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must needs be out of all compass; out of all reasonable compass, Sir John.

Fal. Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life: Thou art our admiral 3, thou bearest the lantern in the poop, but 'tis in the nose of thee: thou art the knight of the burning lamp.

Bard. Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm. Fal. No, I'll be sworn; I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a death's head, or a memento mori: I never see thy face, but I think upon hell-fire, and Dives that lived in purple; for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. If thou wert any way given to virtue, I would swear by thy face; my oath should be, By this fire: but thou art altogether given over; and wert indeed, but for the light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. When thou ran'st up Gads-hill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus, or a ball of wildfire, there's no purchase in money. O, thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light! Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern: but the sack that thou hast drunk me, would have bought me lights as good cheap5, at the dearest chandler's in

3 So Decker, in his Wonderful Year, 1605 :-- An antiquary might have pickt rare matter out of his nose.-' -The Hamburghers offered I know not how many dollars for his company in an East Indian voyage, to have a stood a nights in the poope of their admiral, only to save the charges of candles.' That it was an old joke appears from a passage in Bullein's Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence, 1578, cited by Malone.

4 Steevens has taken occasion here to mention that candles and lanterns to let were then cried about London, the streets not being then lighted.

5 Cheap being derived from KAVPON, Gothic, is the past participle of cypan, ceapan, Sax. to traffic, to bargain, to buy and sell. Good cheap was therefore a good bargain.' Our ancestors not only used GOOD CHEAP, but BETTER CHEAP, in the sense

Europe. I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire, any time this two and thirty years; Heaven reward me for it!

Bard. 'Sblood, I would my face were in your belly!

Fal. God-a-mercy! so should I be sure to be heart-burned.

How now,

Enter Hostess.

dame Partlet the hen? have you inquired yet, who picked my pocket?

Host. Why, Sir John! what do you think, Sir John? Do you think I keep thieves in my house? I have searched, I have inquired, so has my husband, man by man, boy by boy, servant by servant the tithe of a hair was never lost in my house before.

Fal. You lie, hostess; Bardolph was shaved and lost many a hair and I'll be sworn, my pocket was picked: Go to, you are a woman, go.

Host. Who I? I defy thee: I was never called so in mine own house before.

Fal. Go to, I know you well enough.

Host. No, Sir John; you do not know me, Sir John: I know you, Sir John: you owe me money, Sir John, and now you pick a quarrel to beguile me of it: I bought you a dozen of shirts to your back.

Fal. Dowlas, filthy dowlas: I have given them

which we now use CHEAP and CHEAPER. Tooke thinks that badcheap was also used, but has adduced no example. Baret translates the ova vilia of Horace by good cheap eggs; and the minoris vendere aliquid, of Plautus, by to sell better-cheap. Cheap and cheaping therefore came to signify a market, which led Johnson to suppose that good-cheap was derived from à bon marché. All the northern dialects have the same form of speech that our ancestors used; thus godt-kop, betre kop, in Swedish; got kiob, better kiob, in Danish, &c. Florio has buon-mercato, good-cheape, a good bargaine.'

away to bakers' wives, and they have made bolters of them.

Host. Now, as I am a true woman, holland of eight shillings an ell. You owe money here besides, Sir John, for your diet, and by-drinkings, and money lent you, four and twenty pound.

Fal. He had his part of it; let him pay.

Host. He? alas, he is poor; he hath nothing. Fal. How! poor? look upon his face; What call you rich? let them coin his nose, let them coin his cheeks; I'll not pay a denier. What, will you make a younker of me? shall I not take mine ease in mine inn3, but I shall have my pocket picked? I have lost a seal-ring of my grandfather's worth forty mark.

Host. O Jesu! I have heard the prince tell him, I know not how oft, that that ring was copper.

Fal. How! the prince is a Jack, a sneak-cup; and, if he were here, I would cudgel him like a dog, if he would say so.

6 Eight shillings an ell, for holland linen, appears a high price for the time, but hear Stubbes in his Anatomie of Abuses :-' In so much as I have heard of shirtes that have cost some ten shillinges, some twentie, some fortie, some five pound, some twentie nobles, and (whiche is horrible to heare) some ten pound a peece, yea the meanest shirte that commonly is worne of any doest cost a crowne or a noble at the least; and yet that is scarsely thought fine enough for the simplest person.'

7 Younker is here used for a novice, a dupe, or a person thoughtless through inexperience. So in the Merchant of Venice :— How like a younker, and a prodigal,

The scarfed bark puts from her native bay.'

This was a common phrase for enjoying one's self in quiet, as if at home; not very different in its application from that maxim, Every man's house is his castle. Inne originally signified a house or habitation. When the word began to change its meaning, and to be used for a house of public entertainment, the proverb still continuing in force, was applied in the latter sense. Falstaff puns upon the word inn, in order to represent the wrong done him the more strongly. Old Heywood has one or two epigrams which turn upon this phrase.

Enter PRINCE HENRY and POINS, marching. FALSTAFF meets the Prince, playing on his truncheon like a fife.

Fal. How now, lad? is the wind in that door, i'faith? must we all march?

Bard. Yea, two and two, Newgate-fashion?
Host. My lord, I pray you, hear me.

P. Hen. What sayest thou, mistress Quickly? How does thy husband? I love him well, he is an honest man.

Host. Good my lord, hear me.

Fal. Pr'ythee, let her alone, and list to me.

P. Hen. What sayest thou, Jack?

Fal. The other night I fell asleep here behind the arras, and had my pocket picked: this house is turned bawdy-house, they pick pockets.

P. Hen. What didst thou lose, Jack?

Fal. Wilt thou believe me, Hal? three or four bonds of forty pound a-piece, and a seal-ring of my grandfather's.

P. Hen. A trifle, some eight-penny matter.

Host. So I told him, my lord; and I said I heard your grace say so: And, my lord, he speaks most vilely of you, like a foul-mouthed man as he is; and said, he would cudgel you.

P. Hen. What! he did not?

Host. There's neither faith, truth, nor womanhood in me else.

Fal. There's no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune9; nor no more truth in thee, than in

9 Steevens has been too abundantly copious on the subject of stewed prunes. They were a refection particularly common in brothels in Shakspeare's time, perhaps from mistaken notions of their antisyphilitic properties. It is not easy to understand Falstaff's similes, perhaps he means as faithless as a strumpet or a bawd. A drawn fox is surely neither an exenterated fox! nor a fox drawn

a drawn fox; and for womanhood, maid Marian 10 may be the deputy's wife of the ward to thee. Go, you thing, go.

Host. Say, what thing? what thing?

Fal. What thing? why a thing to thank God on. Host. I am no thing to thank God on, I would thou should'st know it; I am an honest man's wife: and, setting thy knighthood aside, thou art a knave to call me so.

Fal. Setting thy womanhood aside, thou art a beast to say otherwise.

Host. Say, what beast, thou knave thou?

Fal. What beast? why an otter.

P. Hen. An otter, Sir John! why an otter? Fal. Why? she's neither fish, nor flesh; a man knows not where to have her.

Host. Thou art an unjust man in saying so; thou or any man knows where to have me, thou knave thou.

P. Hen. Thou sayest true, hostess; and he slanders thee most grossly.

Host. So he doth you, my lord; and said this other day, you ought him a thousand pound.

P. Hen. Sirrah, do I owe you a thousand pound. Fal. A thousand pound, Hal? a million: thy love is worth a million; thou owest me thy love.

over the grounds to exercise the hounds; but a hunted fox, a fox drawn from his cover, whose cunning in doubling and deceiving the hounds makes the simile perfectly appropriate. Beaumont and Fletcher, in the Tamer Tamed, call Moroso, a cunning avaricious old man, that drawn fox.' Drawing is a term used in hunting, when they beat the bushes, &c. after a fox.'—Country Dict. 1704.

10 One of the characters in the ancient morris dance, generally a man dressed like a woman, sometimes a strumpet; and therefore forms an allusion to describe women of a masculine character. A curious tract entitled Old Meg of Herefordshire for a Mayd Marian, and Hereford Town for a Morris-dance, 1609,' was reprinted by Mr. Triphook in 1816.

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