PIST. Quiet thy cudgel; thou doft fee, I eat. FLU. Much goot do you, fcald knave, heartily. Nay, 'pray you, throw none away; the fkin is goot for your proken coxcomb. When you take occafions to fee leeks hereafter, I pray you, mock at them; that is all. PIST. Good. FLU. Ay, leeks is goot :-Hold you, there is a groat to heal your pate. PIST. Me a groat! FLU. Yes, verily, and in truth, you shall take it; or I have another leek in my pocket, which you fhall eat. PIST. I take thy groat, in earnest of revenge. FLU. If I owe you any thing, I will pay you in cudgels; you shall be a woodmonger, and buy nothing of me but cudgels. God be wi' you, and keep you, and heal your pate. PIST. All hell fhall ftir for this. [Exit. Gow. Go, go; you are a counterfeit cowardly knave. Will you mock at an ancient tradition,begun upon an honourable refpect, and worn as a memorable trophy of predeceas'd valour, and dare not avouch in your deeds any of your words? I have feen you gleeking and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice. You thought, because he could not speak English in the native garb, he could not therefore handle an English cudgel: you find it otherwife; and, henceforth, let a Welfh 8 8 gleeking] i. e. fcoffing, fneering. Gleek was a game at cards. So, in Greene's Tu Quoque, 1614: "Why gleek, that's your only game."-" Gleek let it be; for I am perfuaded I fhall gleek fome of you." Again, in Tom Tyler and his Wife, 1661: I fuddenly gleek, or men be aware.' STEEVENS. 56 I correction teach you a good English condition." Fare ye well. 2 [Exit. And there my rendezvous is quite cut off. And fwear, I got them in the Gallia wars. [Exit.^ 9 English condition.] Condition is temper, difpofition of mind. So, in The Merchant of Venice: " if he have the condition of a faint, with the complexion of a devil." STEEVENS. See p. 494, n. 5. MALONE. 2 Doth fortune play the hufwife-] That is, the jilt. Hufwife is here in an ill fenfe. JOHNSON. 3 News have I, that my Nell is dead &c.] Old copy-Doll. STEEVENS. We must read-my Nell is dead. In a former fcene Pistol fays: "Nor fhall my Nell keep lodgers." MALONE.] Doll Tearsheet was fo little the favourite of Piftol, that he offered her in contempt to Nym. Nor would her death have cut off his rendezvous; that is, deprived him of a home. Perhaps the poet forgot his plan. In the quartos, 1600 and 1608, the lines are read thus: "Doth fortune playe the hufwyfe with me now? JOHNSON. + The comic scenes of The Hiftory of Henry the Fourth and Fifth are now at an end, and all the comic perfonages are now difmiffed. Falstaff and Mrs. Quickly are dead; Nym and Bardolph are hanged; Gadshill was loft immediately after the robbery: Poins and Peto Troyes in Champagne." An Apartment in the French King's Palace. Enter, at one door, King HENRY, BEDFORD, GLOSTEr, EXETER, WARWICK, WESTMORELAND, and other Lords; at another, the French King, Queen ISABEL, the Princess KATHARINE, Lords, Ladies, &c. the Duke of BURGUNDY, and his Train. K. HEN. Peace to this meeting, wherefore we are met!" Unto our brother France, and to our fifter, have vanished fince, one knows not how; and Pistol is now beaten into obfcurity. I believe every reader regrets their departure. JOHNSON. s Henry fome time before his marriage with Katharine, accompanied by his brothers, uncles, &c. had a conference with her, the French King and Queen, the Duke of Burgundy, &c. in a field near Melun, where two pavilions were erected for the royal families, and a third between them for the council to affemble in and deliberate on the articles of peace. "The Frenchmen, (fays the Chronicle,) ditched, trenched, and paled their lodgings for fear of after-clappes; but the Englishmen had their parte of the field only barred and parted." But the treaty was then broken off. Sometime afterwards they again met in St. Peter's church at Troyes in Champagne, where Katharine was affianced to Henry, and the articles of peace between France and England finally concluded.Shakspeare, having mentioned in the courfe of this fcene, a bar and royal interview," feems to have had the former place of meeting in his thoughts; the defcription of the field near Melun in the Chronicle fomewhat correfponding to that of a bar or barriers. But the place of the prefent fcene is certainly Troyes in Champagne. However, as St. Peter's church would not admit of the French King and Queen, &c. retiring, and then appearing again on the scene, I have fuppofed, with the former editors, the interview to take place in a palace. MALONE. 66 6 Peace to this meeting, wherefore we are met!] Peace, for which we are here met, be to this meeting. Here, after the chorus, the fifth Act feems naturally to begin. Health and fair time of day :-joy and good wishes you all! FR. KING. Right joyous are we to behold your face, Moft worthy brother England; fairly met:So are you, princes English, every one. 2. ISA. So happy be the iffue, brother England, Of this good day, and of this gracious meeting, As we are now glad to behold your eyes; Your eyes, which hitherto have borne in them Against the French, that met them in their bent, The fatal balls of murdering bafilifks: " The venom of fuch looks, we fairly hope, Have loft their quality; and that this day Shall change all griefs, and quarrels, into love. K. HEN. To cry amen to that, thus we appear. 2. ISA. You English princes all, I do falute you. BUR. My duty to you both, on equal love, Great kings of France and England! That I have labour'd With all my wits, my pains, and strong endeavours, To bring your most imperial majefties Unto this bar" and royal interview, Your mightiness on both parts best can witness. • The fatal balls of murdering bafilifks:] So, in The Winter's Tale: "Make me not fighted like the bafilifk." It was anciently supposed that this ferpent could deftroy the object of its vengeance by merely looking at it. See Vol. X. p. 96, n. 9. STEEVENS. 7 Unto this bar-] To this barrier; to this place of congrefs. JOHNSON. That, face to face, and royal eye to eye, 8 Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart, 8 Unpruned dies:] We must read, lies; for neglect of pruning does not kill the vine, but caufes it to ramify immoderately, and grow wild; by which the requifite nourishment is withdrawn from its fruit. WARBURTON. This emendation is phyfically right, but poetically the vine may be well enough faid to die, which ceafes to bear fruit. 9ber hedges even-pleach'd, JOHNSON. Like prifoners wildly over-grown with hair, &c.] This image of prifoners is oddly introduced. A hedge even-pleach'd is more properly imprifoned than when it luxuriates in unpruned exuberance. JOHNSON. Johnfon's criticifm on this paffage has no juft foundation. The king compares the diforderly fhoots of an unclipped hedge, to the hair and beard of a prifoner, which he has neglected to trim; a neglect natural to a perfon who lives alone, and in a dejected state of mind. M. MASON. The learned commentator [Dr. Johnfon] misapprehended, I believe, our author's fentiment. Hedges are pleached, that is, their long branches being cut off, are twisted and woven through the lower part of the hedge, in order to thicken and ftrengthen the fence. The following year, when the hedge fhoots out, it is customary in many places to clip the fhoots, fo as to render them even. The Duke of Burgundy therefore, among other instances of the neglect of hufbandry, mentions this; that the hedges, which VOL. IX. 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