In aid of Mr. Malone's conjecture that sack was so called as being a dry wine, vin sec, it may be remarked that the old orthography was secke and not sack. Dr. Boorde in his Regimente of health, 1562, 12mo, calls it so. In Hollyband's French schoolemaister, 1619, 12mo, we have "secke, du vin sec." Again, "Some of you chaplaines, get my lorde a cup of secke, to comfort his spirites." Ponet's Treatise of politike power, 1556, 12mo; and Cotgrave in his Dictionary, makes sack to be vin sec. This plausible etymology might have been wholly relied on, if an ingenious female traveller in speaking of the Tatar koumis, a preparation of mare's milk, had not informed us that she could not choose to partake of it out of the goatskin sacks in which it is carried "as the Spaniards," says she, "do their wine; which, by the by, is a practice so common in Spain, as to give the name of sack to a species of sweet wine once highly prized in Great Britain."—Guthrie's Tour through the Crimea, 1802, 4to, page 229. More stress is to be laid on this matter from a remarkable coincidence mentioned by Isidore of Seville, in his Etymologies, book iii. ch. 4, where he states saccatum to be a liquor made from water and the dregs of wine passed through a sack. See also Ducange Gloss. v. Saccatum, and Carpentier's supplement, v. Saquatum.
Whatever has been said in the course of the scattered notes concerning Falstaff's sack is so confused and contradictory, that it will be the duty of a future editor, either to concentrate them for the purpose of enabling the reader to deduce his own inference; or, rejecting them altogether in their present form, to extract from the materials they supply, the best opinion he may be able to form. There are two principal questions on the subject: 1. Whether sack was known in this country in the time of Henry the Fourth? 2. Whether it was a dry or a sweet wine when this play was written? The first is very easily solved; for there appears to be no mention of it till the 23rd year of Henry the Eighth, when a regulation was made that no malmseys, romineis, sackes nor other sweet wines, should be sold for more than three-pence a quart. The other question is full of difficulties, and the evidence relating to it very contradictory. We see it was a sweet wine before Shakspeare's time, a circumstance that may be noticed as adverse to the etymology of sec. But if it was sweet, whence the use of sugar, which we do not find to have been added to other sweet wines? The testimony of Dr. Venner proves that sack was drunk either with or without sugar, according to the palate. The quality of this wine, originally sweet and luscious, might have undergone a change, or else some other Spanish wine less saccharine in its nature might have obtained the name of sack.
Scene 2. Page 385.
Poins. ... and sirrah, I have cases of buckram, &c.
Mr. Malone has in this and some other places maintained that sirrah was not used as a term of disrespect in Shakspeare's time; but the learned commentator would probably have revised his opinion had he recollected the quarrel between Vernon and Basset in the first part of Henry the Sixth, where, in the most opprobrious manner, sirrah is answered by villain. It seems to have been used much in the same way as at present, sometimes expressing anger and contempt, yet more frequently in a milder way when addressed to children and servants. It was even applied to women.
Scene 3. Page 399.
Hot. And if the Devil come and roar for them.
This line would be highly relished by an audience accustomed in Shakspeare's time to "Satan's chaunt," on some of the minor stages. On the theatrical roaring of the Devil, see the notes of Messrs. Steevens and Malone in King Henry V. Act IV.
Scene 3. Page 403.
Wor. As to o'er-walk a current, roaring loud,
On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.