there were five more sir Johns; and, putting off his hat, said, I will now take my leave of these six dry, round, old, withered knights. It angered him to the heart; but he hath forgot that.

1 Draw. Why, then, cover, and set them down; and see if thou canst find out Sneak's noise;1 mistress Tear-sheet would fain hear some music. Despatch.The room where they supped is too hot; they'll come in straight.

2 Draw. Sirrah, here will be the prince, and master Poins anon and they will put on two of our jerkins, and aprons; and sir John must not know of it. Bardolph hath brought word.

1 Draw. By the mass, here will be old utis. will be an excellent stratagem.

2 Draw. I'll see if I can find out Sneak.

Enter Hostess and DOLL TEAR-SHEET.

2

It

[Exit.

Host. I' faith, sweet heart, methinks now you are in an excellent good temperality; your pulsidge beats as extraordinarily as heart would desire; and your color, I warrant you, is as red as any rose. But, i' faith, you have drunk too much canaries; and that's a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes the blood ere one can say,-What's this? How do you now?

Dol. Better than I was. Hem.

Host. Why, that's well said; a good heart's worth gold. Look, here comes sir John.

1 A noise, or a consort, was used for a set or company of musicians. Sneak was a street minstrel, and therefore the drawer goes out to listen for his band. Falstaff addresses them as a company in another scene. In the old play of King Henry IV. "There came the young prince, and two or three more of his companions, and called for wine good store, and then sent for a noyce of musitians,” &c.

2 Old utis is old festivity, or merry doings. Utis, or ulas, being the eighth day after any festival, any day between the feast and the eighth day was said to be within the utas, from the French huit.

Enter FALSTAFF, singing.

Fal. When Arthur first in court.-Empty the jordan. -And was a worthy king. How now, mistress Doll? [Exit Drawer.] Host. Sick of a calm; yea, good sooth. Fal. So is all her sect; 2 an they be once in a calm, they are sick.

Dol. You muddy rascal, is that all the comfort you give me ?

Fal. You make fat rascals,3 mistress Doll.

Dol. I make them! gluttony and diseases make them; I make them not.

Fal. If the cook help to make the gluttony, you help to make the diseases, Doll; we catch of you, Doll, we catch of you; grant that, my poor virtue, grant that.

Dol. Ay, marry; our chains, and our jewels.

Fal. Your brooches, pearls, and owches;-for to serve bravely, is to come halting off, you know: To come off the breach with his pike bent bravely, and to surgery bravely; to venture upon the charged chambers 4 bravely:

Dol. Hang yourself, you muddy conger, hang yourself!

Host. By my troth, this is the old fashion; you two never meet, but you fall to some discord: you are both, in good truth, as rheumatic 5 as two dry toasts; you cannot one bear with another's confirmities. What the good-year! one must bear, and that must be you;

1 The entire ballad is in the first volume of Dr. Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry.

2 Sect and sex were anciently synonymous; the instances of the use of the one for the other are too numerous for it to have been a mere corruption.

3 "Rascall (says Puttenham, p. 150) is properly the hunting term given to young deer leane and out of season, and not to people."

4 To understand this quibble, it is necessary to remember that a cham

ber signifies not only an apartment, but a small piece of ordnance.

5 Mrs. Quickly means splenetic. It should be remarked, however, that rheum seems to have been a cant word for spleen.

[TO DOLL.] you are the weaker vessel, as they say, the emptier vessel.

Dol. Can a weak, empty vessel bear such a huge, full hogshead? There's a whole merchant's venture of Bordeaux stuff in him: you have not seen a hulk better stuffed in the hold.-Come, I'll be friends with thee, Jack: thou art going to the wars; and whether I shall ever see thee again, or no, there is nobody cares.

Re-enter Drawer.

Draw. Sir, ancient1 Pistol's below, and would speak with you. Dol. Hang him, swaggering rascal! let him not come hither; hither; it is the foul-mouth'dst rogue in

England.

Host. If he swagger, let him not come here; no, by my faith; I must live amongst my neighbors; I'll no swaggerers; I am in good name and fame with the very best.-Shut the door;—there comes no swaggerers here; I have not lived all this while to have swaggering now ;-shut the door, I pray you.

Fal. Dost thou hear, hostess ?

Host. 'Pray you, pacify yourself, sir John; there comes no swaggerers here.

Fal. Dost thou hear? it is mine ancient.

Host. Tilly-fally, sir John, never tell me; your ancient swaggerer comes not in my doors. I was before master Tisick, the deputy, the other day; and, as he said to me,—it was no longer ago than Wednesday last,-Neighbor Quickly, says he ;-master Dumb, our minister, was by then ;-Neighbor Quickly, says he, receive those that are civil; for, saith he, you are in an ill name;-now he said so, I can tell whereupon; for, says he, you are an honest woman, and well thought on; therefore take heed what guests you receive. Receive, says he, no swaggering companions.-There comes none here;—you would bless you to hear what he said.—No, I'll no swaggerers.

Fal. He's no swaggerer, hostess; a tame cheater,1 he; you may stroke him as gently as a puppy greyhound; he will not swagger with a Barbary hen, if her feathers turn back in any show of resistance.-Call him up, drawer.

2

Host. Cheater, call you him? I will bar no honest man my house, nor no cheater. But I do not love swaggering; by my troth, I am the worse, when one says-swagger: feel, masters, how I shake; look you, I warrant you.

Dol. So you do, hostess.

Host. Do I? yea, in very truth, do I, an 'twere an aspen leaf; I cannot abide swaggerers.

Enter PISTOL, BARDOLPH, and Page.

Pist. 'Save you, sir John!

Fal. Welcome, ancient Pistol. Here, Pistol, I charge you with a cup of sack; do you discharge upon mine hostess.

Pist. I will discharge upon her, sir John, with two bullets.

Fal. She is pistol-proof, sir; you shall hardly offend her.

Host. Come, I'll drink no proofs, nor no bullets. I'll drink no more than will do me good, for no man's pleasure, I.

Pist. Then to you, mistress Dorothy; I will charge you.

Dol. Charge me? I scorn you, scurvy companion. What! you poor, base, rascally, cheating, lack-linen mate! Away, you mouldy rogue; away! I am meat for your master.

Pist. I know you, mistress Dorothy.

Dol. Away, you cutpurse rascal! you filthy bung,3

1 Tame cheater seems to have meant a rogue in general.

2 The humor consists in Mrs. Quickly's mistaking a cheater for an escheator, or officer of the exchequer.

Bung is

3 To nip a bung, in the cant of thievery, was to cut a purse. now used for a pocket, heretofore for a purse.”—Belman of London, 1610. Doll means to call him pickpocket.

away! by this wine, I'll thrust my knife in your mouldy chaps, an you play the saucy cuttle with me. Away, you bottle-ale rascal! you basket-hilt stale juggler, you! Since when, I pray you, sir?-What, with two points on your shoulder? much!2

1

Pist. I will murder your ruff for this.

Fal. No more, Pistol; I would not have you go off here; discharge yourself of our company, Pistol.

Host. No, good captain Pistol; not here, sweet captain.

Dol. Captain! thou abominable, damned cheater, art thou not ashamed to be called-captain? If captains were of my mind, they would truncheon you out, for taking their names upon you before you have earned them. You a captain, you slave! for what? for tearing a poor whore's ruff in a bawdy house?-He a captain! hang him, rogue! He lives upon mouldy stewed prunes, and dried cakes. A captain! these villains will make the word captain as odious as the word occupy,3 which was an excellent good word before it was ill-sorted; therefore captains had need look to it.

Bard. 'Pray thee, go down, good ancient.
Fal. Hark thee hither, mistress Doll.

Pist. Not I; tell thee what, corporal Bardolph ; I could tear her ;-I'll be revenged on her.

Page. 'Pray thee, go down.

Pist. I'll see her damned first ;-to Pluto's damned lake, to the infernal deep, with Erebus and tortures vile also. Hold hook and line, say I. Down! down, dogs! down, faitors! 4 Have we not Hiren here ? 5

1 Laces, marks of his commission.

2 An expression of disdain.

3 This word had been perverted to an obscene meaning.

4 Traitors, rascals.

5 Shakspeare has put into the mouth of Pistol a tissue of absurd and fustian passages from many ridiculous old plays. Part of this speech is parodied from The Battle of Alcazar, 1594. Have we not Hiren here, is probably a line from a play of George Peele's, called The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the fair Greek. It is often used ludicrously by subsequent dramatists. Hiren, from its resemblance to siren, was used for a seducing woman, and consequently for a courtesan. Pistol, in his rants, twice brings in the same words, but apparently meaning to give his sword the name of Hiren. Mrs. Quickly, with admirable simplicity, sup poses him to ask for a woman.