P. HEN. Hark, how hard he fetches breath: Search his pockets. [Porns searches.] What hast thou found? POINS. Nothing but papers, my lord. P. HEN. Let's see what they be: read them. Item, Sauce, 4d. Item, Sack, two gallons, 5s. 8d. ' Item, Anchovies, and sack after supper, 2s. 6d. P. HEN. O monstrous! but one half-pennyworth had Peto done, (Dr. Johnson observes,) to be trusted with the plot against Falstaff? Poins has the Prince's confidence, and is a man of courage. This alteration clears the whole difficulty; they all retired but Poins, who, with the Prince, having only robbed the robbers, had no need to conceal himself from the travellers." MALONE. 5-Sack, two gallons, 5s. 8d.] It appears from Peacham's Worth of a Penny, that sack was, not many years after Shakspeare's death, about two shillings a quart. If therefore our author had followed his usual practice of attributing to former ages the modes of his own, the charge would have been here 16s. Perhaps he set down the price at random. He has, however, as a learned friend observes to me, fallen into an anachronism, in furnishing his tavern in Eastcheap with sack in the time of King Henry IV. "The vintners sold no other sacks, muscadels, malmsies, bastards, alicants, nor any other wines but white and claret, till the 33d year of King Henry VIII. 1543, and then was old Parr 60 years of age. All those sweet wines were sold till that time at the apothecary's, for no other use but for medicines." Taylor's Life of Thomas Parr, 4to. Lond. 1635. If therefore Falstaff got drunk with sack 140 years before the above date, it could not have been at Mrs. Quickly's. For this information I am indebted to the Reverend Dr. Stock, the accurate and learned editor of Demosthenes. Since this note was written, I have learnt from a passage in Florio's First Fruites, 1578, with which I was furnished by the late Reverend Mr. Bowle, that sack was at that time but sixpence a quart." Claret wine, red and white, is sold for fivepence the quart, and sacke for sixpence: muscadel and malmsey for eight." Twenty years afterwards sack had probably risen to eight-pence or eight-pence halfpenny a quart, so that our author's computation is very exact. MALONE. of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!-What there is else, keep close: we'll read it at more advantage: there let him sleep till day. I'll to the court in the morning: we must all to the wars, and thy place shall be honourable. I'll procure this fat rogue a charge of foot; and, I know, his death will be a march of twelve-score". The money shall be paid back again with advantage. Be with me betimes in the morning; and so good morrow, Poins. 6 POINS. Good morrow, good my lord. [Exeunt. I know, his death will be a march of TWELVE-SCORE.] i. e. It will kill him to march so far as twelve-score yards. JOHNSON. Ben Jonson uses the same expression in his Sejanus: "That look'd for salutations twelve-score off." Again, in Westward Hoe, 1606 : "I'll get me twelve-score off, and give aim." Again, in an ancient MS. play, entitled, The Second Maiden's Tragedy: 66 not one word near it ; "There was no syllable but was twelve-score off.” STEEVENS. That is, twelve score feet; the Prince quibbles on the word foot, which signifies a measure, and the infantry of an army. I cannot conceive why Johnson supposes that he means twelve score yards; he might as well extend it to twelve score miles. M. MASON. Dr. Johnson supposed that "twelve-score" meant twelve score yards, because that was the common phraseology of the time. When archers talked of sending a shaft fourteen score, they meant fourteen score yards. So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor : "This boy will carry a letter twenty miles, as easily as a cannon will shoot point-blank twelve-score." See also, King Henry IV. Part II. I have therefore great doubts whether the equivoque pointed out by Mr. Mason was intended. If not, Mr. Pope's interpretation [twelve-score foot] is wrong, and Dr. Johnson's right. MALONE. 66 Twelve-score" always means so many yards, and not feet. There is not the smallest reason to suppose that Shakspeare meant any quibble. Douce. ACT III. SCENE I. Bangor. A Room in the Archdeacon's House. Enter HOTSPUR, WORCESTER, MORTIMER, and GLENDOWER. MORT. These promises are fair, the parties sure, And our induction full of prosperous hope. Hor. Lord Mortimer,-and cousin Glendower,Will you sit down? And, uncle Worcester :-A plague upon it! GLEND. No, here it is. Sit, cousin Percy; sit, good cousin Hotspur: For by that name as oft as Lancaster Doth speak of you, his cheek looks pale; and, with A rising sigh, he wisheth you in heaven. Hor. And you in hell, as often as he hears Owen Glendower spoke of. GLEND. I cannot blame him: at my nativity, The front of heaven was full of firy shapes, 7-induction] That is, entrance, beginning. JOHNSON. An induction was anciently something introductory to a play. Such is the business of the Tinker previous to the performance of The Taming of the Shrew. Shakspeare often uses the word, which his attendance on the theatres might have familiarized to his conception. Thus, in King Richard III. : 66 "Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous." STEEVENS. 8 -at my nativity, &c.] Most of these prodigies appear to have been invented by Shakspeare. Holinshed says only: Strange wonders happened at the nativity of this man; for the same night he was born, all his father's horses in the stable were found to stand in blood up to their bellies." STEEVENS. In the year 1402, a blazing star appeared, which the Welsh bards represented as portending good fortune to Owen Glendower. Shakspeare had probably read an account of this star in some Chronicle, and transferred its appearance to the time of Owen's nativity. MALONE. 1 Of burning cressets; and, at my birth, The frame and huge foundation of the earth HOT. Why, so it would have done1 Hor. And I say the earth was not of my mind, GLEND. The heavens were all on fire, the earth Hor. O, then the earth shook to see the heavens And not in fear of your nativity. Diseased nature 2 oftentimes breaks forth 9 Of burning CRESSETS ;] A cresset was a great light set upon a beacon, light-house, or watch-tower: from the French word croissette, a little cross, because the beacons had anciently crosses on the top of them. HANMER. The same word occurs in Histriomastix, or the Player Whipt, 1610: "Come, Cressida, my cresset-light, "Thy face doth shine both day and night." 66 In the reign of Elizabeth, Holinshed says: The countie Pala- "Watches in armour, triumphs, cresset-lights." The cresset-lights were lights fixed on a moveable frame or I Why, so it would have done, &c.] A similar observation occurs in Cicero de Fato, cap. 3: “ Quid mirum igitùr, ex speluncâ saxum in crura Icadii incidisse? Puto enim, etiàm si Icadius in speluncâ non fuisset, saxum tamèn illud casurum fuisse." STEEVENS. Diseased nature-] The poet has here taken, from the perverseness and contrariousness of Hotspur's temper, an opportunity of raising his character, by a very rational and philosophical confutation of superstitious error. JOHNSON. In strange eruptions: oft the teeming earth Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving, Shakes the old beldame earth, and topples down 3 oft the teeming earth Is with a kind of colick pinch'd and vex'd By the IMPRISONING of unruly WIND Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving, SHAKES the old beldame EARTH,] So, in our author's Venus and Adonis : "As when the wind, imprison'd in the ground, "Struggling for passage, earth's foundation shakes, "Which with cold terrours doth men's minds confound." The same thought is found in Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. iii. c. ix. : like as a boy'strous wind, "Which in th' earth's hollow caves hath long been hid, 66 And, shut up fast within her prison's blind, "Makes the huge element against her kind "Then forth it breakes; and with his furious blast "Confounds both land and seas, and skyes doth overcast." So also, in Drayton's Legend of Pierce Gaveston, 1594: "As when within the soft and spongie soyle "The wind doth pierce the entrails of the earth, "Shakes all the centre, wanting issue forth," &c. MALONE. Beldame is not used here as a term of contempt, but in the sense of ancient mother. Belle-age, Fr. Drayton, in the 8th song of his Polyolbion, uses bel-sire in the same sense: "As his great bel-sire Brute from Albion's heirs it won." Again, in the 14th song: "When he his long descent shall from his bel-sires bring." Beau pere is French for father-in-law, but the word employed by Drayton seems to have no such meaning. Perhaps beldame originally meant a grandmother. So, in Shakspeare's Tarquin and Lucrece : "To show the beldame daughters of her daughter." STEEVENS. |