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ACT 11.

A plague of sighing and grief! it blows a man up like a bladder. There's villainous news abroad: here was sir John Bracy from your father; you must to the court in the morning. That same mad fellow of the north, Percy; and he of Wales, that gave Amaimon the bastinado, and made Lucifer cuckold, and swore the devil his true liegeman upon the cross of a Welsh hook *,-What, a plague, call you him? him ?——

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Διὰ δακτυλία μὲν ἂν ἐμέ γ' ἂν διελκύσαις.
Plutus, v. 1037.

SIR W. RAWLINSON. An alderman's thumb-ring is mentioned by Brome in The Antipodes, 1640:" Item, a distich graven in his thumb-ring." Again, in The Northern Lass, 1632: "A good man in the city, &c. wears nothing rich about him, but the gout, or a thumb-ring.” Again, in Wit in a Constable, 1640: rest of the bench; what lies in his thumb-ring." The custom of wearing a ring on the thumb, is very ancient. In Chaucer's Squier's Tale, it is said of the rider of the brazen horse, who advanced into the hall of Cambuscan, that

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no more wit than the

upon his thombe he had of gold a ring."

STEEVENS.

It is

upon the cross of a WELSH HOOK,] A Welsh hook appears to have been some instrument of the offensive kind. mentioned in the play of Sir John Oidcastle :

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- that no man presume to wear any weapons, especially welsh-hooks and forest-bills."

Again, in Westward Hoe, by Deckar and Webster, 1607:

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it will be as good as a Welsh-hook for you, to keep out the other at staves-end."

Again, in The Insatiate Countess, by Marston, 1613:

"The ancient hooks of great Cadwallader."

"The Welsh Glaive," (which I take to be the same weapon under another name,) says Captain Grose in his Treatise on Ancient Armour, is a kind of bill, sometimes reckoned among the pole-axes; " a variety perhaps of the securis falcata, or probably resembling the Lochaber axe, which was used in the late rebellion. Colonel Gardner was attacked with such a one at the battle of Prestonpans. See the representation of an ancient watchman, with a bill on his shoulder, vol. vii. p. 87. STEEVENS.

The Welsh hook, I believe, was pointed, like a spear, to push or thrust with; and below had a hook to seize the enemy if he should attempt to escape by flight. I take my ideas from a passage in Butler's Character of a Justice of the Peace, whom the witty

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POINS. O, Glendower.

FAL. Owen, Owen; the same; and his son-inlaw, Mortimer; and old Northumberland; and that sprightly Scot of Scots, Douglas, that runs o' horseback up a hill perpendicular.

P. HEN. He that rides at high speed, and with his pistol kills a sparrow flying.

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FAL. You have hit it.

P. HEN. So did he never the sparrow.

FAL. Well, that rascal hath good metal in him; he will not run.

P. HEN. Why, what a rascal art thou then, to praise him so for running?

FAL. O' horseback, ye cuckoo! but, afoot, he will not budge a foot.

P. HEN. Yes, Jack, upon instinct.

FAL. I grant ye, upon instinct. Well, he is there too, and one Mordake, and a thousand bluecaps more Worcester is stolen away to-night;

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author thus describes: "His whole authority is like a Welsh hook; for his warrant is a puller to her, and his mittimus a thruster from her." Remains, vol. ii. p. 192. WHALLEY.

Minsheu, in his Dict. 1617, explains a Welsh hook thus: "Armorum genus est ære in falcis modum incurvato, perticæ longissimæ præfixo." Cotgrave calls it "a long hedging-bill, about the length of a partisan." See also Florio's Italian Dict. 1598: "Falcione. A bending forrest bill, or Welsh hook.

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"Pennati. Hedge-bills, forest bills, Welsh-hooks, or weeding hooks." MALONE.

5 -pistol] Shakspeare never has any care to preserve the manners of the time. Pistols were not known in the age of Henry. Pistols were, I believe, about our author's time, eminently used by the Scots. Sir Henry Wotton somewhere makes mention of a Scottish pistol. JOHNSON.

Beaumont and Fletcher are still more inexcusable. In The Humorous Lieutenant, they have equipped Demetrius Poliorcetes, one of the immediate successors of Alexander the Great, with the same weapon. STEEVENS.

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blue-caps] A name of ridicule given to the Scots from their blue-bonnets. JOHNSON.

There is an old ballad called "Blew Cap for Me," or

thy father's beard is turned white with the news7; you may buy land now as cheap as stinking mackarelR.

P. HEN. Why then, 'tis like, if there come a hot June, and this civil buffeting hold, we shall buy maidenheads as they buy hob-nails, by the hundreds.

FAL. By the mass, lad, thou sayest true; it is like, we shall have good trading that way.-But, tell me, Hal, art thou not horribly afeard? thou being heir apparent, could the world pick thee out three such enemies again, as that fiend Douglas, that spirit Percy, and that devil Glendower? Art thou not horribly afraid? doth not thy blood thrill at it ?

P. HEN. Not a whit, i' faith; I lack some of thy instinct.

FAL. Well, thou wilt be horribly chid to-morrow, when thou comest to thy father: if thou love me, practise an answer.

"A Scottish lass her resolute chusing;

"Shee'll have bonny blew cap, all other refusing."

STEEVENS.

7thy father's BEARD IS TURNED WHITE with the news ;] I think Montaigne mentions a person condemned to death, whose hair turned grey in one night. TOLLET.

Nashe, in his Have With You to Saffron Walden, &c. 1596, says: "-looke and you shall find a grey haire for everie line I have writ against him; and you shall have all his beard white too, by the time he hath read over this book." The reader may find more examples of the same phænomenon in Grimeston's translation of Goulart's Memorable Histories, p. 489, &c. STEEVENS.

8 you may buy land, &c.] In former times the prosperity of the nation was known by the value of land, as now by the price of stocks. Before Henry the Seventh made it safe to serve the King regnant, it was the practice at every revolution, for the conqueror to confiscate the estates of those that opposed, and perhaps of those who did not assist him. Those, therefore, that foresaw the change of government, and thought their estates in danger, were desirous to sell them in haste for something that might be carried away. JOHNSON,

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P. HEN. Do thou stand for my father, and examine me upon the particulars of my life".

FAL. Shall I ? content :-This chair shall be my state', this dagger my scepter, and this cushion my crown 2.

P. HEN. Thy state is taken for a joint-stool, thy golden scepter for a leaden dagger, and thy precious rich crown, for a pitiful bald crown 3!

FAL. Well, an the fire of grace be not quite out of thee, now shalt thou be moved.-Give me a cup of sack, to make mine eyes look red, that it may be

9 Do thou stand for my father, and examine me upon the particulars of my life.] In the old anonymous play of Henry V. the same strain of humour is discoverable:

"Thou shalt be my lord chief justice, and shalt sit in the chair; and I'll be the young prince, and hit thee a box on the ear," &c. STEEVENS.

This chair shall be my STATE,] A state is a chair with a
So, in Macbeth :

canopy over it.

"Our hostess keeps her state."

See also, vol. xi. p. 416, n. 7.

This, as well as a following passage, was perhaps designed to ridicule the mock majesty of Cambyses, the hero of a play which appears from Deckar's Guls Hornbook, 1609, to have been exhibited with some degree of theatrical pomp. Deckar is ridiculing the impertinence of young gallants who sat or stood on the stage: "on the very rushes where the commedy is to daunce, yea and under the state of Cambises himselfe." STEEVENS.

2 this cushion my crown.] Dr. Letherland, in a MS. note, observes that the country people in Warwickshire use a cushion for a crown, at their harvest-home diversions; and in the play of King Edward IV. Part II. 1619, is the following passage:

"Then comes a slave, one of those drunken sots,

"In with a tavern reck'ning for a supplication.

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'Disguised with a cushion on his head." STEEVENS.

3 Thy state, &c.] This answer might, I think, have better been omitted: it contains only a repetition of Falstaff's mock-royalty. JOHNSON.

This is an apostrophe of the Prince to his absent father, not an answer to Falstaff. FARMER.

Rather a ludicrous description of Falstaff's mock regalia.

RITSON.

VOL. XVI.

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thought I have wept; for I must speak in passion, and I will do it in king Cambyses' vein.

P. HEN. Well, here is my legs.

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FAL. And here is my speech:-Stand aside, nobility.

HOST. This is excellent sport, i̇' faith.

FAL. Weep not, sweet queen, for trickling tears are vain.

HOST. O, the father, how he holds his countenance !

FAL. For God's sake, lords, convey my tristful queen,

For tears do stop the flood-gates of her eyes'.

HOST. O rare! he doth it as like one of these harlotry players, as I ever see.

4-king Cambyses'-] The banter is here upon a play called, A Lamentable Tragedie, mixed full of Pleasant Mirth, containing the Life of Cambises, King of Persia. By Thomas Preston. [1570.] THEOBALD.

I question if Shakspeare had ever seen this tragedy; for there is a remarkable peculiarity of measure, which, when he professed to speak in "king Cambyses' vein," he would hardly have missed, if he had known it. JOHNSON.

There is a marginal direction in the old play of King Cambyses: "At this tale tolde, let the queen weep; " which I fancy is alluded to, though the measure is not preserved. FARMEr. my leg.] That is, my obeisance to my father. - my TRISTFUL queen,] Old copies-trustful. by Mr. Rowe. The word tristful is again used in Hamlet, vol. vii. p. 390. MALONE.

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JOHNSON.
Corrected

7- the flood-gates of her eyes.] This passage is probably a burlesque on the following in Preston's Cambyses:

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Queen. These words to hear makes stilling teares issue from

chrystall eyes."

Perhaps, says Dr. Farmer, we should read-" do ope the floodgates," &c. STEEVENS.

The allusion may be to the following passage in Soliman and Perseda :

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"How can mine eyes dart forth a pleasant look,
"When they are stop'd with floods of flowing tears?"

RITSON.

HARLOTRY players,] The word is used in The Plowman's

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