Enter FALSTAFF.

Shal. It is very just:-Look, here comes good sir John. Give me your good hand, give me your worship's good hand: By my troth, you look well, and bear your years very well: welcome, good sir John.

Fal. I am glad to see you well, good master Robert Shallow:- Master Sure-card, as I think.2

Shal. No, sir John; it is my cousin Silence, in commission with me.

Fal. Good master Silence, it well befits you should be of the peace.

Sil. Your good worship is welcome.

Fal. Fy! this is hot weather.-Gentlemen, have you provided me here half a dozen sufficient men?

Shal. Marry have we, sir.

Will you sit?

Fal. Let me see them, I beseech you.

Shal. Where's the roll? where's the roll? where 's the roll? Let me see, let me see. So, so, so, so: Yea, marry, sir:-Ralph Mouldy:-let them appear as I call; let them do so, let them do so. -Let me see; Where is Mouldy?

Moul. Here, an 't please you.

Shal. What think you, sir John? a good limbed fellow: young, strong, and of good friends.

Fal. Is thy name Mouldy?

Moul. Yea, an 't please you.

Fal. 'Tis the more time thou wert used.

Shal. Ha, ha, ha! most excellent, i' faith! things, that are mouldy, lack use: Very singular good!-In faith, well said, sir John; very well said.

Fal. Prick him.

[To SHAL.

Moul. I was pricked well enough before, an you could have let me alone: my old dame will be undone now, for one to do her husbandry, and her drudgery: you need not to have pricked me; there are other men fitter to go out than I.

2

Master Sure-card, as I think.] It is observable, that many of Shakspeare's names are invented, and characteristical. Mas ter Forth-right, the tilter; Master Shoe-tie, the traveller; Master Smooth, the silkman; Mrs Over-done, the bawd; Kate Keep-down, Jane Night-work, &c. Sure-card was used as a term for a boon companion, so lately as the latter end of the last century, by one of the translators of Suetonius. Malone.

Fal. Go to; peace, Mouldy, you shall go. Mouldy, it is time you were spent.

Moul. Spent!

Shal. Peace, fellow, peace; stand aside; Know you where you are?-For the other, sir John:-let me see; Simon Shadow!

Fal. Ay marry, let me have him to sit under: he's like to be a cold soldier.

Shal. Where's Shadow?

Shad. Here, sir.

Fal. Shadow, whose son art thou?

Shad. My mother's son, sir.

Fal. Thy mother's son! like enough; and thy father's shadow: so the son of the female is the shadow of the male: It is often so, indeed; but not much of the father's substance.

Shal. Do you like him, sir John?

Fal. Shadow will serve for summer,-prick him ;-for we have a number of shadows to fill up the muster-book. 3 Shal. Thomas Wart!

Fal. Where 's he?

Wart. Here, sir.

Fal. Is thy name Wart?

Wart. Yea, sir.

Fal. Thou art a very ragged wart.

Shal. Shall I prick him, sir John.

Fal. It were superfluous; for his apparel is built upon his back, and the whole frame stands upon pins: prick him no more.

Shal. Ha, ha, ha!-you can do it, sir; you can do it: I commend you well.-Francis Feeble!

Fee. Here, sir.

Fal. What trade art thou, Feeble?

Fee. A woman's tailor, sir.

Shal. Shall I prick him, sir?

3 we have a number of shadows to fill up the muster-book.] That is, we have in the muster-book many names for which we receive pay, though we have not the men. Johnson.

So, in Barnabie Riche's Souldiers Wishe to Britons Welfare, or Captaine Skill and Captaine Pill, 1604, p. 19: "One speciall meane that a shifting captaine hath to deceive his prince, is in his number, to take pay for a whole company, when he hath not halfe."

Steevens.

Fal. You may: but if he had been a man's tailor, he would have pricked you.-Wilt thou make as many holes in an enemy's battle, as thou hast done in a woman's petticoat?

Fee. I will do my good will, sir; you can have no

more.

Fal. Well said, good woman's tailor! well said, courageous Feeble! Thou wilt be as valiant as the wrathful dove, or most magnanimous mouse.-Prick the woman's tailor well, master Shallow; deep, master Shallow.

Fee. I would, Wart might have gone, sir.

Fal. I would, thou wert a man's tailor; that thou might'st mend him, and make him fit to go. I cannot put him to a private soldier, that is the leader of so many thousands: Let that suffice, most forcible Feeble.

Fee. It shall suffice, sir.

Fal. I am bound to thee, reverend Feeble.--Who is next?

Shal. Peter Bull-calf of the green!

Fal. Yea, marry, let us see Bull-calf.

Bull. Here, sir.

Fal. 'Fore God, a likely fellow!-Come, prick me Bullcalf till he roar again.

Bull. O lord! good my lord captain,

Fal. What, dost thou roar before thou art pricked? Bull. O lord, sir! I am a diseased man.

Fal. What disease hast thou?

Bull. A whoreson cold, sir; a cough, sir; which I caught with ringing in the king's affairs, upon his coronation day, sir.

Fal. Come, thou shalt go to the wars in a gown; we will have away thy cold; and I will take such order, that thy friends shall ring for thee.-Is here all?

Shal. Here is two more called than your number;5

take such order,] i. e. take such measures. So, in Othello: "Honest Iago hath ta'en order for 't.” Steevens.

5 Here is two more called than your number;] Five only have been called, and the number required is four. Some name seems to have been omitted by the transcriber. The restoration of this sixth man would solve the difficulty that occurs below; for when Mouldy and Bull-calf are set aside, Falstaff, as Dr. Farmer has observed, gets but three recruits. Perhaps our author himself is answerable for this slight inaccuracy. Malone.

you must have but four here, sir;-and so, I pray you, go in with me to dinner.

Fal. Come, I will go drink with you, but I cannot tarry dinner. I am glad to see you, in good troth, master Shallow.

Shal. O, sir John, do you remember since we lay all night in the windmill in Saint George's fields.

Fal. No more of that, good master Shallow, no more of that.

Shal. Ha, it was a merry night. And is Jane Nightwork alive?

Fal. She lives, master Shallow.

Shal. She never could away with me.7

Fal. Never, never: she would always say, she could not abide master Shallow.

Shal. By the mass, I could anger her to the heart. She was then a bona-roba. Doth she hold her own well?

Fal. Old, old, master Shallow.

Shal. Nay, she must be old; she cannot choose but be old; certain, she 's old; and had Robin Night-work by old Night-work, before I came to Clement's-inn.

the windmill in Saint George's fields.] It appears from the following passage in Churchyard's Dreame, a poem that makes part of the collection entitled his Chippes, 4to. 1578, that this windmill was a place of notoriety:

"And from the windmill this dreamd he,

"Where hakney horses hired be." Steevens.

7 She never could away with me.] This expression of dislike is used by Maurice Kyffin, in his translation of the Andria of Terence, 1588: "All men that be in love can ill away to have wives appointed them by others." Perhaps the original meaning was -such a one cannot travel on the same road with me. Steevens. So, in Harrington's Orlando Furioso, Book I:

66

scarce to look on him she can away." Malone. This mode of expression had not become obsolete even in the time of Mr. Locke, who himself uses it in one of his popular works: "- - with those alone he converses, and can away with no company whose discourse goes beyond what claret or dissoluteness inspires." On the Conduct of the Understanding. Reed.

8 bona-roba.] A fine showy wanton. Johnson. Bona-roba was, in our author's time, the common term for a harlot. It is used in that sense by Ben Jonson, in his Every Man out of his Humour, and by many others. Steevens.

THEC

Sil. That's fifty-five year ago.

Shal. Ha, cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this knight and I have seen!-Ha, sir John, said I well?9

Fal. We have heard the chimes at midnight, master Shallow.

Shal. That we have, that we have, that we have; in faith, sir John, we have; our watch-word was, Hem, boys!-Come, let's to dinner; come, let 's to dinner:O, the days that we have seen!-Come, come.

[Exeunt FAL. SHAL. and SIL. Bull. Good master corporate Bardolph, stand my friend; and here is four Harry ten shillings in French crowns for you. In very truth, sir, I had as lief be hanged, sir, as go: and yet, for mine own part, sir, I do not care; but, rather, because I am unwilling, and, for mine own part, have a desire to stay with my friends; else, sir, I did not care, for mine own part, so much. Bard. Go to; stand aside.

Moul. And good master corporal captain, for my old dame's sake, stand my friend: she has nobody to do any thing about her, when I am gone; and she is old, and cannot help herself: you shall have forty, sir.

Bard. Go to; stand aside.

Fee. By my troth I care not;—a man can die but once; we owe God a death;-I'll ne'er bear a base `mind:―an 't be my destiny, so; an 't be not, so: No man's too good to serve his prince; and, let it go which way it will, he that dies this year, is quit for the next. Bard. Well said; thou 'rt a good fellow. Fee. 'Faith, I'll bear no base mind.

Re-enter FALSTAFF, and Justices.

Fal. Come, sir, which men shall I have?

Shal. Four, of which you please.

Bard. Sir, a word with you:-I have three pound1 to free Mouldy and Bull-calf.

9

said I well?] This phrase has already occurred in The Merry Wives of Windsor. See Vol. III, p. 33, n. 3.

1

Steevens.

I have three pound Here seems to be a wrong computation. He had forty shillings for each. Perhaps he meant to conceal part of the profit. Johnson.