I; go to then, there's sympathy: you are merry, so am I; Ha! ha! then there's more sympathy: you love sack, and so do I; Would you desire better sympathy? Let it suffice thee, mistress Page, (at the least, if the love of a soldier can suffice,) that I love thee. I will not say, pity me, 'tis not a soldier-like phrase; but I say, love me. By me, Thine own true knight, By day or night", JOHN FALSTaff. What a Herod of Jewry is this?-O wicked, wicked, world!-one that is well nigh worn to pieces with age, to show himself a young gallant! What an unweighed behaviour hath this Flemish drunkard' 9 Again, in Ben Jonson's Case is Alter'd, 1609: "It is precisianism to alter that, “With austere judgement, which is given by nature.” STEEVENS. If physician be the right reading, the meaning may be this: A lover uncertain as yet of success, never takes reason for his counsellor, but, when desperate, applies to him as his physician. MUSGRAVE. 8 Thine own true knight, By day or night,] This expression, ludicrously employed by Falstaff, is of Greek extraction, and means, at all times. So, in the twenty-second Iliad, 433: ὅ μοι ΝΥΚΤΑΣ ΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΗΜΑΡ Εὐχωλή. Thus faithfully rendered by Mr. Wakefield: "My Hector! night and day thy mother's joy." So likewise, in the third book of Gower, De Confessione Amantis: 91 "The sonne cleped was Machayre, Loud and still was another phrase of similar meaning. STEEVENS. picked (with the devil's name) out of my conversation, that he dares in this manner assay me? Why, he hath not been thrice in my company!-What should I say to him ?-I was then frugal of my mirth 2 :—heaven forgive me!—Why, I'll exhibit a bill in the parliament for the putting down of fat men 3. How shall I be revenged on him? for 2 reproach is here used. Sir John Smythe in Certain Discourses, &c. 4to. 1590, says, that the habit of drinking to excess was introduced into England from the Low Countries "by some of our such men of warre within these very few years: whereof it is come to passe that now-a-dayes there are very fewe feastes where our said men of warre are present, but that they do invite and procure all the companie, of what calling soever they be, to carowsing and quaffing; and, because they will not be denied their challenges, they, with many newe conges, ceremonies, and reverences, drinke to the health and prosperitie of princes; to the health of counsellors, and unto the health of their greatest friends both at home and abroad in which exercise they never cease till they be deade drunke, or, as the Flemings say, Doot dronken." He add, "And this aforesaid detestable vice hath within these six or seven yeares taken wonderful roote amongest our English nation, that in times past was wont to be of all other nations of Christendome one of the soberest." REED. 3 2- I was then frugal of my mirth :] By breaking this speech into exclamations, the text may stand; but I once thought it must be read, ' If I was not then frugal of my mirth,' &c. JOHNSON. - for the PUTTING DOWN of FAT MEN.] The word fat which seems to have been inadvertently omitted in the folio, was restored by Mr. Theobald from the quarto, where the corresponding speech runs thus: "Well, I shall trust fat men the worse, while I live, for his sake. O God; that I knew how to be revenged of him!" -Dr. Johnson, however, thinks that the insertion is unnecessary, as "Mrs. Page might naturally enough, in the first heat of her anger, rail at the sex for the fault of one." But the authority of the original sketch in quarto, and Mrs. Page's frequent mention of the size of her lover in the play as it now stands, in my opinion fully warrant the correction that has been made. Our author well knew that bills are brought into parliament for some purpose that at least appears practicable. Mrs. Page therefore in her passion might exhibit a bill for the putting down men of a particular description; but Shakspeare would never have made her threaten to introduce a bill to effect an impossibility, viz. the extermination of the whole species. revenged I will be, as sure as his guts are made of puddings. Enter Mistress FORD. MRS. FORD. Mistress Page! trust me, I was going to your house. MRS. PAGE. And, trust me, I was coming to you. You look very ill. MRS. FORD. Nay, I'll ne'er believe that; I have to show to the contrary. MRS. PAGE. 'Faith, but you do, in my mind. MRS. FORD. Well, I do then; yet, I say, I could show you to the contrary: O, mistress Page, give me some counsel ! MRS. PAGE. What's the matter, woman? MRS. FORD. O woman, if it were not for one trifling respect, I could come to such honour! There is no error more frequent at the press than the omission of words. In a sheet of this work now before me [Mr. Malone means his former edition in 1790] there was an out, (as it is termed in the printing-house,) that is, a passage omitted, of no less than ten lines. The expression, putting down, is a common phrase of our municipal law. MALONE. I believe this passage has hitherto been misunderstood, and therefore continue to read with the folio, which omits the epithet -fat. The putting down of men, may only signify the humiliation of them, the bringing them to shame. So, in Twelfth Night, Malvolio says of the Clown-" I saw him, the other day, put down by an ordinary fool;" i. e. confounded. Again, in Love's Labour's Lost-"How the ladies and I have put him down!" Again, in Much Ado About Nothing" You have put him down, lady, you have put him down." Again, in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, edit. 1632, p. 482-" Lucullus' wardrobe is put down by our ordinary citizens." I cannot help thinking that the extermination of all men would be as practicable a design of parliament, as the putting down of those whose only offence was embonpoint. I persist in this opinion, even though I have before me (in support of Mr. Malone's argument) the famous print from P. Brueghel, representing the Lean Cooks expelling the Fat ones. STEEVENS. MRS. PAGE. Hang the trifle, woman; take the honour: What is it?-dispense with trifles ;what is it? MRS. FORD. If I would but go to hell for an eternal moment, or so, I could be knighted. MRS. PAGE. What?-thou liest !-Sir Alice Ford! --These knights will hack; and so thou shouldst not alter the article of thy gentry *. 4 What?-thou liest !-Sir Alice Ford!-These knights will HACK and so thou shouldst not alter the article of thy gentry.] I read thus-These knights we'll hack, and so thou shouldst not alter the article of thy gentry. The punishment of a recreant, or undeserving knight, was to hack off his spurs the meaning therefore is it is not worth the while of a gentlewoman to be made a knight, for we'll degrade all these knights in a little time, by the usual form of hacking off their spurs, and thou, if thou art knighted, shalt be hacked with the rest. JOHNSON. Sir T. Hanmer says, to hack, means to turn hackney, or prostitute. I suppose he means-These knights will degrade themselves, so that she will acquire no honour by being connected with them. It is not, however, impossible that Shakspeare meant by"these knights will hack"-these knights will soon become hackneyed characters. So many knights were made about the time this play was amplified (for the passage is neither in the copy 1602, nor 1619,) that such a stroke of satire might not have been unjustly thrown in. In Hans Beer Pot's Invisible Comedy, 1618, is a long piece of ridicule on the same occurrence: "Twas strange to see what knighthood once would do: "To gain this honour and this dignity. "But now, alas! 'tis grown ridiculous, STEEVENS. "Since bought with money, sold for basest prize, "That some refuse it who are counted wise." These knights will hack (that is, become cheap or vulgar,) and therefore she advises her friend not to sully her gentry by becoming one. The whole of this discourse about knighthood is added since the first edition of this play [in 1602]; and therefore I suspect this is an oblique reflection on the prodigality of James I. in bestowing these honours, and erecting in 1611 a new order of knighthood, called Baronets; which few of the ancient gentry would condescend to accept. See Sir Henry Spelman's epigram on them, Gloss. p. 76, which ends thus: MRS. FORD. We burn day-light':-here, read, read ;-perceive how I might be knighted.—I shall think the worse of fat men, as long as I have an eye to make difference of men's liking: And yet dum cauponare recusant Ex vera geniti nobilitate viri; Interea e caulis hic prorepit, ille tabernis Et modo fit dominus, qui modo servus erat." See another stroke at them in Othello, Act III. Sc. IV. BLACKSTONE. Sir W. Blackstone supposes that the order of Baronets (created in 1611) was likewise alluded to. But it appears to me highly probable that our author amplified the play before us at an earlier period. See An Attempt to Ascertain the Order of Shakspeare's Plays. Between the time of King James's arrive' at Berwick in April, 1603, and the 2d of May, he made two hundred and thirty-seven knights; and in the July following between three and four hundred. It is probable that the play before us was enlarged in that or the subsequent year, when this stroke of satire must have been highly relished by the audience. For a specimen of the contemptuous manner in which these knights were mentioned, see B. Rich's My Ladies Looking Glasse, 4to. 1616, but written about 1608, p. 66: "Knighthood was wont to be the reward of virtue, but now a common prey to the betrayers of virtue; and we shall sooner meet Sir Dinadine or Sir Dagenet [the one a cornet knight, the other King Arthur's foole-marginal note] at another man's table, than with Sir Tristram de Lionis, or Sir Lancelot de Lake in the field. Knights in former ages have been assistant unto princes, and were the staires of the commonwealth; but now they live by begging from the prince, and are a burthen to the commonwealth." MALONE. 5 We burn day-light :] i. e. we have more proof than we want. The same proverbial phrase occurs in The Spanish Tragedy: "Hier. Light me your torches." "Pedro. Then we burn day light." Again, in Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio uses the same expression, and then explains it : "We waste our lights in vain like lamps by day." STEEVENS. I think, the meaning rather is, we are wasting time in idle talk, when we ought to read the letter; resembling those who waste candles by burning them in the day-time. MALOne. 6- men's LIKING :] i. e. men's condition of body. Thus in the book of Job: 66 Their young ones are in good liking." Fal |