SIM. Yonder he is coming, this way, sir Hugh. EVA. He's welcome:

To shallow rivers, to whose falls-——

Heaven prosper the right !-What weapons is he? SIM. No weapons, sir: There comes my master, master Shallow, and another gentleman from Frogmore, over the stile, this way.

EVA. Pray you, give me my gown; or else keep it in your arms.

Enter PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER.

SHAL. HOW now, master parson? Good-morrow, good sir Hugh. Keep a gamester from the dice, and a good student from his book, and it is wonderful.

SLEN. Ah, sweet Anne Page!

PAGE. Save you, good sir Hugh!

EVA. 'Pless you from his mercy sake, all of you! SHAL. What! the sword and the word? do you study them both, master parson ?

PAGE. And youthful still, in your doublet and hose, this raw rheumatick day?

EVA. There is reasons and causes for it.

PAGE. We are come to you, to do a good office, master parson.

EVA. Fery well: What is it?

PAGE. Yonder is a most reverend gentleman,

"When we did sit in Babylon,

"The rivers round about,

"Then, in remembrance of Sion,

"The tears for grief burst out."

The word rivers, in the second line, may be supposed to have been brought to Sir Hugh's thoughts by the line of Marlowe's madrigal that he has just repeated; and in his fright he blends the sacred and profane song together. The old quarto has"There lived a man in Babylon; which was the first line of an old song, mentioned in Twelfth Night :-but the other line is more in character. MALONE.

who belike, having received wrong by some person, is at most odds with his own gravity and patience, that ever you saw.

SHAL. I have lived fourscore years, and upward 2;

2 I have lived FOURSCORE years, and upward ;] We must certainly read-threescore. In The Second Part of King Henry IV. during Falstaff's interview with Master Shallow, in his way to York, which Shakspeare has evidently chosen to fix in 1412, (though the Archbishop's insurrection actually happened in 1405,) Silence observes that it was then fifty-five years since the latter went to Clement's Inn; so that, supposing him to have begun his studies at sixteen, he would be born in 1341, and, consequently, be a very few years older than John of Gaunt, who, we may recollect, broke his head in the tilt-yard. But, besides this little difference in age, John of Gaunt at eighteen or nineteen would be above six feet high, and poor Shallow, with all his apparel, might have been truss'd into an eelskin. Dr. Johnson was of opinion that the present play ought to be read between the First and Second Part of Henry IV. an arrangement liable to objections which that learned and eminent critick would have found it very difficult, if not altogether impossible, to surmount. But, let it be placed where it may, the scene is clearly laid between 1402, when Shallow would be sixty-one, and 1412, when he had the meeting with Falstaff: Though one would not, to be sure, from what passes upon that occasion, imagine the parties had been together so lately at Windsor; much less that the Knight had ever beaten his worship's keepers, kill'd his deer, and broke open his lodge. The alteration now proposed, however, is in all events necessary; and the rather so, as Falstaff must be nearly of the same age with Shallow, and fourscore seems a little too late in life for a man of his kidney to be making love to, and even supposing himself admired by, two at a time, travelling in a buckbasket, thrown into a river, going to the wars, and making prisoners. Indeed, he has luckily put the matter out of all doubt, by telling us, in The First Part of King Henry IV. that his age was "some fifty, or, by'r lady, inclining to threescore." RITSON.

The foregoing note, and many others of the same writer, afford ample proof, that something more is requisite to form a sound commentary on these plays, than mere antiquarian research; and that this kind of knowledge, though admirably useful when properly employed, if not regulated by taste and judgment, is not only of no value, but often darkens, instead of illustrating the subject to which it is applied, and bewilders and misleads, instead of instructing the reader.

Shakspeare unquestionably never much troubled himself with

I never heard a man of his place, gravity, and learning, so wide of his own respect.

minute historical researches, as appears from his frequently deviating from the truth of history; in which doubtless he conceived that he was sufficiently warranted by that licence which has always been assumed by dramatick poets in the construction of pieces intended for stage exhibition. But, in the present instance, he has departed from no historical fact. Shallow was a creature entirely of his own imagination; and if he had no scruple in deviating from historical truth, in speaking of the age of Cicely, Duchess of York,-a real character,-(if indeed he knew her age with any degree of exactness, which I much doubt,) he certainly would have none in the play before us, with respect to his fictitious Gloucestershire Justice; with whatever semblance of real life he might clothe him, and in what period soever of the reign of King Edward the Fourth, he might, in another play, have placed him in Clement's-Inn.

The truth is, throughout his plays, when he speaks of very aged persons, or of those whom he chooses to represent as such; whether those persons be real or fictitious, he uses the terms of almost fourscore years, or fourscore, or fourscore and upwards, as a general designation of extreme age, without any consideration of the precise and true age of him or her spoken of, or speaking, even when the character is historical; and à fortiori, without paying the least attention to such circumstances as are assembled in the preceding remark, when the character is of his own formation. Thus, in King Richard III. the Duchess of York says,

"And I with grief and extreme age shall perish

And again:

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Eighty odd years of sorrow have I seen,

"And each hour's joy wreck'd with a week of teen." These words are supposed to be spoken by Cicely, Duchess of York, in 1583. But at that time, she was not past eighty, but sixty-eight years old; for she was born on the 3d May, 1415. See Wylhelmi Wyrcester Annales, apud Lib. Nig. Scaccarii, p. 453, edit. 1771.

King Lear, speaking of himself as a very old man, does not say, that he is seventy or ninety, but fourscore and upward, and most assuredly Shakspeare, in this description, was not guided by any historical document. Geffrey of Monmouth tells us, that he began to be infirm through old age about three years after he had divided his kingdom between his two elder daughters. After their ill-treatment of him, he went to France, and returned with his youngest daughter, Cordeilla, and her husband, Aganippus, king of France, who, in conjunction with Lear, fought a battle with the old king's sons-in-law, and routed them, which is

EVA. What is he?

PAGE. I think you know him; master doctor Caius, the renowned French physician.

scarcely consistent with the age which our poet has assigned to him at the very time of that event. If Shakspeare could be questioned on this subject, he probably would reply,-" I never tied myself down to the observance of such rigid rules as my hypercriticks have devised for me: I merely meant to describe King Lear as a very old man, without inquiring when he was born."

So much for history. Now let us review the fictitious old men created by himself; and we shall find them also uniformly represented, either as "almost fourscore," or "fourscore," or "fourscore and upwards." Thus Adam, in As You Like It:

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From seventeen years till now almost fourscore, "Here lived I, but now must live no more."

So also, in The Winter's Tale, the old Shepherd says to Florizel :

"O sir, you have undone a man of fourscore years." Again, in Timon of Athens: "He is very often like a knight: and generally in all shapes that man goes up and down in, from fourscore to thirteen, this spirit walks in."

Again, in King Lear, when Gloucester, after he has lost his eyes, desires the old man by whom he is led to be gone; he replies, O my good lord, I have been your tenant, and your father's tenant, these fourscore years."

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To all these instances is to be added the passage before us; and when they are thus viewed together, no doubt, I apprehend, can remain, that this was, in Shakspeare's conception, a proper description for an aged person; and that when he makes Shallow say in the present scene, "I have lived fourscore years and upward," he merely meant to describe him as a very old man, without considering whether that description would precisely quadrate with the circumstances to which he has made him refer in the several dialogues in which Shallow bears a part in other dramas where he is exhibited, or with his own express and particular statement of his age in the Second Part of King Henry IV. Nor was this a peculiar fancy of Shakspeare; for such, we find, was the usage of other poets, his contemporaries. Thus Bishop Corbet, in his Iter Boreale, which was written at some time between 1614 and 1620:

"The inkeeper was old, fourscore almost,

"Indeed an emblem, rather than an host."

I may add, that our ancestors were so much in the habit of counting by scores, that the word eighty, though that period of life was so common a designation of old age, does not occur in

EVA. Got's will, and his passion of my heart! I had as lief you would tell me of a mess of porridge.

PAGE. Why?

EVA. He has no more knowledge in Hibocrates and Galen,—and he is a knave besides; a cowardly knave, as you would desires to be acquainted withal.

PAGE. I warrant you, he's the man should fight with him.

SLEN. O, Sweet Anne Page!

SHAL. It appears so, by his weapons:-Keep them asunder ;-here comes doctor Caius.

Enter Host, CAIUS, and RUGBY.

PAGE. Nay, good master parson, keep in your

weapon.

SHAL. So do you, good master doctor.

HOST. Disarm them, and let them question; let them keep their limbs whole, and hack our English.

CAIUS. I pray you, let-a me speak a word vit your ear: Verefore vill you not meet a-me?

EVA. Pray you, use your patience: In good time. CAIUS. By gar, you are de coward, de Jack dog, John ape.

Eva. Pray you, let us not be laughing-stogs to other men's humours; I desire you in friendship, and I will one way or other make you amends :-I

the last (and probably in no former) translation of the Bible; and our poet, we find, never once employs the word as applied to age, except in the single instance quoted above from King Richard III where he adopted it for the sake of a smoother versification. In like manner, Shallow, in the Second Part of King Henry IV. boasts of hitting a mark at fourscore yards' distance; and in Measure for Measure, Master Froth is described as possessing not eighty, but fourscore pounds a year. MALONE.