P. HEN. It shall serve among wits of no higher breeding than thine. POINS. Go to; I stand the push of your one thing that you will tell. P. HEN. Why, I tell thee, - it is not meet that I should be fad, now my father is fick: albeit I could tell to thee, (as to one it pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my friend, ) I could be sad, and fad indeed too. But I POINS. Very hardly, upon such a subject. P. HEN. By this hand, thou think'st me as far in the devil's book, as thou, and Falstaff, for obduracy and persistency: Let the end try the man. tell thee, my heart bleeds inwardly, that my father is so sick: and keeping such vile company as thou art, hath in reason taken from me all oftentation of forrow. 9 POINS, The reason? P. HEN. What would'st thou think of me, if I should weep? POINS. I would think thee a most princely hypocrite. P. HEN. It would be every man's thought: and thou art a blessed fellow to think as every man thinks; never a man's thought in the world keeps the road-way better than thine: every man would think me an hypocrite indeed. And what accites your most worshipful thought, to think so? POINS. Why, because you have been so lewd, and so much engraffed to Falstaff. P. HEN. And to thee. POINS. By this light, I am well spoken of, I can hear it with my own ears: the worst that they can say of me is, that I am a second brother, and that I am a proper fellow of my hands; and those two things, I confefs, I cannot help. By the mass, here comes Bardolph. 2 P. HEN. And the boy that I gave Falstaff: he had him from me christian; and look, if the fat villain have not transform'd him ape. Enter BARDOLPH and Page. BARD. 'Save your grace! P. HEN. And yours, most noble Bardolph ! BARD. Come, you virtuous ass, [To the Page.] you bashful fool, must you be blushing? wherefore blush you now? What a maidenly man at arms are you become? Is it such a matter, to get a pottlepot's maidenhead. 2 proper fellow of my hands; A tall or proper fellow of his hands was a stout fighting man. JOHNSON. In this place, however, it means a good looking, well made personable man. Poins might certainly have helped his being a fighting fellow. RITSON. A handsome fellow of my fize; or of my inches, as we should now express it. M. MASON. Proper, it has been already observed, in our author's time figuified handsome. See Vol. VI. p. 283, n. 6. and Vol. VIII. p. 20, 2. 9. "As tall a man of his hands" has already occurred in The Merry Wives of Windfor. Sec Vol. V. p. 48, n. 3. MALONE. 3 Bard. Come, you virtuous afs, &c.] Though all the editions give this speech to Poins, it seems evident, by the Page's immediate reply that it must be placed to Bardolph for Bardolph had called to the boy from an ale-house, and it is likely, made him half-drunk; and, the boy being ashamed of it, it is natural for Bardolph, a bold unbred fellow, to banter him on his aukward bashfulness. THEOBALD. PAGE. He call'd me even now, my lord, through a red lattice, 4 and I could difcern no part of his face from the window: at laft, I spied his eyes; and, methought, he had made two holes in the alewife's new petticoat, and peep'd through. P. HEN. Hath not the boy profited? BARD. Away, you whoreson upright rabbit, away! Page. Away, you rascally Althea's dream, away! P. HEN. Instruct us, boy: What dream, boy? PAGE. Marry, my lord, Althea dream'd she was delivered of a fire-brand; and therefore I call him her dream. P. HEN. A crown's worth of good interpretation. There it is, boy. [ Gives him money. POINS. O, that this good blossom could be kept from cankers! - Well, there is fixpence to preserve thee. BARD. An you do not make him be hang'd among you, the gallows shall have wrong. P. HEN. And how doth thy master, Bardolph ? BARD. Well, my lord. He heard of your grace's coming to town; there's a letter for you. P. HEN. Deliver'd with good respect. - And how doth the martlemas, your master ? ' 4 through a red lattice,] i. e. from an ale house window. See Vol. V. p. 79, n. 5. MALONE. 5 Althea dream'd &c.] Shakspeare is here mistaken in his mythology, and has confounded Althea's firebrand with Hecuba's. The firebrand of Althea was real: but Hecuba, when she was big with Paris, dreamed that she was delivered of a firebrand that confumed the kingdom. JOHNSON. 6 A crown's worth of good interpretation.] "A pennyworth of good interpretation, " is, if I remember right, the title of fome old tract. 7 MALONE. the martlemas, your master? That is, the autumn, or rather the latter spring. The old fellow with juvenile pasions. JOHNSON. ۱ BARD. In bodily health, fir. POINS. Marry, the immortal part needs a physician: but that moves not him; though that be fick, it dies not. P. HEN. I do allow this wen to be as familiar with me as my dog: and he holds his place; for, look you, how he writes. POINS. [Reads. ] John Falstaff, knight, - Every man must know that, as oft as he has occafion to name himself. Even like those that are kin to the king; for they never prick their finger, but they fay, There is fome of the king's blood fpilt: How comes that? fays he, that takes upon him not to conceive: the answer is as ready as a borrower's cap; the king's poor cousin, fir. 9 I am In The First Part of King Henry IV. the Prince calls Falstaff "the latter spring, -all-hallown summer." MALONE. Martlemas is corrupted from Martinmas, the feast of St. Martin, the eleventh of November. The corruption is general in the old plays. So, in The Pinner of Wakefield, 1599: 8 9 "A piece of beef hung up fince Martlemus." STEEVENS. this wen] This fwoln excrefcence of a man. JOHNSON. the answer is as ready as a borrower's cap ;) Old copya borrow'd cap. STEEVENS. But how is a borrow'd cap so ready? Read, a borrower's cap, and then there is some humour in it: for a man that goes to borrow money, is of all others the most complaifant; his cap is always at hand. WARBURTON. Falstaff's followers, when they ftole any thing called it a purchase. A borrowed cap in the same dialect might be a holen one; which is sufficiently ready, being, as Falstaff says, "to be found on every hedge." MALONE. Such caps as were worn by men in our author's age, were made of filk, velvet, or woollen; not of linen; and confequently would not be hung out to dry on hedges, STEEVENS. P. HEN. Nay, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from Japhet. But the letter : POINS, Sir John Falstaff, knight, to the son of the king, nearest his father, Harry prince of Wales, greeting,-Why, this is a certificate. POINS. Iwill imitate the honourable Romanin bre vity: he fure means brevity in breath; shortwinded. I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I leave thee. Benot too familiar with Poins ; for he misuses thy favours so much, that he fwears, thou art to marry his fister Nell. Repent at idle times as thou may'st, and fo farewell. Thine, by yea and no, (which is as much as to say, as thou useft him,) Jack Falstaff, with my familiars; John, with my brothers and fisters; and fir John, with all Europe. I think Dr. Warburton's corre&ion is right. A cap is not a thing likely to be borrowed, in the common sense of the word : and in the sense of stealing the sense should be a cap to be borrowed. Befides, conveying was the cant phrase for flealing. FARMER. Dr. Warburton's emendation is countenanced by a passage in Timon of Athens: be not ceas'd "With flight denial; nor then filenc'd, when * P. Hen.] All the editors, except Sir Thomas Hanmer, have left this letter in confufion, making the Prince read part, and Poins part. I have followed his correction. JOHNSON. 3 I will imitate the honourable Roman in brevity: ) The old copy reads Romans, which Dr. Warburton very properly corrected, though he is wrong when he appropriates the character to M. Brutus, who affected great brevity of style. I suppose by the honourable Roman is intended Julius Cæfar, whose veni, vidi, vici, seem to be alluded to in the beginning of the letter. I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I leave thee. The very words of Cæfar are afterwards quoted by Falstaff. HEATH. |