet wench," "my hostess of the tavern."

I have indicated a certain continuity and link of characterisation between Parolles, as we leave him in All's Well that Ends Well, and Falstaff, as we first encounter him in the First Part of Henry IV. I shall now demonstrate parallels between the characterisation of Falstaff in the First Part of Henry IV., and the tone and spirit of the conversations between the imaginary characters of Florio's Second Fruites. Fewer resemblances are to be found between the Second Fruites and the Second Part of Henry IV. From this I infer that when Shakespeare composed the First Part of Henry IV. in its original form, his personal acquaintance with Florio was recent and limited, and that he developed