8

I hear for certain, and do speak the truth,-
The gentle archbishop of York is up,
With well-appointed powers; he is a man,
Who with a double furety binds his followers.
My lord your fon had only but the corps,
But fhadows, and the fhows of men, to fight:
For that fame word, rebellion, did divide
The action of their bodies from their fouls;
And they did fight with queafiness, conftrain'd,
As men drink potions; that their weapons only
Seem'd on our fide, but, for their spirits and fouls,
This word, rebellion, it had froze them up,
As fish are in a pond: But now the bishop
Turns infurrection to religion:

Suppos'd fincere and holy in his thoughts,
He's follow'd both with body and with mind;
And doth enlarge his rifing with the blood
Of fair king Richard, fcrap'd from Pomfret ftones:
Derives from heaven his quarrel, and his caufe;
Tells them, he doth beftride a bleeding land,'
Gafping for life under great Bolingbroke;
And more, and lefs, do flock to follow him.

The gentle &c.] Thefe one-and-twenty lines were added fince the first edition. JOHNSON.

This and the following twenty lines are not found in the quarto, 1600, either from fome inadvertence of the tranfcriber or compofitor, or from the printer not having been able to procure a perfect copy. They first appeared in the folio, 1623; but it is manifeft that they were written at the fame time with the reft of the play, Northumberland's anfwer referring to them. MALONE.

9 Tells them, he doth beftride a bleeding land,] That is, ftands over his country to defend her as the lies bleeding on the ground. So Falstaff before fays to the Prince, If thou fee me down, Hal, and befiride me, fo; it is an office of friendship. JOHNSON.

2 And more, and lefs,] More and lefs means greater and less. So, in Macbeth:

"Both more and lefs have given him the revolt."

STEEVENS,

NORTH. I knew of this before; but, to fpeak

truth,

This prefent grief had wip'd it from my mind. Go in with me; and counfel every man

The apteft way for fafety, and revenge:

Get pofts, and letters, and make friends with speed;

Never fo few, and never yet more need. [Exeunt.

SCENE II.

London. A Street.

Enter Sir JOHN FALSTAFF, with his Page bearing his fword and buckler.

FAL. Sirrah, you giant, what fays the doctor to my water?

3

-what lays the doctor to my water?] The method of inveftigating diseases by the infpection of urine only, was once fo much the fashion, that Linacre, the founder of the College of Phyficians, formed a ftatute to reftrain apothecaries from carrying the water of their patients to a doctor, and afterwards giving medicines in confequence of the opinions they received concerning it. This ftatute was, foon after, followed by another, which forbade the doctors themselves to pronounce on any disorder from fuch an uncertain diagnostic.

John Day, the author of a comedy called Law Tricks, or Who would have thought it? 1608, defcribes an apothecary thus: "his houfe is fet round with patients twice or thrice a day, and because they'll be fure not to want drink, every one brings his own water in an urinal with him."

Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Scornful Lady:

"I'll make her cry fo much, that the phyfician,

"If fhe fall fick upon it, fhall want urine

"To find the cause by."

It will scarcely be believed hereafter, that in the years 1775 and 1776, a German, who had been a fervant in a public riding-school,

PAGE. He faid, fir, the water itself was a good healthy water: but, for the party that owed it, he might have more diseases than he knew for.

4

FAL. Men of all forts take a pride to gird at me:" The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent any thing that tends to laughter, more than I invent, or is invented on me: I am not only witty in myfelf, but the caufe that wit is in other men. I do here walk before thee, like a fow, that hath overwhelmed all her litter but If the prince put thee into my service for any other reason than to fet me off, why then I have no judgement. Thou whorefon mandrake,' thou art fitter to be worn in my cap, than to wait at my heels. I was never mann'd with an agate till now:"

one.

(from which he was discharged for infufficiency,) revived this exploded practice of water-cafting. After he had amply increafed the bills of mortality, and been publickly hung up to the ridicule of those who had too much fenfe to confult him, as a monument of the folly of his patients, he retired with a princely fortune, and perhaps is now indulging a hearty laugh at the expence of English credulity. STEEVENS.

to gird at me: i. e. to gibe. So, in Lyly's Mother Bombie, 1594: "We maids are mad wenches; we gird them, and flout them," &c. See Vol. VI. p. 547, n. 7. STEEVENS. 5-mandrake,] Mandrake is a root fuppofed to have the shape of a man; it is now counterfeited with the root of briony. JOHNSON.

• I was never mann'd with an agate till now:] That is, I never before had an agate for my man. JOHNSON.

Alluding to the little figures cut in agates, and other hard ftones, for feals; and therefore he fays, I will fet you neither in gold nor filver. The Oxford editor alters it to aglet, a tag to the points then in ufe (a word indeed which our author ufes to exprefs the fame thought): but aglets, though they were fornetimes of gold or filver, were never jet in thofe metals. WARBURTON.

It appears from a paffage in Beaumont and Fletcher's Coxcomb, that it was usual for juftices of peace either to wear an agate in a ring, or as an appendage to their gold chain: " .Thou wilt

but I will fet you neither in gold nor filver, but in vile apparel, and fend you back again to your mafter, for a jewel; the juvenal, the prince your master, whose chin is not yet fledg'd. I will fooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand, than he fhall get one on his cheek; and yet he will not ftick to fay, his face is a face-royal: God may finish it when he will, it is not a hair amifs yet: he may keep it ftill as a face-royal, for a barber fhall never earn fixpence out of it; and yet he will be crowing, as if he had writ man ever fince his father was a bachelor. He may keep his own grace, but he is almost out of mine, I can affure him.

8

fpit as formally, and fhow thy agate and hatch'd chain, as well as the beft of them."

The fame allufion is employed on the fame occafion in The Ifle of Gulls, 1606:

"Grace, you Agate! haft not forgot that yet?"

The virtues of the agate were anciently fuppofed to protect the wearer from any misfortune. So, in Greene's Mamillia, 1593: "the man that hath the ftone agathes about him, is furely defenced against adverfity." STEEVENS.

I believe an agate is ufed merely to exprefs any thing remarkably little, without any allufion to the figure cut upon it. So, in Much Ads about Nothing, Vol. IV. p. 464, n.9:

7

"If low, an agate very vilely cut." MALONE.

the juvenal,] This term, which has already occurred in The Midfummer Night's Dream, and Love's Labour's Loft, is ufed in many places by Chaucer, and always fignifies a young man.

STEEVENS.

8 - he may keep it fill as a face-royal,] That is, a face exempt from the touch of vulgar hands. So, a flag-royal is not to be hunted, a mine-royal is not to be dug. JOHNSON.

Old copies at a face-royal. Corrected by the editor of the fecond folio. MALONE.

Perhaps this quibbling allufion is to the English real, rial, or royal. The poet feems to mean that a barber can no more earn fixpence by his face-royal, than by the face ftamped on the coin called a royal; the one requiring as little fhaving as the other.

What faid mafter Dumbleton about the fattin for my short cloak, and flops?

PAGE. He faid, fir, you should procure him better affurance than Bardolph: he would not take his bond and yours; he liked not the security.

FAL. Let him be damn'd like the glutton! may his tongue be hotter!-A whorefon Achitophel! a rafcally yea-forfooth knave! to bear a gentleman in hand, and then ftand upon fecurity!-The whorefon smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high fhoes, and bunches of keys at their girdles; and if a man is thorough with them in honeft taking up, then they must stand upon-security. I had

Dumbleton-] The folio has-Dombledon; the quarto Dommelton. This name feems to have been a made one, and defigned to afford fome apparent meaning. The author might have written-Double-done, (or as Mr. M. Mason obferves, Double-down,) from his making the fame charge twice in his books, or charging twice as much for a commodity as it is worth.

I have lately, however, obferved that Dumbleton is the name of a town in Glocefterfhire. The reading of the folio may therefore be the true one. STEEVENS.

The reading of the quarto (the original copy) appears to be only a mif-fpelling of Dumbleton. MALONE.

2 Let him be damn'd like the glutton! may his tongue be hotter!] An allufion to the fate of the rich man, who had fared fumptuously every day, when he requefted a drop of water to cool his tongue, being tormented with the flames. HENLEY.

3 to bear-in hand,] is, to keep in expectation.

So, in Macbeth:

JOHNSON.

How you were borne in hand, how crofs'd."

STEEVENS.

4-if a man is thorough with them in honeft taking up,] That is, if a man by taking up goods is in their debt. To be thorough feems to be the fame with the prefent phrafe,-to be in with a tradefJOHNSON.

man.

So, in Ben Jonfon's Every Man out of his Humour :

I will take up, and bring myfelf into credit."