15 You cast the event of war-] The fourteen lines from hence to Bardolph's next speech, are not to be found in the first editions till that in folio of 1623. A very great number of other lines in this play are inserted after the first edition in like manner, but of such spirit and mastery generally, that the insertions are plainly by Shakspeare himself. POPE. To this note I have nothing to add, but that the editor speaks of more editions than I believe him to have seen, there having been but one edition yet discovered by me that precedes the first folio. JOHNSON. 16 The gentle archbishop-] These one and twenty lines were added since the first edition. 17 Tells them, he doth bestride a bleeding land,] That is, stands over his country to defend her as she lies bleeding on the ground. So Falstaff before says to the prince, If thou see me down, Hal, and bestride me, so; it is an office of friendship. JOHNSON. 18 What says the doctor to my water?] The method of investigating diseases by the inspection of urine only, was once so much the fashion, that Caius, the founder of the college in Warwick-lane, formed a statute to restrain apothecaries from carrying the water of their patients to a physician, and afterwards giving medicines in consequence of the opinions they received concerning it. This statute was, soon after, followed by another, which forbade the doctors them selves to pronounce on any disorder from such an uncertain diagnostic. John Day, the author of a comedy called Law Tricks, or Who would have thought it? 1608, describes an apothecary thus: " -his house is set round with patients twice or thrice a day, and because they'll be sure not to want drink, every one brings his own water in an " urinal with him." Again, in B. and Fletcher's Scornful Lady : "I'll make her cry so much, that the physician, STEEVENS. 19 Thou whoreson mandrake,] Mandrake is a root supposed to have the shape of a man; it is now counterfeited with the root of briony. JOHNSON. 20 I was never mann'd with an agate 'till now:] Alluding to the little figures cut in agates, and other hard stones, for seals; and therefore he says, I will set you neither in gold nor silver. The Oxford Editor alters this to aglet, a tag to the points then in use (a word indeed which our author uses to express the same thought): but aglets, though they were sometimes of gold or silver, were never set in those metals. WARBURTON. 21 To bear a gentleman in hand-] Doctor Johnson says, to bear in hand, is, to keep in expectation. -if a man is thorough with them in honest taking up,] That is, if a man by taking up goods is 22 in their debt, To be thorough seems to be the same with the present phrase to be in with a tradesman. JOHNSON. 23 I bought him in Paul's,-] At that time the resort of idle people, cheats, and knights of the post. WARBURTON. In an old Collection of Proverbs, I find the following: "Who goes to Westminster for a wife, to St. Paul's " for a man, and to Smithfield for a horse, may meet "with a whore, a knave, and a jade." STEEVENS. 24 A wassel candle, &c.] A wassel candle is a large candle lighted up at a feast. There is a poor quibble upon the word wax, which signifies increase as well as the matter of the honey-comb. JOHNSON. 25-like his ill angel.] What a precious collator has Mr. Pope approved himself in this passage! Besides, if this were the true reading, Falstaff could not have made the witty and humorous evasion he has done in his reply. I have restored the reading of the oldest quarto. The Lord Chief Justice calls Falstaff the prince's ill angel or genius: which Falstaff turns off by saying, an ill angel (meaning the coin called an angel) is light; but, surely, it cannot be said that he wants weight: ergo-the inference is obvious. Now money may be called ill, or bad; but it is never called evil, with regard to its being under weight. This Mr. Pope will facetiously call restoring lost puns: but if the author wrote a pun, and it happens to be lost in an editor's indolence, I shall, in spite of his grimace, venture at bringing it back to light. THEOBALD. "As light as a clipt angel," is a comparison frequently used in the old comedies. STEEVENS. 26 I cannot tell:-] I cannot pass current. I cannot be told, or reckoned as valuable. 27-coster-monger times,-] In these times when the prevalence of trade has produced that meanness that rates the merit of every thing by money. JOHNSON. 28 never spit white again.] i. e. May I never have my stomach heated again with liquor; for, to spit white is the consequence of inward heat. So in Mother Bombie, a comedy, 1594, They have sod their livers in sack these forty years; that makes them spit white broth as they "do." 29 STEEVENS. -you are too impatient to bear crosses.] I believe a quibble was here intended. Falstaff has just asked his lordship to lend him a thousand pound, and he tells him in return, that he is not to be entrusted with money. A cross is coin so called, be cause stamped with a cross. So in Love's Labour lost, act i. scene 3. So in As you crosses love him not." like it, "If I should bear you, I should bear no cross." And in Heywood's Epigrams upon Proverbs, 1562. "Of makyng a Crosse. "I will make a crosse upon this gate, ye crosse on Thy crosses be on gates all, in thy purse none." STEEVENS. three-man beetle.] A beetle wielded by three РОРЕ. 31 Let us on, &c.] This excellent speech of York was one of the passages added by Shakspeare after his first edition. РОРЕ. 32-within my vice.] Vice or grasp; a metaphor taken from a smith's vice: there is another reading in the old edition, view, which I think not so good. РОРЕ. 33-honey-suckle villain-honey-seed rogue!-] The landlady's corruption of homicidal and homicide. THEOGALD. 34a parcel-gilt goblet,] A parcel-gilt goblet is a goblet only gilt over, not of solid gold. 35 —this sneap-] A Yorkshire word for rebuke. РОРЕ. Sneap signifies to check; as children easily sneaped; herbs and fruits sneaped with cold weather. See Ray's Collection. STEEVENS. 36 German hunting in water-work,] i. e. in watercolours. 37 Althea dream'd-] Shakspeare is here mistaken in his mythology, and has confounded Althea's firebrand with Hecuba's. The firebrand of Althea was real: but Hecuba, when she was big with Paris, dreamed that she was delivered of a firebrand that consumed the kingdom. JOHNSON. |