blet will sully. In Barbary, sir, it cannot come to so much.

Fran. What, sir?

Poins. [Within.] Francis!

P. Hen. Away, you rogue! Dost thou not hear them call 8?

[Here they both call him; the Drawer stands amazed, not knowing which way to go.

Enter VINTNER.

Vint. What! stand'st thou still, and hear'st such a calling? Look to the guests within. [Exit FRAN.] My lord, old sir John, with half a dozen more, are at the door: shall I let them in?

P. Hen. Let them alone awhile, and then open the door. [Exit VINTNER.] Poins!

Re-enter POINS.

Poins. Anon, anon, sir.

P. Hen. Sirrah, Falstaff and the rest of the thieves are at the door. Shall we be merry?

Poins. As merry as crickets, my lad. But hark ye; what cunning match have you made with this jest of the drawer? come, what's the issue?

P. Hen. I am now of all humours, that have show'd themselves humours, since the old days of goodman Adam to the pupil age of this present twelve o'clock at midnight. [Re-enter FRANCIS, with Wine.] What's o'clock, Francis?

Fran. Anon, anon, sir.

[Exit".

sweet wine." It seems to have been either brown or white, and is often mentioned in writers of Shakespeare's time, not unfrequently as the ground-work of a pun.

8 Dost thou NOT hear them call?] The folio omits "not,' against all authority. The stage-direction is that of the old copies.

9 Exit.] The modern editors make Francis properly re-enter, but they never inform us at what point he goes out again. He no doubt merely hurries across the stage upon his vocation.

P. Hen. That ever this fellow should have fewer words than a parrot, and yet the son of a woman! His industry is up-stairs, and down-stairs; his eloquence, the parcel of a reckoning. I am not yet of Percy's mind, the Hotspur of the North; he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife,-“ Fie upon this quiet life! I want work." "O my sweet Harry," says she, "how many hast thou killed to-day?" "Give my roan horse a drench," says he, and answers, "Some fourteen," an hour after; "a trifle, a trifle."-I pr'ythee, call in Falstaff: I'll play Percy, and that damned brawn shall play dame Mortimer his wife. "Rivo!" says the drunkard'. Call in ribs, call in tallow.

Enter FALSTAFF, GADSHILL, BARDOLPH, and PETO. Poins. Welcome, Jack. Where hast thou been? Fal. A plague of all cowards, I say, and a vengeance too! marry, and amen!-Give me a cup of sack, boy. -Ere I lead this life long, I'll sew nether-stocks2, and mend them, and foot them too. A plague of all cowards!-Give me a cup of sack, rogue.-Is there no virtue extant? [He drinks.

P. Hen. Didst thou never see Titan kiss a dish of butter? pitiful-hearted Titan, that melted at the sweet tale of the sun3! if thou didst, then behold that compound.

1 "Rivo!" says the drunkard.] Rico! is a drinking exclamation," the etymology of which (says the Rev. A. Dyce, in his edit. of Middleton's Works, vol. i. p. 243) has not been discovered." See "Twelfth Night," Vol. iii. p. 331, where "Rico Castiliano!" is quoted from Marlowe's "Rich Jew of Malta." This might show it to be of Spanish origin: possibly, after all, it is only a corruption of bibo.

2 I'll sew nether-stocks,] i. e. lower stocks, or stockings.

3 Pitiful-hearted Titan, that melted at the sweet tale of the SUN!] This is the reading of the folio, 1623: the first and second quartos have sonnes for sun: the later quartos are like the folio. The passage has been hotly disputed by Theobald, Warburton, Steevens, Malone, &c., but we think that Warburton's interpretation of the meaning must be adopted: he read "pitiful-hearted Titan" as in parenthesis, and made the word "that" refer to the butter, which melted "at the sweet tale of the sun :" still a difficulty remains in the words "at the

Fal. You rogue, here's lime in this sack too: there is nothing but roguery to be found in villainous man1: yet a coward is worse than a cup of sack with lime in it; a villainous coward.-Go thy ways, old Jack: die when thou wilt, if manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the earth, then am I a shotten herring. There live not three good men unhanged in England, and one of them is fat, and grows old: God help the while! a bad world, I say. I would I were a weaver; I could sing psalms or any things. A plague of all cowards, I say still.

P. Hen. How now, wool-sack! what mutter you?

Fal. A king's son! If I do not beat thee out of thy kingdom with a dagger of lath, and drive all thy subjects afore thee like a flock of wild geese, I'll never wear hair on my face more. You prince of Wales!

P. Hen. Why, you whoreson round man, what's the matter?

Fal. Are you not a coward? answer me to that? and Poins there?

Poins. 'Zounds! ye fat paunch, an ye call me coward, I'll stab thee.

Fal. I call thee coward! I'll see thee damned ere I

sweet tale," unless we suppose Titan to whisper a tale, while he is kissing the "dish of butter." Malone would make out an allusion to Phaeton, and that the "tale" was that of the destruction of the son of Titan. No explanation can perhaps be entirely satisfactory.

There is nothing but roguery to be found in villainous man :] given, not quoted, in the Palladis Tamia of Francis Meres, fo. 281. was printed in the same year as the play before us.

This line is
The work

I could sing psalms or any thing.] This is the text of the quarto, 1598, and of all the other quarto editions: the folio, 1623, alters it to, "I could sing all manner of songs," as Malone says, to avoid the penalty of the statute, 3 Jac. I. c. 21. This may be so, but the folio is anything but consistent in this mode of mutilating the original, for just before it offends against the statute by inserting the name of the Creator, "God help the while!" We prefer to give the language of Shakespeare as nearly as possible as he wrote it, and not as it might be corrected by the Master of the Revels, in order not to offend against a law which did not exist at the time when this play was composed.

6 Poins. 'Zounds !] In the folio, 1623, this speech (omitting the interjection) is assigned to the Prince, a misprint which had first found its way into the quarto, 1613, from which the folio was reprinted.

call thee coward; but I would give a thousand pound, I could run as fast as thou canst. You are straight enough in the shoulders; you care not who sees your back. Call you that backing of your friends? A plague upon such backing! give me them that will face me.-Give me a cup of sack: I am a rogue, if I drunk to-day.

P. Hen. O villain! thy lips are scarce wiped since thou drunk'st last.

Fal. All's one for that. [He drinks.] A plague of all cowards, still say I.

P. Hen. What's the matter?

Fal. What's the matter? there be four of us here have ta'en a thousand pound this day morning'.

P. Hen. Where is it, Jack? where is it?

Fal. Where is it? taken from us it is: a hundred upon poor four of us.

P. Hen. What, a hundred, man?

Fal. I am a rogue, if I were not at half-sword with a dozen of them two hours together. I have 'scap'd by miracle. I am eight times thrust through the doublet; four through the hose; my buckler cut through and through; my sword hacked like a hand-saw: ecce sigпит. I never dealt better since I was a man: all would not do. A plague of all cowards!-Let them speak if they speak more or less than truth, they are villains, and the sons of darkness.

P. Hen. Speak, sirs: how was it??

7 this DAY morning.] So the first two quartos, according to the phraseology of the time later editions omit "day." The expression "this day morning" is still used in our eastern counties.

8 A hundred upon poor four of us.] So all the old copies. Malone and the modern editors omit " of."

9 P. Hen. Speak, sirs: how was it?] In the quarto editions these words are erroneously assigned to Gadshill, and Ross. stands as the prefix to what Bardolph ought to say. We have seen before, p. 235, that Rossill was inserted in the text for Bardolph. Instead of Rossill we have, therefore, placed Bardolph as the prefix; but the editors of the first folio mistakenly assigned the speeches to Gadshill, who, in the quarto copies, speaks in his own person. Modern editors have inadvertently adopted the error of the first folio.

Bard. We four set upon some dozen,—
Fal. Sixteen, at least, my lord.

Bard. And bound them.

Peto. No, no, they were not bound.

Fal. You rogue, they were bound, every man of them; or I am a Jew else, an Ebrew Jew.

Bard. As we were sharing, some six or seven fresh men set upon us,

Fal. And unbound the rest, and then come in the other.

P. Hen. What fought ye with them all?

Fal. All? I know not what ye call all; but if I fought not with fifty of them, I am a bunch of radish: if there were not two or three and fifty upon poor old Jack, then am I no two-legged creature.

P. Hen. Pray God, you have not murdered some of them'.

Fal. Nay, that's past praying for: I have peppered two of them: two, I am sure, I have paid; two rogues in buckram suits. I tell thee what, Hal, if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse. Thou knowest my old ward:-here I lay, and thus I bore my point. Four rogues in buckram let drive at me,—

P. Hen. What four? thou saidst but two even now. Fal. Four, Hal; I told thee four.

Poins. Ay, ay, he said four.

Fal. These four came all a-front, and mainly thrust I made me no more ado, but took all their seven points in my target, thus.

at me.

P. Hen. Seven? why, there were but four even now. Fal. In buckram.

Poins. Ay, four, in buckram suits.

1 P. Hen. Pray God, you have not murdered some of them.] This speech is given in all the quartos, prior to that of 1613, to the Prince, but the quarto, 1613, having misprinted Poins for Prin, the folio repeated the blunder, and the modern editors followed the folio.

2 but took ALL their seven points-] Malone omits "all," which is in every old copy, and much heightens the force of what Falstaff says.