Cousin, on Wednesday next our council we WEST. I will, my liege. [Exeunt. The same. SCENE II. Another Room in the Palace. Enter HENRY Prince of Wales, and Falstaff. FAL. Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad? P. HEN. Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou would'st truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and 3 Than out of anger can be uttered.] That is, "More is to be said than anger will suffer me to say: more than can issue from a mind disturbed like mine." JOHNSON. 4 to demand that truly which thou would'st truly know.] The Prince's objection to the question seems to be, that Falstaff had asked in the night what was the time of the day. JOHNSON. This cannot be well received as the objection of the Prince; for presently after, the Prince himself says: "Good morrow, Ned," and Poins replies: "Good morrow, sweet lad." The truth may be, that when Shakspeare makes the Prince wish Poins a good morrow, he had forgot that the scene commenced at night. STEEVENS. the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flamecolour'd taffata; I see no reason, why thou should'st be so superfluous to demand the time of the day. FAL. Indeed, you come near me, now, Hal: for we, that take purses, go by the moon and seven stars; and not by Phoebus,-he, that wandering knight so fair. And, I pray thee, sweet wag, when thou art king,-as, God save thy grace, (majesty, I should say; for grace thou wilt have none, P. HEN. What! none? FAL. No, by my troth; not so much as will serve to be prologue to an egg and butter. P. HEN. Well, how then? come, roundly, roundly. FAL. Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us, that are squires of the night's body, be called thieves of the day's beauty; let 6 5 Phoebus,-he, that wandering knight so fair.] Falstaff starts the idea of Phoebus, i. e. the sun; but deviates into an allusion to El Donzel del Febo, the knight of the sun in a Spanish romance translated (under the title of The Mirror of Knighthood, &c.) during the age of Shakspeare. This illustrious personage was "most excellently faire," and a great wanderer, as those who travel after him throughout three thick volumes in 4to. will discover. Perhaps the words "that wandering knight so fair," are part of some forgotten ballad on the subject of this marvellous hero's adventures. In Peele's Old Wives Tale, Com. 1595, Eumenides, the wandering knight, is a character. STEEVENS. "let not us, that are squires of the night's body, be called thieves of the day's beauty;] This conveys no manner of idea to me. How could they be called thieves of the day's beauty? They robbed by moonshine; they could not steal the fair day-light. I have ventured to substitute booty: and this I take to be the meaning. Let us not be called thieves, the purloiners of that booty, which, to the proprietors, was the purchase of honest labour and industry by day. THEOBALD. It is true, as Mr. Theobald has observed, that they could not steal the fair day-light; but I believe our poet by the expression, thieves of the day's beauty, meant only, let not us who are body us be-Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon:" And let men say, we be men of good government; being governed as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we-steal. P. HEN. Thou say'st well; and it holds well too: for the fortune of us, that are the moon's men, doth ebb and flow like the sea; being governed as the sea is, by the moon. As, for proof, now: A purse of gold most resolutely snatched on Monday night, and most dissolutely spent on Tuesday morn squires to the night, i. e. adorn the night, be called a disgrace to the day. To take away the beauty of the day, may probably mean, to disgrace it. A squire of the body signified originally, the attendant on a knight; the person who bore his head-piece, spear, and shield. It became afterwards the cant term for a pimp; and is so used in the second part of Decker's Honest Whore, 1630. Again, in The Witty fair One, 1633, for a procuress: "Here comes the squire of her mistress's body." Falstaff, however, puns on the word knight. See the Curialiq of Samuel Pegge, Esq. Part I. p. 100. STEEVENS. There is also, I have no doubt, a pun on the word beauty, which in the western counties is pronounced nearly in the same manner as booty. See King Henry VI. P. III: "So triumph thieves upon their conquer'd booty." MALONE. 7 Diana's foresters, &c.] "Exile and slander are justly mee awarded, "My wife and heire lacke lands and lawful right; "And me their lord made dame Diana's knight." So lamenteth Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, in The Mirrour for Magistrates. HENDERSON. We learn from Hall, that certain persons who appeared as foresters in a pageant exhibited in the reign of King Henry VIII. were called Diana's knights. MALONE. 8 minions of the moon:] Thus, as Dr. Farmer observes, Gamaliel Ratsey and his company "became servants to the moone, for the sunne was too hot for them." STEEVENS. 9 ing; got with swearing-lay by ;" and spent with crying-bring in: now, in as low an ebb as the foot of the ladder; and, by and by, in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows. FAL. By the Lord, thou say'st true, lad. And is not my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench ?2 P. HEN. As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of 9 -got with swearing-lay by ;] i. e. swearing at the passengers they robbed, lay by your arms; or rather, lay by was a phrase that then signified stand still, addressed to those who were preparing to rush forward. But the Oxford editor kindly accommodates these old thieves with a new cant phrase, taken from Bagshot-heath or Finchley-common, of lug out. WARBURTON. To lay by, is a phrase adopted from navigation, and signifies, by slackening sail to become stationary. It occurs again in King Henry VIII: 1 "Even the billows of the sea "Hung their heads, and then lay by." STEEVENS. -and spent with crying-bring in:] i. e. more wine. MALONE. And is not my hostess of the tavern &c.] We meet with the same kind of humour as is contained in this and the three following speeches, in The Mostellaria of Plautus, Act I. sc. ii: "Jampridem ecastor frigidâ non lavi magis lubenter, ، Nec unde me melius, mea Scapha, rear esse defecatam. "Sca. Eventus rebus omnibus, velut horno messis magna fuit. "Phi. Quid ea messis attinet ad meam lavationem? "Sca. Nihilo plus, quam lavatio tua ad messim." In the want of connection to what went before, probably consists the humour of the Prince's question. STEEVENS. This kind of humour is often met with in old plays. In The Gallathea of Lyly, Phillida says: “ It is a pittie that nature framed you not a woman. "Gall. There is a tree in Tylos, &c. "Phill. What a toy it is to tell me of that tree, being nothing " &c. to the purpose, VOL. XI. the castle. And is not a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance ?4 3 As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle.] Mr. Rowe took notice of a tradition, that this part of Falstaff was written originally under the name of Oldcastle. An ingenious correspondent hints to me, that the passage above quoted from our author, proves what Mr. Rowe tells us was a tradition. Old lad of the castle seems to have a reference to Oldcastle. Besides, if this had not been the fact, why, in the epilogue to The Second Part of King Henry IV. where our author promises to continue his story with Sir John in it, should he say, "Where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man.' "" This looks like declining a point that had been made an objection to him. I'll give a farther matter in proof, which seems almost to fix the charge. I have read an old play, called, The famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, containing the honourable Battle of Agincourt. The action of this piece commences about the 14th year of King Henry the Fourth's reign, and ends with Henry the Fifth's marrying Princess Catharine of France. The scene opens with Prince Henry's robberies. Sir John Oldcastle is one of the gang, and called Jockie; and Ned and Gadshill are two other comrades.-From this old imperfect sketch, I have a suspicion, Shakspeare might form his two parts of King Henry IV. and his history of King Henry V. and consequently it is not improbable, that he might continue the mention of Sir John Oldcastle, till some descendant of that family moved Queen Elizabeth to command him to change the THEOBALD. name. my old lad of the castle.] This alludes to the name Shakspeare first gave to this buffoon character, which was Sir John Oldcastle; and when he changed the name he forgot to strike out this expression that alluded to it. The reason of the change was this one Sir John Oldcastle having suffered in the time of Henry the Fifth for the opinions of Wickliffe, it gave offence, and therefore the poet altered it to Falstaff, and endeavours to remove the scandal in the epilogue to The Second Part of King Henry IV. Fuller takes notice of this matter in his Church History:-"Stage-poets have themselves been very bold with, and others very merry at, the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, whom they have fancied a boon companion, a jovial royster, and a coward to boot. The best is, Sir John Falstaff hath relieved the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, and of late is substituted |