SCENE III. A Room in Ford's Houfe. Enter Mrs. FORD and Mrs. PAGE. Mrs. Ford. What, John! what, Robert! Enter Servants with a Basket. Mrs. Page. Come, come, come. Mrs. Ford. Here, fet it down. Mrs. Page. Give your men the charge; we must be brief. Mrs. Ford. Marry, as I told you before, John, and Robert, be ready here hard by in the brewhoufe; and when I fuddenly call you, come forth, and (without any paufe, or ftaggering,) take this basket on your fhoulders: that done, trudge with it in all hafte, and carry it among the whitfters in Datchet mead, and there empty it in the muddy ditch, clofe by the Thames' fide. Mrs. Page. You will do it? Mrs. Ford. I have told them over and over; they lack no direction: Be gone, and come when you are called. Mrs. Page. Here comes little Robin. [Exeunt Servants. It has been already remarked, that Shakspeare has frequent allufions to a cuckold's borns. TYRWHITT. Pipe is known to be a veffel of wine, now containing two hogfheads. Pipe-wine is therefore wine, not from the bottle, but the pipe; and the jeft confifts in the ambiguity of the word, which fignifies both a cask of wine, and a mufical inftrument. JOHNSON. The jeft here lies in a mere play of words. "I'll give him pipe-wine which shall make him dance." Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1786. STEEVENS. The phrafe," To drink in pipe wine"-always feemed to me a very ftrange one, till I met with the following paffage in King James's first Speech to his parliament, in 1604; by which it appears that " to drink in" was the phrafeology of the time: " -who either, being old, have retained their firft drunken-in liquor," &c. MALONE. 7 i. e, the blanchers of linen. Dovcr. Enter Enter ROBIN, Mrs. Ford. How now, my eyas-mufket? what news with you? Rob. My mafter fir John is come in at your back-door, miftrefs Ford; and requests our company. Mrs. Page. You little Jack-a-lent, 9 have you been true to us? Rob. Ay, I'll be fworn: My mafter knows not of your being here; and hath threaten'd to put me into everlasting liberty, if I tell you of it; for, he fwears, he'll turn me away. Mrs. Page. Thou'rt a good boy; this fecrecy of thine fhall be a tailor to thee, and fhall make thee a new doublet and hofe.—I'll go hide me. Mrs. Ford. Do fo:-Go tell thy mafter, I am alone. Miftrefs Page, remember you your cue. [Exit ROBIN. Mrs. Page. I warrant thee; if I do not act it, hiss me. [Exit Mrs. PAGE. Mrs. Ford. Go to then; we'll ufe this unwholfome humidity, this grofs watry pumpion; we'll teach him to know turtles from jays. Enter FALSTAFF. Fal. Have I caught thee, my heavenly jewel? Why, now let me die, for I have lived long enough;3 this is the period of my ambition: O this blessed hour! Mrs. Ford. 8 Eyas is a young unfledg'd hawk; I fuppofe from the Italian Niafo, which originally fignified any young bird taken from the nest unfledg'd, afterwards a young hawk. The French, from hence, took their niais, and used it in both thofe fignifications; to which they added a third, metaphorically, a filly fellow; un garçon fort niais, un niais. Musket fignifies a fparrow bawk, or the fmalleft fpecies of hawks. This too is from the Italian Mufchetto, a fmall hawk, as appears from the original fignifica tion of the word, namely, a troublesome flinging fly. So that the humour of calling the little page an yas-musket is very intelligible. WARBURTON. 9 A Jack o' lent was a puppet thrown at in Lent, like shrove-cocks. STEEVENS. 2 Have I caught my heavenly jewel ?] This is the first line of the second fong in Sidney's Aftrophel and Stella. TOLLET. 3 This fentiment, which is of facred origin, is here indecently introduced. It appears again with somewhat lefs of profaneness, in The Winter's Tale, A& IV. and in Othello, Act II. STEEVENS. Mrs. Ford. O fweet fir John! Fal. Miftrefs Ford, I cannot cog, I cannot prate, miftrefs Ford. Now fhall I fin in my with: I would thy husband were dead; I'll fpeak it before the beft lord, I would make thee my lady. Mrs. Ford. I your lady, fir John! alas, I fhould be a pitiful lady. Fal. Let the court of France show me fuch another; I fee how thine eye would emulate the diamond: Thou haft the right arched bent of the brow, that becomes the fhip-tire, the tire-valiant, or any tire of Venetian admittance, 4 Mrs. Ford. A plain kerchief, fir John: my brows become nothing else; nor that well neither. Fal. Thou art a traitor to fay fo: thou would'st make an abfolute courtier; and the firm fixture of thy foot would give an excellent motion to thy gait, in a femi-circled farthingale. 4 The speaker tells his mistress, fhe had a face that would become all the head dreffes in fashion. The hip-tire was an open head drefs, with a kind of fcarf depending from behind. Its name of fhip-tire was, I prefume, from its giving the wearer fome refemblance of a ship (as Shakspeare fays) in all ber tim: with all her pennants out, and flags and ftreamers flying. Thus Beau This was an image familiar with the poets of that time. mont and Fletcher, in their play of Wit without Money: She spreads fattens as the king's fhips do canvas every where; fhe may fpace her mifen," &c. This will direct us to reform the following word of tirevaliant, which I fufpect to be corrupt, valiant being a very incongruous epithet for a woman's head-dress: I fuppofe Shakspeare wrote tire-wailant. As the hip-tire was an open head-drefs, fo the tire-wailant was a clofe one, in which the head and breaft were covered as with a veil. And thefe were, in fact, the two different head-dreffes then in fafhion, as we may fee by the pictures of that time. One of which was fo open, that the whole neck, breasts, and fhoulders, were opened to view: the other, fo fecurely inclofed in kerchiefs, &c. that nothing could be feen above the eyes, or below the chin. WARBURTON. - i. e. of a fashion received or admitted from Venice. Dr. Farmer propofes to read of Venetian remittance." STEEVENS. In how much requeft the Venetian tyre formerly was held, appears from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 1624: "let her have the Spanish gate [gait], the Venetian tire, Italian complements and endowments." MALONE. May not the tire-valiant be fo called from the air of boldness and confidence which it might give the wearer? REED. 5. e. to thy own merit. STEEVENS. farthingale. I fee what thou wert, if fortune thy foe" were not; nature is thy friend: Come, thou canst not hide it. Mrs. Ford. Believe me, there's no fuch thing in me. Fal. What made me love thee? let that perfuade thee, there's fanething extraordinary in thee. Come, I cannot cog, and lay, thou art this and that, like a many of these lifping haw-thorn buds, that come like women in men's apparel, and fmell like Bucklers-bury" in fimple-time; I cannot but I love thee; none but thee; and thou deservest it. Mrs. Ford. Do not betray me, fir; I fear, you love mistress Page. Fal. Thou might'ft as well fay, I love to walk by the Counter-gate; which is as hateful to me as the reek of a lime-kiln. Mrs. Ford. Well, heaven knows, how I love you; and you fhall one day find it. Fal. Keep in that mind; I'll deferve it. Mrs. Ford. Nay, I must tell you, fo you do; or else I could not be in that mind. Reb. [within] Mistress Ford, mistress Ford! here's mistress Page at the door, fweating, and blowing, and looking wildly, and would needs fpeak with you prefently. Fal. She fhall not fee me; I will enfconce me behind the Mrs. Ford. Pray you, do fo; fhe's a very tattling woman. [FALSTAFF hides himself. 6 fortune thy for-]"was the beginning of an old ballad, in which were enumerated all the misfortunes that fall upon mankind, through the caprice of fortune." See note on The cuftom of the Country, A&t 1. fc. i. by Mr. Theobald. Mr. Ritfon obferves, that "the tune is the identical air now known by the fong of Death and the Lady, to which the metrical lamentations of extraordinary criminals have been usually chanted for upwards of these two hundred years." REED. 7 Buckler's-bury, in the time of Shakspeare, was chiefly inhabited by druggifts, who fold all kinds of herbs, green as well as dry. STEEVENS. The spaces left between the walls and the wooden frames on which arras was hung, were not more commodious to our ancestors than to the authors of their ancient dramatic pieces. Borachio in Much ado about Nothing: and. Polonius in Hamlet, alfo avail themselves of this convenient reces STELVENS. Enter Enter Mistress PAGE and ROBIN. What's the matter? how now? Mrs. Page. O mistress Ford, what have you done? You're fhamed, you are overthrown, you are undone for ever. Mrs. Ford. What's the matter, good miftrefs Page? Mrs. Page. O well-a-day, miftrefs Ford! having an honeft man to your husband, to give him fuch cause of fufpicion! Mrs. Ford. What caufe of fufpicion? Mrs. Page. What caufe of fufpicion?-Out upon you! how am I mistook in you? Mrs. Ford. Why, alas! what's the matter? Mrs. Page. Your hufband's coming hither, woman, with all the officers in Windfor, to fearch for a gentleman, that, he fays, is here now in the house, by your confent, to take an ill advantage of his abfence: You are undone. Mrs. Ford. Speak louder."—[Afide.]—'Tis not fo, I hope. Mrs. Page. Pray heaven it be not so, that you have fuch a man here; but 'tis moft certain your husband's coming with half Windfor at his heels, to fearch for fuch a one. I come before to tell you: If you know yourself clear, why I am glad of it but if you have a friend here, convey, convey him out. Be not amazed; call all your fenfes to you; defend your reputation, or bid farewell to your good life for ever. Mrs. Ford. What fhall I do?-There is a gentleman, my dear friend; and I fear not mine own shame, so much as his peril I had rather than a thousand pound, he were out of the house. you Mrs. Page. For fhame, never ftand you had rather, and had rather; your husband's here at hand, bethink you of fome conveyance in the houfe you cannot hide him.-O, how have you deceived me!-Look, here is a basket; if he be of any reasonable ftature, he may creep in here; and throw foul linen upon him, as if it were going to bucking: Or, it is whiting-time, fend him by your two men to Datchet mead. 2 9 i. e. that Falstaff who is retired may hear. STEEVENS. Mrs. 2 Bleaching time; fpring. The feafon when "maidens bleach their fummer fmecks." HOLT WHITE. |