1 DRAW. By the mass, here will be old utis: It will be an excellent stratagem.

2 DRAW. I'll see, if I can find out Sneak.

Enter Hostess and DOLL TEAR-SHEET.

[Exit.

HOST. I'faith, sweet heart, methinks now you are in an excellent good temperality: your pulsidge

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- here will be OLD UTIS:] Utis, an old word yet in use in some counties, signifying a merry festival, from the French huit, octo, ab A. S. Eahta, Octavæ festi alicujus.—Skinner.

РОРЕ. Skinner's explanation of utis (or utas) may be confirmed by the following passage from T. M.'s Life of Sir Thomas More:

66

to-morrow is St. Thomas of Canterbury's eeve, and the utas of St. Peter-." The eve of Thomas à Becket, according to the new style, happens on the 6th of July, and St. Peter's day on the 29th of June.

Again, in A Contention between Liberality and Prodigality, a comedy, 1602:

"Then if you please, with some roysting harmony, "Let us begin the utas of our iollitie." HENLEY. In Warwickshire, as the Rev. Mr. Sharp informs me, utis is still used for what is called a row, a scene of noisy turbulence. MALONE.

Old, in this place, does not mean ancient, but was formerly a common augmentative in colloquial language. Old utis signifies festivity in a great degree.

So, in Lingua, 1607:

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there's old moving among them."

Again, in Decker's comedy, called, If this be not a good Play the Devil is in it, 1612:

66

We shall have old breaking of necks then."

Again, in Soliman and Perseda, 1599;

"I shall have old laughing."

Again, in Arden of Feversham, 1592:

"Here will be old filching, when the press comes out of Paul's." STEEVENS.

This expression has long existed in our language. We meet with it in Le Bone Florence. Ritson's Romances, vol. iii. p. 29 : "With sharpe swyrdis foght they then

66

They had be two full doghty men,

"Gode-olde fyghtyng was there." BOSWELL.

See vol. v. p. 441, n. 4. MALONE.

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beats as extraordinarily as heart would desire; and your colour, I warrant you, is as red as any rose: But, i'faith, you have drunk too much canaries ; and that's a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes the blood" ere one can say,-What's this? How do you now?

DOL. Better than I was. Hem.

HOST. Why, that's well said; a good heart's worth gold. Look, here comes sir John.

Enter FALSTAFF, singing.

FAL. When Arthur first in court 1-Empty the jordan.-And was a worthy king: [Exit Drawer.] How now, mistress Doll?

HOST. Sick of a calm2: yea, good sooth. FAL. So is all her sect3; an they be once in a calm, they are sick.

8 -your pulsidge beats, &c.] One would almost regard this speech as a burlesque on the following passage in the interlude called The Repentance of Mary Magdalene, 1567. Infidelity says to Mary:

"Let me fele your poulses, mistresse Mary, be
you sicke?
By my troth in as good tempre as any woman can be;
"Your vaines are as full of blood, lusty and quicke,
"In better taking truly I did you never see." STEEVENS.

the

9 — a marvellous searching wine, and it PERFUMES blood-] The same phraseology is seriously used by Arthur Hall, in his translation of the first Iliad, 4to. 1581:

66

good Chrise with wine so red

"The aulter throughly doth perfume-." STEEVENS.

* When Arthur first in court-] The entire ballad is published in the first volume of Dr. Percy's Reliques of ancient English Poetry. STEEVENS.

The words in the ballad are

"When Arthur first in court began,

"And was approved king." MALONE.

2 Sick of a CALM :] I suppose she means to say of a qualm.

STEEVENS.

3 So is all her SECT;] I know not why sect is printed in all the copies; I believe sex is meant. JOHNSON.

Sect is, I believe, right. Falstaff may mean all of her profes

DOL. You muddy rascal, is that all the comfort you give me ?

FAL. You make fat rascals, mistress Doll.

sion.' In Mother Bombie, a comedy, 1594, the word is frequently used:

66 Sil. I am none of that sect.

"Can. Thy loving sect is an ancient sect, and an honourable," &c.

Since the foregoing quotation was given, I have found sect so often printed for sex in the old plays, that I suppose these words were anciently synonymous. Thus, in Marston's Insatiate Countess, 1613:

66

Deceives our sect of fame and chastity."

Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Valentinian :

66

Modesty was made

"When she was first intended: when she blushes
"It is the holiest thing to look upon,

"The purest temple of her sect, that ever
"Made nature a blest founder."

Again, in Whetstone's Arbour of Vertue, 1576:

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Who, for that these barons so wrought a slaunder to her sect,

"Their foolish, rash, and judgment false, she sharplie did detect." STEEVENS.

In Middleton's Mad World my Masters, 1608, (as Dr. Farmer has elsewhere observed,) a courtezan says, "it is the easiest art and cunning for our sect to counterfeit sick, that are always full of fits, when we are well." I have therefore no doubt that sect was licentiously used by our author, and his contemporaries, for sex. MALONE.

I believe sect is here used in its usual sense, and not for sex. Falstaff means to say, that all courtezans, when their trade is at a stand, are apt to be sick. Douce.

4 You make fat RASCALS,] Falstaff alludes to a phrase of the forest. Lean deer are called rascal deer. He tells her she calls him wrong, being fat he cannot be a rascal. JOHNSON.

So, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle : "The heavy hart, the blowing buck, the rascal, and the pricket." Again, in The Two Angry Women of Abington, 1599:

"What take you?-Deer.-You'll ne'er strike rascal? Again, in Quarles's Virgin Widow, 1656:

66

and have known a rascal from a fat deer." Rascall, (says Puttenham, p. 150,) is properly the hunting terme given to young deere, leane and out of season, and not to people." STEEVENS,

DoL. I make them! gluttony and diseases make them; I make them not.

FAL. If the cook help to make the gluttony, you help to make the diseases, Doll: we catch of you, Doll, we catch of you; grant that, my poor virtue, grant that.

DOL. Ay, marry; our chains, and our jewels. FAL. Your brooches, pearls, and owches-for

To grow fat and bloated is one of the consequences of the venereal disease; and to that Falstaff probably alludes. There are other allusions, in the following speeches, to the same disorder. M. MASON.

5 Your BROOCHES, pearls, and oWCHES ;] Brooches were chains of gold that women wore formerly about their necks. Owches were bosses of gold set with diamonds. POPE.

I believe Falstaff gives these splendid names as we give that of carbuncle, to something very different from gems and ornaments: but the passage deserves not a laborious research.

JOHNSON.

Brooches were, literally, clasps, or buckles, ornamented with gems. See vol. xii. p. 382, n. 8, a note on Antony and Cleopatra.

Mr. Pope has rightly interpreted owches in their original sense. So, in Nash's Lenten Stuff, &c. 1599: ". -three scarfs, bracelets, chains, and ouches." It appears likewise from a passage in the ancient satire called Cocke Lorelles Bote, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, that the makers of these ornaments were called owchers:

"Owchers, skynners, and cutlers."

Dugdale, p. 234, in his Account of the Will of T. de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, in the time of Edward III. says: "His jewels be thus disposed to his daughter Stafford, an ouche called the eagle, which the prince gave him; to his daughter Alice, his next best ouche."

"With brooches, rings, and owches," is, however, a line in the ancient ballad of The Boy and the Mantle. See Percy's Reliques, &c. 4th edit. vol. iii. p. 341. Dr. Johnson's conjecture may be supported by a passage in The Widow's Tears, a comedy, by Chapman, 1612:

66

As many aches in his bones, as there are ouches in his skin."

Again, in The Duke's Mistress, by Shirley, 1638, Valerio, speaking of a lady's nose, says:

to serve bravely, is to come halting off, you know: To come off the breach with his pike bent bravely, and to surgery bravely; to venture upon the charged chambers bravely:

6

DOL. Hang yourself, you muddy conger, hang yourself * !

Host. By my troth, this is the old fashion; you two never meet, but you fall to some discord: you are both, in good troth, as rheumatick as two dry * Folio omits this speech.

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"It has a comely length, and is well studded

"With gems of price; the goldsmith would give money

for't." STEEvens.

6 the charged CHAMBERS] To understand this quibble, it is necessary to say, that a chamber signifies not only an apartment, but a piece of ordnance.

So, in The Fleire, a comedy, 1610: " he has taught my ladies to make fireworks; they can deal in chambers already, as well as all the gunners that make them fly off with a train at Lambeth, when the mayor and aldermen land at Westminster."

Again, in The Puritan, 1605: "-only your chambers are licensed to play upon you, and drabs enow to give fire to them." A chamber is likewise that part in a mine where the powder is lodged. STEEVens.

Čhambers are very small pieces of ordnance which are yet used in London on what are called rejoicing days, and were sometimes used in our author's theatre on particular occasions. See King Henry VIII. Act I. Sc. III. MALONE.

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-rheumatick] She would say splenetick. HANMer. I believe she means what she says. So, in Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour :

"Cob. Why I have my rewme, and can be angry." Again, in our author's King Henry V.: "He did in some sort handle women; but then he was rheumatick," &c.

Rheumatick, in the cant language of the times, signified capricious, homoursome. In this sense it appears to be used in many other old plays. STEEVENS.

The word scorbutico (as an ingenious friend observes to me) is used in the same manner in Italian, to signify a peevish ill-tempered man. MALONE.

Dr. Farmer observes, that Sir Thomas Elyott, in his Castell of Helth, 1572, speaking of different complexions, has the following remark: "Where cold with moisture prevaileth, that body is called fleumatick." STEEVENS.