away! by this wine, I'll thrust my knife in your mouldy chaps, an you play the saucy cuttle with me. Away, you bottle-ale rascal! you basket-hilt stale juggler, you! -Since when, I pray you, sir?-What, with two points on your shoulder? much! 2 Pist. I will murder your ruff for this. Fal. No more, Pistol; I would not have you go off here; discharge yourself of our company, Pistol. Host. No, good captain Pistol; not here, swee captain. Dol. Captain! thou abominable, damned cheater, art thou not ashamed to be called-captain? If captains were of my mind, they would truncheon you out, for taking their names upon you before you have earned them. You a captain, you slave! for what? for tearing a poor whore's ruff in a bawdy house?—He a captain! hang him, rogue! He lives upon mouldy stewed prunes, and dried cakes. A captain! these villains will make the word captain as odious as the word occupy, which was an excellent good word before it was ill-sorted : therefore captains had need look to it. Bard. 'Pray thee, go down, good ancient. 3 Pist. Not I; tell thee what, corporal Bardolph ;I could tear her ;-I'll be revenged on her. Page. 'Pray thee, go down. Pist. I'll see her damned first ;-to Pluto's damned lake, to the infernal deep, with Erebus and tortures vile also. Hold hook and line, say I. Down! down, dogs! down, faitors! Have we not Hiren here ? 5 4 1 Laces, marks of his commission. 2 An expression of disdain. 3 This word had been perverted to an obscene meaning. 4 Traitors, rascals. 5 Shakspeare has put into the mouth of Pistol a tissue of absurd and fustian passages from many ridiculous old plays. Part of this speech is parodied from The Battle of Alcazar, 1594. Have we not Hiren here, is probably a line from a play of George Peele's, called The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the fair Greek. It is often used ludicrously by subsequent dramatists. Hiren, from its resemblance to siren, was used for a seducing woman, and consequently for a courtesan. Pistol, in his rants, twice brings in the same words, but apparently meaning to give his sword the name of Hiren. Mrs. Quickly, with admirable simplicity, sup poses him to ask for a woman. Host. Good captain Peesel, be quiet; it is very late, i' faith I beseek you now, aggravate your choler. Pist. These be good humors, indeed! Shall packhorses, And hollow, pampered jades of Asia, Which cannot go but thirty miles a day,1 Shall we fall foul for toys? Host. By my troth, captain, . these are very bitter words. Bard. Be gone, good ancient; this will grow to a brawl anon. Pist. Die men, like dogs; give crowns like pins. Have we not Hiren here? Host. O' my word, captain, there's none such here. What the good-year! do you think I would deny her? for God's sake, be quiet. Pist. Then feed and be fat, my fair Calipolis.3 Come, give's some sack. Si fortuna me tormenta, sperato me contenta.1— Fear we broadsides? no, let the fiend give fire. Give me some sack;—and, sweetheart, lie thou there. [Laying down his sword. Come we to full points here; and are et ceteras nothing? 5 Fal. Pistol, I would be quiet. Pist. Sweet knight, I kiss thy neif! What! we have seen the seven stars. 1 This is a parody of the lines addressed by Tamberlane to the captive princes who draw his chariot, in Marlowe's Tamberlaine, 1590. 2 A blunder for Hannibal. 3 This is again a burlesque upon a line in The Battle of Alcazar, in which Muley Mahomet enters to his wife with lion's flesh on his sword:"Feed then and faint not, my faire Callypolis." 4 Pistol is supposed to read this motto on his sword; by singular chance Mr. Douce picked up an old rapier with the same motto in French :Si fortune me tourmente, l'esperance me contente. 5 That is, Shall we have no further entertainment? 6 Neif is used for fist. It is a north country word. Dol. Thrust him down stairs; I cannot endure such a fustian rascal. Pist. Thrust him down stairs! know we not Galloway nags?1 Fal. Quoit him down, Bardolph, like a shove-groat shilling. Nay, if he do nothing but speak nothing, he shall be nothing here. Bard. Come, get you down stairs. brue? Pist. What! shall we have incision? shall we im [Snatching up his sword. Then death rock me asleep, abridge my doleful days! Why, then, let grievous, ghastly, gaping wounds Untwine the sisters three! Come, Atropos, I say! Host. Here's goodly stuff toward! Fal. Give me my rapier, boy. 3 Dol. I pray thee, Jack, I pray thee, do not draw. Fal. Get you down stars. [Drawing, and driving PISTOL out. Host. Here's a goodly tumult! I'll forswear keeping house, afore I'll be in these tirrits and frights. So; murder, I warrant now. Alas, alas! put up your naked weapons, put up your naked weapons. [Exeunt PISTOL and BARDOLPH. Dol. I pray thee, Jack, be quiet; the rascal is gone. Ah, you whoreson little valiant villain, you. Host. Are you not hurt i' the groin? methought he made a shrewd thrust at your belly. 1 Common hackneys. 2 i. e. pitch him down. The shove-groat shillings were such broad shillings of king Edward VI. as Slender calls Edward shovel-boards, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act i. Sc. 1. 3 Pistol makes use of fragments of old ballads as well as old plays: "O death, rock me on slepe, Bring me on quiet rest," is an ancient song, attributed to Anne Boleyn. There is another in the Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions, 1578, which has furnished him with some of his rhodomontade : "I hate this loathsome life, O Atropos, draw nie, Untwist the thread of mortall strife, Send death, and let me die." Re-enter BARdolph. Fal. Have you turned him out of doors? Bard. Yes, sir. The rascal's drunk: you have hurt him, sir, in the shoulder. Fal. A rascal! to brave me! Dol. Ah, you sweet little rogue, you! Alas, poor ape, how thou sweat'st! Come, let me wipe thy face; -come on, you whoreson chops.-Ah, rogue! i' faith, I love thee. Thou art as valorous as Hector of Troy, worth five of Agamemnon, and ten times better than the nine worthies. Ah, villain! Fal. A rascally slave! I will toss the rogue in a blanket. Dol. Do, if thou darest for thy heart; if thou dost, I'll canvass thee between a pair of sheets. Enter Music. Page. The music is come, sir. Fal. Let them play;-play, sirs ;-sit on my knee, Doll. A rascally, bragging slave! the rogue fled from me like quicksilver. Dol. Î'faith, and thou followedst him like a church. Thou whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig,' when wilt thou leave fighting o' days, and foining o' nights, and begin to patch up thine old body for heaven? Enter, behind, PRINCE HENRY and POINs, disguised like Drawers. Fal. Peace, good Doll! do not speak like a death's head; do not bid me remember mine end. Dol. Sirrah, what humor is the prince of? Fal. A good, shallow young fellow he would have made a good pantler; he would have chipped bread well. 1 Roasted pigs were formerly among the chief attractions of Bartholomew fair. Dol. They say, Poins has a good wit. Fal. He a good wit? Hang him, baboon! his wit is as thick as Tewksbury mustard; there is no more conceit in him, than is in a mallet. Dol. Why does the prince love him so then? Fal. Because their legs are both of a bigness; and he plays at quoits well; and eats conger and fennel;1 and drinks off candles' ends for flap-dragons; 2 and rides the wild mare with the boys;3 and jumps upon joint-stools; and swears with a good grace; and wears his boot very smooth, like unto the sign of the leg; and breeds no bate with telling of discreet stories; and such other gambol faculties he hath, that show a weak mind and an able body, for the which the prince admits him; for the prince himself is such another; the weight of a hair will turn the scales between their avoirdupois. P. Hen. Would not this nave of a wheel 5 have his ears cut off? Poins. Let's beat him before his whore. P. Hen. Look, if the withered elder hath not his poll clawed like a parrot. Poins. Is it not strange, that desire should so many years outlive performance? Fal. Kiss me, Doll. P. Hen. Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction! What says the almanac to that? 1 Fennel was generally esteemed an inflammatory herb, and therefore to eat conger and fennel was to eat two high and hot things together. Fennel was also regarded as an emblem of flattery. 2 The flap-dragon was some small, combustible material swallowed alight in a glass of liquor: a candle's end formed a very formidable and disagreeable flap-dragon, and to swallow it was considered an act of merit, or of gallantry, when done in honor of the toper's mistress. 3 Riding the wild mare is another name for the childish sport of see saw. 4 Mr. Douce thinks Falstaff's meaning to be, that Poins excites no censure by telling his companions modest stories, or, in plain English, that he tells them nothing but immodest ones. 5 Falstaff is humorously called nave of a wheel, from his rotundity of figure. The equivoque between nave and knave is obvious. 6This was indeed a prodigy. The astrologers, says Ficinus, remark, that Saturn and Venus are never conjoined. |