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.