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Enter another Carrier.

2 Car. Pease and beans are as dank 3 here as a dog, and that is the next way to give poor jades the bots: this house is turned upside down, since Robin ostler died.

1 Car. Poor fellow! never joyed since the price of oats rose; it was the death of him.

2 Car. I think, this be the most villanous house in all London road for fleas : I am stung like a tench 5.

1 Car. Like a tench? by the mass, there is ne'er a king in Christendom could be better bit than I have been since the first cock.

2 Car. Why, they will allow us ne'er a jorden, and then we leak in your chimney; and your cham

ber-lie breeds fleas like a loach".

1 Car. What, ostler! come away and be hanged, come away.

7

2 Car. I have a gammon of bacon, and two razes of ginger, to be delivered as far as Charing Cross.

3 Dank is moist, wet, and consequently mouldy.

4 Bots are worms; a disease to which horses are very subject. 5 Dr. Farmer thought tench a mistake for trout; probably alluding to the red spots with which the trout is covered, having some resemblance to the spots on the skin of a flea-bitten person. 6 It appears from a passage in Holland's translation of Pliny's Nat. Hist. b. IX. c. xlvii. that anciently fishes were supposed to be infested with fleas. 'Last of all some fishes there be which of themselves are given to breed fleas and lice; among which the chalcis, a kind of turgot, is one.' Mason suggests that 'breeds fleas as fast as a loach breeds loaches' may be the meaning of the passage; the loach being reckoned a peculiarly prolific fish.

7 The commentators have puzzled themselves and their readers about this word razes: Theobald asserts that a raze is the Indian term for a bale. I bave somewhere seen the word used for a fraile, or little rush basket, such as figs, raisins, &c. are usually

1 Car. 'Odsbody! the turkeys in my pannier are quite starved 8.-What, ostler!-A plague on thee! hast thou never an eye in thy head? canst not hear ? An 'twere not as good a deed as drink, to break the pate of thee, I am a very villain.—Come, and be hanged:-Hast no faith in thee?

Enter GADSHill9.

Gads. Good morrow, carriers. What's o'clock ? 1 Car. I think it be two o'clock.

Gads. I pr'ythee, lend me thy lantern, to see my gelding in the stable.

1 Car. Nay, soft, I pray ye; I know a trick worth two of that, i'faith.

Gads. I pr'ythee, lend me thine.

2 Car. Ay, when? canst tell?-Lend me thy lantern, quoth a?-marry, I'll see thee hanged first. Gads. Sirrah carrier, what time do you mean to come to London?

2 Car. Time enough to go to bed with a candle, I warrant thee.-—Come, neighbour Mugs, we'll call up the gentlemen; they will along with company, for they have great charge. [Exeunt Carriers.

Gads. What, ho! chamberlain !
Cham. [Within.] At hand, quoth pick-purse 10.
Gads. That's even as fair as-at hand, quoth the

packed in; but I cannot now recall the book to memory in which it occurred. Such a package was much more likely to be meant than a bale. The poet perhaps intended to mark the petty importance of the carrier's business.

8 This is one of the poet's anachronisms. Turkeys were not brought into England until the reign of Henry VIII.

9 Gadshill has his name from a place on the Kentish Road, where robberies were very frequent. A curious narrative of a gang, who appear to have infested that neighbourhood in 1590, is printed from a MS. paper of Sir Roger Manwood's in Boswell's Shakspeare, vol. xvi. p. 431.

10 This is a proverbial phrase, frequently used in old plays.

chamberlain for thou variest no more from picking of purses, than giving direction doth from labouring; thou lay'st the plot how 11.

Enter Chamberlain.

Cham. Good morrow, master Gadshill. It holds current, that I told you yesternight: There's a franklin 12 in the wild of Kent, hath brought three hundred marks with him in gold: I heard him tell it to one of his company, last night at supper; a kind of auditor; one that hath abundance of charge too, God knows what. They are up already, and call for eggs and butter: They will away presently.

Gads. Sirrah, if they meet not with Saint Nicholas' clerks 13, I'll give thee this neck.

13

Cham. No, I'll none of it: I pr'ythee, keep that for the hangman; for, I know, thou worship'st Saint Nicholas as truly as a man of falsehood may.

Gads. What talkest thou to me of the hangman? if I hang, I'll make a fat pair of gallows: for, if I hang, old Sir John hangs with me; and, thou knowest, he's no starveling. Tut! there are other Trojans that thou dreamest not of, the which, for sport sake, are content to do the profession some grace; that would, if matters should be looked into,

11 Thus in The Life and Death of Gamaliel Ratsey, 1605:he dealt with the chamberlaine of the house, to learn which way they went in the morning, which the chamberlaine performed accordingly, and that with great care and diligence, for he knew he should partake of their fortunes if they sped.'

12 A freeholder or yeoman, a man above a vassal or villain, but not a gentleman. This was the Franklin of the age of Elizabeth. In earlier times he was a person of much more dignity. See Canterbury Tales, v. 333, and Mr. Tyrwhitt's note upon it.

13 In a note on The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act iii. Sc. 1, is an account of the origin of this expression as applied to scholars; and as Nicholas or old Nick is a cant name for the devil, so thieves are equivocally called Saint Nicholas' clerks.

I am

for their own credit sake, make all whole. joined with no foot land-rakers 14, no long-staff, sixpenny strikers 15; none of these mad, mustachio, purple-hued malt-worms: but with nobility, and tranquillity; burgomasters, and great oneyers 16; such as can hold in; such as will strike sooner than speak, and speak sooner than drink, and drink sooner than pray: And yet I lie; for they pray continually to their saint, the commonwealth; or, rather, not pray to her, but prey on her; for they ride up and down on her, and make her their boots 17.

Cham. What, the commonwealth their boots? will she hold out water in foul way?

Gads. She will, she will; justice hath liquored her 18. We steal as in a castle 19, cock-sure; we have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible.

14 Footpads.

15 A striker was a thief. In Greene's Art of Coney Catching, the cutting a pocket, or picking a purse is called striking.' Again, '— who taking a proper youth to be his prentice, to teach him the order of striking and foisting.'

16 Some of the commentators have been at great pains to conjecture what class of persons were meant by great oneyers. One proposed to read moneyers; another mynheers; and Malone coins a word, onyers, which he says may mean a public accountant, from the term o-ni, used in the exchequer. The ludicrous nature of the appellations which Gadshill bestows upon his associates might have sufficiently shown them that such attempts must be futile; nobility and tranquillity, burgomasters and great oneyers.' Johnson has judiciously explained it. 'Gadshill tells the chamberlain that he is joined with no mean wretches, but with "burgomasters and great ones," or, as he terms them in merriment by a cant termination, great one-y-ers, or great one-eers, as we say privateer, auctioneer, circuiteer.'

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17 A quibble upon boots and booty. Boot is profit, advantage. 18 Alluding to boots in the preceding passage. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff says:-'They would melt me out of my fat drop by drop, and liquor fishermen's boots with me.'

19 As in a castle was a proverbial phrase for security. Steevens has adduced several examples of its use in cotemporary writers.

Cham. Nay, by my faith, I think you are more beholden to the night, than to fern-seed 20, 20 for your walking invisible.

Gads. Give me thy hand: thou shalt have a share in our purchase 21, as I am a true man.

Cham. Nay, rather let me have it, as you are a false thief.

Gads. Go to; Homo is a common name to all men. Bid the ostler bring my gelding out of the stable. Farewell, you muddy knave.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II. The Road by Gadshill.

Enter PRINCE HENRY, and POINS; BARDOLPH and PETO, at some distance.

Poins. Come, shelter, shelter: I have removed Falstaff's horse, and he frets like a gummed velvet1. P. Hen. Stand close.

Enter FALSTAFF.

Fal. Poins! Poins, and be hanged! Poins! P. Hen. Peace, ye fat-kidneyed rascal; What a brawling dost thou keep?

Fal. Where's Poins, Hal?

20 Fern-seed was supposed to have the power of rendering persons invisible: the seed of fern is itself invisible; therefore to find it was a magic operation, and in the use it was supposed to communicate its own property. Thus in Ben Jonson's New Inn, 1. 6:

Because, indeed, I had

No med'cine, sir, to go invisible,

No fern-seed in my pocket.'

21 Purchase was anciently understood in the sense of gain, profit, whether legally or illegally obtained. The commentators are wrong in saying that it meant stolen goods.

1 This allusion we often meet with in the old comedies. Thus in The Malecontent, 1604 :- I'll come among you, like gum into taffata, to fret, fret.' Velvet and taffeta were sometimes stiffened with gum; but the consequence was, that the stuff being thus hardened quickly rubbed and fretted itself out.

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