[269] Let me understand you. So Falstaff says, "I would your grace would take me with you; whom means your grace?"—"First Part of King Henry IV.," act ii. sc. 2, and Dr Johnson's and Dr Farmer's notes.
[270] This is one of the many instances which might be given where a parson is called Sir. "Upon which," says Sir John Hawkins, "it may be observed, that anciently it was the common designation both of one in holy orders and a knight." Fuller somewhere in his "Church History" says, that anciently there were in England more sirs than knights; and so lately as temp. William and Mary, in a deposition in the Exchequer, in a case of tithes, the witness, speaking of the curate, whom he remembers, styles him Sir Gyles. Vide Gibson's "View of the State of the Churches of Door, Home-Lacey," &c., p. 36. Note to "The Merry Wives of Windsor," act i. sc. 1, edit. 1778.
So in the "New Trick to Cheat the Devil," 1639: "Sir me no Sirs; I am no knight nor Churchman."—Collier.
[271] This expression is used by Falstaff, in the "Second Part of King Henry IV.," act ii. sc. 1.
[272] Go.
[273] The Host's conversation is wholly made up of puns and quibbles. He means here his hungry guests. [See p. 244.] His address to the smith before, on reading the little Geneva print, was [an equivoque on the redness of his eyes from having drunk too much, and the small type in which the Scriptures were printed in the common Genevan version.]
[274] The 4o of 1617 reads bosonians; that of 1631, bonasosis.
[275] [A play on shall and shale (or shell).] Churchyard, in his "Challenge," 1593, says—
"Thus all with shall; or shalles ye shal be fed."
The old editions spell it shales, and it is not a very forced construction to suppose that Mounchensey, complaining of Clare's want of faith, uses the word shalls in the sense of promises; and this seems to be the real meaning of the quotation from Churchyard.—Collier.