Enter the Lord Chief Juftice, and an Attendant. PAGE. Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the prince for ftriking him about Bardolph. FAL. Wait clofe, I will not fee him. CH. JUST. What's he that goes there? ATTEN. Falstaff, an't please your lordship. CH. JUST. He that was in queftion for the robbery? ATTEN. He, my lord: but he hath fince done good service at Shrewsbury; and, as I hear, is now going with fome charge to the lord John of Lancafter. CH. JUST. What, to York? Call him back again. ATTEN. Sir John Falstaff! FAL. Boy, tell him, I am deaf. PAGE. You must speak louder, my master is deaf. CH. JUST. I am fure, he is, to the hearing of any thing good.-Go, pluck him by the elbow; I muft speak with him. James I.] fays Ofborne, in his Memoirs of that monarch," and did fo continue till these, [the interregnum,] for the principal gentry, lords, courtiers, and men of all profeffions, not merely mechanicks, to meet in St. Paul's church by eleven, and walk in the middle ifle till twelve, and after dinner from three to fix; during which time fome difcourfed of business, others of news. Now, in regard of the universal commerce there happened little that did not firft or last arrive here." MALONE. 2 — Lord Chief Juftice,] This judge was Sir Wm. Gafcoigne, Chief Juftice of the King's Bench. He died December 17, 1413, and was buried in Harwood church, in Yorkshire. His effigy, in judicial robes, is on his monument. STEEVENS. His portrait, copied from the monument, may be found in The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LI. p. 516. MALONE. ATTEN. Sir John,- FAL. What! a young knave, and beg! Is there not wars? is there not employment? Doth not the king lack fubjects? do not the rebels need foldiers? Though it be a fhame to be on any fide but one, it is worse shame to beg than to be on the worst fide, were it worse than the name of rebellion can tell how to make it. ATTEN. You mistake me, fir. FAL. Why, fir, did I fay you were an honest man? fetting my knighthood and my foldiership afide, I had lied in my throat if I had said so. and ATTEN. I pray you, fir, then fet your knighthood your foldiership afide; and give me leave to tell you, you lie in your throat, if you fay I am any other than an honeft man. FAL. I give thee leave to tell me fo! I lay afide that which grows to me! If thou get'ft any leave of me, hang me; if thou takeft leave, thou wert better be hanged: You hunt-counter,3 hence! avaunt! 3 hunt-counter,] That is, blunderer. He does not, I think, allude to any relation between the judge's servant and the counter-prifon. JOHNSON. Dr. Johnfon's explanation may be countenanced by the folowing paffage in Ben Jonfon's Tale of a Tub: Do you mean to make a hare "Of me, to hunt counter thus, and make these doubles, "And you mean no fuch thing as you send about?" Again, in Hamlet: "O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs." It should not, however, be concealed, that Randle Holme, in his Academy of Armory and Blazon, Book III. ch. 3. says: "Hunt counter, when hounds hunt it by the heel." STEEVENS. Hunt counter means, bafe tyke, or worthless dog. There can be no reason why Falftaff thould call the attendant a blunderer, but he seems very anxious to prove him a rafcal. After all, it ATTEN. Sir, my lord would speak with you. FAL. My good lord!-God give your lordship good time of day. I am glad to fee your lordship abroad: I heard fay, your lordfhip was fick. I hope, your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordfhip, though not clean past your youth, hath yet fome fmack of age in you, fome relifh of the faltnefs of time; and I most humbly beseech your lordship, to have a reverend care of your health. CH. JUST. Sir John, I fent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury. FAL. An't please your lordship, I hear, his majefty is returned with fome discomfort from Wales. CH. JUST. I talk not of his majesty:-You would not come when I fent for you. FAL. And I hear moreover, his highness is fallen into this fame whorefon apoplexy. CH. JUST. Well, heaven mend him! I pray, let me speak with you. FAL. This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an't please your lordship; a kind of fleeping in the blood, a whorefon tingling. CH. JUST. What tell you me of it? be it as it is. FAL. It hath its original from much grief; from is not impoffible the word may be found to fignify a catchpole or bum-bailiff. He was probably the Judge's tipftaff. RITSON. Perhaps the epithet hunt-counter is applied to the officer, in reference to his having reverted to Falstaff's falvo. HENLEY. I think it much more probable that Falftaff means to allude to the counter-prifon. Sir T. Overbury, in his character of A Serjeant's Yeoman, 1616, (in modern language, a bailiff's follower,) calls him "a counter-rat." MALONE. ftudy, and perturbation of the brain: I have read the caufe of his effects in Galen; it is a kind of deafnefs. CH. JUST. I think, you are fallen into the difeafe; for you hear not what I fay to you. FAL. Very well, my lord, very well :4 rather, an't 4 Fal. Very well, my lord, very well:] In the quarto edition, printed in 1609, this fpeech ftands thus: Old. Very well, my lord, very well: I had not observed this, when I wrote my note to The First Part of Henry IV. concerning the tradition of Falstaff's character having been first called Oldcastle. This almoft amounts to a selfevident proof of the thing being fo: and that the play, being printed from the ftage manufcript, Oldcaftle had been all along altered into Falftaff, except in this fingle place by an overfight; of which the printers not being aware, continued these initial THEOBALD. traces of the original name. I am unconvinced by Mr. Theobald's remark. Old. might Thus we have have been the beginning of fome actor's name. Kempe and Cowley, inftead of Dogberry and Verges, in the 4to. edit. of Much Ado about Nothing, 1600. Names utterly unconnected with the Perfonæ Dramatis of Shakspeare, are fometimes introduced as entering on the stage. Thus, in The Second Part of King Henry IV. edit. 1600:"Enter th' Archbishop, Thomas Mowbray, (Earle Marshall;) the Lord Haftings, Fauconbridge, and Bardolfe." Sig. B 4.Again: "Enter the Prince, Poynes, Sir John Rufjell, with others." Sig. C3.-Again, in King Henry V. 1600: "Enter Burbon, Conftable, Orleance, Gelon." Sig. D 2. Old might have been inferted by a mistake of the fame kind; or indeed through the lazinefs of compofitors, who occafionally permit the letters that form fuch names as frequently occur, to remain together, when the rest of the page is diftributed. Thus it will fometimes happen that one name is fubftituted for another. This obfervation will be well understood by those who have been engaged in long attendance on a printing-houfe; and thofe to whom my remark appears obfcure, need not to lament their ignorance, as this kind of knowledge is ufually purchased at the expence of much time, patience, and difappointment. In 1778, when the foregoing obfervations first appeared, they had been abundantly provoked. Juftice, however, obliges me VOL. XII. Ꭰ Please you, it is the disease of not liftening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal. CH. JUST. To punish you by the heels, would amend the attention of your ears; and I care not, if I do become your physician. FAL. I am as poor as Job, my lord; but not fo patient your lordship may minifter the potion of imprisonment to me, in refpect of poverty; but how I fhould be your patient to follow your prefcriptions, the wife may make fome dram of a fcruple, or, indeed, a fcruple itself. CH. JUST. I fent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me. to fubjoin, that no part of the fame cenfure can equitably fall on the printing-office or compofitors engaged in our prefent republication. STEEVENS. I entirely agree with Mr. Steevens in thinking that Mr. Theobald's remark is of no weight. Having already difcuffed the subject very fully, it is here only neceffary to refer the reader to Vol. IX. p. 194, et feq. in which I think I have fhewn that there is no proof whatfoever that Falstaff ever was called Oldcaftle in these plays. The letters prefixed to this fpeech crept into the first quarto copy, I have no doubt, merely from Oldcafile being, behind the fcenes, the familiar theatrical appellation of Falstaff, who was his stage-fucceffor. All the actors, copyifts, &c. were undoubtedly well acquainted with the former character, and probably used the two names indifcriminately.-Mr. Steevens's fuggeftion that Old. might have been the beginning of fome actor's name does not appear to me probable; because in the lift of "the names of the principal actors in all these plays" prefixed to the first folio, there is no actor whose name begins with this fyllable; and we may be fure that the part of Falstaff was performed by a principal actor. MALONE. Principal actors, as at present, might have been often changing from one play-house to another; and the names of fuch of them as had quitted the company of Hemings and Condell, might therefore have been purpofely omitted, when the lift prefixed to the folio 1623 was drawn up. STEEVENS. |