North. Why should the gentleman, that rode by To Harry Monmouth: whose swift wrath beat down Travers, Give then such instances of loss? Bard. Who, he? He was some hilding' fellow, that had stol'n The horse he rode on; and, upon my life, Spoke at a venture. Look, here comes more news. Enter MORTON. North. Yea, this man's brow, like to a title-leaf, Your brother, thus; so fought the noble Douglas; Mor. Douglas is living, and your brother, yet: But, for my lord your son, North. Why, he is dead. See, what a ready tongue suspicion hath! He, that but fears the thing he would not know, Hath, by instinct, knowledge from others' eyes, That what he fear'd is chanc'd. Yet speak, Morton; Tell thou thy earl, his divination lies; And I will take it as a sweet disgrace, And make thee rich for doing me such wrong. Mor. You are too great to be by me gainsaid: Your spirit is too true, your fears too certain. North. Yet, for all this, say not that Percy's dead. I see a strange confession in thine eye: Bard. I cannot think, my lord, your son is dead. 5 1 i. e. Hilderling, base, low fellow. 2 An attestation of its ravage. 3 Dr. Bently is said to have thought this passage corrupt; and therefore (with a greater degree of gravity than the reader will probably express) proposed the following emendation : So dead, so dull in look Ucalegon, Drew Priam's curtain,' &c. The name of Ucalegon occurs in the third Iliad, and in the Æneid. 4 So in Shakspeare's seventy-first Sonnet :-You shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled.' Milton has adopted this expressive epithet :-I hear the far-off curfew sound Over some wide-water'd shore, Swinging slow with sullen roar.' The bell anciently was rung before the dying person had expired, and thence was called the passing bell. Mr. Douce thinks it probable that this bell might have been originally used to drive away demons, who were supposed to watch for the parting soul. The never-daunted Percy to the earth, mourn. In poison there is physic; and these news, Having been well, that would have made me sick, Being sick, have in some measure made me well: And as the wretch, whose fever-weaken'd joints, Like strengthless hinges, buckle under life, Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire Out of his keeper's arms; even so my limbs, Weaken'd with grief, being now enrag'd with grief, Are thrice themselves: hence therefore, thou nice crutch; A scaly gauntlet now, with joints of steel, Tra. This strained passion doth you wrong, m Bard. Sweet earl, divorce not wisdom from you honour. Mor. The lives of all your loving complices Lean on your health; the which, if you give o'er To stormy passion, must perforce decay. 5 By faint quittance a faint return of blows is meant. 6 i. e. reported, noised abroad. 7 i. e. began to fall his courage, to let his spirits sink under his fortune. To vail is to lower, to cast down. 8 Grief, in the latter part of this line, is used, in its present sense, for sorrow; in the former part for bodily pain. 9 Steevens explains nice here by trifling; but Shakspeare, like his contemporaries, uses it in the sense of effeminate, delicate, tender. 10 The conclusion of this noble speech (says Johnson) is extremely striking. There is no need to suppose it exactly philosophical; darkness, in poetry, may be absence of eyes, as well as privation of light. Yet we may remark that, by an ancient opinion, it has been held that if the human race, for whom the world was made, were extirpated, the whole system of sublunary nature would cease at once.' 11 This line in the quarto is by mistake given to Umfreville, who is spoken of in this very scene as absent It is given to Travers at Steevens's suggestion. You cast the event of war, my noble lord,' Let us make head. It was your presurmise, Bard. We all, that are engaged to this loss," I hear for certain, and do speak the truth,- With well-appointed powers; he is a man, But shadows, and the shows of men, to fight: SCENE II. London. A Street. Enter SIN JOHN FALSTAFF, with his Page bearing his Sword and Buckler. Fal. Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water ?10 Suppos'd sincere and holy in his thoughts, Page. He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water: but for the party that owed it, he might have more diseases than he knew for. North. I knew of this before; but, to speak truth, 1 The fourteen following lines, and a number of others in this play, were not in the quarto edition. 2 Dealing, or distribution. 3 So in King Henry IV. Part 1 : As full of peril and adventurous spirit, 4 That is, you were warned or aware. Fal. Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me: The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to vent any thing that tends to laughter, more than I invent, or is invented on me : I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men. I do here walk before thee, like a sow, that hath overwhelmed all her litter but one. If the prince put thee into my service for any other reason than to set me off, why then I have no judgment. Thou whoreson mandrake,13 thou art fitter to be worn in my cap, than to wait at my heels. I was never manned with an agate1 till now: but I will set you neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your master, for a jewel; the juvenal, the prince your master, whose chin is not yet fledged. I will sooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand, than he shall get one on his cheek; and yet he will not stick to say, his face is a face-royal: God may finish it when he will, it is not a hair amiss yet: he may keep it still as a face-royal, 16 for a barber shall never earn sixpence out of it; and yet he will be crowing, as if he had writ man ever since his father was a bachelor. He may keep his own grace, but he is almost out of mine, I can assure him.- -What said master Dumbleton about the satin for my short cloak, and slops? 5 This mode of expression has before been noticed. 6 This and the following twenty lines are not found in the quarto. 7 Against their stomachs. Page. He said, sir, you should procure him better assurance than Bardolph: he would not take his bond and yours; he liked not the security. Fal. Let him be damned like the glutton! may his tongue be hotter !"-A whoreson Achitophe!! a rascally yea-forsooth knave! to bear a gentleman in hand, and then stand upon security!-The whoreson smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes, and bunches of keys at their girdles; and if a man is thorough' with them in honest taking up, then they must stand upon-security. I had as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth, as offer to stop it with security. I looked he should have sent me two and twenty yards of satin, as I am a true knight, and he sends me security. Well, he may sleep in security; for he hath the horn of abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it; and yet cannot he see, though he have 13 A root supposed to have the shape of a man. Quacks and impostors counterfeited, with the root briony, figures resembling parts of the human body, which were sold to the credulous as endued with specific virtues. See Sir Thomas Brown's Vulgar Errors, p. 72, edit. 1686, for some very curious particulars. 14 An agate is used metaphorically for a very dimi nutive person, in allusion to the small figures cut in agate for rings and broaches. Thus Florio explains Formaglio: ouches, broaches, or tablets and jewels, that yet some old men wear in their hats, with agathstones, cut and graven with some formes and images 8 That is, stand over his country, as she lies bleed-on them, namely, of famous men's heads.' ing and prostrate, to protect her. It was the office of a friend to protect his fallen comrade in battle in this manner. Shakspeare has alluded to it in other places. 9 i. e. great and small, all ranks. 10 This quackery was once so much in fashion that Linacre, the founder of the College of Physicians, formed a statute to restrain apothecaries from carrying the water of their patients to a doctor, and afterwards giving medicines in consequence of the opinions pronounced concerning it. This statute was followed by another, which forbade the doctors themselves to pronounce on any disorder from such an uncertain diagnostic. But this did not extinguish the practice, which has even its dupes in these enlightened times. il Owned. 12 Gird (Mr. Gifford says) is a mere metathesis of gride, and means a thrust, a blow; the metaphorical use of the word for a smart stroke of wit, taunt, reproachful retort, &c. is justified by a similar application of kindred terms in all languages. 15 Juvenal occurs in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and in Love's Labour's Lost. It is also used in many places by Chaucer for a young man. 16 Johnson says that, by a face-royal, Falstaff means a face exempt from the touch of vulgar hands. As a stagroyal is not to be hunted, a mine-royal is not to be dug. Steevens imagines that there may be a quibble intend. ed on the coin called a real, or royal; that a barber can no more earn sixpence by his face, than by the face stamped on the coin, the one requiring as little shaving as the other. Mason thinks that Falstaff's conceit is, If nothing be taken out of a royal, it will remain a royal still, as it was.' The reader will decide for himself. I have nothing better in the way of conjecture to offer. 17 An allusion to the fate of the rich man, who had fared sumptuously every day, when he requested a drop of water to cool his tongue, being tormented with flames. promises. 18 To bear in hand is to keep in expectation by false } 19 i. e. in their debt, by taking up goods on credit. Page. He's gone into Smithfield, to buy your worship a horse. Fal. I bought him in Paul's,' and he'll buy me a horse in Smithfield: an I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived. Enter the Lord Chief Justice, and an Attendant. Page. Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the prince for striking him about Bardolph. Fal. Wait close, I will not see him. Ch. Just. What's he that goes there? Atten. Falstaff, an't please your lordship. Ch. Just. He that was in question for the robbery? Atten. He, my lord: but he hath since done good service at Shrewsbury; and, as I hear, is now going with some charge.to the lord John of Lan Atten. Sir John, Fal. What a young knave, and beg! Is there not wars? is there not employment? Doth not the king lack subjects? do not the rebels need soldiers? Though it be a shame to be on any side but one, it is worse shame to beg than to be on the worst side, were it worse than the name of rebellion can tell how to make it. Atten. You mistake me, sir. Fal. Why, sir, did I say you were an honest man? setting my knighthood and my soldiership aside, I had lied in my throat if I had said so. Atten. I pray you, sir, then set your knighthood and your soldiership aside; and give me leave to tell you, you lie in your throat, if you say I am any other than an honest man. Fal. I give thee leave to tell me so! I lay aside that which grows to me! If thou get'st any leave of me, hang me; if thou takest leave, thou wert better be hanged; You hunt counter, hence! avaunt! Atten. Sir, my lord would speak with you. Ch. Just. Sir John Falstaff, a word with you. Fal. My good lord!-God give your lordship good time of day. I am glad to see your lordship abroad: I heard say, your lordship was sick: I hope, your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I most humbly beseech your lordship, to have a reverend care of your health. Ch. Just. Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury. Fal. An't please your lordship, I hear, his majesty is returned with some discomfort from Wales. Ch. Just. I talk not of his majesty :-You would not come when I sent for you. 1 The body of old St. Paul's Church, in London, was a constant place of resort for business and amusement, and consequently frequented by idle people of all descriptions. Advertisements were fixed up there, bargains made, servants hired, &c. Fal. And I hear moreover, his highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy. Ch. Just. Well, heaven mend him! I pray, let me speak with you. Fal. This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an't please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling. Ch. Just. What tell you me of it? be it as it is. Fal. It hath its original from much grief; from study, and perturbation of the brain: I have read the cause of its effects in Galen; it is a kind of deafness. Ch. Just. I think, you are fallen into the disease; for you hear not what I say to you. Fal. Very well, my lord, very well: rather, an't please you, it is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal. Ch. Just. To punish you by the heels would amend the attention of your ears; and I care not, if I do become your physician. Fal. I am as poor as Job, my lord; but not so patient: your lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me, in respect to poverty; but how should be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or, indeed, a scruple itself. I Ch. Just. I sent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me. Fal. As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws of this land-service, I did not come. Ch. Just. Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy. Fal. He that buckles him in my belt, cannot live in less. Ch. Just. Your means are very slender, and your waste is great. Fal. I would it were otherwise; I would my means were greater, and my waist slenderer. Ch. Just. You have misled the youthful prince. Fal. The young prince hath misled me: I am the fellow with the great belly, and he my dog. Ch. Just. Well, I am loath to gall a new-heal'd wound; your day's service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night's exploit on Gad's-hill: you may thank the unquiet time for your quiet o'erposting that action. Fal. My lord? Ch. Just. But since all is well, keep it so: wake not a sleeping wolf. Fal. To wake a wolf, is as bad as to smell a fox. Ch. Just. What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt out. Fal. A wassel candle, my lord; all tallow: if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth. Ch. Just. There is not a white hair on your face, but should have his effect of gravity. Fal. His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy. Ch. Just. You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel. Fal. Not so, my lord; your ill angel is light;" but, I hope, he that looks upon me, will take me without weighing: and yet, in some respects, I grant, I cannot go, I cannot tell: Virtue is of so does not seem to be any allusion to the Counter prison here; though such allusions were very common in the poet's age. 4 In the quarto edition this speech stands thus:Old. Very well, my lord, very well.' This is a strong corroboration of the tradition that Falstaff was first called Oldcastle. 2 This judge was Sir Wm. Gascoigne, chief justice of the King's Bench. He died Dec. 17, 1413, and was buried in Harewood Church, in Yorkshire. His effigy is on his monument, and may be seen in Gough's Se-feast. There is a poor quibble upon the word war, pulchral Monuments, vol. ii. 3 To hunt counter was to hunt the wrong way, to trace the scent backwards: to hunt it by the heel is the technical phrase. Falstaff means to tell the man that he is on a wrong scent. The folio and the modern editions print hunt-counter with a hyphen, so as to make it appear like a name; but in the quartos the words are disjoined-hunt counter. Cotgrave explains contrepied, that which we call counter in hunting;' and 'tenir contrepied, to set or hold his foot against another man's, thereby to stop him from going any further; to cross or impeach the designes or enterprises of another.' There 5 A wassel candle is a large candle lighted up at a which signifies increase as well as the matter of the honeycomb. 6 As light as a clipt angel' is a comparison frequent in the old comedies. 7 I cannot tell, Johnson explains, 'I cannot be taken Mr. Gifford in a reckoning, I cannot pass current.' objects to this explanation, and says that it merely means I cannot tell what to think of it. The phrase with that signification, was certainly common (says Mr Boswell); but as it will also bear the sense which Dr. Johnson assigned to it, his interpretation appears to me to suit the context better. Let the reader judge. little regard in these coster-monger times, that true-A man can no more separate age and covetousvalour is turned bear-herd: Pregnancy is made a ness, than he can part young limbs and lechery: tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the reckonings: all the other gifts appertinent to man, other; and so both the degrees prevent" my curses. as the malice of this age shapes them, are not-Boy!worth a gooseberry. You, that are old, consider, not the capacities of us that are young: you measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls: and we that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confess, are wags too. Ch. Just. Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single and every part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fye, fye, fye, Sir John!" Fal. My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head, and something a round belly. For my voice,-I have lost it with hollaing, and singing of anthems. To approve my youth further, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judgment and understanding: and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him. For the box o' the ear that the prince gave you,-he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have checked him for it; and the young lion repents; marry, not in ashes, and sackcloth; but in new silk and old sack. Ch. Just. Well, heaven send the prince a better companion! Fal. Heaven send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him. Ch. Just. Well, the king hath severed you and Prince Harry: I hear, you are going with Lord John of Lancaster, against the archbishop, and the earl of Northumberland. Fal. Yea; I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But look you pray, all you that kiss my lady peace at home, that our armies join not in a hot day! for, by the Lord, I take but two shirts out with me, and I mean not to sweat extraordinarily if it be a hot day, an I brandish any thing but my bottle, I would I might never spit white again. There is not a dangerous action can peep out his head, but I am thrust upon it: Well, I cannot last ever: But it was always yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. If you will needs say, I am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God, my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is. I were better to be eaten to death with rust, than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion. Ch. Just. Well, be honest, be honest; and God bless your expedition! Fal. Will your lordship lend me a thousand pounds, to furnish me forth? Ch. Just. Not a penny, not a penny; you are too impatient to bear crosses. Fare you well: Commend me to my cousin Westmoreland. [Exeunt Chief Justice and Attendant. Fal. If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. 1 Coster-monger times are petty pedilling times; when the prevalence of trade has produced that meanness that rates the merit of every thing by money. 2 Pregnancy is readiness. 3 Single is simple, silly. How much has been writ ten about this phrase, and to how little purpose! Single-witted and single-soul'd were common epithets with our ancestors, to designate simple persons. 4 The rest of this speech, which is not in the folio, is restored from the quarto copy, 5 A quibble is here intended between crosses, contraryings, and the sort of money so called. | Page. Sir? Fal. What money is in my purse? Fal. I can get no remedy against this consump tion of the purse: borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable.-Go bear this letter to my lord of Lancaster, this to the prince; this to the earl of Westmoreland; and this to old mistress Ursula, whom I have weekly sworn to marry since I perceived the first white hair on my chin: About it; you know where to find me. [Ent Page.] A pox of this gout! or, a gout of this pox! for the one, or the other, plays the rogue with my great toe. It is no matter, if I do halt; I have the wars for my colour, and my pension shall seem the more reasonable: A good wit will make use of any thing; I will turn diseases to commodity. [Exit. SCENE III. York. A Room in the Archbishop's Palace. Enter the Archbishop of York; the LORDS HASTINGS, MOWBRAY, and BARDOLPH. Arch. Thus have you heard our cause, and known our means; And, my most noble friends, I pray you all, Mowb. I well allow the occasion of our arms; Hast. Our present musters grow upon the file To five and twenty thousand men of choice; And our supplies live largely in the hope Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns With an incensed fire of injuries. Bard. The question then, Lord Hastings, standeth thus: Whether our present five and twenty thousand Bard. Bard. It was, my lord; who lin'd himself with hope, Eating the air on promise of supply, Flattering himself with project of a power Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts: And So, with great imagination, Proper to madmen, led his powers to death, And, winking, leap'd into destruction. Hast. But, by your leave, it never yet did hurt, To lay down likelihoods, and forms of hope. Bard. Yes, in this present quality of war;Indeed the instant action,1° (a cause on foot), generally kills it. A three-man beetle is a heavy beetle, with three handles, used in driving piles, &c. 7 To prevent is to anticipate. 'Mine eyes prevent the night watches.-Ps. cxix. One of our old translators renders the Noctem que instabat interpræcapere; to prevent the night that was at hand.' 8 Commodity is profit, interest. 9 That is, which turned out to be much smaller than, &c. 6 This alludes to a common but cruel diversion of boys, called fillipping the toad. They lay a board, two or three feet long, at right angles, over a transverse piece, two or three inches thick; then placing the toad at one end of the board, the other end is struck by a bat or large stick, which throws the poor toad forty It has been proposed to read :— or fifty feet perpendicular from the earth: and the fall serted in the folio, 1623. This passage has perplexed 10 The first twenty lines of this speech were first inthe editors. The old copies read: 'Yes, if this present quality of war, Indeed the instant action: a cause on foot Lives so in hope: As in,' &c. "Yes, if this present quality of war ;— Lives so in hope, as in an early spring We see the appearing buds; which, to prove fruit, We first survey the plot, then draw the model; What do we then, but draw anew the model To build at all? Much more, in this great work, Using the names of men instead of men: Beyond his power to build it; who, half through, Hast. Grant, that our hopes (yet likely of fair Should be still-born, and that we now possess'd I think, we are a body strong enough, Bard. What is the king but five and twenty Hast. To us, no more; nay, not so much, Lord Bardolph. For his divisions, as the times do brawl, In three divided; and his coffers sound And being now trimm'd in thine own desires, ACT II. SCENE I. London. A Street. Enter Hostess; Host. Master Fang, have you entered the action? Host. Where is your yeoman ? Is it a lusty yeoman? will a' stand to't? Fang. Sirrah, where's Snare ? Host. O lord, ay: good master Snare. Fang. Snare, we must arrest Sir John Falstaff. Host. Yea, good master Snare; I have entered him and all. Snare. It may chance cost some of us our lives, for he will stab. Host. Alas the day! take heed of him; he stabbed me in mine own house, and that most beastly: in good faith, a' cares not what mischief he doth, if his weapon be out: he will foin like any devil; he Arch. That he should draw his several strengths will spare neither man, woman, nor child. together, And come against us in full puissance, Need not be dreaded. Hast. If he should do so, He leaves his back unarm'd, the French and Welsh Fang. If I can close with him, I care not for his thrust. Host. No, nor I neither: I'll be at your elbow. Fang. An I but fist him once; an a' come but within my vice ;9 Host. I am undone by his going; I warrant you, he's an infinitive thing upon my score:-Good master Fang, hold him sure;-good master Snare, let Hast. The duke of Lancaster, and Westmore-him not 'scape. He comes continually to Pie land: In luc'd the instant action: a cause on foot Lives so in hope, as in,' &c. The realing adopted by Steevens and Malone, from 2 During this rebellion of Northumberland and the Archbishop a French army of twelve thousand men landed at Milford Haven in aid of Owen Glendower. See Holinshed, p. 531. 3 This is an anachronism. Prince John of Lancaster was not created a duke till the second year of the reign of his brother, King Henry V. At this time Prince Henry was actually duke of Lancaster. Shakspeare was misled by Stowe, who, speaking of the first parlia; ment of King Henry IV. says, Then the king rose, and made his eldest sonne prince of Wales, &c.: his second corner (saving your manhoods,) to buy a saddle; and he's indited to dinner to the lubbar's head in Lumbert-street, to master Smooth's the silkman: I pray ye, since my exion is entered, and my case so openly known to the world, let him be brought in to his answer. A hundred mark is a long loan1o for a poor lone woman to bear: and I have borne, and borne, and borne; and have been fubbed off, and fubbed off, and fubbed off, from this day to that day, that it is a shame to be thought on. There is no honesty in such dealing; unless a woman should he made an ass, and a beast, to bear every knave's wrong. |