MowB. Shall we go draw our numbers, and set

on?

HAST. We are time's subjects, and time bids be

gone.

[Exeunt.

ACT II. SCENE I.

London. A Street.

Enter Hostess; FANG, and his Boy, with her; and SNARE following.

HOST. Master Fang, have you enter'd the action? FANG. It is entered.

HOST. Where is your yeoman?5. Is it a lusty yeoman? will a' stand to't?

FANG. Sirrah, where's Snare?

HOST. O lord, ay: good master Snare.
SNARE. Here, here.

FANG. Snare, we must arrest sir John Falstaff. HOST. Yea, good master Snare; I have entered him and all.

SNARE. It may chance cost some of us our lives, for he will stab.

HOST. Alas the day! take heed of him; he stabbed me in mine own house, and that most beastly: in good faith, a' cares not what mischief he doth,

5 Where is your yeoman?] A bailiff's follower was, in our author's time, called a serjeant's yeoman. MALONE.

if his weapon be out: he will foin like any devil; he will spare neither man, woman, nor child.

FANG. If I can close with him, I care not for his thrust.

HOST. No, nor I neither: I'll be at your elbow.

FANG. An I but fist him once; an a' come but within my vice; 66

HOST. I am undone by his going; I warrant you, he's an infinitive thing upon my score:-Good master Fang, hold him sure ;-good master Snare, let him not 'scape. He comes continuantly to Piecorner, (saving your manhoods,) to buy a saddle; and he's indited to dinner to the lubbar's head' in Lumbert-street, to master Smooth's the silkman : I pray ye, since my exion is entered, and my case so openly known to the world, let him be brought in to his answer. A hundred mark is a long loan R

an a' come but within my vice;] Vice or grasp; a metaphor taken from a smith's vice: there is another reading in the old edition, view, which I think not so good. POPE.

Vice is the reading of the folio, view of the quarto.

STEEVENS.

The fist is vulgarly called the vice in the West of England. HENLEY.

7-lubbar's head-] This is, I suppose, a colloquial corruption of the Libbard's head. JOHNSON.

See Vol. VII. p. 185, n. 7. MALone.

• A hundred mark is a long loan-] Old copy-long one.

STEEVENS.

A long one? a long what? It is almost needless to observe, how familiar it is with our poet to play the chimes upon words similar in sound, and differing in signification; and therefore I make no question but he wrote-A hundred mark is a long loan for a poor lone woman to bear: i. e. a hundred mark is a good round sum for a poor widow to venture on trust. THEOBALD.

for a poor lone woman' to bear: and I have borne, and borne, and borne; and have been fubbed off, and fubbed off, and fubbed off, from this day to that day, that it is a shame to be thought on. There is no honesty in such dealing; unless a woman should be made an ass, and a beast, to bear every knave's wrong.

Enter Sir JOHN FALSTAFF, Page, and BARDOLPH.

Yonder he comes; and that arrant malmsey-nose1 knave, Bardolph, with him. Do your offices, do your offices, master Fang, and master Snare; do me, do me, do me your offices.

FAL. How now? whose mare's dead? what's the matter?

FANG. Sir John, I arrest you at the suit of mistress Quickly.

9 a poor lone woman-] A lone woman is an unmarried woman. So, in the title-page to A Collection of Records, &c. 1642: "That Queen Elizabeth being a lone woman, and having few friends, refusing to marry" &c. Again, in Maurice Kyffin's translation of Terence's Andria, 1588: "Moreover this Glycerie is a lone woman ;"-" tum hæc sola est mulier." In The First Part of King Henry IV. Mrs. Quickly had a husband alive. She is now a widow.

STEEVENS. 'malmsey-nose-] That is, red nose, from the effect of malmsey wine. JOHNSON.

In the old song of Sir Simon the King, the burthen of each stanza is this:

"Says old Sir Simon the king,

"Says old Sir Simon the king,

"With his ale-dropt hose,

"And his malmsey-nose,

"Sing hey ding, ding a ding." PERCY.

FAL. Away, varlets!-Draw, Bardolph; cut me off the villain's head; throw the quean in the channel.

HOST. Throw me in the channel? I'll throw thee in the channel. Wilt thou? wilt thou? thou O thou bastardly rogue!-Murder, murder! honey-suckle villain! wilt thou kill God's officers, and the king's? O thou honey-seed rogue!2 thou art a honey-seed; a man-queller,3 and a womanqueller.

FAL. Keep them off, Bardolph.

FANG. A rescue! a rescue!

HOST. Good people, bring a rescue or two.Thou wo't, wo't thou? thou wo't, wo't thou? do, do, thou rogue! do, thou hemp-seed!

FAL. Away, you scullion !5 you rampallian! you fustilarian! I'll tickle your catastrophe."

2

honey-suckle villain!-honey-seed rogue!] The landlady's corruption of homicidal and homicide. THEOBALD.

3

a man-queller,] Wicliff, in his Translation of the New Testament, uses this word for carnifex. Mark vi. 27: "Herod sent a man-queller, and commanded his head to be brought." STEEVENS.

'Thou wo't, wo't thou? &c.] The first folio reads, I think less properly, thou wilt not? thou wilt not? JOHNSON.

Fal. Away, you scullion!] This speech is given to the Page in all the editions to the folio of 1664. It is more proper for Falstaff, but that the boy must not stand quite silent and useless on the stage. JOHNSON.

6

·rampallian!—fustilarian!] The first of these terms of abuse may be derived from ramper, Fr. to be low in the world. The other from fustis, a club; i. e. a person whose weapon of defence is a cudgel, not being entitled to wear a sword.

The following passage, however, in A new Trick to cheat the

Enter the Lord Chief Justice, attended.

CH. JUST. What's the matter? keep the peace here, ho!

HOST. Good my lord, be good to me! I beseech you, stand to me!

CH. JUST. How now, sir John? what, are you brawling here?

Doth this become your place, your time, and busi ness?

You should have been well on your way to York.Stand from him, fellow; Wherefore hang'st thou

on him?

HOST. O my most worshipful lord, an't please your grace, I am a poor widow of Eastcheap, and he is arrested at my suit.

CH. JUST. For what sum?

HOST. It is more than for some, my lord; it is for all, all I have: he hath eaten me out of house

Devil, 1639, seems to point out another derivation of rampallian:

"And bold rampallian like, swear and drink drunk.” It may therefore mean a ramping riotous strumpet. Thus, in Greene's Ghost haunting Coneycatchers: "Here was Wiley Beguily rightly acted, and an aged rampalion put beside her schoole-tricks." STEEVENS.

Fustilarian is, I believe, a made word, from fusty. Mr. Steevens's last explanation of rampallian appears the true one. MALONE.

7

I'll tickle your catastrophe.] This expression occurs several times in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, 1608: Bankes your ale is a Philistine; foxe zhart there fire i'th' tail ont; you are a rogue to charge us with mugs i'th' rereward. A plague o' this wind! O, it tickles our catastrophe." Again: -to seduce my blind customers; I'll tickle his catastrophe for this."

STEEVENS.