art thou not ashamed to be called-captain? If captains were of my mind, they would truncheon you out, for taking their names upon you before you have earned them. You a captain, you slave! for what? for tearing a poor whore's ruff in a bawdyhouse? He a captain! Hang him, rogue! He lives upon mouldy stewed prunes, and dried cakes *. A captain! these villains will make the word captain as odious as the word occupy; which was an "Thou unspeakable rascal, thou a soldier! "That with thy slops and cat-a-mountain face, 4 He lives upon mouldy STEWED PRUNES, and dried cakes.] That is, he lives on the refuse provisions of bawdy-houses and pastry-cooks' shops. Stewed prunes, when mouldy, were perhaps formerly sold at a cheap rate, as stale pies and cakes are at present. The allusion to stewed prunes, aud all that is necessary to be known on that subject, has been already explained in the First Part of this historical play. STEEVENS. 5- as odious as the word occUPY ;] So Ben Jonson, in his Discoveries: "Many, out of their own obscene apprehensions, refuse proper and fit words; as, occupy, nature," &c. STEEVENS. This word is used with different senses in the following jest, from Wits, Fits, and Fancies, 1614: "One threw stones at an yll-fauor'd old womans Owle, and the olde woman said: Faith (sir knaue) you are well occupy'd, to throw stones at my poore Owle, that doth you no harme. Yea marie (answered the wag) so would you be better occupy'd too (I wisse) if you were young againe, and had a better face." RITSON. Occupant seems to have been formerly a term for a woman of the town, as occupier was for a wencher. So, in Marston's Satires, 1599: 66 He with his occupant "Are cling'd so close, like dew-worms in the morne, "That he'll not stir." Again, in a Song by Sir T. Overbury, 1616: "Here's water to quench maiden's fires, "Here's spirits for old occupiers." MALONE. Again, in Promos and Cassandra, bl. 1. 1578: "Mistresse, you excellent good word before it was ill sorted*: therefore captains had need look to it. BARD. Pray thee, go down, good ancient. PIST. Not I: tell thee what, corporal Bardolph;I could tear her :-I'll be revenged on her. PAGE. Pray thee go down. PIST. I'll see her damned first:-to Pluto's damned lake, to the infernal deep, with Erebus† and tortures vile also ". Hold hook and line, say I. *Folio reads only, will make the word captain odious. † Folio, where Erebus. must shut up your shop, and leave your occupying." This is said to a bawd. HENDERSON. Barnabe Rych, in his Roome for a Gentleman, 1609, complains of "a number of counterfeit souldiers that will be called captaines ;" and says of them, "these be they that are a slander and disgrace to the Art Militari; for there is no greater incivility, no baser disorder, nor more shamefull misdemeanor, than is used by those counterfeit souldiers that do march under the title of captaines." BoS WELL. 6 I'll see her DAMNED 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 Battel of Alcazar, 1594, from which Pistol afterwards quotes a line (see p. 87, n. 6): "You dastards of the night and Erebus, "Fiends, fairies, hags, that fight in beds of steel, 7 Hold hook and line,] These words are introduced in ridicule, by Ben Jonson, in The Case is Alter'd, 1609. Of absurd and fustian passages from many plays, in which Shakspeare had been a performer, I have always supposed no small part of Pistol's character to be composed: and the pieces themselves being now irretrievably lost, the humour of his allusion is not a little obscured. Let me add, however, that in the frontispiece to an ancient bl. 1. ballad, entitled The Royal Recreation of Joviall Anglers, Down! down, dogs! down faitors! Have we not Hiren here?? * Folio, fates. one of the figures has the following couplet proceeding from his mouth : "Hold hooke and line, "Then all is mine." STEEVENS. In Tusser's Husbandry, bl. 1. 1580, it is said: "Out trudgeth Hew Makeshift, with hook and with line." HENDERSON. 8 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 7 Rich. II. c. 5, for evil doers, or rather for idle livers; from the French, faitard, which in Cotgrave's Dictionary s slothful, idle, &c. TOLLET. ignifies "-down faitors!" i. e. traitors, rascals. So, Spenser: "Into new woes, unweeting, was I cast "By this false faitour." 9 The word often occurs in The Chester Mysteries. STEEVENS. Have we not HIREN here?] In an old comedy, 1608, called Law Tricks; or, Who Would Have Thought It? the same quotation is likewise introduced, and on a similar occasion. The Prince Polymetes says: "What ominous news can Polymetes daunt? Again, in Massinger's Old Law: "Clown. No dancing for me, we have Siren here. "Cook. Syren! 'twas Hiren the fair Greek, man." Again, in Decker's Satiromastix: " - therefore whilst we have Hiren here, speak my little dish-washers." 66 Again, in Love's Mistress, a masque, by T. Heywood, 1636: say she is a foul beast 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 sirens in the sea of the world. Sirens? Hirens as they are now called. What a number of these sirens, Hirens, cockatrices, courteghians,-in plain English, harlots,-swimme amongst us?"-Pistolmay therefore mean,-Have we not a strumpet here? and why am I thus used by her? STEEVENS. From The Merie Conceited Jests of George Peele, Gentleman, sometime Student in Oxford, quarto 1657, it appears that Peele HOST. Good captain Peesel, be quiet; it is very late, i'faith: I beseek you now, aggravate your choler. was the author of a play called The Turkish Mahomet, and Hyren the Fair Greek, which is now lost. One of these jests, or rather stories, is entitled, How George read a Play-book to a Gentleman. "There was a gentleman (says the tale) whom God had endued with good living, to maintain his small wit,-one that took great delight to have the first hearing of any work that George had done, himself being a writer.-This self-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 associates, a punk.-This fantastick, whose brain was made of nought but cork and spunge, came to the cold lodging of Monsieur Peel.-George bids him welcome;-told him he would gladly have his opinion of his book.-He willingly condescended, 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 occasion into the mouth of Pistol. In Eastward Hoe, a comedy, by Jonson, Chapman, and Marston, 1605, Quicksilver comes in drunk, and repeats this, and many other verses, from dramatick performances of that time: "Holla, ye pamper'd jades of Asia!" [Tamburlaine.] "Hast thou not Hiren here?" [Probably The Turkish Mahomet.] "Who cries on murther? lady, was it you?" [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. MALONE. The notes on this expression have left it a matter of doubt whether Pistol is speaking of his sword or of a woman; but the fact is, after all, that the word Hiren was purposely designed by the author to be ambiguous, though used by Pistol with reference only to his sword. When the Hostess replies, "There's none such here, do you think I would deny her?" she evidently con PIST. These be good humours, indeed! Shall packhorses, And hollow pamper'd jades of Asia', ceives that he is calling for some wench. Pistol, not regarding her blunder, continues to handle his sword, and in his next speech reads the motto on it-si fortuna me tormenta, sperato me contenta. It is to be observed that most of the ancient swords had inscriptions on them, and there is no doubt that if diligent search. were made, the one before us, in a less corrupted state, would be found. Douce. Mr. Douce adds, that he is possessed of an old French rapier, on which these lines are engraved: "Si Fortune me tourmente, l'esperance me contente." A representation of it is given in his Illustrations, vol. i. p. 453. BOSWELL. I -hollow pamper'd jades of Asia, &c.] These lines are in part a quotation out of an old absurd fustian play, entitled, Tamburlaine's Conquests; or, The Scythian Shepherds, 1590, [by C. Marlow.] THEOBALD. These lines are addressed by Tamburlaine to the captive princes who draw his chariot : "Holla, you pamper'd jades of Asia, "What! can you draw but twenty miles a day?" The same passage is burlesqued by Beaumont and Fletcher, in The Coxcomb. Young, however, has borrowed the idea for the use of his Busiris : "Have we not seen him shake his silver reins "O'er harness'd monarchs, to his chariot yok'd?" I was surprised to find a simile, much and justly celebrated by the admirers of Spenser's Fairy Queen, inserted 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: "Like to an almond-tree ymounted high "With blossoms brave bedecked daintily, "At every little breath that under heaven is blown.” "Like to an almond-tree ymounted high Upon the lofty and celestial mount "Of ever-green Selinis, quaintly deck'd Spenser. A |