again and, I may fay to you, we knew where the bona-robas 5 were; and had the beft of them all at commandment. Then was Jack Falftaff, now fir John, a boy; and page to Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk." 1631,) was for many years called Ruffians' Hall, by reason it was the ufual place of frayes and common fighting, during the time that fword and buckler were in ufe; when every ferving man, from the base to the best, carried a buckler at his backe, which hung by the hilt or pummel of his fword which hung before him.-Untill the 20th year of Queen Elizabeth, it was ufual to have frayes, fights, and quarrels upon the fundayes and holydayes, fometimes, twenty, thirty, and forty fwords and bucklers, halfe against halfe, as well by quarrels of appointment as by chance. And in the winter feafon all the high ftreets were much annoyed and troubled with hourly frayes, and sword and buckler men, who took pleasure in that bragging fight; and although they made great fhew of much furie, and fought often, yet feldome any man was hurt, for thrusting was not then in ufe, neither would any one of twenty strike beneath the waste, by reason they held it cowardly and beaftly." MALONE. 5 bona-robas-] i. e. ladies of pleasure. Bona Roba, Ital. So, in The Bride, by Nabbes, 1640: "Some bona-roba they have been sporting with." STEEVENS. See Florio's Italian Dictionary, 1598: "Buona roba, as we fay good stuff; a good wholefome plump-cheeked wench." MALONE. • Then was Jack Falstaff, now fir John, a boy; and page to Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk.] The following circumftances, tending to prove that Shakspeare altered the name of Oldcastle to that of Falstaff, have hitherto been overlooked. In a poem by J. Weever, entitled, The Mirror of Martyrs, or the Life and Death of that thrice valiant Capitaine and moft godly Martyre Sir John Oldcastle, Knight, Lord Cobham, 18mo. 1601. Oldcastle, relating the events of his life, fays: "Within the spring-time of my flow'ring youth, "He [his father] ftept into the winter of his age; "Made meanes (Mercurius thus begins the truth) "That I was made Sir Thomas Mowbrais page." Again, in a pamphlet, entitled, The Wandering Jew telling Fortunes to Englishmen, 4to. (the date torn off, but apparently SIL. This fir John, coufin, that comes hither anon about foldiers? a republication about the middle of the laft century) [1640] is the following paffage in the Glutton's fpeech: "I do not live by the fweat of my brows, but am almoft dead with fweating. I eate much, but can talk little. Sir John Oldcastle was my great grandfather's father's uncle. I come of a huge kindred." REED. Different conclufions are sometimes drawn from the same premifes. Because Shakspeare borrowed a fingle circumftance from the life of the real Oldcastle, and imparted it to the fictitious Falstaff, does it follow that the name of the former was ever employed as a cover to the vices of the latter? Is it not more likely, becaufe Falstaff was known to poffefs one feature in common with Oldcastle, that the vulgar were led to imagine that Falstaff was only Oldcastle in difguife? Hence too might have arifen the story that our author was compelled to change the name of the one for that of the other; a ftory fufficiently fpecious to have imposed on the writer of The Wandering Jew, as well as on the credulity of Field, Fuller, and others, whose coincidence has been brought in fupport of an opinion contrary to my own. STEEVENS. Having given my opinion very fully on this point in a former note, (fee Vol. XI. p. 194, & feq. n. 3.) I fhall here only add, that I entirely concur with Mr. Steevens. There is no doubt that the Sir John Oldcastle of the anonymous King Henry V. fuggested the character of Falstaff to Shakspeare; and hence he very naturally adopted this circumftance in the life of the real Oldcastle, and made his Falstaff page to Mowbray Duke of Norfolk. The author of The Wandering Jew feems to have been misunderstood. He defcribes the Glutton as related to some Sir John Oldcastle, and therefore as a man of huge kindred; but he means a fat man, not a man nobly allied. From a pamphlet already quoted, entitled, The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinarie, it appears that the Oldcastle of the old King Henry V. was reprefented as a very fat man; (fee alfo the prologue to a play entitled Sir John Oldcastle, 1600, in which the Oldcastle of the old King Henry V. is defcribed as "a pampered glutton,") but we have no authority for fuppofing that Lord Cobham was fatter than other men. Is it not evident then that the Oldcastle of the play of King Henry V. was the perfon in the contemplation of the author of The Wandering Jew? and how does the proof that Shakspeare changed the name of his character advance SHAL. The fame fir John, the very fame. I faw him break Skogan's head at the court gate, when by this means one ftep?-In addition to what I have fuggefted in a former note on this fubje&t, I may add, that it appears from Camden's Remaines, 1614, p. 146, that celebrated actors were fometimes diftinguished by the names of the perfons they reprefented on the ftage:-" that I may say nothing of fuch as for well acting on the ftage have carried away the names of the perfonage which they have acted, and loft their names among the people."-If actors, then, were fometimes called by the names of the perfons they reprefented, what is more probable than that Falstaff should have been called by the multitude, and by the players, Oldcastle; not only because there had been a popular character of that name in a former piece, whofe immediate fucceffor Falstaff was, and to whose clothes and fictitious belly he fucceeded; but because, as Shakspeare himself intimates in his Epilogue to this play, a false idea had gone abroad, that his jolly knight was, like his predeceffor, the theatrical reprefentative of Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham ?-See the note to the Epilogue at the end of this play. MALONE. 7 Skogan's head-] Who Skogan was, may be underftood from the following paffage in The Fortunate Isles, a mafque, by Ben Jonfon, 1626: 66 Methinks you should enquire now after Skelton, " And master Scogan. Scogan? what was he? "Oh, a fine gentleman, and a master of arts "Of Henry the Fourth's times, that made difguifes Among the works of Chaucer is a poem called " Scogan unto the Lordes and Gentilmen of the Kinge's House." STEEVENS. In the written copy, (fays the editor of Chaucer's Works, 1598,) the title hereof is thus: "Here followethe a morall ballade to the Prince, now Prince Henry, the Duke of Clarence, the Duke of Bedford, the Duke of Gloucester, the kinges fons, by Henry Scogan, at a fupper among the merchants in the vintrey at London, in the houfe of Lewis John." The purport of the ballad is to diffuade them from spending their youth "folily." John Skogan, who is faid to have taken the degree of master of arts at Oxford, " being (fays Mr. Warton) an excellent he was a crack, not thus high: and the very fame mimick, and of great pleasantry in converfation, became the favourite buffoon of the court of King Edward IV." Bale and Tanner have confounded him with Henry Scogan, if indeed they were distinct perfons, which I doubt. The compofitions which Bale has attributed to the writer whom he supposes to have lived in the time of Edward IV. were written by the poet of the reign of Henry IV. which induces me to think that there was no poet or mafter of arts of this name, in the time of Edward. There might then have been a jefter of the fame name. Scogin's JESTS were published by Andrew Borde, a phyfician in the reign of Henry VIII. Shakspeare had probably met with this book; and as he was very little fcrupulous about anachronisms, this perfon, and not Henry Scogan, the poet of the time of Henry IV. may have been in his thoughts: I fay may, for it is by no means certain, though the author of Remarks on the last edition of Shakspeare, &c. has afferted it with that confidence which distinguishes his observations. Since this note was written, I have obferved that Mr. Tyrwhitt agrees with me in thinking that there was no poet of the name of Scogan in the time of King Edward 17. nor any ancient poet of that name but Henry Scogan, Mafter of Arts, who lived in the time of King Henry IV. and he urges the fame argument that I have done, namely, that the compofitions which Bale afcribes to the fuppofed John Scogan, were written by Henry. Bale and Tanner were, I believe, Mr. Warton's only authority. "As to the two circumftances (fays Mr. Tyrwhitt,) of his being a master of arts of Oxford, and jester to the king, I can find no older authority for it than Dr. Borde's book. That he was contemporary with Chaucer, but fo as to furvive him feveral years, perhaps till the reign of Henry V. is fufficiently clear from this poem [the poem mentioned in the former part of my note.] 66 Shakspeare feems to have followed the jeft-book, in confidering Scogan as a mere buffoon, when he mentions as one of Falstaff's boyish exploits that he broke Scogan's head at the court-gate." Tyrwhitt's Chaucer, Vol. V. Pref. "Among a number of people of all forts who had letters of protection to attend Richard II. upon his expedition into Ireland in 1399, is Henricus Scogan, Armiger.". Ibidem, p. xv. MALONE. This was John Scogan, jefter to King Edward IV. and not Henry, the poet, who lived long before, but is frequently con day did I fight with one Sampfon Stockfish, a fruit founded with him. Our author, no doubt, was well read in John's Jefts, "gathered by Andrew Boarde, doctor of phyfick," and printed in 4to. and black letter, but without date; and his existence, which has been lately called in queftion, (for what may not be called in question?) is completely afcertained by the following characteristic epitaph, accidentally retrieved from a contemporary manufcript in the Harleian library (No. 1587): Hic iacet in tumulo corpus ScoGAN ecce JOHANNIS; Sit tibi pro fpeculo, letus fuit eius in annis: Leti tranfibunt, tranfitus vitare nequibunt ; Quo nefcimus ibunt, vinofi cito peribunt. Holinfhed, speaking of the great men of Edward the Fourth's time, mentions" Scogan, a learned gentleman, and student for a time in Oxford, of a pleasaunte witte, and bent to mery deuifes, in respect whereof he was called into the courte, where giuing himselfe to his naturall inclination of mirthe and pleafaunt paftime, he plaied many sporting parts, althoughe not in fuche vnciuill maner as hath bene of hym reported." Thefe uncivil reports evidently allude to the above jeft-book, a circumftance of which no one who confults it will have the leaft doubt. See alfo Bale's Scriptores Britanniæ, and Tanner's Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, art. SKOGAN. After all, there is some reason to believe that John was actually a little bit of a poet. Drayton, in his preface to his Eclogues, fays, that "the Colin Clout of Scogan, under Henry the Seventh, is pretty;" clearly meaning fome paftoral under that title, and of that age, which he must have read, and, confequently, not Skelton's poem fo called, nor any thing of Spenfer's. Langham, in his enumeration of Captain Cox's library, notices "the Seargeaunt that became a Fryar, Skogan, Collyn Cloout, the Fryar and the Boy, Elynor Rumming, and the Nutbrooun Maid ;" and that, by Skogan, the writer does not mean his Jefts, is evident, from the circumftance of all the reft being poetical tracts. He is elsewhere named in company with Skelton; and, in support of this idea, one may refer to the facetious epigram he wrote on taking his degree, at Oxford, of Mafter of Arts. Mr. Tyrwhitt's opinion will, on all occafions, be intitled to attention and respect; but no opinion can have any weight whatever against a positive and incontrovertible fact. RITSON. 8 a crack,] This is an old Islandic word, fignifying a boy or child. One of the fabulous kings and heroes of Denmark, called Hrolf, was furnamed Krake. See the story in Edda, Fable 63. TYRWHITT. |