POINS. O, that this good blossom could be kept from Cankers!-Well, there is sixpence to preserve thee.

BARD. An you do not make him be hanged among you, the gallows shall have wrong.

P. HEN. And how doth thy master, Bardolph ? BARD. Well, my lord. He heard of your grace's coming to town; there's a letter for you.

POINS. Delivered with good respect.-And how doth the martlemas, your master 3 ?

BARD. In bodily health, sir.

3

POINS. Marry, the immortal part needs a physician: but that moves not him; though that be sick, it dies not.

4

P. HEN. I do allow this wen to be as familiar with me as my dog: and he holds his place; for, look you, how he writes.

POINS. [Reads.] John Falstaff, knight,--Every man must know that, as oft as he has occasion to name himself. Even like those that are kin to the king: for they never prick their finger, but they say, There is some of the King's blood spilt: How

good Interpretation, is, if I remember right, the title of some old tract. MALONE.

3

the MARTLEMAS, your master?] That is, the autumn, or rather the latter spring. The old fellow with juvenile passions. JOHNSON.

In The First Part of King Henry IV. the Prince calls Falstaff "the latter spring,-all hallown summer." MALONE.

Martlemas is corrupted from Martinmas, the feast of St. Martin, the eleventh of November. The corruption is general in the old plays. So, in The Pinner of Wakefield, 1599:

"A piece of beef hung up since Martlemas." STEEVENS. "The martlemas your master." Martinmas, which in Shakspeare's time fell later in the month than it does now, was then the chief time of killing hogs: this is therefore only another of the innumerable variations of allusion to Falstaff's corpulence.

BLAKEWAY.

this wEN] This swoln excrescence of a man.

JOHNSON.

comes that? says he, that takes upon him not to conceive the answer is as ready as a borrower's cap; I am the king's poor cousin, sir.

P. HEN. Nay, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from Japhet. But the letter:

POINS. Sir John Falstaff, knight, to the son of the king, nearest his father, Harry Prince of Wales, greeting.-Why, this is a certificate.

P. HEN. Peace!

POINS. I will imitate the honourable Roman in brevity:—he sure means brevity in breath; shortwinded. I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I leave thee. Be not too familiar with Poins; for he misuses thy favours so much, that he swears, thou art to marry his sister Nell. Repent at idle times as thou may'st, and so farewell.

Thine, by yea and no, (which is as much as to say, as thou usest him,) Jack Falstaff, with my familiars; John, with my brothers and sisters; and sir John with all Europe.

s the answer is as ready as a BORROWER's cap;] Old copy -a borrowed cap. STEEVENS.

But how is a borrowed cap so ready? Read, a borrower's cap, and then there is some humour in it: for a man that goes to borrow money, is of all others the most complaisant; his cap is always at hand. WARBURTON.

Dr. Warburton's emendation is countenanced by a passage in Timon of Athens:

be not ceas'd

Plays in the right hand, thus:-." STEEVENS. 6 P. Hen.] All the editors, except Sir Thomas Hanmer, have left this letter in confusion, making the Prince read part, and Poins part. I have followed his correction. JOHNSON.

7 I will imitate the honourable ROMAN in brevity:] The old copy reads Romans, which Dr. Warburton very properly corrected, though he is wrong when he appropriates the character to M. Brutus, who affected great brevity of style. I suppose by

My lord, I will steep this letter in sack, and make

him eat it.

P. HEN. That's to make him eat twenty of his words R. But do you use me thus, Ned? must I marry your sister?

POINS. May the wench have no worse fortune! but I never said so.

P. HEN. Well, thus we play the fools with the time; and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds, and mock us. Is your master here in London? BARD. Yes, my lord.

P. HEN. Where sups he? doth the old boar feed in the old frank??

BARD. At the old place, my lord; in East cheap. P. HEN. What company?

PAGE. Ephesians', my lord; of the old church.

the honourable Roman is intended Julius Cæsar, whose veni, vidi, vici, seems to be alluded to in the beginning of the letter. 'I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I leave thee.' The very words of Cæsar are afterwards quoted by Falstaff. HEATH.

That's to make him eat TWENTY of his words.] Why just twenty, when the letter contained above eight times twenty? We should read plenty; and in this word the joke, as slender as it is, consists. WARBURTON.

It is not surely uncommon to put a certain number for an uncertain one. Thus, in The Tempest, Miranda talks of playing "for a score of kingdoms." Busby, in King Richard II. observes, that "each substance of a grief has twenty shadows." In Julius Cæsar, Cæsar says that the slave's hand "did burn like twenty torches." In King Lear we meet with "twenty silly ducking observants," and, "not a nose among twenty."

Robert Green, the pamphleteer, indeed, obliged an apparitor to eat his citation, wax and all. In the play of Sir John Oldcastle, the Summer is compelled to do the like: and says on the occasion,-"I'll eat my word." Harpoole replies, "I meane you shall eat more than your own word, I'll make you eate all the words in the processe." STEEVENS.

9 - frank ?] Frank is sty. POPE.

Ephesians,] Ephesian was a term in the cant of these times, of which I know not the precise notion: it was, perhaps, a toper. So, the Host, in The Merry Wives of Windsor: "It is thine host, thine Ephesian calls." JOHNSON.

P. HEN. Sup any women with him?

PAGE. None, my lord, but old mistress Quickly, and mistress Doll Tear-sheet 2.

P. HEN. What pagan may that be?

PAGE. A proper gentlewoman, sir, and a kinswoman of my master's.

P. HEN. Even such kin as the parish heifers are to the town bull.-Shall we steal upon them, Ned, at supper?

POINS. I am your shadow, my lord; I'll follow

you.

P. HEN. Sirrah, you boy,-and Bardolph ;-no word to your master that I am yet come to town: There's for your silence.

BARD. I have no tongue, sir.

PAGE. And for mine, sir,-I will govern it.

P. HEN. Fare ye well; go. [Exeunt BARDOLPH and Page.]-This Doll Tear-sheet should be some road.

POINS. I warrant you as common as the way between Saint Alban's and London.

P. HEN. How might we see Falstaff bestow himself to-night in his true colours, and not ourselves be seen?

2 - Doll Tear-sheet.] Shakspeare might have taken the hint for this name from the following passage in The Playe of Robyn Hoode, very proper to be played in Maye Games, bl. 1. no date: "She is a trul of trust, to serve a frier at his lust, "A prycker, a prauncer, a terer of shetes," &c. STEEVENS.

3 What PAGAN may that be?] Pagan seems to have been a cant term, implying irregularity either of birth or manners. So, in The Captain, a comedy, by Beaumont and Fletcher : "Three little children, one of them was mine;

"Upon my conscience the other two were pagans." In The City Madam of Massinger it is used (as here) for a prostitute:

in all these places

"I've had my several Pagans billeted." STEEVENS.

POINS. Put on two leather jerkins 1, and aprons, and wait upon him at his table as drawers.

P. HEN. From a god to a bull? a heavy descension! it was Jove's case. From a prince to a prentice? a low transformation! that shall be mine: for in every thing, the purpose must weigh with the folly. Follow me, Ned. [Exeunt.

SCENE III.

Warkworth. Before the Castle.

Enter NORTHUMBERLAND, Lady Northumberland, and Lady PERCY.

NORTH. I pray thee, loving wife and gentle daughter,

4 Put on two leather jerkins,] This was a plot very unlikely to succeed where the Prince and the drawers were all known; but it produces merriment, which our author found more useful than probability. JOHNSON.

Johnson forgets that all the family were in the secret, except Falstaff; and that the Prince and Poins were disguised.

M. MASON.

But how does this circumstance meet with Dr. Johnson's objection? The improbability arises from Falstaff's being perfectly well acquainted with all the waiters in the house; and however disguised the Prince and Poins might be, or whatever aid they might derive from the landlord and his servants, they could not in fact pass for the old attendants, with whose person, voice, and manner, Falstaff was well acquainted. Accordingly he discovers the Prince as soon as ever he speaks. However, Shakspeare's chief object was to gain an opportunity for Falstaff to abuse the Prince and Poins, while they remain at the back part of the stage in their disguises: a jeu de theatre which he practised in other plays, and which always gains applause. MALONE.

5 a heavy DESCENSION!] Descension is the reading of the first edition.

Mr. Upton proposes that we should read thus by transposition: From a god to a bull? a low transformation !-from a prince to a prentice? a heavy declension!' This reading is elegant, and perhaps right. JOHNSON.

The folio reads-declension.

VOL. XVII.

MALONE.

F