HOST. Will you have Doll Tear-sheet meet you

at fupper?

FAL. No more words; let's have her.

[Exeunt Hoftefs, BARDOLPH, Officers, and Page.

CH. JUST. I have heard better news.

FAL. What's the news, my good lord?

CH. JUST. Where lay the king last night?
Gow. At Basingstoke,3 my lord.

FAL. I hope, my lord, all's well: What's the news, my lord?

CH. JUST. Come all his forces back?

Gow. No; fifteen hundred foot, five hundred horse,

Are march'd up to my lord of Lancaster,
Against Northumberland, and the archbishop.
FAL. Comes the king back from Wales, my no-
ble lord?

CH. JUST. You fhall have letters of me presently: Come, go along with me, good mafter Gower. FAL. My lord!

CH. JUST. What's the matter?

FAL. Mafter Gower, fhall I entreat you with me to dinner?

Gow. I muft wait upon my good lord here: I thank you, good fir John.

keep her in the fame humour. In this fense the expreffion is ufed in The Guardian, by Maffinger :

"Hook on; follow him, harpies." STEEVENS.

3 At Basingstoke,] The quarto reads at Billingsgate. The players fet down the name of the place which was the most familiar to them. STEEVENS.

CH. JUST. Sir John, you loiter here too long, being you are to take foldiers up in counties as you go.

FAL. Will you fup with me, master Gower?

CH. JUST. What foolish mafter taught you these manners, fir John?

FAL. Mafter Gower, if they become me not, he was a fool that taught them me.-This is the right fencing grace, my lord; tap for tap, and fo part

fair.

CH. JUST. Now the Lord lighten thee! thou art a great fool. [Exeunt.

SCENE II.

The fame. Another Street.

Enter Prince HENRY and POINS.

P. HEN. Truft me, I am exceeding weary.

POINS. Is it come to that? I had thought, weariness durft not have attached one of fo high blood.

P. HEN. 'Faith, it does me; though it discolours the complexion of my greatness to acknowledge it. Doth it not show vilely in me, to defire small beer?

POINS. Why, a prince fhould not be fo loosely studied, as to remember fo weak a compofition.

P. HEN. Belike then, my appetite was not princely got; for, by my troth, I do now remember the poor creature, fmall beer. But, indeed, these humble confiderations make me out of love with my greatnefs. What a difgrace is it to me, to remember

thy name? or to know thy face to-morrow? or to take note how many pair of filk ftockings thou haft; viz. these, and thofe that were the peachcolour'd ones? or to bear the inventory of thy fhirts; as, one for fuperfluity, and one other for ufe?—but that, the tennis-court-keeper knows better than I; for it is a low ebb of linen with thee, when thou keepeft not racket there; as thou haft not done a great while, because the reft of thy low-countries have made a fhift to eat up thy holland and God knows,4 whether thofe that bawl out the ruins of thy linen,5 fhall inherit his king

and God knows, &c.] This paffage Mr. Pope reftored from the first edition. I think it may as well be omitted. It is omitted in the first folio, and in all subsequent editions before Mr. Pope's, and was perhaps expunged by the author. The editors, unwilling to lofe any thing of Shakspeare's, not only infert what he has added, but recall what he has rejected.

JOHNSON.

I have not met with pofitive evidence that Shakspeare rejected any paffages whatever. Such proof may indeed be inferred from the quartos which were published in his life-time, and are declared (in their titles) to have been enlarged and corrected by his own hand. These I would follow, in preference to the folio, and should at all times be cautious of oppofing its authority to that of the elder copies. Of the play in queftion, there is no quarto extant but that in 1600, and therefore we are unauthorized to affert that a fingle paffage was omitted by consent of the poet himself. I do not think I have a right to expunge what Shakspeare fhould feem to have written, on the bare authority of the player-editors. I have therefore restored the paffage in question to the text. STEEVENS.

This and many other fimilar paffages were undoubtedly ftruck out of the playhouse copies by the Mafter of the Revels.

MALONE.

5 that bawl out the ruins of thy linen,] I fufpect we fhould read-that bawl out of the ruins of thy linen; i. e. his baftard children, wrapt up in his old fhirts. The fubfequent words confirm this emendation. The latter part of this speech, And God knows," &c. is omitted in the folio, MALONE.

dom: but the midwives say, the children are not in the fault; whereupon the world increases, and kindreds are mightily ftrengthened.

POINS. How ill it follows, after you have laboured fo hard, you should talk fo idly? Tell me, how many good young princes would do fo, their fathers being fo fick as yours at this time is ?

P. HEN. Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins?

POINS. Yes; and let it be an excellent good thing.

P.HEN. It fhall ferve among wits of no higher breeding than thine.

POINS. Go to; I ftand the pufh of your one thing that you will tell.

P. HEN. Why, I tell thee,—it is not meet that I fhould be fad, now my father is fick : albeit I could tell to thee, (as to one it pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my friend,) I could be fad, and fad indeed too.

POINS. Very hardly, upon fuch a fubject.

P. HEN. By this hand, thou think'ft me as far in the devil's book, as thou, and Falstaff, for obduracy and perfiftency: Let the end try the man. But I tell thee, my heart bleeds inwardly, that my father is fo fick and keeping fuch vile company as thou art, hath in reafon taken from me all oftentation of forrow.6

"Out the ruins" is the fame as "out of" &c. Of this elliptical phrafeology I have seen instances, though I omitted to note them. STEEVENS.

6 all oftentation of forrow.] Oftentation is here not boastful show, but fimply show. Merchant of Venice:

one well studied in a fad oftent

"To please his grandame." JOHNSON,

POINS. The reason?

P. HEN. What would'ft thou think of me, if I fhould weep?

POINS. I would think thee a moft princely hypocrite.

P. HEN. It would be every man's thought and thou art a bleffed fellow, to think as every man thinks; never a man's thought in the world keeps the road-way better than thine: every man would think me an hypocrite indeed. And what accites your most worshipful thought, to think fo?

POINS. Why, because you have been fo lewd, and fo much engraffed to Falftaff.

P. HEN. And to thee.

POINS. By this light, I am well fpoken of, I can hear it with my own ears: the worst that they can fay of me is, that I am a second brother, and that I am a proper fellow of my hands; and those two things, I confefs, I cannot help. By the mafs, here comes Bardolph.

P. HEN. And the boy that I gave Falstaff: he had him from me chriftian; and look, if the fat villain have not transformed him ape.

7

•proper fellow of my hands ;] A tall or proper fellow of his hands was a ftout fighting man. JOHNSON.

In this place, however, it means a good looking, well made, perfonable man. Poins might certainly have helped his being a fighting fellow. RITSON.

A handsome fellow of my fize; or of my inches, as we should now express it. M. MASON.

Proper, it has been already observed, in our author's time, fignified handfome. See Vol. VI. p. 74, n. 8; and Vol. VII. p. 248, n. 1. "As tall a man of his hands" has already occurred in The Merry Wives of Windfor. See Vol, V. p. 50, n. 4. MALONE.