Ch. Just. You speak as having power to do You should have been well on your way to York-wrong: but answer in the effect of your reputation," Stand from him, fellow; wherefore hang'st thou on him ?

Ch. Just. Now, master Gower; what news?
Gow. The king, my lord, and Harry prince of
Wales,

Are near at hand: the rest the paper tells.
Fal. As I am a gentleman:-

Host. Nay, you said so before.

Fal. As I am a gentleman;-Come, no more words of it.

Host. By this heavenly ground I tread on, I must be fain to pawn both my plate, and the tapestry of my dining-chambers.

Fal. Glasses, glasses, is the only drinking: and for thy walls,-a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the proligal, or the German hunting in waterwork, is worth a thousand of these bed-hangings, and these fly-bitten tapestries. Let it be ten pound, if thou canst. Come, and it were not for thy bu mours, there is not a better wench in England. Go wash thy face, and 'draw thy action: Come, thou must not be in this humour with me! dost not know me? Come, come, I know thou wast set on to this!

Host. 'Pray thee, Sir John, let it be but twenty nobles; i'faith I am loath to pawn my plate, in good earnest, la.

6 Sneap is reproof, rebuke. Thus in Brome's Antipodes :'Do you sneap me, my lord?

And again:

No need to come hither to be sneap'd'
even as now I was not,

When you sneup'd me, my lord.'
Snip, snib, sueb, and snub, are different forms of the
same word. To sneap was originally to check or pinch
by frost. Shakspeare has sneaping frost and sneaping
winds in other places.

7 Suitably to your character.

8 Water work is water colour paintings or hangings The painted cloth was generally oil colour; but a cheaper sort, probably resembling in their execution some modern paper-hangings, was brought from Hol land or Germany, executed in water colour, or distemper. The German hunting, or wild boar hunt, would consequently be a prevalent subject.

Fal. Let it alone; I'll make other shift: you'll be a fool still.

Host. Well, you shall have it, though I pawn my gown. I hope you'll come to supper; you'll pay me altogether.

Fal. Will I live?-Go, with her, with her; [To BARDOLPH.] hook on, hook on.

Host. Will you have Doll Tear-sheet meet you at supper?

Ful. No more words; let's have her.

[Exeunt Hostess, BARDOLPH, Officers,
and Page.

Ch. Just. I have heard better news.
Fal. What's the news, my good lord?
Ch. Just. Where lay the king last night?
Gow. At Basingstoke, my lord.

Fal. Ihope, my lord, all's well: What's the news, my lord?

Ch. Just. Come all his forces back?

Poins. How ill it follows, after you have laboured so hard, you should talk so idly? Tell me, how many good young princes would do so, their fathers being so sick as yours at this time is?

P. Hen. Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins? Poins. Yes; and let it be an excellent good thing. P. Hen. It shall serve among wits of no higher breeding than thine.

Poins. Go to; I stand the push of your one thing that you will tell.

P. Hen. Why, I tell thee,-it is not meet that I should be sad, now my father is sick : albeit I could tell to thee (as to one it pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my friend,) I could be sad, and sad indeed too.

Poins. Very hardly, upon such a subject.

P. Hen. By this hand, thou think'st me as far in the devil's book, as thou, and Falstaff, for obduracy and persistency: Let the end try the man. But I

Gow. No; fifteen hundred foot, five hundred tell thee,-my heart bleeds inwardly, that my father

horse;

Are march'd up to my lord of Lancaster,
Against Northumberland and the archbishop.

Fal. Comes the king back from Wales, my noble lord?

Ch. Just. You shall have letters of me presently:
Come, go along with me, good master Gower.
Fal. My lord!

Ch. Just. What's the matter?

Fal. Master Gower, shall I entreat you with me to dinner?

Gow. I must wait upon my good lord here: I thank you, good Sir John.

Ch. Just. Sir John, you loiter here too long, being you are to take soldiers up in counties as you go. Fal. Will you sup with me, master Gower? Ch. Just. What foolish master taught you these manners, Sir John?

Fal. Master Gower, if they become me not, he was a fool that taught them me.-This is the right fencing grace, my lord; tap for tap, and so part fair. Ch. Just. Now the lord lighten thee! thou art a great fool. [Exeunt. SCENE II. The same. Another Street. Enter PRINCE HENRY and POINS.

P. Hen. Trust me, I am exceeding weary. Poins. Is it come to that? I had thought, weariness durst not have attached one of so high blood.

P. Hen. 'Faith, it does me; though it discolours the complexion of my greatness to acknowledge it. Doth it not show vilely in me to desire small beer? Poins. Why, a prince should not be so loosely studied, as to remember so weak a composition.

is so sick and keeping such vile company as thou art, hath in reason taken from me all ostentation" of

sorrow.

Poins. The reason?

P. Hen. What would'st thou think of me, if I should weep?

Poins. I would think thee a most princely hypocrite.

P. Hen. It would be every man's thought: and thou art a blessed fellow, to think as every man thinks; never a man's thoughts in the world keeps the road-way better than thine: every man would think me a hypocrite indeed. And what accites your most worshipful thought to think so?

Poins. Why, because you have been so lewd, and so much engrafied to Falstaff.

P. Hen. And to thee.

Poins. By this light, I am well spoken of, I can hear it with mine own ears: the worst that they can say of me is, that I am a second brother, and that I am a proper fellow of my hands and those two things, I confess, I cannot help. By the mass, here comes Bardolph.

P. Hen. And the boy that I gave Falstaff: he had him from me christian; and look, if the fat villain have not transformed him ape.

Enter BARDOLPH and Page.

Bard. 'Save your grace!

P. Hen. And yours, most noble Bardolph!

Bard. Come, you virtuous ass [To the Page,] you bashful fool, must you be blushing? wherefore blush you now? What a maidenly man at arms are you become! Is it such a matter, to get a pot. tlepot's maidenhead?

Page. He called me even now, my lord, through a red-lattice, and I could discern no part of his face from the window: at last, I spied his eyes; and, methought, he had made two holes in the ale-wife's new petticoat, and peeped through.

P. Hen. Hath not the boy profited?

P. Hen. Belike then, my appetite was not princely got; for, by my troth, I do now remember the poor creature, small beer. But, indeed, these humble considerations make me out of love with my greatness. What a disgrace is it to me, to remember thy name? or to know thy face to-morrow? or to take note how many pair of silk stockings thou hast; viz. these and those that were the peach-colour'd ones? or to bear the inventory of thy shirts; as, one for superfluity, and one other for use?-but that the tennis-court keeper knows better than I; for it is a low ebb of linen with thee, when thou keepest not racket there; as thou hast not done a great while, because the rest of thy low-countries have made a shift to eat up thy holland: and God knows, whether-There it is, boy. those that bawl out the ruins of thy linen, shall inherit his kingdom: but the midwives say, the children are not in the fault; whereupon the world increases, and kindreds are mightily strengthened.

Bard. Away, you whoreson upright rabbit, away! Page. Away, you rascally Althea's dream, away! P. Hen. Instruct us, boy: What dream, boy?" Page. Marry, my lord, Althea dreamed she was delivered of a firebrand; and therefore I call him her dream.

P. Hen. A crown's worth of good interpretation. [Gives him money. Poins. O, that this good blossom could be kept from cankers!-Well, there is sixpence to preserve thee.

in a note on The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act i. Sc. 4. That a tall or a proper fellow was sometimes used in an equivocal sense for a thief, there can be no doubt. Cotgrave has a proverb, 'Les beaux hommes au gibet: The gibbet makes an end of proper men.' A striker is one of its meanings, according to Cotgrave, who taking a proper youth to be his apprentice, to teach him the order of striking and foisting.'-Greene's Art of Cony. Catching.

4 An alehouse window.

Bard. An you do not make him be hanged among | you, the gallows shall have wrong.

P. Hen. And how doth thy master, Bardolph ? Bard. Well, my lord. He heard of your grace's coming to town; there's a letter for you.

Poins. Delivered with good respect.-And how doth the martlemas,' your master?

Bard. In bodily health, sir.

Poins. Marry, the immortal part needs a physician; but that moves not him; though that be sick,

it dies not.

P. Hen. I do allow this wen2 to be as familiar with me as my dog: and he holds his place; for, look you, how he writes.

Poins. [Reads.] John Falstaff, knight,-Every man must know that, as oft as he has occasion to name himself. Even like those that are kin to the king; for they never prick their finger, but they say, There is some of the king's blood spilt: How comes that? says he that takes upon him not to conceive: the answer is as ready as a borrower's' cap; I am the king's poor cousin, sir.

P. Hen. Nav, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from Japhet. But the letter:

Poins. Sir John Falstaff, knight, to the son of the king, nearest his father, Harry, Prince of Wales, greeting-Why, this is a certificate.

P. Hen. Peace!

Poins. I will imitate the honourable Roman in brevity-he sure means brevity in breath; shortwinded.-I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I leave thee. Be not too familiar with Poins: for he misuses thy favours so much, that he swears, thou art to marry his sister Nell. Repent at idle times as thou may'st, and so farewell.

Thine, by yea and no (which is as
much as to say, as thou usest him,)
Jack Falstaff, with my familiars;
John with my brothers and sisters;
and Sir John, with all Europe.
steep this letter in sack, and make

My lord, I will
him eat it.
P. Hen. That's to make him eat twenty of his
words. But do you use me thus, Ned? must I marry
your sister?

Poins. May the wench have no worse fortune! but I never said so.

P. Hen. Well, thus we play the fools with the time and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds, and mock us.-Is your master here in London? Bard. Yes, my lord.

P. Hen. Where sups he? doth the old boar feed n the old frank ?5

Bard. At the old place, my lord; in Eastcheap.
P. Hen. What company?

Page. Ephesians, my lord; of the old church.
P. Hen. Sup any women with him?
Page. None, my lord, but old mistress Quickly,
and mistress Doll Tear-sheet.

P. Hen. What pagan' may that be?
Page. A proper gentlewoman, sir, and a kins-

woman of my master's.

P. Hen. Even such kin as the parish heifers are to the town bull. Shall we steal upon them, Ned, at supper?

Poins. I am your shadow, my lord; I'll follow

you.

P. Hen. Sirrah, you boy,-and Bardolph ;-no word to your master, that I am yet come to town: There's for your silence.

Bard. I have no tongue, sir.

Page. And for mine, sir,-I will govern it. P. Hen. Fare ye well; go. [Exeunt BARDOLPH and Page.]-This Doll Tear-sheet should be some road.

Poins. I warrant you, as common as the way between Saint Albans and London.

P. Hen. How might we see Falstaff bestow himself to-night in his true colours, and not our. selves be seen?

Poins. Put on two leather jerkins, and aprons, and wait upon him at his table as drawers.

P. Hen. From a god to a bull? a heavy descen-
sion! it was Jove's case. From a prince to a
prentice? a low transformation! that shall be mine:
for, in every thing, the purpose must weigh with the
folly. Follow me, Ned.
[Exeunt

SCENE III. Warkworth. Before the Castle.
Enter NORTHUMBERLAND, LADY NORTHUM-
BERLAND, and LADY PERCY.

North. I pray thee, loving wife, and gentle
daughter,

Give even way unto my rough affairs;
Put not you on the visage of the times,
And be, like them, to Percy troublesome.
Lady N. I have given over, I will speak no more:
Do what you will; your wisdom be your guide.
North. Alas, sweet wife, my honour is at pawn;
And, but my going, nothing can redeem it.

Lady P. O, yet, for God's sake, go not to these
wars!

The time was, father, that you broke your word,
When you were more endear'd to it than now;
When your own Percy, when my heart's dear Harry,
Threw many a northward look, to see his father
Bring up his powers: but he did long in vain.
Who then persuaded you to stay at home?
There were two honours lost; yours, and your son's.
For yours,-may heavenly glory brighten it!
For his,-it stuck upon him, as the sun
In the grey vault of heaven: and, by his light,
Did all the chivalry of England move
To do brave acts; he was, indeed, the glass
Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.
He had no legs, that practis'd not his gait :19
And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,
Became the accents of the valiant:

For those that could speak low, and tardily,
Would turn their own perfection to abuse,
To seem like him: So that, in speech, in gait,
In diet, in affections of delight,

In military rules, humours of blood, He was the mark and glass, copy and book,12 That fashion'd others. And him,-O wondrous him! O miracle of men!-him did you leave (Second to none, unseconded by you,) To look upon the hideous god of war In disadvantage; to abide a field, Where nothing but the sound of Hotspur's name 1 Falstaff is before called 'thou latter spring, all-hal-Did seem defensible :1-so you left him: lown summer,' and Poins now calls him martlemas, a corruption of martinmas, which means the same thing. The feast of St. Martin being considered the latter end of autumn. Este de St. Martin is a French proverb for a late summer. It means therefore an old fellow with juvenile passions.

2 Swoln excrescence.

3 The old copy reads a borrowed cap. The emendation is Warburton's.

4 That is Julius Cæsar. Falstaff alludes to the veni, vidi, vici, which he afterwards quotes.

5 Asty, a place to fatten a boar in.

6 A cant phrase probably signifying topers, or jolly companions of the old sort.

7 Massinger, in The City Madam, has used this phrase for a wench :

in all these places

I've had my several pagans billeted.'

9 i. e. act. In a MS. letter from Secretary Conway to Buckingham, at the Isle of Ree, also what the lords have advanced for the expedition towards you, since Saturday that they returned from Windsor with charge to bestowe themselves seriously in it-Conway Papers. 9 The folio reads declension.

10 The twenty-two following lines were first given in the folio.

11 Speaking thick is speaking quick, rapidity of utter ance. Baret translates the anilitus criber of Virgil thicke-breathing.

12 Thus in the Rape of Lucrece :

For princes are the glass, the school, the book Where subjects' eyes do learn, do read, do look." 13 Defensible does not in this place mean capable of defence, but bearing strength, furnishing the means of defence the passive for the active participle

Never, O never, do his ghost the wrong,
To hold your honour more precise and nice
With others, than with him; let them alone;
=The marshal, and the archbishop, are strong:
Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers,
To-day might I, hanging on Hotspur's neck,
Have talk'd of Monmouth's grave.

North.
Beshrew your heart,
Fair daughter! you do draw my spirits from me,
With new lamenting ancient oversights.
But I must go, and ineet with danger there;
Or it will seek me in another place,
And find me worse provided.
Lady N.

O, fly to Scotland,
Till that the nobles, and the armed commons,
Have of their puissance made a little taste.
Lady P. If they get ground and vantage of the
king,

Then join you with them, like a rib of steel,
To make strength stronger; but, for all our loves,
First let them try themselves: So did your son;
He was so suffer'd; so came I a widow;
And never shall have length of life enough,
To rain upon remembrance with mine eyes,
That it may grow and sprout as high as heaven,
For recordation to my noble husband.

North. Come, come, go in with me: 'tis with my
mind,

As with the tide swell'd up unto its height,
That makes a still-stand, running neither way.
Fain would I go to meet the archbishop,
But many thousand reasons hold me back:-.
I will resolve for Scotland; there am I,
Till time and vantage crave my company. [Exeunt.
SCENE IV. London. A Room in the Boar's
Head Tavern in Eastcheap. Enter Two Drawers.
1 Draw. What the devil hast thou brought there?
apple-Johns? thou know'st, Sir John cannot endure
an apple-John.3

2 Draw. Mass, thou sayest true: The prince once set a dish of apple-Johns before him, and told =him, there were five more Sir Johns: and, putting off his hat, said, I will now take my leave of these six dry, round, old, withered knights. It angered him to the heart; but he hath forgot that.

1 Drav. Why then, cover, and set them down: And see if thou canst find out Sneak's noise;" mistress Tear-sheet would fain hear some music. Despatch:-The room where they supped is too hot; they'll come in straight.

2 Draw. Sirrah, here will be the prince, and master Poins anon: and they will put on two of our jerkins, and aprons; and Sir John must not know of it: Bardolph hath brought word.

1 Draw. By the mass, here will be old utis: will be an excellent stratagem.

It

2 Draw. I'll see if I can find out Sneak. [Exit.
Enter Hostess and DOLL TEAR-SHEET.
Host. I'faith, sweet heart, methinks now you are
I II!-betide.

2 Alluding to the plant rosemary, so called because It was the symbol of remembrance, and therefore used at weddings and funerals.

3 This apple, which was said to keep two years, is well de cribed by Philips :

Nor John-apple, whose wither'd rind entrench'd
By many a furrow, aptly represents
Decrepid age.'

Falstaff has already said of himself, I am withered
like an old apple-John.

4 A noise, or a consort, was used for a set or com pany of musicians. Sneak was a street minstrel, and therefore the drawer goes out to listen for his band. Falstaff addresses them as a company in another scene. In the old play of King Henry IV. There came the young prince, and two or three more of his companions, and called for wine good store, and then seut for a noyse of musicians,' &c.

5 Old utis is old festivity, or merry doings. Ut's. or utas, being the eighth day after any festival; any day between the feast and the eighth day was said to be within the utas. So Sir Thomas More, in the last letter

in an excellent good temperality: your pulsidge beats as extraordinarily as heart would desire; and your colour, I warrant you, is as red as any rose ; But, i'faith, you have drunk too much canaries; and that's a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes the blood ere one can say,-What's this? How do you now?

Dol. Better than I was. Hem.

Host. Why, that's well said; a good heart's worth gold. Look, here comes Sir John.

Enter FALSTAFF, singing.

Fal. When Arthur first in court.-Empty the jordan.-And was a worthy king: [Exit Drawer.] How now, mistress Doll?

Host. Sick of a calm: yea, good sooth.

Fal. So is all her sect; an they be once in a calm, they are sick.

Dol. You muddy rascal, is that all the comfort you give me?

Fal. You make fat rascals, mistress Doll. Dol. I make them! gluttony and diseases make them; I make them not.

Fal. If the cook help to make the gluttony, you help to make the diseases, Doll: we catch of you, Doll, we catch of you; grant that, my poor virtue, grant that.

Dol. Ay, marry; our chains, and our jewels.

Fal. Your brooches, pearls, and owches;-for to serve bravely, is to come halting off, you know: To come off the breach with his pike bent bravely, and to surgery bravely; to venture upon the charged chambers bravely:

Dol. Hang yourself, you muddy conger, hang yourself!

Host. By my troth, this is the old fashion; you two never meef, but you fall to some discord: you are both, in good truth, as rheumatic" as two dry toasts; you cannot one bear with another's confirmi ties. What the good-year! one must bear, and that must be you: [To DOLL.] you are the weaker vessel, as they say, the empher vessel.

full hogshead? there's a whole merchant's venture Dol. Can a weak empty vessel bear such a huge, of Bordeaux stuff in him: you have not seen a hulk better stuffed in the hold.-Come, I'll be friends whether I shall ever see thee again, or no, there is with thee, Jack: thou art going to the wars; and nobody cares.

Re-enter Drawer.

Draw. Sir, ancient12 Pistol's below, and would speak with you.

Dol. Hang him, swaggering rascal! let him not come hither: it is the foul-mouth'dst rogue in England.

Host. If he swagger, let him not come here; no, by my faith; I must live amongst my neighbours;

he wrote to his daughter the day before his execution, de, ires to die on the morrow, For it is Saint Thomas' even, and the utas of Saint Peter."

6 The entire ballad is in the first volume of Dr. Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry.

7 Steevens is right in his assertion that sect and sex were anciently synonymous; the instances of the use of the one for the other are too numerous for it to have been a mere vulgar corruption.

8 Falstaff alludes to a phrase of the forest. 'Rascall (says Puttenham, p. 150) is properly the hunting term given to young deer leane and out of season, and not to people.'

9 Falstaff gives these splendid names to something very different from gems and ornaments, as we still use carbuncle. The passage, as Johnson observed, is not deserving of further illustration.

10 To understand this quibble it is necessary to re member that a chamber signifies not only an apartment, but a small piece of ordnance.

11 Mrs. Quickly means splenetic. It should be remarked, however, that rheum seems to have been a cant word for spleen.

12 That is, he that carrieth the colours to a company of foot soldiers, an ensign bearer.'--Philips. Falstaft was captain, Peto lieutenant, and Pistol ensign. I have met with the word in old MSS. written ansine.

470

I'll no swaggerers: I am in good name and fame What! you poor, base, rascally, cheating, lackwith the very best:-Shut the door ;-there comes linen mate! Away, you mouldy rogue; away! I no swaggerers here: I have not lived all this while am meat for your master. to have swaggering now :-shut the door, I pray you. Ful. Dost thou hear, hostess?

Host. 'Pray you, pacify yourself, Sir John; there comes no swaggerers here.

Fal. Dost thou hear? it is mine ancient. Host. Tilly-fally, Sir John, never tell me; your ancient swaggerer comes not in my doors. I was before master Tisick,' the deputy, the other day; and, as he said to me,-it was no longer ago than Wednesday last,-Neighbour Quickly, says he ;master Dumb, our minister, was by then ;-Neighbour Quickly, says he, receive those that are civil; for, saith he, you are in an ill name ;-now he said I can tell whereupon; for, says he, you are an honest woman, and well thought on; therefore take heed what guests you receive: Receive, says he, no swaggering companions. -There comes none here; -you would bless you to hear what he said :no, I'll no swaggerers.

50,

Pist. I know you, mistress Dorothy.

4

Dol. Away, you cut-purse rascal! you filthy bung, 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 baskethilt stale juggler, you!-Since when, I pray yʊʊ, sir?-What, with two points on your shoulder ? much!

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, sweet captain.

Dol. Captain! thou abominable damned cheater, art thou not ashamed to be called-captain? É 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 bawdyFal. He's no swaggerer, hostess; a tame cheater, house ?-He a captain! Hang him, rogue! He lives he, you may stroke him as gently as a puppy grey- upon mouldy stewed prunes, and dried cakes. A hound: he will not swagger with a Barbary hen, if captain! these villains will make the word captain her feathers turn back in any show of resistance.-as odious as the word occupy; which was an exCall him up, drawer. cellent good word before it was ill-sorted; therefore captains had need look to it.

Host. Cheater, call you him? I will bar no honest man my house, nor no cheater: But I do not love swaggering; by my troth, I am the worse, when one says-swagger: feel, masters, how I shake, look you, I warrant you.

Dol. So you do, hostess.

Host. Do I? yea, in very truth, do I, an 'twere an aspen leaf: I cannot abide swaggerers.

Enter PISTOL, BARDOLPH, and Page. Pist. 'Save you, Sir John!

Fal. Welcome, ancient Pistol. Here, Pistol, I charge you with a cup of sack: do you discharge upon mine hostess.

Pist. I will discharge upon her, Sir John, with two bullets.

Fal. She is pistol-proof, sir; you shall hardly

offend her.

Host. Come, I'll drink no proofs, nor no bullets: I'll drink no more than will do me good, for no man's pleasure, I.

Pist. Then to you, mistress Dorothy; I will charge you.

Dol. Charge me ? I scorn you, scurvy companion.

1 The names of Master Tisick and Master Dumb are Judicrously intended to denote that the deputy was pursy and short-winded; the minister one of those who preached only the homilies set forth by authority. The puritans nicknamed them Dumb-dogs, and the opprobrious epithet continued in use as late as the reign of King Charles II. See Burnet's On Times, vol. i. p. 395.

2 A cheater sometimes meant an unfair gamester. But tame cheater seems to have meant a rogue in general.

Bard. 'Pray thee, go down, good ancient.
Fal. Hark thee hither, mistress Doll.
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 ?1o

Host. Good captain Peesel, be quiet; it is very late, i'faith: I beseek you now, aggravate your choler.

Pist. These be good humours, indeed! Shall
packhorses,

And hollow pamper'd jades of Asia,
Which cannot go but thirty miles a day,11
Compare with Cæsars, and with Cannibals,"
And Trojan Greeks? nay, rather damn them with
King Cerberus; and let the welkin roar.
Shall we fall foul for toys?

Host. By my troth, captain, these are very bit

ter words.

in A Woman's a Weathercock, by Nat. Field, 1612,
who is thus described :-

"Thou unspeakable rascal, thou a soldier!
That with thy slops and cat-a-mountain face,
Thy blather chaps, and thy robustious words,
Fright'st the poor whore, and terribly dost exact
A weekly subsidy, twelve pence a piece,
Whereon thou livest; and on my conscience
Thou snap'st besides with cheats and cutpurses."
Mouldy stewed prunes and dried cakes' are put for
the refuse of brothels.

9 Traitors, rascals.

3 The humour consists in Mrs. Quickly's mistaking a cheater for an escheator, or officer of the exchequer. 8 This word had been perverted to an obscene meanGreene, in his Mihil Munchaunce, has the following ing. An occupant was also a term for a woman of the passage, which gives the origin of the phrase: They town, and an occupier meant a weencher. Ben Jonson, call their art by a new found name as cheating, them-in his Discoveries, says:-Many, out of their own ob selves cheaters, and the dice cheters: borrowing the scene apprehensions, refuse proper and fit words, as term from among our lawyers, with whom all such occupy, nature,' &c. casuals as fall to the lord, at the holding of his leets, as waifes, straies, and such like, be called chetes, and are accustomably to be escheated to the lord's use.' Lord Coke, in his Charge at Norwich, 1607, puns upon the equivoque But if you will be content to let the escheator alone, and not look into his actions, he will be contented by deceiving you to change his name, taking unto himself the two last syllables only, with the es left eut, and so turn cheater.

10 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 Turk ish 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, 4 To nip a bung, in the cant of thievery, was to cut and consequently for a courtesan. Pistol, in his rants, a purse. Bung is now used for a pocket, heretofore twice brings in the same words, but apparently mean for a purse.-Beiman of London, 1810. Doll meansing to give his sword the name of Hiren. Mrs. Quickly, to call him pick-pocket. Cuttle, and cuttle-bung, were with admirable simplicity, supposes him to ask for a also cant terms for the knife used by cutpurses. These woman. terms are therefore used by metonymy for a thief.

5 Laces, marks of his commission.

6 An expression of disdain.

7 There is a personage of the same stamp with Pistol

11 This is a parody of the lines addressed by Tamberlane to the captive princes who draw his chariot, in Marlowe's Tamberlaine, 1590.

12 A blunder for Hannibal.