Fran. My lord?

P. Hen. Wilt thou rob this leathern-jerkin 6, crystal-button, nott-pated?, agate-ring, puke-stocking, caddis-garter, smooth-tongue, Spanish-pouch,Fran. O lord, sir, who do you mean?

P. Hen. Why then, your brown bastard 10 is your only drink: for, look you, Francis, your white canvass doublet will sully: in Barbary, sir, it cannot come to so much.

Fran. What, sir?

Poins. [Within.] Francis!

P. Hen. Away, you rogue; Dost thou not hear them call?

[Here they both call him; the Drawer stands amazed, not knowing which way to go.

6 The prince intends to ask the drawer whether he will rob his master, whom he denotes by these contemptuous distinctions. 7 Nott-pated is shorn-pated, or cropped; having the hair cut close. Chaucer's Yeman is thus described :

'A nott-head had he, with a brown visage.' 'Tonsus homo,' a man rounded, polled, or notted.'-Cooper's Dict. The word is derived from the Saxon hnot, which means the

same.

8 Puke-stockings are dark-coloured stockings. Puke is a colour between russet and black; pullus, Lat. according to the dictionaries. By the receipt for dyeing it, it appears to have been a dark gray or slate colour.

9 Caddis was probably a kind of ferret or worsted lace. A slight kind of serge still bears the name of cadis in France. In Glapthorne's Wit in a Constable we are told of 'footmen in caddis.' Garters being formerly worn in sight were often of rich materials; to wear a coarse cheap sort was therefore reproachful.

10 A kind of sweet Spanish wine, of which there were two sorts, brown and white. Baret says that 'bastarde is muscadel, sweete wine, mulsum.' Bastard wines are said to be Spanish wines in general, by Olans Magnus. He speaks of them with almost as much enthusiasm as Falstaff does of sack, and concludes by saying, Nullum vinum majoris pretii est, quam bastardum, ob dulcedinis nobilitatem.'-De Gent. Septent. p. 521.

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 humours, that have show'd themselves humours, 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?

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,Fye 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 11, , says the drunkard. Call in ribs, call in

tallow.

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 12, 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 butter, that melted at the sweet tale of the sun13! if thou didst, then behold that compound.

13

Fal. You rogue, here's lime 14 in this sack too: There is nothing but roguery to be found in villain

11 Of this exclamation, which was frequently used in Bacchanalian revelry, the origin or derivation has not been discovered. 12 Stockings.

13

6

at

Didst thou ever 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 the sweet tale of the sonnes:' but they differ in their explanations of the passage. Their arguments are too long for this place, and are the less necessary as I do not adopt the readings upon which they are founded. 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.'

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

ous 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 live 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 15: A plague of all cowards, I say still.

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 16, 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

15 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. exxi. 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. Weavers were supposed to be generally good singers: their trade being sedentary, they had an opportunity of practising, and sometimes in parts, while they were at work.

16 A dagger of lath is the weapon given to the Vice in the Old Moralities. In the second part of this play Falstaff calls Shallow a Vice's dagger. So in Twelfth Night, Act iv. Sc. 2:'In a trice, like to the old Vice,

VOL. V.

Your need to sustain,

Who with dagger of lath,' &c.

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 [He drinks.

I.

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 'scap'd by miracle. I am eight times thrust through the doublet; four, through the hose; my buckler cut through and through 17; my sword hacked like a hand-saw, ecce 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?

17 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. I am sorry for it; I shall never see good manhood again. If it be once gone, this poking fight of rapier and dagger will come up then: then a tall man and a good sword-and-buckler-man will be spitted like a cat or a coney: then a boy will be as good as a man,' &c.