ACT II.
Scene 1. Page 49.
Host. A hundred mark is a long loan for a poor lone woman to bear.
The old copy reads long one, and the above alteration has, on the suggestion of Theobald, been very improperly and unnecessarily made. The hostess means to say that a hundred mark is a long mark, that is score, reckoning, for her to bear. The use of mark in the singular number in familiar language admits very well of this equivoque.
Scene 2. Page 64.
Page. Marry, my Lord, Althea dream'd she was delivered of a firebrand.
Dr. Johnson has properly noticed the error concerning Althea's firebrand. This mythological fable is accurately alluded to in 2 Henry VI. Act I. Scene 1; a circumstance that may perhaps furnish an additional argument, though a slight one, that that play was not written by Shakspeare.
Scene 4. Page 91.
Pist. Have we not Hiren here.
The notes on this expression have left it a matter of doubt whether Pistol is speaking of his sword or of a woman; but the fact is, after all, that the word Hiren was purposely designed by the author to be ambiguous, though used by Pistol with reference only to his sword. When the hostess replies, "There's none such here, do you think I would deny her?" she evidently conceives that he is calling for some wench. Pistol, not regarding her blunder, continues to handle his sword, and in his next speech reads the motto on it—SI FORTUNA ME TORMENTA, SPERATO ME CONTENTA. It is to be observed that most of the ancient swords had inscriptions on them, and there is no doubt that if diligent search were made, the one before us, in a less corrupted state, would be found. In the mean time the reader is presented with the figure of an old French rapier, in the author's possession, on which these lines are engraved: SI FORTUNE ME TOURMENTE L'ESPERANCE ME CONTENTE.
In further illustration, the following story from Wits, fits and fancies, 1614, 4to, is added:—"Haniball Gonsaga being in the low countries overthrowne from his horse by an English captaine, and commanded to yeeld himselfe prisoner: kist his sword and gave it the Englishman saying: Si fortuna me tormenta, il speranza me contenta." Part of this story had already been quoted by Dr. Farmer, but not for a similar purpose.
Scene 4. Page 94.
Fal. Quoit him down, Bardolph, like a shove-groat shilling.
Mr. Steevens supposes the shove-groat shilling to have been used in the game of shovel-board, by which he seems to infer that the games of shove-groat and shovel-board were the same; but this is apparently a mistake. The former was invented during the reign of Henry the Eighth; for in the statutes of his 33rd year, chap. ix., it is called a new game. It was also known by the several appellations of slide-groat, slide-board, slide-thrift, and slip-thrift, the first of which was probably adopted from the game being originally played with the silver groats of the time, then nearly as large as modern shillings. When the broad shillings of Edward the Sixth were coined, they were substituted for the groats in this game, and used also at that of shovel-board, which seems to have been only a variation of the other on a larger scale. Nothing has occurred to carry it beyond the time of Henry the Eighth; and from the want of such a term as a shovel-groat, it is probably not older than the reign of Edward the Sixth, who first coined the shilling piece. Shovel-board is already too well known to require any description of it in this place; but of the other little seems recorded, or not sufficient to discover the manner in which it was played. Holinshed, or rather Stanihurst, in his history of Ireland, speaking of a mandate for the execution of the Earl of Kildare in the reign of Henry the Eighth, says, that "one night when the lieutenant and he for their disport were playing at slidegrote or shofleboorde, sodainly commeth from the Cardinall (Wolsey) a mandatum to execute Kyldare on the morrow. The earle marking the lieutenant's deepe sigh, By S. Bryde, Lieutenant, quoth he, there is some made game in that scrole; but fall how it will, this throwe is for a huddle." Here the writer has either confounded the two games, or might only mean to state that the Earl was playing at one or the other of them. Rice the puritan, in his Invective against vices, black letter, no date, 12mo, speaks of "paysed [weighed] groates to plaie at slip-thrifte;" and in another place he asks whether God sent Adam into Paradise to play at it. There is a modern game called Justice Jervis, which is supposed by Mr. Strutt, who has described it at large, to bear some resemblance to shove-groat. See his Sports and pastimes, p. 225.
Scene 4. Page 94.
Pist. Why then let grievous, ghastly, gaping wounds
Untwine the sisters three. Come Atropos, I say!
This is manifestly in ridicule of Sackvile's Complaynt of Henry Duke of Buckingham, in The mirour for magistrates:
"Where eke my graundsire, Duke of Buckingham
Was wounded sore, and hardly scapt untane.
But what may boote to stay the sisters three?
When Atropos perforce will cut the thred."
Stanzas 5 and 6.
Scene 4. Page 96.
Page. The musick is come, sir.
Fal. Let them play;—play, sirs.
This music was, in all probability, that belonging to one of those dances called passameasures; and it appears to have afterwards travelled by some means or other to Barbadoes: for Ligon, in his entertaining account of that island, where he was in 1647, tells us that he heard it played there by an old fellow. Ligon, no doubt, remembered it on the stage, and it is very likely to have been the original music of Shakspeare's time; but the above writer has very ignorantly supposed it to have been "a tune in great esteem in Harry the Fourth's dayes."
Scene 4. Page 98.
Fal. Drinks off candles ends for flap-dragons; and rides the wild mare with the boys.
A flap-dragon is a sport among choice spirits, by putting nuts or raisins into a bowl of brandy, which being set on fire, the nuts are snatched out hastily and swallowed, the party usually burning his mouth and fingers. In this way men formerly drank healths to their mistresses. It is likewise a Christmas gambol among young people, at which, instead of brandy, spirits of wine are used. It is sometimes called slap-dragon and snap-dragon. In The laws of drinking, 1617, 12mo, p. 147, a person is said to be "as familiar as slap-dragons with the Flemming."
Riding the wild mare, is another name for the childish sport of see-saw, or what the French call bascule and balançoire.
Scene 4. Page 100.
Fal. ... and breeds no bate with telling of discreet stories.
Dr. Warburton would most unnecessarily read indiscreet. Mr. Steevens supposes that "by discreet stories is meant what suspicious masters and mistresses of families would call prudential information; i. e. what ought to be known, and yet is disgraceful to the teller." But Poins, of whom Falstaff is speaking, had no masters or mistresses; and if it be recollected with what sort of companions he was likely to associate, Falstaff's meaning will appear to be, that he excites no censure for telling them modest stories; or in plain English, that he tells them nothing but immodest ones.
Scene 4. Page 102.
Fal. What stuff wilt have a kirtle of?
Notwithstanding this word has excited as much conjecture as almost any other in the language, it will still admit of discussion. Kirtel is pure Saxon, and signifies, generally, a covering, i. e. over all the other garments; in which sense it will always be found to have been [properly] used. In Littelton's Dictionary it is Latinized supparum. See likewise Ducange's Glossary, and a multitude of other authorities. Hence probably covercle. From the circumstance of its occurring as often in the sense of a long as of a short garment, it is more probable that the root of the word should denote that which covers, simply, than something that is short, curtus. In one of the notes, Cotgrave is cited as making kirtle and petticoat synonymous; but this definition is at variance with the line in the comedy of Ignoramus,
"Gownos, silkcotos, kirtellos et peticotos."
It is admitted, however, that this word has been used with great latitude of meaning. Randle Holme makes it the same with the apron.
Scene 4. Page 104.
Fal. Ha! a bastard son of the king's?—And art not thou Poins his brother?
Mr. Ritson explains this the brother of Poins. But where is the use of asking the prince such a question? It must be remembered that the prince and Poins have just made their appearance, and Falstaff has a question for each. The sense therefore is, "Art not thou Poins, the brother of this bastard?"