K. Hen. But I have sent for him to answer this:
And, for this cause, awhile we must neglect
Our holy purpose to Jerusalem,

Cousin, on Wednesday next our council we
Will hold at Windsor, so inform the lords:
But come yourself with speed to us again;
For more is to be said, and to be done,
Than out of anger can be uttered 17.
West. I will, my liege.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.

The same.

Another Room in the Palace.

Enter HENRY, Prince of Wales, and FALSTAFF.

Fal. Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?

P. Hen. Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou would'st truly know. What the devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flamecolour'd taffata; I see no reason why thou should'st be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.

Fal. Indeed, you come near me now, Hal: for we, that take purses, go by the moon and seven

the rest: it is applied to other birds, and is perhaps so familiar as hardly to require a note. It is thus found in Greene's Metamorphosis, 1613

'Pride makes the fowl to prune his feathers so.' Milton uses to plume in the same sense:

She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings.'

17 That is, more is to be said than anger will suffer me to say: more than can issue from a mind disturbed like mine.

stars; and not by Phoebus,-he, that wandering knight so fair1. And, I pray thee, sweet wag, when thou art king,—as, God save thy grace (majesty, I should say; for thou wilt have none),

grace

P. Hen. What, none?

Fal. No, by my troth; not so much as will serve to be prologue to an egg and butter.

3

P. Hen. Well, how then? come, roundly, roundly. Fal. Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us, that are squires of the night's body, be called thieves of the day's beauty; let us beDiana's foresters 3, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon: And let men say, we be men of good government: being governed as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we-steal.

P. Hen. Thou say'st well; and it holds well too; for the fortune of us, that are the moon's men, doth ebb and flow like the sea; being governed as the sea is, by the moon. As, for proof, now: A purse of gold most resolutely snatched on Monday night,

1 Falstaff, with great propriety, according to vulgar astronomy, calls the sun a wandering knight, and by this expression evidently alludes to some knight of romance; perhaps The Knight of the Sun;' el Cavallero del Febo, a popular book in his time. The words may be part of some forgotten ballad.

2 Let not us who are body squires to the night (i. e. adorn the night) be called a disgrace to the day.' To take away the beauty of the day may probably mean to disgrace it. A squire of the body' originally signified the attendant of a knight. It became afterwards the cant term for a pimp. Falstaff puns on the words knight and beauty, quasi booty.

3

Exile and slander are justly me awarded,

My wife and heire lacke lands and lawful right;
And me their lord made dame Diana's knight.'

This is the lament of Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, in The Mirror for Magistrates. Hall, in his Chronicles, says that certain persons who appeared as foresters in a pageant exhibited in the reign of King Henry VIII. were called Diana's knights.

and most dissolutely spent on Tuesday morning; got with swearing-lay by; and spent with crying -bring in 5: now, in as low an ebb as the foot of the ladder; and, by and by, in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows.

Fal. By the Lord, thou say'st true, lad. And is not my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench? P. Hen. As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle. And is not a buff jerkin, a most sweet robe of durance??

4 To lay by is to be still. It occurs again in King Henry VIII.:

Even the billows of the sea

Hung their heads, and then lay by?'

Steevens says that it is a term adopted from navigation.

5 i. e. bring in more wine.'

6 Old lad of the castle. This passage has been supposed to have a reference to the name of Sir John Oldcastle. Rowe says that there was a tradition that the part of Falstaff was originally written by Shakspeare under that name. Fuller, in his Church History, book iv. p. 168, mentions this change in the following manner: Stage poets have themselves been very bold with, and others very merry at, the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, whom they have fancied a boon companion, a jovial royster, and a coward to boot. The best is, Sir John Falstaff hath relieved the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, and of late is substituted buffoon in his place.' In confirmation of this, it may be remarked

7 The buff, or leather jerkin, was the common habit of a serjeant, or sheriff's officer, and is called a robe of durance on that account, as well as for its durability: an equivoke is intended. In the Comedy of Errors, Activ. Sc. 2, it is called an everlasting garment. Durance might also have signified some lasting kind of stuff, such as is at present called everlasting. Thus, in Westward Hoe, 1607, Where did'st thou buy this buff? Let me live but I will give thee a good suit of durance. Wilt thou take my bond, &c. Again, in The Devil's Charter, 1607, Varlet of velvet, my moccado villain, old heart of durance, my strip'd canvas shoulders, and my perpetuana pander.' And in The Three Ladies of London, 1584, As the taylor that out of seven yards stole one and a half of durance.' Sir T. Cornwalleys, in his Essays, says, 'I refuse to weare buffe for the lasting; and shall I be content to apparell my braine in durance.'

Fal. How now, how now, mad wag ? what, in thy quips, and thy quiddities? what a plague have I to do with a buff jerkin?

P. Hen. Why, what a pox have I to do with my hostess of the tavern?

Fal. Well, thou hast called her to a reckoning, many a time and oft.

P. Hen. Did I ever call for thee to pay thy part? Fal. No; I'll give thee thy due, thou hast paid all there.

P. Hen. Yea, and elsewhere, so far as my coin

that one of Falstaff's speeches in the first edition has Old. instead
of Falst. prefixed to it: and in the epilogue to the Second Part
of King Henry IV. the poet makes a kind of retractation for
having made too free with Sir John Oldcastle's name—' Where,
for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless he be
killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and
this is not the man.' Add to this, that Nathaniel Field, in his
Amends for Ladies, 1618, alludes to Falstaff's definition of honour
in the following words, which he attributes to Oldcastle :-
:-
Did you never see

The play where the fat knight, hight Oldcastle,
Did tell you truly what this honour was.'

Field, who was a player, was hardly likely to have been mistaken, or to have confounded characters. It is true that in the old play of King Henry V. which had been exhibited before 1589, Sir John Oldcastle is a character, and fills the place of Falstaff as companion to the prince in his revels and his robberies. But as Shakspeare took the hint from the old play, why might he not take the name also? and change it when he found that he was injuring a worthy person; or at the instance of the queen (as it has been said) out of respect to the memory of Lord Cobham. Weaver describes Oldcastle, as Shakspeare does Falstaff, to have been the page of Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk and Oldcastle is alluded to as the fat knight in other old books. Against the weight of all this evidence Steevens and Malone have contended; but, as Reed justly observes,' they have opposed conjecture and inference alone-conjecture very ingeniously suggested, and inference very subtilly extracted; but weighing nothing against what is equivalent to positive evidence.' The reader will find the whole voluminous controversy at the end of the First Part of King Henry IV. in Boswell's edition.

:

would stretch; and where it would not, I have used my credit.

Fal. Yea, and so used it, that were it not here apparent that thou art heir apparent,-But, I pr'ythee, sweet wag, shall there be gallows standing in England when thou art king? and resolution thus fobbed as it is, with the rusty curb of old father antick the law? Do not thou, when thou art king, hang a thief.

P. Hen. No; thou shalt.

Fal. Shall I? O rare! By the Lord, I'll be a brave judge.

P. Hen. Thou judgest false already; I mean, thou shalt have the hanging of the thieves, and so become a rare hangman.

Fal. Well, Hal, well; and in some sort it jumps with my humour, as well as waiting in the court, I can tell you.

P. Hen. For obtaining of suits?

Fal. Yea, for obtaining of suits: whereof the hangman hath no lean wardrobe. 'Sblood, I am as melancholy as a gib cat, or a lugged bear.

8

P. Hen. Or an old lion; or a lover's lute.

Fal. Yea, or the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe9.

8 A gib cat is a male cat, from Gilbert, the northern name for a he cat. Tom cat is now the usual term. Chaucer has gibbe our cat' in the Romaunt of the Rose, as a translation of Thibert le chas.' From Thibert, Tib was also a common name for a cat. Ray has this proverbial phrase, as melancholy as a gib'd cat.' In Sherwood's English and French Dictionary we have a gibbe (or old male cat) Macou.' It was certainly a name not bestowed upon a cat early in life, as we may be assured by the melancholy character ascribed to it. It did not mean, as some have imagined, a castrated cat.

9 Lincolnshire bagpipes' is a proverbial saying, the allusion is as yet unexplained. Perhaps it was a favourite instrument in that county, as well as in the north.