cushions again; you have but eleven now. Come, I charge you both with me; for the 20 man is dead that you and Pistol beat

amongst you.

Dol. I'll tell you what, you thin man in a censer, I will have you as soundly swinged for this-you blue-bottle rogue, you filthy famished correctioner, if you be not swinged, I'll forswear half-kirtles.

First Bead. Come, come, you she knight-errant, come.

Host. O God, that right should thus overcome 30
might! Well, of sufferance comes ease.
Dol. Come, you rogue, come; bring me to a
justice.

Host. Aye, come, you starved blood-hound.
Dol. Goodman death, goodman bones!
Host. Thou atomy, thou!

Dol. Come, you thin thing; come, you rascal.
First Bead. Very well.

SCENE V

[Exeunt.

A public place near Westminster Abbey.
Enter two grooms, strewing rushes.

First Groom. More rushes, more rushes.
Sec. Groom. The trumpets have sounded twice.

23. “thin man in a censer"; Doll humorously compares the beadle's spare figure to the embossed figures in the middle of the pierced convex lid of a censer made of thin metal. The sluttery of rushstrewed chambers rendered censers or fire pans in which coarse perfumes were burned most necessary utensils.-H. N. H.

First Groom. Twill be two o'clock ere they come from the coronation: dispatch, dispatch.

[Exeunt.

Enter Falstaff, Shallow, Pistol, Bardolph,
and Page.

Fal. Stand here by me, Master Robert Shal-
low; I will make the king do you grace: I
will leer upon him as a' comes by; and do
but mark the countenance that he will give

me.

Pist. God bless thy lungs, good knight.
Fal. Come here, Pistol; stand behind me. O,
if I had had time to have made new liveries,
I would have bestowed the thousand pound
I borrowed of you. But 'tis no matter; this
poor show doth better: this doth infer the
zeal I had to see him.

Shal. It doth so.

Fal. It shows my earnestness of affection,-
Shal. It doth so.

Fal. My devotion,

Shal. It doth, it doth, it doth.

Fal. As it were, to ride day and night; and not to deliberate, not to remember, not to have patience to shift me,

Shal. It is best, certain.

Fal. But to stand stained with travel, and sweating with desire to see him; thinking of

10

20

13. "to have made new liveries"; i. c. to have them made.-C. H. H. 18, 20, 22. "it doth so"; Q. assigns these three speeches to Pistol, Ff. the first to Shallow, the others to Pistol. Hanmer was undoubtedly right in giving them all to Shallow.-C. H. H.

nothing else, putting all affairs else in ob

livion, as if there were nothing else to be 30 done but to see him.

Pist. "Tis 'semper idem,' for 'obsque hoc nihil est:' 'tis all in every part.

Shal. 'Tis so, indeed.

Pist. My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver,
And make thee rage.

Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts,
Is in base durance and contagious prison;
Haled thither

By most mechanical and dirty hand:

40

Rouse up revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto's snake,

For Doll is in. Pistol speaks nought but truth. Fal. I will deliver her.

[Shouts within, and the trumpets sound. Pist. There roar'd the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds.

Enter the King and his train, the Lord Chief
Justice among them.

Fal. God save thy grace, King Hal! my royal
Hal!

32. "obsque hoc nihil esť”; “'tis all in every part"; the second and later Ff. correct obsque to absque, but the error may have been intentional on the author's part. Pistol uses a Latin expression "ever the same, for without this there is nothing," and then goes on to allude to an English proverbial expression, “All in all, and all in every part,” which he seems to give as its free rendering.— I. G.

41. “rouse up Revenge,” etc. Probably an allusion to the Spanish Tragedy, Act iv. end, where the Ghost's cry, “Awake Revenge" (or Alecto) is four times reiterated.-C. H. H.

Pist. The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!

Fal. God save thee, my sweet boy!

King. My lord chief justice, speak to that vain 50

man.

Ch. Just. Have you your wits? know you what 'tis you speak?

Fal. My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart! King. I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;

How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dream'd of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men. 61
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest:

54-79. Hall, Holinshed, and Stowe give much the same account of this matter. In Holinshed it runs thus: "Whereas aforetime he had made himselfe a companion unto misrulie mates of dissolute order and life, he now banished them all from his presence, (but not unrewarded, or else unpreferred,) inhibiting them upon a great paine, not once to approach, lodge, or sojourne within ten miles of his court; calling to mind how once, to hie offence of the king his father, he had with his fists striken the cheefe justice for sending one of his minions (upon desert) to prison, when the justice stoutlie commanded himselfe also into streict to ward, and he (then prince) obeied."-The king's treatment of his old makesport, when he has no longer any use or time for his delectations, has been censured by several critics. In reference to which censure Johnson rightly observes,-"If it be considered that the fat knight has never uttered one sentiment of generosity, and, with all his powers of exciting mirth, he has nothing in him that can be esteemed, no great pain will be suffered from the reflection that he is compelled to live honestly, and maintained by the king, with a promise of advancement when he shall deserve it."-H. N. H.

King. "I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers; "

King Henry IV., P. 2. Act 5, Scene 5.