Fal. Thou hast the most unsavoury similes: and art, indeed, the most comparative 12, rascalliest, — sweet young prince, But, Hal, I pr'ythee, trouble me no more with vanity. I would to God, thou and I knew where a commodity of good names were to be bought: An old lord of the council rated me the other day in the street about you, sir; but I marked him not: and yet he talked very wisely; but I regarded him not: and yet he talk'd wisely, and in the street too.

P. Hen. Thou didst well; for wisdom cries out in the streets, and no man regards it 13.

Fal. O thou hast damnable iteration 14; and art, indeed, able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me, Hal, God forgive thee for it! Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing; and now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked. I must give over this life, and I will give it over; by the Lord, an I do not, I am a villain; I'll be damned for never a king's son in Christendom.

P. Hen. Where shall we take a purse to-morrow, Jack?

Fal. Where thou wilt, lad, I'll make one; an I do not, call me villain, and baffle 15 me.

P. Hen. I see a good amendment of life in thee: from praying, to purse-taking.

don, between Bishopsgate and Cripplegate, opened to an unwholesome, impassable morass, and was consequently not frequented by the citizens, like other suburbial fields, and therefore had an air of melancholy. Thus in Taylor's Pennylesse Pilgrimage, 1618:my body being tired whith travel, and my mind attired with moody muddy, Moore-ditch melancholy.'

12 Comparative, this epithet, which is used here for one who is fond of making comparisons, occurs again in Act iii. Sc. 2, of this play :

stand the push

Of every beardless vain comparative.' In Love's Labour's Lost, Rosalind tells Biron that he is a man 'full of comparisons and wounding flouts.

13 This is a scriptural expression. See Proverbs, i. 20 and 24. 14 ie. thou hast a wicked trick of repetition, and (by thy misapplication of holy texts) art indeed able to corrupt a saint.

15 To baffle is to use contemptuously, or treat with ignominy; to unknight. It was originally a punishment of infamy inflicted

Enter POINs, at a distance.

Fal. Why, Hal, 'tis my vocation, Hal; 'tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation. Poins! Now shall we know if Gadshill have set a match 16. O, if men were to be saved by merit, what hole in hell were hot enough for him? This is the most omnipotent villain, that ever cried, Stand, to a true 17 man.

P. Hen. Good morrow, Ned.

Poins. Good morrow, sweet Hal — What says monsieur Remorse? What says Sir John Sack-andSugar 18? Jack, how agrees the devil and thee about

on recreant knights, one part of which was hanging them up by the heels Hall, in his Chronicle, p. 40, mentions it as still practised in Scotland. Something of the same kind is implied in a subsequent scene, where Falstaff says: 'hang me up by the heels for a rabbit sucker, or a poulterer's hare.' See King Richard II. Act. i. Sc. i. p. 12.

16 To set a match is to make an appointment. So in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, 'Peace, sir, they'll be angry if they hear you eaves dropping, now they are setting their match. The folio reads set a watch; match is the reading of the quarto.

17 Honest.

18 After all the discussion about Falstaff's favourite beverage, here mentioned for the first time, it appears to have been the Spanish wine which we now call sherry. Falstaff expressly calls it sherris-sack, that is sack from Xeres. 'Sherry sack, so called from Xeres, a sea town of Corduba, in Spain, where that kind of sack is made.— Blount's Glossographia. It derives its name of sack probably from being a dry wine, vin sec. And it was anciently written seck. 'Your best sacke,' says Gervase Markham, are of Seres in Spaine -Engl. Housewife. The difficulty about it has arisen from the later importation of sweet wines from Malaga, or Canary sacks; sack being by that time considered as a name applicable to all white wines. 'I read in the reign of Henry VII. that no sweet wines were brought in to this reign but Malmsyes,' says Howell, in his Londinopolis, p. 103. And soon After, 'Moreover no sacks were sold but Rumney, and that for medicine more than for drink, but now many kinds of sacks are known and used. One of the sweet wines still retaining the name of sack has thrown an obscurity over the original dry sack; but if further proof were wanting, the following passage affords it abundantly: 'But what I have spoken of mixing sugar with sack, must be understood of Sherrie sack, for to mix sugar with other wines, that in a common appellation are called sack, and are sweeter in taste, makes it unpleasant to the pallat, and fulsome to the taste.' Venner's Via Recta ad Vitam longam, 1637. He afterwards carefally distinguishes Canarie wine of some termed a sacke, with this adjunct sweete; from the genuine sack. The reader will find a satisfactory article upon sack in the Glossary of Archdeacon Nares, to which I am much indebted on this as on other occasions.

thy soul, that thou soldest him on Good-friday last, for a cup of Madeira, and a cold capon's leg?

P. Hen. Sir John stands to his word, the devil shall have his bargain; for he was never yet a breaker of proverbs, he will give the devil his due. Poins. Then art thou damned for keeping thy word with the devil.

P. Hen. Else he had been damned for cozening the devil.

Poins. But, my lads, my lads, to-morrow morning, by four o'clock, early at Gadshill: There are pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and traders riding to London with fat purses: I have visors 19 for you all, you have horses for yourselves: Gadshill lies to-night in Rochester; I have bespoke supper to-morrow night in Eastcheap; we may do it as secure as sleep: If you will go, I will stuff your purses full of crowns; If you will not, tarry at home, and be hanged.

Fal. Hear me, Yedward; if I tarry at home, and go not, I'll hang you for going. Poins. You will, chops?

Fal. Hal, wilt thou make one!

P.Hen. Who, I rob? I a thief? not I, by my faith. Fal. There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee, nor thou camest not of the blood royal, if thou darest not stand for ten shillings 20, P. Hen. Well, then once in my days I'll be a mad-cap.

Fal. Why, that's well said.

P. Hen. Well, come what will, I'll tarry at home. Fal. By the Lord, I'll be a traitor then, when thou art king.

P. Hen. I care not.

Poins. Sir John, I pr'ythee, leave the prince and me alone; I will lay him down such reasons for this adventure, that he shall go.

19 Masks.

20 Falstaff is quibbling on the word royal. was of the value of ten shillings.

Vol. V.

The real or royal

6*

Fal. Well, may'st thou have the spirit of persuasion, and he the ears of profiting, that what thou speakest may move, and what he hears may be believed, that the true prince may (for recreation sake) prove a false thief; for the poor abuses of the time want countenance. Farewell you shall find me in Eastcheap.

P. Hen. Farewell, thou latter spring! Farewell All-hallown summer 21! [Exit FALSTAFF. Poins. Now, my good sweet honey lord, ride with us to-morrow; I have a jest to execute, that I cannot manage alone. Falstaff, Bardolph, Peto, and Gadshill 22, shall rob those men that we have already way-laid; yourself, and I, will not be there: and when they have the booty, if you and I do not rob them, cut this head from my shoulders. P. Hen. But how shall we part with them in setting forth?

Poins. Why, we will set forth before or after them, and appoint them a place of meeting, wherein it is at our pleasure to fail; and then will they adventure upon the exploit themselves; which they shall have no sooner achieved, but we'll set upon them.

P. Hen. Ay, but, 'tis like, that they will know us, by our horses, by our habits, and by every other appointment, to be ourselves.

Poins. Tut! our horses they shall not see, I'll tie them in the wood; our visors we will change, after we leave them; and, sirrah, I have cases of buckram for the nonce 23, to immask our noted outward garments.

21 i. e. late summer. All hallown tide meaning All-saints, which festival is the first of November. The French have a proverbial phrase of the same import for a late summer. Esté de St. Martin, Martlemas summer.

22 The old copy reads Falstaff, Harvey, Rossil, and Gadshill. Theobald thinks that Harvey and Rossil might be the names of the actors who played the parts of Bardolph and Peto.

23 For the nonce signified for the purpose, for the occasion, for the once. Junius and Tooke, in their Etymology of Anon, led the

P. Hen. But, I doubt, they will be too hard for us. Poins. Well, for two of them, I know them to be as true-bred cowards as ever turned back; and for the third, if he fight longer than he sees reason, I'll forswear arms. The virtue of this jest will be, the incomprehensible lies that this same fat rogue will tell us, when we meet at supper: how thirty, at least, he fought with; what wards, what blows, what extremities he endured; and, in the reproof 24 of this, lies the jest.

P. Hen. Well, I'll go with thee: provide us all things necessary, and meet me to-morrow night 25 in Eastcheap, there I'll sup. Farewell.

Poins. Farewell, my lord.

[Exit POINS.
P. Hen. I know you all, and will a while uphold
The unyok'd humour of your idleness:
Yet herein will I imitate the sun;

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds 26
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours, that did seem to strangle 27 him.

way; and Mr. Gifford has since clearly explained its meaning. The editor of the new edition of Warton's History of English Poetry (vol. ii. p. 496), has shown that it is nothing more than a slight variation of the A. S. 'for then anes'-'for then anis'-'for then ones, or once' Similar inattention to this form of the prepositive article has produced the phrases 'at the nale,' 'at the nend; which have been transformed from 'at than ale,' 'at than end.'

24 Reproof is confutation. To refute, to refell, to disallow, were ancient synonymes of to reprove. Thus in Cooper's Dictionary, 1584, "Testes refutare, is rendered to 'reproove wit

nesses.

25 We should read to-night, for the robbery was to be committed, according to Poins, to-morrow morning by four o'clock' Shakspeare had forgotten what he had written at the beginning of this scene.

26

'Full many a glorious morning have I scen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,-
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride

With ugly rack on his celestial face.'

27 Thus in Macbeth :

Shakspeare's 33d Sonnet.

'And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.