FAL. Thou dost give me flattering busses. DOL. Nay, truly, I kiss thee with a most conftant heart. FAL. I am old, I am old. DoL. I love thee better than I love e'er a scurvy young boy of them all. FAL. What fluff wilt have a kirtle of? I shall Or, like the Page in The Mad Lover of Beaumont and Fletcher, who " Lisps when he lift to catch a chambermaid." Again, in Love's Labour's Loft : “ - He can carve too and lifp." Again, in Maston's 8th Satire : "With voyce diftinct, all fine, articulate, Lifping, Fayre faint, my woe compassionate : " By heaven thine eye is my foule-guiding fate." STEEVENS. Certainly the word claffing better preserves the integrity of the metaphor; or perhaps, as the expreffion is old tables, we might read licking: Bardolph was kiffing the Hostess; and old ivory books were commonly cleaned by licking them. FARMER. The old table-book was a counsel-keeper, or a register of secrets; and so also was Dame Quickly. I have therefore not the leaft fufpicion of any corruption in the text. Lisping is, in our author's dialed, making love, or in modern language, Saying foft things. So, in The Merry Wives of Windfor, Falstaff apologises to Mrs. Ford for his concise address to her, by saying, "I cannot cog, and say this and that, like a many of these lifping hawthornbuds, that come like women in men's apparel, and smell like Buckler's-bury in simple-time; I cannot; but I love thee;" &c. MALONE. 6 a kirtle of? I know not exactly what a kirtle is. The following passages may serve to show that it was something different from a gown. "How unkindly she takes the matter, and cannot be reconciled with less than a gown or a kirtle of filk." Greene's Art of Legerdemain, &c. 1612. Again, in one of Stanyhurst's poems, 1582: This gowne your lovemate, that kirtle costlye she craveth." Bale, in his Actes of English Votaries, says that Roger earl of Shrewsbury fent " to Clunyake in France, for the kyrtle of holy Hugh the abbot." Perhaps kirtle, in its common acceptation, receive money on Thursday: thou shalt have a cap orrow. A merry song, come: it grows late, we'll to bed. Thou'lt forget me, when I am gone. to-morrow. means a petticoat. " Half a dozen taffata gowns or fattin kirtles." Cynthia's Revels, by Ben Jonfon. Stubbs mentions kirtles, but is not precife in his description of them. Dr. Farmer supposes them to be the fame as fafe guards or riding-hoods. STEEVENS. A kirtle, I believe, meant a long cloak. Minsheu describes it as an upper or exterior garment, worn over another; what in French is called a garde-robe. See his Dict. 1617. The latter word is explained by Cotgrave thus: "A cloth or cloak worn or cast over a garment to keep it from duft, rain," &c. That writer however supposes kirtle and petticoat to be synonymous; for he renders the word vasquine thus: “ A kirtle, or petticoat; and furcot he calls an upper kirtle, or a garment worn over a kirtle. When therefore a kirtle is mentioned simply, perhaps a petticoat is meant; when an upper kirtle is spoken of, along cloak or mantle is probably intended, and I imagine a half-kirtle, which occurs in a subsequent scene in this play, meant a short cloak, half the length of the upper kirtle. The term half-kirtle seems incousistent with Dr. Farmer's idea; as does Milton's use of the word in his Masque, "the flowery-kirtled Naiades." Stubbes in his Anatomie of Abuses, 1595, describes a kirtle as diftin& from both a gown and a petticoat. After having described the gowns usually worn at that time, he proceeds thus: "then have thei petticoats of the best clothe, of scarlette, grograine, taffatie, or filke, &c. But of whatsoever their petticoats be, yet must they have kirtles, (for so they call them,) either of filke, velvet, grograine, taffatie, satten or scarlet, bordered with gardes, lace, &c. I suppose he means a mantle or long cloak. So also, in The First Part of the Contention of the two Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, 1600: “ Marry, he that will lustily stand to it, shall go with me, and take up these commodities following: item, a gown, a kirtle, a petticoat, and a smock." My interpretation of kirtle is confirmed by Barret's Alvearye, 1580, who renders kirtle, by subminia, cyclas, palla, pallula, χλαίνα, furcot, Subminia Cole interprets in his Latin Dictionary, 1697, A kirtle, a light red coat," Cyclas, "a kirtle, a cimarr." Palla, a woman's long gown; a veil that covers the head."-Pallula, a short kirtle." Lena, "an Irish rugge, a freeze caffock, a rough hairy gaberdine." ( DOL. By my troth thou'lt set me a weeping, an thou say'st so: prove that ever I dress myself handsome till thy return. Well, hearken the end. FAL. Some fack, Francis. 8 P. HEN. POINS. Anon, anon, fir." [Advancing. FAL. Ha! a bastard son of the king's? - And art not thou Poins his brother?9 P. HEN. Why, thou globe of finful continents, what a life dost thou lead? FAL. A better than thou; I am a gentleman, thou art a drawer. P. HEN. Very true, fir; and I come to draw you out by the ears. HOST. O, the Lord preserve thy good grace ! by my troth, welcome to London. - Now the Lord bless that sweet face of thine! O Jesu, are you come from Wales ? FAL. Thou whorefon mad compound of majesty, -by this light flesh and corrupt blood, thou art welcome. [Leaning his hand upon Doll. From hence it appears, that a woman's kirtle, or rather upperkirtle, (as diftinguished from a petticoat, which was sometimes called a kirtle,) was a long mantle which reached to the ground, with a head to it that entirely covered the face; and it was perhaps ufually red. A half-kirtle was a fimilar garment, reaching only fomewhat lower than the waist. See Florio's Italian Dict. 1598: Semicinto. A garment coming lower than the belly; also halfgirt, as we may say a half-kirtle." MALONE. 7 Anon, anon, fir.) The usual answer of drawers at this period. So, in The Discoverie of the Knights of the Pofte, 1597: "wherefore hee calling, the drawer presently answered with a fhrill voyce, anon, anon fir.' REED. 8 Ha! a bastard &c.] The improbability of this scene is scarcely balanced by the humour. JOHNSON. 9-Poins his brother?] i. e. Poins's brother, or brother to Poins; a vulgar corruption of the genitive cafe. RITSON. Dor. How! you fat fool, I fcorn you. POINS. My lord, he will drive you out of your revenge, and turn all to a merriment, if you take not the heat. 2 P. HEN. You whoreson candle-mine, you, how vilely did you speak of me even now, before this honest, virtuous, civil gentlewoman? HOST. 'Bleffing o' your good heart! and so she is, by my troth. FAL. Didft thou hear me? P. HEN. Yes; and you knew me, as you did when you ran away by Gads-hill: you knew, I was at your back; and spoke it on purpose, to try my patience. FAL. No, no, no; not so; I did not think, thou wast within hearing. P. HEN. I shall drive you then to confefs the wilful abuse; and then I know how to handle you. FAL. No abuse, Hal, on mine honour; no abuse. P. HEN. Not! to dispraise me; and call mepantler, and bread-chipper, and I know not what? 2 --if you take not the heat.) Alluding, I fuppofe, to the proverb, " Strike while the iron is hot." So again, in King Lear: "We must do fomething, and i'the heat." STEEVENS. 3 --candle-mine, Thou inexhauftible magazine of tallow. JOHNSON. 4 Not! to difpraise me;) The prince means to say, " What! is it not abuse to dispraise me," &c. Some of the modern editors read-No! &c. but, I think, without neceffity. So, in Coriolanus: "Com. He'll never hear him. "Sic. Not?`` There alfo Not has been rejected by the modern editors, and no inferted in its place. MALONE. FAL. No abuse, Hal. POINS. No abuse! FAL. No abuse, Ned in the world; honest Ned, none. I disprais'd him before the wicked, that the wicked might not fall in love with him:-in which doing, I have done the part of a careful friend, and a true subject, and thy father is to give me thanks for it. No abuse, Hal; _none, Ned, none;-no, boys, none. P. HEN. See now, whether pure fear, and entire cowardice, doth not make thee wrong this virtuous gentlewoman to close with us? Is the of the wicked? Is thine hoftess here of the wicked? Or is the boy of the wicked? Or honest Bardolph, whose zeal burns in his nose, of the wicked? POINS. Answer, thou dead elm, answer. FAL. The fiend hath prick'd down Bardolph irrecoverable; and his face is Lucifer's privy-kitchen, where he doth nothing but roast malt-worms. For the boy, there is a good angel about him; but the devil outbids him too.4 P. HEN. For the women, — FAL. For one of them, she is in hell already, and burns, poor foul! For the other,-I owe her money; and whether she be damn'd for that, I know not. Host. No, I warrant you. FAL. No, I think thou art not; I think, thou art --outbids him to.] Thus the folio. The quarto reads blinds him too; and perhaps it is right. MALONE. --and burns, poor foul!] This is Sir T. Hanmer's reading. Undoubtedly right. The other editions had, - she is in hell already, and burns poor fouls. The venereal disease was called in those times the brennynge, or burning. JOHNSON. |