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To know what willing ransom he will give.Prince Dauphin, you shall stay with us in Roüen". DAU. Not so, I do beseech your majesty.

FR. KING. Be patient, for you shall remain with

us.

Now, forth, lord constable, and princes all;
And quickly bring us word of England's fall.

[Exeunt.

SCENE VI.

The English Camp in Picardy.

Enter GowER and FLUELlen.

Gow. How now, captain Fluellen? come you from the bridge?

FLU. I assure you, there is very excellent service committed at the pridge.

Gow. Is the duke of Exeter safe?

FLU. The duke of Exeter is as magnanimous as Agamemnon; and a man that I love and honour with my soul, and my heart, and my duty, and my life, and my livings, and my uttermost powers: hẹ is not, (God be praised, and plessed !) any hurt in the 'orld; but keeps the pridge most valiantly,

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in Rouen.] Here, and a little higher, we have, in the old copy-Roan, which was, in Shakspeare's time, the mode of spelling Rouen, in Normandy. He probably pronounced the word as a monosyllable, Roan; as indeed most Englishmen do at this day. MALONE.

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but keeps the PRIDGE most valiantly,] This is not an imaginary circumstance, but founded on an historical fact. After Henry had passed the Some, the French endeavoured to intercept him in his passage to Calais; and for that purpose attempted to break down the only bridge that there was over the small river of Ternois, at Blangi, over which it was necessary for Henry to But Henry, having notice of their design. sent a part of his troops before him, who, attacking and putting the French to

with excellent discipline. There is an ensign 9 there at the pridge,-I think, in my very conscience, he is as valiant as Mark Antony; and he is a man of no estimation in the 'orld: but I did see him do gallant service.

Gow. What do you call him?

FLU. He is called-ancient Pistol.

Gow. I know him not.

Enter PISTOL.

FLU. Do you not know him? Here comes the

man.

PIST. Captain, I thee beseech to do me favours: The duke of Exeter doth love thee well.

FLU. Ay, I praise Got; and I have merited some love at his hands.

PIST. Bardolph, a soldier, firm and sound of heart,

Of buxom valour', hath,-by cruel fate,

And giddy fortune's furious fickle wheel,

That goddess blind,

That stands upon the rolling restless stone 2,

flight, preserved the bridge, till the whole English army arrived, and passed over it. MALONE.

9 There is an ENSIGN-] Thus the quarto. The folio reads -there is an ancient lieutenant. Pistol was not a lieutenant.

MALONE.

I Of BUXOM Valour,] i. e. valour under good command, obedient to its superiors. So, in Spenser's Fairy Queen :

"Love tyrannizeth in the bitter smarts

"Of them that to him are buxom and prone." STEEVENS. 2 That goddess BLIND,

That stands upon the ROLLING restless STONE,] Fortune is described by Cebes, and by Pacuvius, in the Fragments of Latin Authors, p. 60, and the first book of the pieces to Herennius, precisely in these words of our poet. It is unnecessary to quote

them. S. W.

"Rolling restless "In an Ode to Concord, which concludes the fourth Act of Gascoigne's Jocasta, we find the same combina, tion of epithets, though applied to a different object :

FLU. By your patience, ancient Pistol. Fortune is painted plind, with a muffler before her eyes, to signify to you that fortune is plind: And she is

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"Of him that rules the restlesse-rolling skie." STEEVENS. For this idea our author seems indebted to The Spanish Tragedy:

"Fortune is blind,

"Whose foot is standing on a rolling stone." RITSON.

3 Fortune is painted PLIND, with a MUFFLER before her eyes, to signify to you that fortune is plind :] Here the fool of a player was for making a joke, as Hamlet says, not set down for him, and showing a most pitiful ambition to be witty. For Fluellen, though he speaks with his country accent, yet is all the way represented as a man of good plain sense. Therefore, as it appears he knew the meaning of the term plind, by his use of it, he could never have said that "Fortune was painted plind, to signify she was plind." He might as well have said afterwards, "that she was painted inconstant to signify she was inconstant." But there he speaks sense; and so, unquestionably, he did here. We should therefore strike out the first plind, and read :

"Fortune is painted with a muffler," &c. WARBURTON. The old reading is the true one. Fortune the goddess is represented blind, to show that fortune, or the chance of life, is without discernment. STEEVENS.

The picture of Fortune is taken from the old history of Fortunatus; where she is described to be a fair woman, muffled over the eyes. FARMER.

A muffler appears to have been a fold of linen which partially covered a woman's face. So, in Monsieur Thomas, 1639:

"On with my muffler."

See The Merry Wives of Windsor, vol. viii. p. 157, n. 5. STEEVENS. Minsheu, in his Dictionary, 1617, explains "a woman's muffler," by the French word cachenez, which Cotgrave defines " a kind of mask for the face; " yet, I believe, it was made of linen, and that Minsheu only means to compare it to a mask, because they both might conceal part of the face. It was, I believe, a kind of hood, of the same form as the riding-hood now sometimes worn by men, that covered the shoulders, and a great part of the face. This agrees with the only other passage in which the word occurs in these plays: .I spy a great beard under her muffler." Merry Wives of Windsor. See also the verses cited from the Cobler's Prophecy, vol. iv. p. 273;

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painted also with a wheel: to signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning, and inconstant, and variations, and mutabilities: and her foot, look you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls, and rolls;-In good truth *, the poet is make a most excellent description of fortune fortune, look you, is an excellent moral. PIST. Fortune is Bardolph's foe, and frowns on him ;

For he hath stol'n a pix3, and hanged must 'a be.

"Now is she barefast to be seene, straight on her muffler goes:

"Now is she hufft up to the crowne, straight nuzled to the nose." MALONE.

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- In good truth, &c.] The reading here is made out of two copies, the quarto, and the first folio. MALONE.

5 For he hath stol'n a PIX,] The old editions read-pax. "And this is conformable to history," says Mr. Pope, 66 a soldier (as Hall tells us) being hanged at this time for such a fact." Both Hall and Holinshed agree as to the point of the theft; but as to the thing stolen, there is not that conformity betwixt them and Mr. Pope. It was an ancient custom, at the celebration of mass, that when the priest pronounced these words, "Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum!" both clergy and people kissed one another. And this was called Osculum Pacis, the Kiss of Peace. But that custom being abrogated, a certain image is now presented to be kissed, which is called a Pax. But it was not this image which Bardolph stole; it was a pix, or little chest, (from the Latin word, pixis, a box,) in which the consecrated host was used to be kept. "A foolish soldier," says Hall expressly, and Holinshed after him, "stole a pix out of a church, and unreverently did eat the holy hostes within the same contained." THEOBALD.

What Theobald says is true, but might have been told in fewer words: I have examined the passage in Hall. Yet Dr. Warburton rejected that emendation, and continued Pope's note without animadversion.

It is pax in the folio, 1623, but altered to pix by Theobald and Sir T. Hanmer. They signified the same thing. See Pax at Mass, Minsheu's Guide into the Tongues. Pix or pax was a little box in which were kept the consecrated wafers. JOHNSON.

So, in May-Day, a comedy, by Chapman, 1611: "Kiss the pax, and be quiet, like your other neighbours."

A damned death!

Let gallows gape for dog, let man go free,
And let not hemp his wine-pipe suffocate :
But Exeter hath given the doom of death,
For pir of little price.

Therefore, go speak, the duke will hear thy voice; And let not Bardolph's vital thread be cut

So, in The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington, 1601: "Then with this hallow'd crucifix,

"This holy wafer, and this pix."

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That a pix and a pax were different things, may also be seen from the following passage in The History of our Blessed Lady of Loretto, 12mo. 1608, p. 595: a cup, and a sprinkle for holy water, a pix and a pax, all of excellent chrystal, gold and amber."

Again, in Stowe's Chronicle, p. 677: "palmes, chalices, crosses, vestments, pixes, paxes, and such like." STEEVENS.

Pix is apparently right. In Henry the VIIth's will it is said "Forasmoch as we have often and many tymes to our inwarde regrete and displeasure seen at our Jen, in diverse many churches of our reame, the holie sacrament of the aulter, kept in ful simple, and inhonest pixes, spicially pixes of copre and tymbre; we have appointed and commaunded the treasurer of our chambre, and maistre of our juell-houss, to cause to be made furthwith, pixes of silver and gilt, in a greate nombre, for the keeping of the holie sacrament of the aultre, after the faction of a pixe that we have caused to be delivered to theim. Every of the said pixes to be of the value of iiiil. garnished with our armes, and rede roses and poart-colis crowned." P. 38. REED.

The old copies have pax, which was a piece of board on which the image of Christ on the cross; which the people used to kiss after the service was ended.

I have adopted Mr. Theobald's emendation, for the reason which hé assigns.

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Holinshed (whom our author followed) says, a foolish soldier stole a pixe out of a church, for which cause he was apprehended, and the king would not once more remove till the box was restored, and the offender strangled."

The following, as Mr. Tyrwhitt has elsewhere observed, is one of the Ordinances des Battailes, 9 R. II.:

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Item, que nul soit si hardi de toucher le corps de noster Seigneur, ni le vessel en quel il est, sur peine d'estre trainez et pendu, et le teste avoir coupé." MS. Cotton, Nero, D 6.

MALONE.

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