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 2, hath,-by cruel fate, And giddy fortune's furious fickle wheel, That goddess blind,

That stands upon the rolling restless stone,

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 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 stolen a pix1, and hanged must 'a be. A damned death!

2 Buxom valour.' It is true that, in the Saxon and our elder English, buxom meant pliant, yielding, obedient; and in this sense Spenser uses it: but as we know it was also used for lusty, rampant, however mistakenly, it was surely very absurd to give the older meaning to it here, as Steevens did. Pistol would be much more likely to take the popular sense, than one founded on etymology. Blount, after giving the old legitimate meaning of buxomeness, says, It is now mistaken for lustiness or rampancy.'

3 A muffler was a fold of linen used for concealing the face of a woman. It will be best understood by a reference to the wood cut in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Activ. Sc. 2, p. 261, copied from Mr. Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare.

4A pix.' The folio reads pax: but Holinshed, whom Shakspeare 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.' It was the box in which the consecrated wafers were kept, originally so named from being made of box; but in later times it was made of gold, silver, and other costly materials.

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

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

With edge of penny cord, and vile reproach:
Speak, captain, for his life, and I will thee requite.
Flu. Ancient Pistol, I do partly understand your
meaning.

Pist. Why then rejoice therefore.

Flu. Certainly, ancient, it is not a thing to rejoice at; for if, look you, he were my brother, I would desire the duke to use his goot pleasure, and put him to executions; for disciplines ought to be used.

Pist. Die and be damn'd; and figo5 for thy friendship!

Flu. It is well.

Pist. The fig of Spain!

Flu. Very good.

[Exit PISTOL.

Gow. Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal; I remember him now; a bawd; a cutpurse.

Flu. I'll assure you, 'a utter'd as prave 'ords at the pridge, as you shall see in a summer's day: But it is very well; what he has spoke to me, that is well, I warrant you, when time is serve.

Gow. Why, 'tis a gull, a fool, a rogue; that now

5 And figo for thy friendship.' See note on King Henry IV. Part II. The Spanish fig probably alludes to the custom of giving poisoned figs to those who were the objects of either Spanish or Italian revenge; to which custom there are numerous allusions in our old dramas. In the quarto copies of this play we have: The fig of Spain within thy jaw.' And afterwards :The fig of Spain within thy bowels and thy dirty maw.'

6 Very good.' In the quartos, instead of these two words, we have:

Captain Gower, cannot you hear it lighten and thunder?” ́

and then goes to the wars, to grace himself, at his return into London, under the form of a soldier. And such fellows are perfect in great commanders' names: and they will learn you by rote, where services were done :-at such and such a sconce, at such a breach, at such a convoy; who came off bravely, who was shot, who disgraced, what terms the enemy stood on; and this they con perfectly in the phrase of war, which they trick up with newtuned oaths: And what a beard of the general's cut, and a horrid suit of the camp, will do among foaming bottles, and ale-washed wits, is wonderful to be thought on! but you must learn to know such slanders of the age9, or else you may be marvellous mistook.

Flu. I tell you what, Captain Gower;-I do perceive, he is not the man that he would gladly make show to the 'orld he is; if I find a hole in his coat, I will tell him my mind. [Drum heard.] Hark

7 Such and such a sconce.' Steevens has erroneously explained this, 'a hasty, rude, inconsiderable kind of fortification.' The quotation from Sir Thomas Smythe only described some particularly imperfect sconces. A sconce was a block-house or chief fortress, for the most part round in fashion of a head; hence the head is ludicrously called a sconce : a lantern was also called a sconce, because of its round form.

8A beard of the general's cut.' curious in the fashion of their beards;

Our ancestors were very

a

certain cut was appropriated to certain professions and ranks. They are some of them humorously described in a ballad in The Prince D'Amour, 1660. The spade beard and the stilletto beard appear to have been appropriated to the soldier.

9 Such slanders of the age. Nothing was more common than such huffcap pretending braggarts as Pistol in the poet's age: they are the continual subject of satire to his cotemporaries. To the reader who has any acquaintance with our early writers it would be superfluous to cite instances. Steevens mentions Basilico, in Solyman and Perseda, as likely to have given the hint of Pistol's character to Shakspeare.. R R

VOL. V.

you, the king is coming; and I must speak with him from the pridge 10.

Enter KING HENRY, GLOSTER, and Soldiers. Flu. Got pless your majesty!

K. Hen. How now, Fluellen? camest thou from the bridge?

Flu. Ay, so please your majesty. The duke of Exeter has very gallantly maintained the pridge: the French is gone off, look you; and there is gallant and most prave passages: Marry, th'athversary was have possession of the pridge; but he is enforced to retire, and the duke of Exeter is master of the pridge; I can tell your majesty, the duke is a prave man.

K. Hen. What men have you lost, Fluellen?

Flu. The perdition of th'athversary hath been very great, very reasonable great: marry, for my part, I think the duke hath lost never a man, but one that is like to be executed for robbing a church, one Bardolph, if your majesty know the man: his face is all bubukles, and whelks 11, and knobs, and flames of fire; and his lips plows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes plue, and sometimes red; but his nose is executed, and his fire's out.

11

10 From the pridge.' These words are not in the quarto. If not a mistake of the compositor, who may have caught them from the king's speech, they must mean about the bridge, or concerning it.

11 His face is all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs.' Whelks are not stripes, as Mr. Nares interprets the word; but pimples, or blotches: Papula. A pimple, a whelke; Bourion ou bubbe qui vient en face.' Mr. Steevens remarks that Chaucer's Sompnour may have afforded Shakspeare a hint for Bardolph's face. He also had

A fire red cherubimes face,'

with welkes white,' and knobbes sitting on his cheekes.'Cant. Tales, v. 628.

K. Hen. We would have all such offenders so cut off:-and we give express charge, that in our marches through the country, there be nothing compelled from the villages, nothing taken but paid for; none of the French upbraided, or abused in disdainful language; For when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest win

ner.

Tucket sounds.

Enter MONTJOY.

Mont. You know me by my habit 12.

K. Hen. Well then, I know thee; What shall I know of thee?

Mont. My master's mind.

K. Hen. Unfold it.

Mont. Thus says my king:-Say thou to Harry of England, Though we seemed dead, we did but sleep; Advantage is a better soldier than rashness. Tell him, we could have rebuked him at Harfleur; but that we thought not good to bruise an injury, till it were full ripe:-now we speak upon our cue 13, and our voice is imperial! England shall repent his folly, see his weakness, and admire our sufferance. Bid him, therefore, consider of his ransom; which must proportion the losses we have borne, the subjects we have lost, the disgrace we have digested; which, in weight to re-answer, his pettiness would bow under. For our losses, his exchequer is too poor; for the effusion of our blood, the muster of his kingdom too faint a number; and for our disgrace, his own person, kneeling at our

12 You know me by my habit.' That is, by his herald's coat. The person of a herald being inviolable was distinguished by a richly emblazoned dress. Montjoie is the title of the first king at arms in France, as Garter is in this country.

13 i. e. in our turn. This theatrical phrase has been already noticed.