SCENE II. London. A Street. Enter Sir JOHN FALSTAFF, with his Page bearing his Sword and Buckler. FAL. Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water ?? PAGE. He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water: but, for the party that owed it, he might have more diseases than he knew for. 7 what says the doctor to my water?] The method of investigating diseases by the inspection of urine only, was once so much the fashion, that Linacre, the founder of the College of Physicians, formed a statute to restrain apothecaries from carrying the water of their patients to a doctor, and afterwards giving medicines, in consequence of the opinions they received concerning it. This statute was, soon after, followed by another, which forbade the doctors themselves to pronounce on any disorder from such an uncertain diagnostic. John Day, the author of a comedy called Law Tricks, or Who would have thought it? 1608, describes an apothecary thus: 66 his house is set round with patients twice or thrice a day, and because they'll be sure not to want drink, every one brings his own water in an urinal with him." Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Scornful Lady: "If she fall sick upon it, shall want urine It will scarcely be believed hereafter, that in the years 1775 and 1776, a German, who had been a servant in a public riding-school, (from which he was discharged for insufficiency,) revived this exploded practice of water-casting. After he had amply increased the bills of mortality, and been publicly hung up to the ridicule of those who had too much sense to consult him, as a monument of the folly of his patients, he retired with a princely fortune, and perhaps is now indulging a hearty laugh at the expence of English credulity. STEEVENS. FAL. Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me: The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to vent any thing that tends to laughter, more than I invent, or is invented on me : I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men. I do here walk before thee, like a sow, that hath overwhelmed all her litter but one. If the prince put thee into my service for other reason than to set me off, why then I have no judgment. Thou whoreson mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my cap, than to wait at my heels. I was never manned with an agate till now:1 but I any to gird at me :] i. e. to gibe. So, in Lyly's Mother Bombie, 1594: "We maids are mad wenches; we gird them, and flout them," &c. STEEvens. 9 mandrake,] Mandrake is a root supposed to have the shape of a man; it is now counterfeited with the root of briony. JOHNSON. 'I was never manned with an agate till now:] That is, I never before had an agate for my man. JOHNSON. Alluding to the little figures cut in agates, and other hard stones, for seals; and therefore he says, I will set you neither in gold nor silver. The Oxford editor alters it to aglet, a tag to the points then in use, (a word, indeed, which our author uses to express the same thought): but aglets, though they were sometimes of gold or silver, were never set in those metals. WARBURTON. It appears from a passage in Beaumont and Fletcher's Coxcomb, that it was usual for justices of peace either to wear an agate in a ring, or as an appendage to their gold chain: " Thou wilt spit as formally, and show thy agate and hatched chain, as well as the best of them." The same allusion is employed on the same occasion in The Isle of Gulls, 1606: "Grace, you Agate! hast not forgot that yet?" The virtues of the agate were anciently supposed to protect the wearer from any misfortune. So, in Greene's Mamillia, 1593: "the man that hath the stone agathes about him, is surely defenced against adversity." STEEVENS. will set you neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your master, for a jewel; the juvenal, the prince your master, whose chin is not yet fledged. I will sooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand, than he shall get one on his cheek; and yet he will not stick to say, his face is a face-royal: God may finish it when he will, it is not a hair amiss yet: he may keep it still as a face-royal, for a barber shall never earn sixpence out of it; and yet he will be crowing, as if he had writ man ever since his father was a bachelor. He may keep his own grace, but he is almost out of mine, I can assure him.- -What said master Dumbleton about the satin for my short cloak, and slops? I believe an agate is used merely to express any thing remarkably little, without any allusion to the figure cut upon it. So, in Much Ado about Nothing, Vol. VI. p. 82, n. 3: "If low, an agate very vilely cut." MALONE. the juvenal,] This term, which has already occurred in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, and Love's Labour's Lost, is used in many places by Chaucer, and always signifies a young STEEVENS. man. he may keep it still as a face-royal,] That is, a face exempt from the touch of vulgar hands. So, a stag-royal is not to be hunted, a mine-royal is not to be dug. JOHNSON. Old copies at a face-royal. Corrected by the editor of the second folio. MALONE. Perhaps this quibbling allusion is to the English real, rial, or royal. The poet seems to mean that a barber can no more earn sixpence by his face-royal, than by the face stamped on the coin called a royal; the one requiring as little shaving as the other. STEEVENS. If nothing be taken out of a royal, it will remain a royal as it was. This appears to me to be Falstaff's conceit. A royal was a piece of coin of the value of ten shillings. I cannot approve either of Johnson's explanation, or of that of Steevens." M. MASON. —Dumbleton-] The folio has-Dombledon; the quarto PAGE. He said, sir, you should procure him better assurance than Bardolph: he would not take his bond and yours; he liked not the security. FAL. Let him be damned like the glutton! may his tongue be hotter! 5-A whoreson Achitophel! a rascally yea-forsooth knave! to bear a gentleman in hand, and then stand upon security!-The whoreson smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes, and bunches of keys at their girdles; and if a man is thorough with them in honest taking up, then they must stand upon-security. I had Dommelton. This name seems to have been a made one, and designed to afford some apparent meaning. The author might have written-Double-done, (or, as Mr. M. Mason observes, Double-down,) from his making the same charge twice in his books, or charging twice as much for a commodity as it is worth. I have lately, however, observed that Dumbleton is the name of a town in Glocestershire. The reading of the folio may therefore be the true one. STEEVENS. The reading of the quarto (the original copy) appears to be only a mis-spelling of Dumbleton. MALONE. Let him be damned like the glutton! may his tongue be hotter!]. An allusion to the fate of the rich man, who had fared sumptuously every day, when he requested a drop of water to cool his tongue, being tormented with the flames. HENLEY. 6 JOHNSON. —to bear—in hand,] is, to keep in expectation. So, in Macbeth : 66 How you were borne in hand, how cross'd." STEEVENS. if a man is thorough with them in honest taking up,] That is, if a man by taking up goods is in their debt. To be thorough seems to be the same with the present phrase, to be in with a tradesman. JOHNSON. So, in Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour: "I will take up, and bring myself into credit." So again, in Northward Hoe, by Decker and Webster, 1607: as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth, as offer to stop it with security. I looked he should have sent me two and twenty yards of satin, as I am a true knight, and he sends me security. Well, he may sleep in security; for he hath the horn of abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it and yet cannot he see, though he have his own lantern to light him.'Where's Bardolph ? PAGE. He's gone into Smithfield, to buy your worship a horse. "They will take up, I warrant you, where they may be trusted." Again, in the same piece: "Sattin gowns must be taken up.” Again, in Love Restored, one of Ben Jonson's masques :"A pretty fine speech was taken up o' the poet too, which if he never be paid for now, 'tis no matter." STEEVENS. 8- the horn of abundance,] So, in Pasquil's Night-Cap, 1612, p. 43: 9 "But chiefly citizens, upon whose crowne "Fortune her blessings most did tumble downe; STEEVENS. the lightness of his wife shines through it and yet cannot he see, though he have his own lantern to light_him.] This joke seems evidently to have been taken from that of Plautus: "Quò ambulas tu, qui Vulcanum in cornu conclusum geris?" Amph. Act. I. sc. i. and much improved. We need not doubt that a joke was here intended by Plautus; for the proverbial term of horns for cuckoldom, is very ancient, as appears by Artemidorus, who says: “ Προειπεῖν αὐτῷ ὅ τι ἡ γυνή σου Ở & πορνεύσει, καὶ τὸ λεγομενον, κέρατα αυτώ ποιήσει, καὶ οὕτως ἀπέξη.” "OvElgo. Lib. II. cap. 12. And he copied from those before him. WARburton. The same thought occurs in The Two Maids of Moreclacke, 1609: "Shine through the horn, as candles in the eve, |