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.