Or what hath this bold enterprise brought forth,
More than that being which was like to be?

Bard. We all, that are engaged to this loss 21,
Knew that we ventur'd on such dangerous seas,
That, if we wrought out life, 'twas ten to one:
And yet we ventur'd, for the gain propos'd
Chok'd the respect of likely peril fear'd;
And, since we are o'erset, venture again.
Come, we will all put forth; body, and goods.
Mor. 'Tis more than time: And, my most noble
lord,

I hear for certain, and do speak the truth,--
The gentle archbishop of York is up 22,
With well appointed powers; he is a man,
Who with a double surety binds his followers.
My lord your son had only but the corps,
But shadows, and the shows of men, to fight:
For that same word, rebellion, did divide
The action of their bodies from their souls;
And they did fight with queasiness 23, constrain'd,
As men drink potions; that their weapons only
Seem'd on our side, but, for their spirits and souls,
This word, rebellion, it had froze them up,
As fish are in a pond: But now the bishop
Turns insurrection to religion:

Suppos'd sincere and holy in his thoughts,
He's follow'd both with body and with mind;
And doth enlarge his rising with the blood
Of fair King Richard, scrap'd from Pomfret stones:
Derives from heaven his quarrel, and his cause;

21 This mode of expression has before been noticed. Thus in the first part of King Henry IV :—

'Hath a more worthy interest to this state.'

22 This and the following twenty lines are not found in the quarto.

23 Against their stomachs.

Tells them, he doth bestride a bleeding land 24,
Gasping for life under great Bolingbroke;
And more 25, and less, da flock to follow him.
North. I knew of this before; but, to speak truth,
This present grief had wip'd it from my mind.
Go in with me; and counsel every man

The aptest way for safety, and revenge:

Get posts, and letters, and make friends with speed; Never so few, and never yet more need. [Exeunt.

SCENE II. London. A Street.

Enter SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, with his Page bearing his Sword and Buckler.

Fal. Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water1?

Page. He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water: but for the party that owed it, he might have more diseases than he knew for.

Fal. Men of all sorts take a pride to gird3 at

24 That is, stand over his country, as she lies bleeding and prostrate, to protect her.' It was the office of a friend to protect his fallen comrade in battle in this manner. Shakspeare has alluded to it in other places.

25 i. e. great and small, all ranks. So in Macbeth :

'Both more and less have given him the revolt.'

1 This quackery was once so much in fashion that Linacre, the founder of the College of Physicians, formed a statute to restrain apothecaries from carrying the water of their patients to a doctor, and afterwards giving medicines in consequence of the opinions pronounced concerning it. This statute was followed by another, which forbade the doctors themselves to pronounce on any disorder from such an uncertain diagnostic. But this did not extinguish the practice, which has even its dupes in these enlightened times.

2 Owned.

3 Gird (Mr. Gifford says) is a mere metathesis of gride, and means a thrust, a blow; the metaphorical use of the word for a smart stroke of wit, taunt, reproachful retort, &c. is justified by a similar application of kindred terms in all languages.'

me: The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to vent any thing that tends to laughter, more than I invent, or is invented on me: I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men. I do here walk before thee, like a sow, that hath overwhelmed all her litter but one. If the prince put thee into my service for any other reason than to set me off, why then I have no judgment. Thou whoreson mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my cap, than to wait at my heels. I was never manned with an agate 5 till now: but I will set you neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your master, for a jewel; the juvenal, the prince your master, whose chin is not yet fledged. I will sooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand, than he shall get one on his cheek; and yet he will not stick to say, his face is a face-royal: God may finish it when he will, it is not a hair amiss yet: he may keep it still as a face-royal7, for a barber shall never earn

4 A root supposed to have the shape of a man. Quacks and impostors counterfeited, with the root briony, figures resembling parts of the human body, which were sold to the credulous as endued with specific virtues. See Sir Thomas Brown's Vulgar Errors, p. 72, edit. 1686, for some very curious particulars.

5 An agate is used metaphorically for a very diminutive person, in allusion to the small figures cut in agate for rings and broaches. Thus Florio explains 'Formaglio: ouches, broaches, or tablets and jewels, that yet some old men wear in their hats, with agath-stones, cut and graven with some formes and images on them, namely of famous men's heads.' So in Romeo and Juliet:

'In shape no bigger than an agate stone,
On the fore finger of an alderman.'

6 Juvenal occurs in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and in Love's Labour's Lost. It is also used in many places by Chaucer for a young man.

7 Johnson says that, by a face-royal, Falstaff means a face exempt from the touch of vulgar hands. As a stag-royal is not to be hunted, a mine-royal is not to be dug. Steevens imagines

sixpence out of it; and yet he will be crowing, as if he had writ man ever since his father was a bachelor. He may keep his own grace, but he is almost out of mine, I can assure him.- -What said master Dumbleton about the satin for my short cloak, and slops?

Page. He said, sir, you should procure him better assurance than Bardolph: he would not take his bond and yours; he liked not the security.

Fal. Let him be damned like the glutton! may his tongue be hotter !-A whoreson Achitophel! a rascally yea-forsooth knave! to bear a gentleman in hand, and then stand upon security!-The whoreson smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes, and bunches of keys at their girdles; and if a man is thorough 10 with them in honest taking up, then they must stand upon-security. I had as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth, as offer to stop it with security. I looked he should have sent me two and twenty yards of satin, as I am a true knight, and he sends me security. Well, he may sleep in security; for he hath the horn of abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it: and yet cannot he see, though he have

that there may be a quibble intended on the coin called a real, or royal; that a barber can no more earn sixpence by his face, than by the face stamped on the coin, the one requiring as little shaving as the other. Mason thinks that Falstaff's conceit is, 'If nothing be taken out of a royal, it will remain a royal still, as it was.' The reader will decide for himself. I have nothing better in the way of conjecture to offer.

8 An allusion to the fate of the rich man, who had fared sumptuously every day, when he requested a drop of water to cool his tongue, being tormented with flames.

9 To bear in hand is to keep in expectation by false promises. So in Macbeth ::

'How you were borne in hand, how crossed.' 10 i. e. in their debt, by taking up goods on credit.

-Where's Bar

his own lantern to light him.

dolph ?

Page. He's gone into Smithfield, to buy your worship a horse.

Fal. I bought him in Paul's11, and he'll buy me a horse in Smithfield: an I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived.

Enter the Lord Chief Justice 12, and an Attendant.

Page. Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the prince for striking him about Bardolph. Fal. Wait close, I will not see him.

Ch. Just. What's he that goes there? Atten. Falstaff, an't please your lordship. Ch. Just. He that was in question for the robbery?

Atten. He, my lord: but he hath since done good service at Shrewsbury; and, as I hear, is now going with some charge to the lord John of Lan

caster.

Ch. Just. What, to York? Call him back again. Atten. Sir John Falstaff!

Fal. Boy, tell him, I am deaf.

Page. You must speak louder, my master is deaf. Ch. Just. I am sure he is, to the hearing of any

11 The body of old St. Paul's Church, in London, was a constant place of resort for business and amusement, and consequently frequented by idle people of all descriptions. Advertisements were fixed up there, bargains made, servants hired, &c. The scene of the chief part of the third act of Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour is laid there. In the Choice of Change, 1598, quarto, it is said that A man must not make choyse of three things in three places. Of a wife in Westminster; of a servant in Paule's; of a horse in Smithfield; lest he chuse a queane, a knave, or a jade.'

12 This judge was Sir Wm. Gascoigne, chief justice of the King's Bench. He died Dec. 17, 1413, and was buried in Harewood Church, in Yorkshire. His effigy is on his monument, and may be seen in Gough's Sepulchral Monuments, vol. ii.