Enter BARDOLPH and Page.

BARD. 'Save your grace!

P. HEN. And yours, most noble Bardolph!

BARD. Come, you virtuous afs,8 [To the Page.] you bafhful fool, muft you be blufhing? wherefore blush you now? What a maidenly man at arms are you become? Is it fuch a matter, to get a pottlepot's maidenhead.

PAGE. He called me even now, my lord, through a red lattice, and I could difcern no part of his face from the window: at laft, I fpied his eyes; and, methought, he had made two holes in the alewife's new petticoat, and peeped through.

P. HEN. Hath not the boy profited?

BARD. Away, you whorefon upright rabbit, away! PAGE. Away, you rascally Althea's dream, away! P. HEN. Inftruct us, boy: What dream, boy? PAGE. Marry, my lord, Althea dreamed she was delivered of a fire-brand; and therefore I call him her dream.

* Bard. Come, you virtuous ass, &c.] Though all the editions give this fpeech to Poins, it feems evident, by the Page's immediate reply, that it must be placed to Bardolph: for Bardolph had called to the boy from an ale-house, and it is likely, made him half-drunk; and, the boy being ashamed of it, it is natural for Bardolph, a bold unbred fellow, to banter him on his aukward bashfulness. THEOBALD.

9

through a red lattice,] i. e. from an ale-house window. See Vol. V. p. 83, n. 4. MALONE.

I

-Althea dreamed &c.] Shakspeare is here mistaken in his mythology, and has confounded Althea's firebrand with Hecuba's. The firebrand of Althea was real: but Hecuba, when she was big with Paris, dreamed that she was delivered of a firebrand that confumed the kingdom. JOHNSON.

P. HEN. A crown's worth of good interpretation.-There it is, boy. [Gives him money.

POINS. O, that this good bloffom could be kept from cankers!-Well, there is fixpence to preferve thee.

BARD. An you do not make him be hanged among you, the gallows fhall have wrong.

P. HEN. And how doth thy mafter, Bardolph ? BARD. Well, my lord. He heard of your grace's coming to town; there's a letter for you.

POINS. Delivered with good refpect.-And how doth the martlemas, your mafter? 3

BARD. In bodily health, fir.

POINS. Marry, the immortal part needs a phyfician: but that moves not him; though that be fick, it dies not.

P. HEN. I do allow this went to be as familiar with me as my dog: and he holds his place; for, look you, how he writes.

POINS. [Reads.] John Falftaff, knight,

A crown's worth of good interpretation.] A Pennyworth of good Interpretation, is, if I remember right, the title of fome old tract. MALONE.

3

the martlemas, your mafter?] That is, the autumn, or rather the latter fpring. The old fellow with juvenile paffions. JOHNSON.

In The First Part of King Henry IV. the Prince calls Falstaff "the latter fpring,-all-hallown fummer." MALONE.

་

Martlemas is corrupted from Martinmas, the feast of St. Martin, the eleventh of November. The corruption is general in the old plays. So, in The Pinner of Wakefield, 1599: "A piece of beef hung up fince Martlemas."

STEEVENS.

4 this wen-] This fwoln excrefcence of a man.

JOHNSON.

Every man must know that, as oft as he has occafion to name himself. Even like thofe that are kin to the king; for they never prick their finger, but they fay, There is fome of the king's blood spilt: How comes that? fays he, that takes upon him not to conceive: the answer is as ready as a borrower's cap; 5 I am the king's poor coufin, fir.

P. HEN. Nay, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from Japhet. But the letter:-

POINS. Sir John Falftaff, knight, to the Son of the king, nearest his father, Harry prince of Wales, greeting. Why, this is a certificate.

P. HEN. Peace!

5 the answer is as ready as a borrower's cap;] Old copy-a borrowed cap. STEEVens.

But how is a borrowed cap fo ready? Read, a borrower's cap, and then there is fome humour in it: for a man that goes to borrow money, is of all others the most complaifant; his cap is always at hand. WARBURTON.

Falftaff's followers, when they ftole any thing, called it a purchafe. A borrowed cap, in the fame dialect, might be a folen one; which is fufficiently ready, being, as Falstaff says, "to be found on every hedge." MALONE.

Such caps as were worn by men in our author's age, were made of filk, velvet, or woollen; not of linen; and confequently would not be hung out to dry on hedges. STEEVENS.

I think Dr. Warburton's correction is right. A cap is not a thing likely to be borrowed, in the common fenfe of the word: and in the fenfe of Stealing the sense should be a cap to be bor rowed. Befides, conveying was the cant phrase for Stealing. FARMER.

Dr. Warburton's emendation is countenanced by a paffage in Timon of Athens:

'

be not ceas'd

"With flight denial; nor then filenc'd, when

"Commend me to your mafter-and the cap

r

Plays in the right hand, thus:——— -" STEEVENS.

P. Hen.] All the editors, except Sir Thomas Hanmer, have

POINS. I will imitate the honourable Roman in brevity:7-he fure means brevity in breath; shortwinded. I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I leave thee. Be not too familiar with Poins; for he mifufes thy favours fo much, that he fwears, thou art to marry his fifter Nell. Repent at idle times as thou mayft, and fo farewell.

Thine, by yea and no, (which is as much as to fay, as thou useft him,) Jack Falftaff, with my familiars; John, with my brothers and fifiers; and fir John with all Europe.

My lord, I will steep this letter in fack, and make him eat it.

P. HEN. That's to make him eat twenty of his words. But do you use me thus, Ned? must I marry your fifter?

left this letter in confufion, making the Prince read part, and Poins part. I have followed his correction. JOHNSON.

7 I will imitate the honourable Roman in brevity:] The old copy reads Romans, which Dr. Warburton very properly corrected, though he is wrong when he appropriates the character to M. Brutus, who affected great brevity of ftyle. I fuppofe by the honourable Roman is intended Julius Cæfar, whofe veni, vidi, vici, feems to be alluded to in the beginning of the letter. I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I leave thee. The very words of Cæfar are afterwards quoted by Falstaff. ·

НЕАТН.

8 That's to make him eat twenty of his words.] Why just twenty, when the letter contained above eight times twenty? We fhould read plenty; and in this word the joke, as flender as it is, confifts. WARBURTON.

It is not furely uncommon to put a certain number for an uncertain one. Thus, in The Tempest, Miranda talks of playing "for a score of kingdoms." Bufby, in King Richard II. obferves, that "each fubftance of a grief has twenty fhadows." In Julius Cæfar, Cæfar fays that the flave's hand "did burn like twenty torches." In King Lear we meet with " twenty filly ducking obfervants," and, "not a nofe among twenty."

POINS. May the wench have no worfe fortune! but I never faid fo.

P. HEN. Well, thus we play the fools with the time; and the fpirits of the wife fit in the clouds, and mock us. Is your master here in London?

BARD. Yes, my lord.

P. HEN. Where fups he? doth the old boar feed in the old frank? 9

BARD. At the old place, my lord; in Eaftcheap. P. HEN. What company ?

PAGE. Ephefians,' my lord; of the old churcn. P. HEN. Sup any women with him?

PAGE. Nonę, my lord, but old mistress Quickly, and mistress Doll Tear-fheet.*

P. HEN. What pagan may that be? 3

Robert Green, the pamphleteer, indeed, obliged an apparitor to eat his citation, wax and all. In the play of Sir John Oldcastle, the Sumner is compelled to do the like; and fays on the occafion," I'll eat my word." Harpoole replies, I meane you fhall eat more than your own word, I'll make you eate all the words in the proceffe." STEEVENS.

9-frank?] Frank is fty. POPE.

Ephefians,] Ephefian was a term in the cant of these times, of which I know not the precife notion: it was, perhaps, a toper. So, the Hoft, in The Merry Wives of Windfor: "It is thine hoft, thine Ephefian calls." JOHNSON.

2- Doll Tear-fheet.] Shakspeare might have taken the hint for this name from the following paffage in The Playe of Robyn Hoode, very proper to be played in Maye Games, bl. I. no date :

She is a trul of truft, to ferve a frier at his luft, "A prycker, a prauncer, a terer of hetes," &c.

STEEVENS.

3 What pagan may that be?] Pagan feems to have been a cant term, implying irregularity either of birth or manners.