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Of this young Percy's pride? 7 the prisoners,
Which he in this adventure hath furpriz'd,
To his own use he keeps; and fends me word,
I fhall have none but Mordake earl of Fife.

Weft. This is his uncle's teaching, this is Worcester, Malevolent to you in all aspects;

8 Which makes him prune himself, and briftle up The creft of youth against your dignity.

K. Henry. But I have fent for him to answer this; And, for this caufe, a while we must neglect

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the prifoners,] Percy had an exclufive right to these prifoners, except the earl of Fife. By the law of arms, every man who had taken any captive, whofe redemption did not exceed ten thousand crowns, had him clearly for himself, either to acquit or ranfom, at his pleasure. It seems from Camden's Brit. that Pounouny-caftle in Scotland was built out of the ranfom of this very Henry Percy, when taken prisoner at the battle of Otterbourne by an ancestor of the prefent earl of Eglington. TOLLET.

Percy could not refuse the earl of Fife to the king; for being a prince of the blood royal, (fon to the duke of Albany, brother to king Robert III.) Henry might justly claim him by his acknowledged military prerogative. STEEVENS.

Which makes him prune himfelf,] Doubtlefs Shakespeare wrote plume. And to this the Oxford editor gives his fiat.

WARBURTON.

I am not fo confident as thofe two editors. The metaphor is taken from a cock, who in his pride prunes himself; that is, picks off the loose feathers to fmooth the reft. To prune and to plume, spoken of a bird, is the fame. JOHNSON.

Dr. Johnfon is certainly right in his choice of the reading. So, in Albumazar, 1615:

66 prune yourfelf fleek."

Again, in the Cobler's Prophecy, 1594 :

"Sith now thou doft but prune thy wings,

"And make thy feathers gay.'

Again, in Green's Metamorphofis, 1613:

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"Pride makes the fowl to prune his feathers fo."

But I am not certain that the verb to prune is justly interpreted. In the Booke of Haukynge &c. (commonly called the Booke of St. Albans) is the following account of it: "The hauke proineth when the fetcheth oyle with her beake over the taile, and anointeth her feet and her fethers. She plumeth when the pulleth fethers of anie foule and cafteth them from her." STEEVENS.

Our

Our holy purpose to Jerufalem.

Coufin, on Wednesday next our council we
Will hold at Windfor, fo inform the lords:
But come yourself with speed to us again;
For more is to be faid, and to be done,
? Than out of anger can be uttered.
Weft. I will, my liege.

SCENE II.

An apartment belonging to the prince.

[Exeunt.

Enter Henry, prince of Wales, and Sir John Falstaff.
Fal. Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?

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P. Henry. Thou art fo fat-witted, with drinking of old fack, and unbuttoning thee after fupper, and fleeping upon benches after noon, that thou haft forgotten to demand that truly which thou would'st truly know. What a devil haft thou to do with the time of the day? unlefs hours were cups of fack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the figns of leaping-houses, and the bleffed fun himself a fair hot wench in flame-colour'd taffata; I fee no reason, why thou fhould't be fo fuperfluous to demand the time of the day.

Fal. Indeed, you come near me now, Hal: for

Than out of anger can be uttered.] That is, "More is to be faid than anger will fuffer me to fay: more than can issue from a mind difturbed like mine." JOHNSON.

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-to demand that truly which thou would'ft truly know.---] The prince's objection to the question feems to be, that Falstaff had afked in the night what was the time of day. JOHNSON.

This cannot be well received as the objection of the prince; for prefently after, the prince himfelf fays: "Good morrow, Ned," and Poins replies: "Good morrow, fweet lad." The truth may be, that when Shakespeare makes the Prince with Poins a good morrow, he had forgot that the scene commenced at night.

S 2

STEEVENS.

we,

we, that take purfes, go by the moon and seven stars; and not by Phoebus,-he, that wand'ring knight fo fair. And, I pray thee, fweet wag, when thou art king,as, God fave thy grace, (majefty, I fhould fay; for grace thou wilt have none.)

P. Henry. What! none?

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

P. Henry. Well, how then? come, roundly, roundly.

Fal. Marry, then, fweet wag, when thou art king, 2 let not us, that are fquires of the night's body, be call'd thieves of the day's beauty; let us be-Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the fhade, minions of the moon: And let men fay, we be men of good government; being govern'd as the fea is, by our noble and chafte miftrefs the moon, under whofe countenance we- -fteal.

P. Henry. Thou fay'ft well; and it holds well too : for the fortune of us, that are the moon's men, doth ebb and flow like the fea; being govern'd as the fea

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let not us, that are fquires of the night's body, be called thieves of the day's beauty:] This conveys no manner of idea to me. How could they be called thieves of the day's beauty? They robbed by moonshine; they could not steal the fair day-light. I have ventured to substitute booty: and this I take to be the meaning. Let us not be called thieves, the purloiners of that booty, which, to the proprietors, was the purchase of honest labour and industry by day. THEOBALD.

It is true, as Theobald has obferved, that they could not steal the fair day-light; but I believe our poet by the expreffion, thieves of the day's beauty, meant only, let not us, who are body Squires to the night, i. e. adorn the night, be called a difgrace to the day. To take away the beauty of the day, may probably mean, to difgrace it. Afquire of the body fignified originally, the attendant on a knight; the perfon who bore his head-piece, fpear, and shield. It became afterwards the cant term for a pimp; and is fo ufed in the fecond part of Decker's Honeft Whore, 1630. Again, in the Witty Fair One, 1633, for a procurefs: "Here comes the Squire of her miftrefs's body." STEEVENS,

is, by the moon. As, for proof, now: A purse of gold most resolutely fnatch'd on Monday night, and moft diffolutely spent on Tuesday morning; got with fwearing-lay by ; and spent with crying-bring in 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 fay'ft true, lad. 4 And is not my hoftefs of the tavern a moft fweet wench? P. Henry. As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of

the

3 -got with fwearing-lay by ;-] i. e. fwearing at the paffengers they robbed, lay by your arms; or rather, lay by was a phrafe that then fignified ftand ftill, addreffed to those who were preparing to rush forward. But the Oxford editor kindly accommodates thefe old thieves with a new cant phrafe, taken from Bagfhot-heath or Finchly-common, of lug out. WARBURTON.

4 And is not mine hoftefs of the tavern &c.] We meet with the fame kind of humour as is contained in this and the three following speeches, in the Moftellaria of Plautus, act I. fc. ii. Jampridem ecaftor frigidâ non lavi magis lubenter,

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"Nec unde me melius, mea Scapha, rear effe defœcatam. Sca. "Eventus rebus omnibus, velut horno meffis magna fuit. Phi. "Quid ea meffis attinet ad meam lavationem?

Sca. "Nihilo plus, quam lavatio tua ad meffim."

In the want of connection to what went before, probably confifts the humour of the prince's queftion. STEEVENS.

This kind of humour is often met with in old plays. In the Gallathea of Lilly, Phillida fays: "It is a pittie that nature framed you not a woman.'

"Gall. There is a tree in Tylos, &c.

"Phill. What a toy it is to tell me of that tree, being nothing to the purpose, &c."

Ben Jonfon calls it a game at vapours.

FARMER.

5 As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the caftle:-] Mr. Rowe took notice of a tradition, that this part of Falstaff was written originally under the name of Oldcastle. An ingenious correfpondent hints to me, that the paffage above quoted from our author, proves what Mr. Rowe tells us was a tradition. Old lad of the caf tle feems to have a reference to Oldcastle. Befides, if this had not been the fact, why, in the epilogue to The Second Part of Henry IV. where our author promifes to continue his story with fir John in it, fhould he fay: Where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard

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the caftle. And is not a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance?

Fal.

opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man." This looks like declining a point that had been made an objection to him. I'll give a farther matter in proof, which feems almost to fix the charge. I have read an old play, called, The famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, containing the honourable battle of Agin court. The action of this piece commences about the 14th year of K. Henry the Fourth's reign, and ends with Henry the Fifth's marrying princefs Catharine of France. The fcene opens with prince Henry's robberies. Sir John Oldcastle is one of the gang, and called Jockie; and Ned and Gadfhill are two other comrades, From this old imperfect sketch, I have a fufpicion Shakespeare might form his two parts of Henry the Fourth, and his hiftory of Henry the Fifth; and confequently it is not improbable, that he might continue the mention of fir John Oldcastle, till fome defcendants of that family moved queen Elizabeth to command him to change the name. THEOBALD.

my old lad of the caftle: ] This alludes to the name Shakespeare firft gave to this buffoon character, which was fir John Oldcastle; and when he changed the name he forgot to strike out this expreffion that alluded to it. The reafon of the change was this; one fir John Oldcastle having suffered in the time of Henry the Fifth for the opinions of Wickliffe, it gave offence, and therefore the poet altered it to Falstaff, and endeavours to remove the fcandal in the epilogue to The Second Part of Henry IV. Fuller takes notice of this matter in his Church Hiftory:-" Stage-poets have themfelves been very bold with, and others very merry at, the memory of fir John Oldcastle, whom they have fancied a boon companion, a jovial royfter, and a coward to boot. The best is, fir John Falstaff hath relieved the memory of fir John Oldcastle, and of late is fubftituted buffoon in his place." Book iv. p. 168. But, to be candid, I believe there was no malice in the matter. Shakespeare wanted a droll name to his character, and never confidered whom it belonged to: we have a like inftance in the Merry Wives of Windfor, where he calls his French quack, Caius, a name at that time very refpectable, as belonging to an eminent and. learned phyfician, one of the founders of Caius College in Cambridge. WARBURTON,

The propriety of this note the reader will find contested at the beginning of Henry V. Sir John Oldcastle was not a character ever introduced by Shakespeare, nor did he ever occupy the place of Falitaff. The play in which Oldçaftle's name occurs, was not the work of our poet.

Old lad is likewife a familiar compellation to be found in fome of

our

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