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Enter the Lord Chief Justice, and an Attendant.

PAGE. Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the prince for ftriking him about Bardolph. FAL. Wait close, I will not fee him. CH. JUST. What's he that goes there? ATTEN. Falstaff, an't please your lordship.

CH. JUST. He that was in queftion for the robbery?

ATTEN. He, my lord: but he hath fince done good service at Shrewsbury; and, as I hear, is now going with fome charge to the lord John of Lancafter.

CH. JUST. What, to York? Call him back again. ATTEN. Sir John Falftaff!

FAL. Boy, tell him, I am deaf.

PAGE. You must speak louder, my mafter is deaf. CH. JUST. I am fure, he is, to the hearing of any thing good.-Go, pluck him by the elbow; I must speak with him.

James I.] fays Ofborne, in his Memoirs of that monarch, "and did fo continue till thefe, [the interregnum,] for the principal gentry, lords, courtiers, and men of all profeffions, not merely mechanicks, to meet in St. Paul's church by eleven, and walk in the middle isle till twelve, and after dinner from three to fix; during which time fome difcourfed of business, others of news. Now, in regard of the universal commerce there happened little that did not firft or last arrive here." MALONE.

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Lord Chief Juftice,] This judge was Sir Wm. Gafcoigne, Chief Justice of the King's Bench. He died December 17, 1413, and was buried in Harwood church, in Yorkshire. His effigy, in judicial robes, is on his monument. STEEVENS.

His portrait, copied from the monument, may be found in The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LI. p. 516. MALONE.

ATTEN. Sir John,——————

FAL. What! a young knave, and beg! Is there not wars? is there not employment? Doth not the king lack subjects? do not the rebels need foldiers? Though it be a fhame to be on any fide but one, it is worse shame to beg than to be on the worst fide, were it worse than the name of rebellion can tell how to make it.

ATTEN. You mistake me, fir.

FAL. Why, fir, did I fay you were an honest man? fetting my knighthood and my foldiership afide, I had lied in my throat if I had said so.

ATTEN. I pray you, fir, then fet your knighthood and your foldiership afide; and give me leave to tell you, you lie in your throat, if you fay I am any other than an honeft man.

FAL. I give thee leave to tell me fo! I lay afide that which grows to me! If thou get'ft any leave of me, hang me; if thou takeft leave, thou wert better be hanged: You hunt-counter,3 hence!

avaunt!

3

hunt-counter,] That is, blunderer.

He does not,

I think, allude to any relation between the judge's fervant and the counter-prison. JOHNSON.

Dr. Johnson's explanation may be countenanced by the folowing paffage in Ben Jonson's Tale of a Tub:

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Do you mean to make a hare

"Of me, to hunt counter thus, and make these doubles, "And you mean no fuch thing as you send about ?" Again, in Hamlet :

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O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs."

It should not, however, be concealed, that Randle Holme, in his Academy of Armory and Blazon, Book III. ch. 3. fays: "Hunt counter, when hounds hunt it by the heel." STEEVENS.

Hunt counter means, bafe tyke, or worthless dog. There can be no reason why Falftaff fhould call the attendant a blunderer, but he seems very anxious to prove him a rafcal. After all, it

ATTEN. Sir, my lord would speak with you.
CH. JUST. Sir John Falstaff, a word with you.

FAL. My good lord!-God give your lordship good time of day. I am glad to fee your lordship abroad: I heard fay, your lordfhip was fick. I hope, your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordthip, though not clean past your youth, hath yet fome fmack of age in you, fome relifh of the faltness of time; and I most humbly beseech your lordship, to have a reverend care of your health. you before your

CH. JUST. Sir John, I fent for expedition to Shrewsbury.

FAL. An't please your lordship, I hear, his majesty is returned with fome discomfort from Wales.

CH. JUST. I talk not of his majesty :-You would not come when I fent for you.

FAL. And I hear moreover, his highness is fallen into this fame whorefon apoplexy.

CH. JUST. Well, heaven mend him! I pray, let me speak with you.

FAL. This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an't please your lordship; a kind of fleeping in the blood, a whorefon tingling.

CH. JUST. What tell you me of it? be it as it is. FAL. It hath its original from much grief; from

is not impoffible the word may be found to fignify a catchpole or bum-bailiff. He was probably the Judge's tipftaff. RITSON. Perhaps the epithet hunt-counter is applied to the officer, in reference to his having reverted to Falftaff's falvo. HENLEY.

I think it much more probable that Falstaff means to allude to the counter-prifon. Sir T. Overbury, in his character of A Serjeant's Yeoman, 1616, (in modern language, a bailiff's follower,) calls him "a counter-rat." MALONE.

study, and perturbation of the brain: I have read the cause of his effects in Galen; it is a kind of deafness.

CH. JUST. I think, you are fallen into the disease; hear not what I fay to you.

for you

FAL. Very well, my lord, very well:4 rather, an't

4 Fal. Very well, my lord, very well:] In the quarto edition, printed in 1609, this fpeech ftands thus:

Old. Very well, my lord, very well:

I had not obferved this, when I wrote my note to The Firft Part of Henry IV. concerning the tradition of Falstaff's character having been first called Oldcastle. This almoft amounts to a selfevident proof of the thing being fo: and that the play, being printed from the ftage manufcript, Oldcastle had been all along altered into Falstaff, except in this fingle place by an overfight; of which the printers not being aware, continued these initial traces of the original name. THEOBALD.

I am unconvinced by Mr. Theobald's remark. Old. might have been the beginning of fome actor's name. Thus we have Kempe and Cowley, inftead of Dogberry and Verges, in the 4to. edit. of Much Ado about Nothing, 1600.

Names utterly unconnected with the Perfonæ Dramatis of Shakspeare, are sometimes introduced as entering on the stage. Thus, in The Second Part of King Henry IV. edit. 1600:"Enter th' Archbishop, Thomas Mowbray, (Earle Marihall,) the Lord Haftings, Fauconbridge, and Bardolfe." Sig. B 4. Again: "Enter the Prince, Poynes, Sir John Ruffell, with others." Sig. C3.-Again, in King Henry V. 1600: "Enter Burbon, Conftable, Orleance, Gebon." Sig. D 2.

Old might have been inferted by a mistake of the fame kind; or indeed through the lazinefs of compofitors, who occafionally permit the letters that form fuch names as frequently occur, to remain together, when the rest of the page is diftributed. Thus it will fometimes happen that one name is fubftituted for another. This obfervation will be well understood by those who have been engaged in long attendance on a printing-house; and those to whom my remark appears obfcure, need not to lament their ignorance, as this kind of knowledge is usually purchased at the expence of much time, patience, and disappointment.

In 1778, when the foregoing obfervations first appeared, they had been abundantly provoked. Juftice, however, obliges me

Please you, it is the disease of not liftening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.

CH. JUST. To punish you by the heels, would amend the attention of your ears; and I care not, if I do become your phyfician.

FAL. I am as poor as Job, my lord; but not fo patient your lordship may minifter the potion of imprisonment to me, in respect of poverty; but how I fhould be your patient to follow your prefcriptions, the wife may make fome dram of a fcruple, or, indeed, a fcruple itself.

CH. JUST. I fent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me.

to subjoin, that no part of the fame cenfure can equitably fall on the printing-office or compofitors engaged in our prefent republication. STEEVENS.

I entirely agree with Mr. Steevens in thinking that Mr. Theobald's remark is of no weight. Having already difcuffed the fubject very fully, it is here only neceffary to refer the reader to Vol. IX. p. 194, et feq. in which I think I have fhewn that there is no proof whatsoever that Falstaff ever was called Oldcaftle in these plays. The letters prefixed to this speech crept into the first quarto copy, I have no doubt, merely from Oldcaftle being, behind the fcenes, the familiar theatrical appellation of Falftaff, who was his ftage-fucceffor. All the actors, copyifts, &c. were undoubtedly well acquainted with the former character, and probably used the two names indifcriminately.-Mr. Steevens's fuggeftion that Old. might have been the beginning of fome actor's name does not appear to me probable; because in the lift of "the names of the principal actors in all these plays" prefixed to the first folio, there is no actor whofe name begins with this fyllable; and we may be sure that the part of Falstaff was performed by a principal actor. MALONE.

Principal actors, as at prefent, might have been often changing from one play-house to another; and the names of fuch of them as had quitted the company of Hemings and Condell, might therefore have been purposely omitted, when the lift prefixed to the folio 1623 was drawn up. STEEVENS.

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