cellent good word before it was ill forted: therefore captains had need look to it. BARD. Pray thee, go down, good ancient. PIST. Not I: I tell thee what, corporal Bardolph ; - I could tear her: - I'll be reveng'd on her. PAGE. Pray thee, go down. PIST. I'll fee her damn'd first; - to Pluto's damned lake, to the infernal deep, with Erebus and tortures vile also. Hold hook and line, say I. Again, in Promos and Caffandra, bl. 1. 1578: "Mistresse, you must shut up your shop, and leave your occupying." This is faid to a bawd. HENDERSON. 6 I'll fee her damn'd first; - to Pluto's damned lake, to the infernal deep, with Erebus and tortures vile also. These words, I believe, were intended to allude to the following passage in an old play called The Battle of Alcazar, 1594, from which Pistol afterwards quotes a line (see p. 92, n. 7.): " You daftards of the night and Erebus, " Fiends, fairies, hags, that fight in beds of fteel, Range through this army with your iron whips; " Descend and take to thy tormenting hell "The mangled body of that traitor king. - "Damn'd let him be, damn'd and condemn'd to bear MALONE. Hold hook and line, These words are introduced in ridicule by Ben Jonfon in The Cafe is alter'd, 1609. Of abfurd and fuftian passages from many plays, in which Shakspeare had been a performer, I have always fuppofed no small part of Pistol's chara&er to be composed: and the pieces themselves being now irretrievably loft, the humour of his allusions is not a little obscured. In Tuffer's Husbandry, bl. 1. 1580, it is said: STEEVENS. "At noone if it bloweth, at night if it shine, HENDERSON. Down! down, dogs! down faitors! Have we not Hiren here? 9 * Down? down, dogs! down faitors!) A burlesque on a play already quoted; The Battle of Alcazar: "Ye proud malicious dogs of Italy, "Strike on, strike down, this body to the earth." MALONE. Faitours, says Minsheu's Dictionary, is a corruption of the French word faiseurs, i. e. factores, doers; and it is used in the statute Rich. II. c. 5. for evil doers, or rather for idle livers; from the French, faitard, which in Cotgrave's Dictionary fignifies slothful, idle, &c. TOLLET. down faitors!] i. e. traitors, rascals. So, Spenser: By this false faitour. " The word often occurs in The Chester Mysteries. STEEVENS. 9 Have we not Hiren here?) In an old comedy, 1608, called Law Tricks; or, Who would have thought it? the same quotation is likewife introduced, and on a fimilar occafion. The Prince Polymetes says: What ominous news can Polymetes daunt? "Have we not Hiren here?" Again, in Maffinger's Old Law: " Clown. No dancing for me, we have Siren here. Again, in Decker's Satiromastix : washers. therefore whilst we have Hiren here, speak my little dish. " Again, in Love's Mistress, a masque by T.- Heywood, 1636: fay she is a foul beaft in your eyes, yet she is my Hyren. Mr. Tollet observes, that in Adams's Spiritual Navigator, &c. 1615, there is the following passage: "There be firens in the sea of the world. Syrens? Hirens, as they are now called. What a number of these firens, Hirens, cockatrices, courteghians, - in plain English, harlots, swimme amongst us?" Pistol may therefore mean, Have we not a ftrumpet here? and why am I thus used by her? STEEVENS. From The Merie conceited Fests of George Peele, Gentleman, Sometime Student in Oxford, quarto, 1657, it appears, that Peele was the author of a play called The Turkish Mahomet, and Hyren the Fair Greek, which is now loft. One of these jests, or rather stories, is entitled, How George read a Play-book to a Gentleman. was a gentleman (fays the tale) whom God had endued with good living, to maintain his small wit, one that took great delight to " There HOST. Good captain Peesel, be quiet; it is very late, i'faith: I beseek you now, aggravate your choler. PIST. These be good humours, indeed; Shall packhorses, And hollow pamper'd jades of Afia, 2 have the first hearing of any work that George had done, himself being a writer. This felf-conceited brock had George invited to half a score sheets of paper; whose Christianly pen had writ Finis to the famous play of The Turkish Mahomet and Hyren the Fair Greek; - in Italian called a curtezan; in Spaine, a margarite; in French, un curtain; in English, among the barbarous, a whore; among the gentles, their usual affociates, a punk. - This fantastick, whose brain was made of nought but cork and spunge, came to the cold lodging of Monfieur Peel. - George bids him welcome; told him he would gladly have his opinion of his book. - He willingly condefcended, and George begins to read, and between every Scene he would make pauses, and demand his opinion how he liked the carriage of it, " &c. Have we not Hiren here? was, without doubt, a quotation from this play of Peele's, and, from the explanation of the word Hiren above given, is put with peculiar propriety on the present occafion into the mouth of Pistol. In Eastward Hoe, a comedy by Jonson, Chapman, and Marfston, 1605, Quicksilver, comes in drunk, and repeats this and many other verses, from dramatick performances of that time: " Holla, ye pamper'd jades of Afia!" [Tamburlaine.] [Probably The Turkish Mahomet.] [A Parody on The Spanish Tragedy.] All these lines are printed as quotations, in Italicks. In John Day's Law Tricks, quoted by Mr. Steevens in the preceding note, the Prince Polymetes, when he says, "Have we not Hiren here? alludes to a lady then present, whom he imagines to be a harlot." 2 - MALONE. hollow pamper'd jades of Asia, &c.] These lines are in part a quotation out of an old absurd fuftian play, entitled, Tam burlaine's Conquests; or, The Scythian Shepherds, 1590, [by C. Marlowe.] THEOBALD. These lines are addressed by Tamburlaine to the captive princes who draw his chariot: Holla, you pamper'd jades of Afia, "What! can you draw but twenty miles a day? 1 Which cannot go but thirty miles a day, Shall we fall foul for toys? 1 1 The same paffage is burlesqued by Beaumont and Fletcher in The Coxcomb. Young, however, has borrowed the idea for the ufe of his Bufiris: Have we not seen him shake his filver reins "O'er harness'd monarchs, to his chariot yok'd?" I was surprised to find a fimile, much and justly celebrated by the admirers of Spenser's Fairy Queen, inferted almost word for word in the second part of this tragedy. The earliest edition of those books of The Fairy Queen, in one of which it is to be found was published in 1590, and Tamburlaine had been represented in or before the year 1588, as appears from the preface to Perimedes the Blacksmith, by Robert Greene. The first copy, however, that I have met with, is in 1590, and the next in 1593. In the year 1590 both parts of it were entered on the books of the Stationers' Company: 3 " Like to an almond-tree ymounted high "At every little breath that under heaven is blown." " Like to an almond-tree ymounted high Upon the lofty and celeftial mount " Of ever-green Selinis, quaintly deck'd "With bloom more bright than Erycina's brows; "Whose tender blossoms tremble every one "At every little breath from heaven is blown." Spenser. Tamburlaine. Cannibals,] Cannibal is used by a blunder for Hannibal. This was afterwards copied by Congreve's Bluff and Wittol. Bluff is a character apparently taken from this of ancient Pistol. JOHNSON. Perhaps the character of a bully on the English stage might have been originally taken from Pistol; but Congreve seems to have copied his Nol Bluff more immediately from Jonson's Captain Bobadil. STEEVENS. 4 and let the welkin roar.] Part of the words of an old Host. By my troth, captain, these are very bitter words. BARD. Be gone, good ancient: this will grow to a brawl anon. PIST. Die men, like dogs; 5 give crowns like pins; Have we not Hiren here? Host. O' my word, captain, there's none such here. What the good-year! do you think, I would deny her? for God's fake, be quiet. baliad intitled, What the father gathereth with the rake, the fon doth catter with the forke: "Let the welkin roare, "Ile never give ore, Again, in another ancient fong called, The Man in the Moon drinks Claret : " Drink wine till the welkin roares, " " And cry out ap- of your scores. STEEVENS. So, in Eastward Hoe, 1605: --turn swaggering gallant, and let the welkin roar, and Erebus also." MALONE. 5 Die men, like dogs;) This expreffion I find in Ram-Alley, or Merry Tricks, 1611: 6 "Your lieutenant's an ass. "How an afs? Die men like dogs?" STEEVENS. Have we not Hiren here? Hoft. O' my word, captain, there's none fuch here.) i. e. shall I fear, that have this trufty and invincible sword by my fide? For, as King Arthur's swords were called Galibusne and Ron; as Edward the Confessor's, Curtana, as Charlemagne's, Joyeuse; Orlando's Durindana; Rinaldo's Fusberta; and Rogero's, Balisarda; fo Piftol, in imitation of these heroes, calls his fword Hiren. I have been told, Amadis the Gaul had a sword of this name. Hirir is to strike, and from hence it seems probable that Hiren may be derived; and fo signify a swashing, cutting sword. - But what wonderful humour is there in the good hostess so innocently mistaking Pistol's drift, fancying that he meant to fight for a whore in the house, and therefore telling him. O' my word, captain, there's none fuch here; what the good-year! do you think, I would deny her? THEOBALD. As it appears from a former note, that Hiren was sometimes a cant term for a mistress or harlot, Piftol may be supposed to give |