P. Hen. What saycst thou, Jack? Fal. The other night I fell asleep here behind the arras, and had my pocket picked: this house is turned bawdy-house, they pick pockets. P. Hen. What didst thou lose, Jack? Fal. Wilt thou believe me, Hal? three or four bonds of forty pound a-piece, and a seal-ring of my grandfather's. P. Hen. A trifle, some eight-penny matter. Host. So I told him, my lord; and I said I heard your grace say so: And, my lord, he speaks most vilely of you, like a foul-mouthed man as he is; and said he would cudgel you. P. Hen. What! he did not? Host. There's neither faith, truth, nor womanhood in me else. Fal. There's no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune; nor no more truth in thee than in a drawn fox; and for womanhood, maid Marian may be the deputy's wife of the ward to thee. Go, you thing, go. Host. Say, what thing? what thing? Fal. What thing? why, a thing to thank IIca ven on. Host. I am no thing to thank Heaven on, I would thou shouldst know it; I am an honest man's wife: and, setting thy knighthood aside, thou art a knave to call me so. Fal. Setting thy womanhood aside, thou art a beast to say otherwise. Host. Say, what beast, thou knave thou? P. Hen. An otter, sir John! why an otter? Fal. Why? she's neither fish nor flesh; a man knows not where to have her. Host. Thou art an unjust man in saying so; thou or any man knows where to have me, thou knave thou! P. Hen. Thou sayest true, hostess; and he slanders thee most grossly. Host. So he doth you, my lord; and said this other day, you ought him a thousand pound. P. Hen. Sirrah, do I owe you a thousand pound? Fal. A thousand pound, Hal? a million: thy love is worth a million; thou owest me thy love. Host. Nay, my lord, he called you Jack, and said he would cudgel you. Fal. Did I, Bardolph ? a man, I dare: but as thou art a prince, I fear thee, as I fear the roaring of the lion's whelp. P. Hen. And why not as the lion? Fal. The king himself is to be feared as the lion: Dost thou think I'll fear thee as I fear thy father? nay, an I do, let my girdle break! P. Hen. O, if it should, how would thy guts fall about thy knees! But, sirrah, there's no room for faith, truth, nor honesty, in this bosom of thine; it is all filled up with guts and midriff. Charge an honest woman with picking thy pocket! Why, thou whoreson, impudent, embossed rascal, if there were anything in thy pocket but tavern reckonings, memorandums of bawdy-houses, and one poor penny-worth of sugar candy, to make thee long-winded; if thy pocket were enriched with any other injuries but these, I am a villain. And yet you will stand to it, you will not pocket up wrong: Art thou not ashamed? Fal. Dost thou hear, Hal? thou knowest, in the state of innocency, Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do, in the days of villainy? Thou seest I have more flesh than another man; and therefore more frailty. You confess, then, you picked my pocket? to P. Hen. It appears so by the story. Fal. Hostess, I forgive thee: Go, make ready breakfast; love thy husband, look to thy servants, cherish thy guests: thou shalt find me tractable any honest reason: thou seest I am pacified. -Still?-Nay, prithee, be gone. [Exit Hostess. Now, Hal, to the news at court: For the robbery, lad,-How is that answered? P. Hen. O, my sweet beef, I must still be good angel to thee:-The money is paid back again. Fal. O, I do not like that paying back, 't is a double labour. P. Hen. I am good friends with my father, and may do anything. Fal. Rob me the exchequer the first thing thou doest, and do it with unwashed hands too. Bard. Do, my lord. P. Hen. I have procured thee, Jack, a charge of foot. Fal. I would it had been of horse. Where shall I find one that can steal well? O, for a fine thief, of the age of two and twenty, or thereabouts! I am heinously unprovided. Well, God be thanked for these rebels, they offend none but the virtuous; I laud them, I praise them. a Embossed. Swollen, puffed up. In Lear we have "embossed carbuncle." ILLUSTRATIONS OF ACT III. SCENE I.-" Burning cressets." THE Cresset-light was set upon beacons and watchtowers, or carried upon a pole. It was a square or circular framework of iron, having open ribs or hoops, in which pitched ropes or other combustible materials were burned. We have seen one upon the ancient tower of Hadley Church, near Barnet; and we could not help fancying that it might have blazed out when the Lancastrians and the Yorkists fought over the undulating ground from St. Alban's to Barnet Common, where the men of Kent under Warwick made their last desperate stand. It was last lighted in the rebellion of 1745. 2 SCENE I.-"The goats ran from the mountains," &c. Malone quotes a passage from an account of an earthquake in Catania, to show that Shakspere's description of the effects of one of the rarer phenomena of nature was literally true: "There was a blow as if all the artillery in the world had been discharged at once; the sea retired from the town above two miles; the birds flew about astonished; the cattle in the fields ran crying." 3 SCENE I.-"Wanton rushes." A passage in Bulleyn's "Bulwarke,” 1579, tells us the use of rushes: "Rushes that grow upon dry grounds be good to strew in halls, chambers, and galleries, to walk upon; defending apparel, as trains of gowns and kirtles, from dust." 4 SCENE I.-"Our book." Book means charter, or deed. We find the word boke-land in our early history. Whiter (Etymological Dictionary, vol. iii., p. 153) says, the term Book is referred to any piece of paper, or materials, written on, which may form a Roll, however minute it may be; and this may assist our lawyers in deciding upon those points which have turned on the original sense annexed to the word Book." 5 SCENE I." Velvet guards." The velvet guards-edges of velvet-seem to have been a distinguishing peculiarity of the dress of the London city-wives. Fynes Moryson says, "at public meetings the aldermen of London wear scarlet gowns, and their wives a close gown of scarlet, with guards of black velvet." SCENE I.-"'T is the next way to turn tailor," &c. Weavers and tailors were remarkable for singing at their work. Hotspur commends his wife that she will not, by singing, become like a tailor or a teacher of piping birds. Malvolio says, "Do you make an alehouse of my lady's house, that ye squeak out your cozier's catches ?" A cozier was one who sews. 7 SCENE III.-"Holland of eight shillings an ell." In this age of power-looms we are apt to forget the high price of clothing in old times, and to think that the hostess was imposing upon Falstaff when she charged the holland of his shirts at eight shillings an ell. Stubbes, in his "Anatomy of Abuses," tells us that the meanest shirt cost a crown, and some as much as ten pounds HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. OWEN GLENDOWER-the "damned Glendower" of the king-the "great Glendower" of Hotspur"he of Wales," that "swore the devil his true liegeman" of Falstaff, was amongst the most bold and enterprising of the warriors of his age. The immediate cause of his outbreak against the power of Henry IV. was a quarrel with Lord Grey of Ruthyn, on the occasion of which the parliament of Henry seems to have treated Owen with injustice; but there can be no doubt that the great object of his ambition was to restore the independence of Wales. In the guerilla warfare which he waged against Henry he was eminently successful, and his boast in this drama is historically true, that, P 2 "Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head Against my power: thrice from the banks of Wye, And sandy-bottom'd Severn, have I sent him, Bootless home, and weather-beaten back." Shakspere has, indeed, seized, with wonderful exactness, upon all the features of his history and character, and of the popular superstitions connected with him. They all belonged to the region of poetry. Glendower says, -"at my nativity, The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes." The old Chroniclers say, "the same night he was born all his father's horses were found to stand in blood up to their bellies." His pretensions as a 209 magician, which Shakspere has most beautifully connected with his enthusiastic and poetical temperament, made him a greater object of fear than even his undoubted skill and valour. When the king pursued him into his mountains, Owen, as Holinshed relates, "conveyed himself out of the way into his known lurking places, and, as was thought, through art magic he caused such foul weather of winds, tempest, rain, snow, and hail, to be raised for the annoyance of the king's army, that the like had not been heard of." His tedious stories to Hotspur, -"of the moldwarp and the ant, A clip-wing'd griffin, and a moulten raven, were old Welsh prophecies which the people in general, and very likely Glendower himself, devoutly believed. According to Holinshed, it was upon the faith of one of these prophecies in particular that the tripartite indenture of Mortimer, Hotspur, and Glendower, was executed. "This was done (as some have said) through a foolish credit given to a vain prophecy, as though King Henry was the moldwarp, cursed of God's own mouth, and they three were the dragon, the lion, and the wolf, which should divide this realm between them." Glendower might probably have "Believed the magic wonders which he sang," but he was no vulgar enthusiast. He was "trained up in the English court," as he describes himself, and he was probably exceedingly well read," as Mortimer describes him, for he had been a barrister of the Middle Temple. When the parliament, who rudely dismissed his petition against Lord Grey of Ruthyn, refused to listen to "bare-footed blackguards," it can scarcely be wondered that he should have raised the standard of rebellion. The Welsh from all parts of England, even the students of Oxford, crowded home to fight under the banners of an independent Prince of Wales. Had Glendower joined the Percies before the battle of Shrewsbury, which he was most probably unable to do, he might for a time have ruled a kingdom, instead of perishing in wretchedness and obscurity, after years of unavailing contest. "Lingering from sad Salopia's field, SCENE I.-The Rebel Camp near Shrewsbury. In this fine age, were not thought flattery, The tongues of soothers; but a braver place Ere he by sickness had been visited: His health was never better worth than now. Hot. Sick now! droop now! this sickness doth infect The very life-blood of our enterprise : . a Not I, my lord. The folio reads not I his mind;-the earlie t quarto, not I m mind. The present is the received reading, upon the correction of Capell. |