Enter Vintner.

Vint. What! stand'st thou still, and hear'st such a calling? Look to the guests within. [Exit FRAN.] My lord, old sir John, with half a dozen more, are at the door shall I let them in?

P. Hen. Let them alone awhile, and then open the door. [Exit Vintner.] Poins!

Re-enter POINS.

Poins. Anon, anon, sir.

P. Hen. Sirrah, Falstaff and the rest of the thieves are at the door. Shall we be merry ?

Poins. As merry as crickets, my lad. But hark ye-what cunning match have you made with this jest of the drawer? come, what's the issue?

P. Hen. I am now of all humors, that have showed themselves humors, since the old days of good man Adam, to the pupil age of this present twelve o'clock at midnight. [Re-enter FRANCIS, with wine.] What's o'clock, Francis?

Fran. Anon, anon, sir.

P. Hen. That ever this fellow should have fewer words than a parrot, and yet the son of a woman!— His industry is-up-stairs, and down-stairs; his eloquence, the parcel of a reckoning. I am not yet of Percy's mind, the Hotspur of the north; he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife,-Fie upon this quiet life! I want work. O my sweet Harry, says she, how many hast thou killed to-day? Give my roan horse a drench, says he; and answers, Some fourteen, an hour after; a trifle, a trifle. I pr'ythee, call in Falstaff; I'll play Percy, and that damned brawn shall play dame Mortimer, his wife. Rivo,' says the drunkard. Call in ribs, call in tallow.

1 Of this exclamation, which was frequently used in Bacchanalian revelry, the origin or derivation has not been discovered.

Enter FALSTAFF, GADSHILL, BARDOLPH, and PETO. Poins. Welcome, Jack. Where hast thou been? Fal. A plague of all cowards, I say, and a vengeance too! Marry, and amen!-Give me a cup of sack, boy.-Ere I lead this life long, I'll sew netherstocks,1 and mend them, and foot them too. A plague of all cowards!-Give me a cup of sack, rogue.-Is there no virtue extant? [He drinks

P. Hen. Didst thou never see Titan kiss a dish of butter? pitiful-hearted Titan, that melted at the sweet tale of the sun! If thou didst, then behold that compound.

2

Fal. You rogue, here's lime' in this sack too: There is nothing but roguery to be found in villanous man; yet a coward is worse than a cup of sack with lime in it; a villanous coward.-Go thy ways, old Jack; die when thou wilt, if manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the earth, then am I a shotten herring. There lives not three good men unhanged in England; and one of them is fat, and grows old: God help the while! A bad world, I say! I would I were a weaver; I could sing psalms or any thing. A plague

of all cowards, I say still.

1 Stockings.

2 "Didst thou never see Titan kiss a dish of butter?" alludes to Falstaff's entering in a great heat, melting with the motion, like butter with the heat of the sun. "Pitiful-hearted" is used in the sense which Cotgrave gives to "misericordieux, merciful, pitiful, compassionate, tender." Theobald reads "pitiful-hearted butter," which is countenanced by none of the old copies, but affords a clear sense. Malone and Steevens have each given a reading, founded upon the quarto of 1598, which has " at the sweet tale of the sonnes : " but they differ in their explanations of the passage. Bishop Earle, in his Microcosmography, giving the character of a pot poet, says, "His frequentest works go out in single sheets, and are chaunted from market to market to a vile tune and a worse throat; whilst the poor country wench melts like butter to hear them."

3 Eliot, in his Orthoepia, 1593, speaking of sack and rhenish, says, "The vintners of London put in lime; thence proceed infinite maladies, specially the goutes."

4 This is the reading of the first quarto, 1598. The folio reads, "I could sing all manner of songs." The passage was probably altered to avoid the penalty of the statute, 3 Jac. I. cxxi. Weavers are mentioned as

lovers of music in the Twelfth Night. The Protestants who fled from the persecutions of the duke of Alva, were mostly weavers; and, being Calvinists, were distinguished for their love of psalmody.

P. Hen. How now, wool-sack? what mutter you? Fal. A king's son! If I do not beat thee out of thy kingdom with a dagger of lath,' and drive all thy subjects afore thee like a flock of wild geese, I'll never wear hair on my face more. You prince of Wales!

P. Hen. Why, you whoreson round man! what's the matter?

Fal. Are you not a coward? answer me to that; and Poins there?

Poins. 'Zounds, ye fat paunch, an ye call me coward, I'll stab thee.

Fal. I call thee coward! I'll see thee damned ere I call thee coward; but I would give a thousand pound, I could run as fast as thou canst. You are straight enough in the shoulders; you care not who sees your back: call you that backing of your friends? A plague upon such backing! Give me them that will face me. -Give me a cup of sack;-I am a rogue, if I drunk to-day.

P. Hen. O villain, thy lips are scarce wiped since thou drunk'st last.

Fal. All's one for that. A plague of all cowards, still say I. [He drinks.

P. Hen. What's the matter?

Fal. What's the matter? There be four of us here have ta'en a thousand pound this morning.

P. Hen. Where is it, Jack? where is it?

Fal. Where is it? Taken from us it is; a hundred upon poor four of us.

P. Hen. What, a hundred, man?

Fal. I am a rogue, if I were not at half-sword with a dozen of them two hours together. I have 'scaped by miracle. I am eight times thrust through the doublet; four, through the hose; my buckler cut through and through; my sword hacked like a handsaw-ecce

2

1 A dagger of lath is the weapon given to the Vice in the Old Moralities. 2 It appears from the old comedy of The Two Angry Women of Abingdon (1599), that this method of defence and fight was then going out of fashion:-"I see by this dearth of good swords that sword-and-buckler fight begins to grow out."

signum. I never dealt better since I was a man: all would not do. A plague of all cowards!-Let them speak; if they speak more or less than truth, they are villains, and the sons of darkness.

P. Hen. Speak, sirs; how was it?
Gads. We four set upon some dozen,-
Fal. Sixteen, at least, my lord.
Gads. And bound them.

Peto. No, no, they were not bound.

Fal. You rogue, they were bound, every man of them; or I am a Jew else, an Ebrew Jew.

Gads. As we were sharing, some six or seven fresh men set upon us,

Fal. And unbound the rest, and then come in the other.

P. Hen. What, fought you with them all?

Fal. All? I know not what ye call, all; but if I fought not with fifty of them, I am a bunch of radish ; if there were not two or three and fifty upon poor old Jack, then I am no two-legged creature.

Poins. 'Pray God, you have not murdered some of them.

Fal. Nay, that's past praying for; I have peppered two of them: two, I am sure, I have paid; two rogues in buckram suits. I tell thee what, Hal,—if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse. Thou knowest my old ward ;-here I lay, and thus I bore my point. Four rogues in buckram let drive at me,

P. Hen. What, four? thou saidst but two, even

now.

Fal. Four, Hal; I told thee four.

Poins. Ay, ay, he said four.

Fal. These four came all afront, and mainly thrust at me. I made no more ado, but took all their seven points in my target, thus.

P. Hen. Seven? why, there were but four, even

now.

Fal. In buckram.

Poins. Ay, four, in buckram suits.

Fal. Seven, by these hilts, or I am a villain else.

P. Hen. Pr'ythee, let him alone; we shall have

more anon.

Fal. Dost thou hear me, Hal?

P. Hen. Ay, and mark thee too, Jack.

Fal. Do so, for it is worth the listening to. These nine in buckram, that I told thee of,

P. Hen. So, two more already.

Fal. Their points being broken,-
Poins. Down fell their hose.1

Fal. Began to give me ground; but I followed me close, came in foot and hand; and, with a thought, seven of the eleven I paid.

P. Hen. O monstrous! eleven buckram men grown out of two!

Fal. But, as the devil would have it, three misbegotten knaves, in Kendal2 green, came at my back, and let drive at me; for it was so dark, Hal, that thou could'st not see thy hand.

P. Hen. These lies are like the father that begets them; gross as a mountain, open, palpable. Why, thou clay-brained guts; thou knotty-pated fool; thou whoreson, obscene, greasy tallow-keech,3

Fal. What, art thou mad? art thou mad? Is not the truth the truth?

P. Hen. Why, how couldst thou know these men in Kendal green, when it was so dark thou couldst not see thy hand? Come, tell us your reason. What sayest thou to this?

Poins. Come, your reason, Jack, your reason.

Fal. What, upon compulsion? No; were I at the strappado, or all the racks in the world, I would not

1 The same jest has already occurred in Twelfth Night, Acti. Sc. 5. 2 Kendal green was the livery of Robert earl of Huntingdon, and his followers, when in a state of outlawry, under the name of Robin Hood and his men. The color took its name from Kendal, in Westmoreland, formerly celebrated for its cloth manufacture. Green still continues the color of woodmen and gamekeepers.

3 A keech is a round lump of fat, rolled up by the butcher in order to be carried to the chandler. The old editions read catch.

4 The strappado was a dreadful punishment inflicted on soldiers and criminals, by drawing them up on high with their arms tied backward. Randle Holme says that they were suddenly let fall half way with a jerk, which not only broke the arms, but shook all the joints out of joint.