about, and come you in, and come you in: rah, tah, tah, would 'a say; bounce, would 'a say; and away again would 'a go, and again would 'a come:-I shall never see such a fellow.

Fal. These fellows will do well, master Shallow.-God keep you, master Silence; I will not use many words with you:-Fare you well, gentlemen both: I thank you; I must a dozen mile to-night.-Bardolph, give the soldiers coats.

Shal. Sir John, heaven bless you, and prosper your affairs, and send us peace! As you return, visit my house; let our old acquaintance be renewed: peradventure, I will with you to the court.

Fal. I would you would, master Shallow.

Shal. Go to; I have spoke, at a word. Fare you

well.

[Exeunt SHAL. and SIL.

Fal. Fare you well, gentle gentlemen. On, Bardolph; lead the men away. [Exeunt BARD. Recruits, &c.] As I return, I will fetch off these justices: I do see the bottom of justice Shallow. Lord, lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying! This same starved justice hath done nothing but prate to me of the wildness of his youth, and the feats he hath done about Turnbull-street;5 and every third word a lie, duer paid to the hearer than the Turk's tribute. I do remember him at Clement'sinn, like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring: when he was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with

should appear to the reader of any weight, by extending the parenthesis to the words-" Arthur's Show," it is obviated; for Shallow might have resided at Clement's Inn, and displayed his feats of archery in Arthur's show elsewhere, not on the day here alluded to. The meaning will then be, I remember when I resided at Clement's Inn, and in the exhibition of archery made by Arthur's knights I used to represent Sir Dagonet, that among the soldiers exercised at Mile-end Green, there was, &c. Malone.

a little quiver fellow,] Quiver is nimble, active, &c. "There is a maner fishe that hyght mugill, which is full quiver and swifte." Bartholomeus, 1535, bl. 1. Henderson.

5

about Turnbull-street;] In an old comedy called RamAlley, or Merry Tricks, this street is mentioned again:

"You swaggering, cheating, Turnbull-street rogue." Turnbull or Turnmill-street, is near Cow-cross, West-Smithfield.

Steevens.

a knife: he was so forlorn, that his dimensions to any thick sight were invisible: he was the very Genius of famine; yet lecherous as a monkey, and the whores called him-mandrake:7 he came ever in the rear-ward of the fashion; and sung those tunes to the over-scutched huswives that he heard the carmen whistle, and sware

6

were invisible:] The old copies read, by an apparent error of the press, invincible. Mr. Rowe introduced the necessary change. Steevens.

were invincible:] That is, could not be master'd by any thick sight. Mr. Rowe and the other modern editors read, I think, without necessity, invisible. Malone.

Invincible cannot possibly be the true reading, invincible to, not being English; for who ever wrote or said-not be conquered to? Invincible by is the usual phrase; though Shakspeare in Much Ado about Nothing, makes Don Pedro say, "I would have thought her spirit had been invincible against all assaults of affection;" a sufficient proof that he would not have written "invincible to a thick sight." Steevens.

7- called him mandrake:] In the age of Shakspeare, (as I learn from Thomas Lupton's Third Booke of Notable Thinges, 4to. bl. 1.) it was customary "to make counterfeat mandrag, which is sold by deceyuers for much money." Out of the great double root of briony (by means of a process not worth transcribing) they produced the kind of priapic idol to which Shallow has been compared. Steevens.

Bullein, in his Bullwark of Defence against all Sicknesse, &c. fol. 1597, p. 41, speaking of mandrake, says: 66 - this hearbe is called also anthropomorphos, because it beareth the image of a man; and that is false. For no herbe hath the shape of a man or woman; no truly, it is not naturall of his owne growing: but by the crafty invention of some false men it is done by arte. "My friend Marcellus, the description of this mandrake, as I have sayd, was nothing but the imposterous subtility of wicked people. Perhaps of fryers or supersticious monkes whych have wrytten thereof at length; but as for Dioscorides, Galen, and Plinie, &c. they have not wrytten thereof so largely as for to have head, armes, fyngers," &c. Reed.

See a former scene of this play, p. 20, n. 8; and Sir Thomas Brown's Vulgar Errors, p. 72, edit. 1616 Malone.

8 over-scutched-] That is, whipt, carted. Pope.

I rather think that the word means dirty or grimed. The word huswives agrees better with this sense. Shallow crept into mean houses, and boasted his accomplishments to dirty women.

Johnson.

Ray, among his north country words, says that an over-switched huswife is a strumpet. Over-scutched has undoubtedly the meaning which Mr. Pope has affixed to it. Over-scutched is the same as

-they were his fancies, or his good-nights.

And now

is this Vice's dagger1 become a squire; and talks as fa

over-scotched. A scutch or scotch is a cut or lash with a rod or whip. Steevens.

The following passage in Maroccus Extaticus, or Bankes' Bay Horse in a Traunce, 4to. 1595, inclines me to believe that this word is used in a wanton sense: "The leacherous landlord hath his wench at his commandment, and is content to take ware for his money; his private scutcherie hurts not the common-wealth farther than that his whoore shall have a house rent-free."

Malone.

Now I bethink me, the pleasant Esquire aforesaid may have reason on the side of his enucleation; for is not the name of a procuress-Mrs. Overdone, in Measure for Measure? and hath not that festive varlet sir John Falstaff talked of his "white doe with a black scut?" Amner.

9 fancies, or his good-nights.] Fancies and Good-night were the titles of little poems. One of Gascogne's Good-nights is published among his Flowers. Steevens.

1 And now is this Vice's dagger -] By Vice here the poet means that droll character in the old plays (which I have several times mentioned in the course of these notes) equipped with ass's ears and a wooden dagger. It was very satirical in Falstaff to compare Shallow's activity and impertinence to such a machine as a wooden dagger in the hands and management of a buffoon. Theobald.

Vice was the name given to a droll figure, heretofore much shown upon our stage, and brought in to play the fool and make sport for the populace. His dress was always a long jerkin, a fool's cap with ass's ears, and a thin wooden dagger, such as is still retained in the modern figures of Harlequin and Scaramouch. Minshieu, and others of our more modern criticks, strain hard to find out the etymology of the word, and fetch it from the Greek: probably we need look no further for it than the old French word Vis, which signified the same as Visage does now. From this in part came Visdase, a word common among them for a fool, which Menage says is but a corruption from Vis d'asne, the face or head of an ass. It may be imagined therefore that Visdase or Vis d'asne, was the name first given to this foolish theatrical figure, and that by vulgar use it was shortened to plain Vis or Vice. Hanmer.

The word Vice is an abbreviation of Device; for in our old dramatick shows, where he was first exhibited, he was nothing more than an artificial figure, a puppet moved by machinery, and then originally called a Device or Vice. In these representations he was a constant and the most popular character, afterwards adopted into the early comedy. The smith's machine called a vice, is an abbreviation of the same sort. Hamlet calls his uncle "a vice of kings," a fantastick and factitious image of ma

miliarly of John of Gaunt, as if he had been sworn brother to him: and I'll be sworn he never saw him but once in the Tilt-yard; and then he burst his head, for crowding among the marshal's men. I saw it; and told John of Gaunt, he beat his own name:3 for you might have truss'd him, and all his apparel, into an eel-skin; the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a court; and now has he land and beeves. Well; I will be acquainted with him, if I return: and it shall go hard, but I will make him a philosopher's two stones to me: 4

T. Warton.

jesty, a mere puppet of royalty. See Jonson's Alchymist, Act I, sc. iii: "And on your stall a puppet with a vice." he burst his head,] Thus the folio and quarto. The modern editors read broke. To break and to burst were, in our poet's time, synonymously used. Steevens.

2

3

beat his own name :] That is, beat gaunt, a fellow so slender, that his name might have been gaunt. Johnson.

4 philosopher's two stones-] One.of which was an universal medicine, and the other a transmuter of base metals into gold. Warburton.

I believe the commentator has refined this passage too much. A philosopher's two stones is only more than the philosopher's stone. The universal medicine was never, so far as I know, conceived to be a stone before the time of Butler's stone.

Johnson.

Mr. Edwards ridicules Dr. Warburton's note on this passage, but without reason. Gower has a chapter in his Confessio Amantis, "Of the three stones that philosophres made:" and Chaucer, in his tale of the Chanon's Yeman, expressly tells us, that one of them is Alixar cleped; and that it is a water made of the four elements. Face, in the Alchymist, assures us, it is “a stone and not a stone." Farmer.

That the ingredients of which this Elixir, or Universal Medicine, was composed, were by no means difficult of acquisition, may be proved by the following conclusion of a letter written by Villiers Duke of Buckingham to King James I, on the subject of the Philosopher's Stone. See the second Volume of Royal Letters in the British Museum, No. 6987, art. 101:

I confess, so longe as he conseled the meanes he wrought by, I dispised all he said: but when he tould me, that which he hath given your sovrainship to preserve you from all sickness ever hereafter, was extracted out of a t-d, I admired the fellow; and for theis reasons: that being a stranger to you, yett he had found out the kind you are come of, and your natural affections and apetis; and so, like a skillful man, hath given you natural fisicke, which is the onlie meanes to preserve the radicall hmrs:

If the young daces be a bait for the old pike, I see no reason, in the law of nature, but I may snap at him. Let time shape, and there an end.

[Exit.

ACT IV.....SCENE I.

A Forest in Yorkshire.

Enter the Archbishop of York, MOWBRAY, HASTINGS, and Others.

Arch. What is this forest call'd?

Hast. 'Tis Gualtree forest, an 't shall please your

grace.

Arch. Here stand, my lords; and send discoverers

forth,

To know the numbers of our enemies.

Hast. We have sent forth already.
Arch.

'Tis well done. My friends, and brethren in these great affairs, I must acquaint you that I have receiv'd

and thus I conclude: My sow is healthfull, my divill's luckie, myself is happie, and needs no more than your blessing, which is my trew Felosophers stone, upon which I build as upon a rocke: Your Majesties most humble slave and doge

Stinie."

The following passage in the Dedication of The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image and certaine Satyres, 1598, will sufficiently prove that the Elixir was supposed to be a stone before the time of Butler:

"Or like that rare and rich Elixar stone,

"Can turne to gold leaden invention." Steevens.

I think Dr. Johnson's explanation of this passage is the true one: "I will make him of twice the value of the philosopher's stone." Malone.

5

If the young dace ] That is, if the pike may prey upon the dace, if it be the law of nature that the stronger may seize upon the weaker, Falstaff may, with great propriety, devour Shallow. Johnson.

6 'Tis Gualtree forest,]"The earle of Westmoreland, &c. made forward against the rebels, and coming into a plaine, within Galtree forest, caused their standards to be pitched down in like sort as the archbishop had pitched his, over against them."

Holinshed, p. 529. Steevens