FAL. I hope, my lord, all's well: What's the news, my lord? CH. JUST. Come all his forces back? Gow. No; fifteen hundred foot, five hundred horse, Are march'd up to my lord of Lancaster, CH. JUST. You shall have letters of me presently: CH. JUST. What's the matter? FAL. Master Gower, shall I entreat you with me to dinner? Gow. I must wait upon my good lord here: I thank you, good sir John. CH. JUST. Sir John, you loiter here too long, being you are to take soldiers up in counties as you go. FAL. Will you sup with me, master Gower? CH. JUST. What foolish master taught you these manners, sir John? FAL. Master Gower, if they become me not, he was a fool that taught them me.-This is the right fencing grace, my lord; tap for tap, and so part fair. CH. JUST. Now the Lord lighten thee! thou art a great fool. [Exeunt. SCENE II. The Same. Another Street. Enter Prince HENRY and POINS. P. HEN. Trust me, I am exceeding weary. 4 57 weariness durst not have attached one of so high blood. P. HEN. 'Faith, it does me; though it discolours the complexion of my greatness to acknowledge it. Doth it not show vilely in me, to desire small beer? POINS. Why, a prince should not be so loosely studied, as to remember so weak a composition. P. HEN. Belike then, my appetite was not princely got; for by my troth, I do now remember the poor creature, small beer. But, indeed, these humble considerations make me out of love with my greatness. What a disgrace is it to me, to remember thy name? or to know thy face to-morrow? or to take note how many pair of silk stockings thou hast; viz. these, and those that were the peach colour'd ones? or to bear the inventory of thy shirts; as, one for superfluity, and one other for use?-but that, the tennis-court-keeper knows better than I; for it is a low ebb of linen with thee, when thou keepest not racket there; as thou hast not done a great while, because the rest of thy lowcountries have made a shift to eat up thy holland: and God knows, whether those that bawl out the 4 attached] i. e. arrested. TALBOT. and God knows, &c.] This passage Mr. Pope restored from the first edition. I think it may as well be omitted. It is omitted in the first folio, and in all subsequent editions before Mr. Pope's, and was perhaps expunged by the author. The editors, unwilling to lose any thing of Shakspeare's, not only insert what he has added, but recall what he has rejected. JOHNSON. I have not met with positive evidence that Shakspeare rejected any passages whatever. Such proof may indeed be inferred from the quartos which were published in his life-time, and are declared (in their titles) to have been enlarged and corrected by his own hand. These I would follow, in preference to the folio, and should at all times be cautious of opposing its authority to that of the elder copies. Of the play in question, there is no quarto extant but that in 1600, and therefore we are unauthorized to assert that a single passage was omitted by consent of the poet himself. I do not think I have a right to expunge what ruins of thy linen, shall inherit his kingdom: but the midwives say, the children are not in the fault; whereupon the world increases, and kindreds are mightily strengthened. POINS. How ill it follows, after you have laboured so hard, you should talk so highly? Tell me, how many good young princes would do so, their fathers being so sick as yours at this time is? P. HEN. Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins? POINS. Yes; and let it be an excellent good thing. 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 sad, now my father is sick 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 sad indeed too. 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. But I tell thee, my heart bleeds inwardly, that my fa Shakspeare should seem to have written, on the bare authority of the player-editors. I have therefore restored the passage in question to the text. STEEVENS. This and many other similar passages were undoubtedly struck out of the playhouse copies by the Master of the Revels. 5 - MALONE. -that bawl out the ruins of thy linen,] I suspect we should read “that bawl out of the ruins of thy linen;" i. e. his bastard children, wrapt up in his old shirts. The subsequent words confirm this emendation. The latter part of this speech, "And God knows," &c. is omitted in the folio. MALONE. 66 "Out the ruins" is the same as out of," &c. Of this elliptical phraseology I have seen instances, though I omitted to note them. STEEVENS. ther is so sick and keeping such vile company as thou art, hath in reason taken from me all ostentation of sorrow". 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 confess, I cannot help. By the mass, here comes Bardolph. P. HEN. And the boy that I gave Falstaff: he 6 all OSTENTATION of sorrow.] Ostentation is here not boastful show, but simply show. Merchant of Venice: -- 66 one well studied in a sad ostent "To please his grandame." JOHNSON. - proper fellow of my hands;] A tall or proper fellow of his hands, was a stout fighting man. 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 size; or of my inches, as we should now express it. M. MASON. Proper, it has been already observed, in our author's time, signified handsome. See vol. iv.p. 94, n. 3. "As tall a man of his hands" has already occurred in The Merry Wives of Windsor. See vol. viii. p. 47, n. 4. MALONE. had him from me christian; and look, if the fat villain have not transformed 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. PAGE. He called me even now, my lord, through a red lattice, and I could discern no part of his face from the window: at last, I spied his eyes; and, methought, he had made two holes in the alewife's new petticoat, and peeped 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 dreamed she was delivered of a fire-brand'; and therefore I call him her dream. P. HEN. A crown's worth of good interpretation 2. -There it is, boy. [Gives him money. 8 Bard. Come, you virtuous ass, &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. 9 - through a red lattice,] i. e. from an ale-house window. See vol. viii. p. 77, n. 6. Malone. Althea dreamed, &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 consumed the kingdom. JOHNSON. 2 A crown's worth of good interpretation.] A Pennyworth of |