P. HEN. For worms, brave Percy. Fare thee* Ill-weav'd ambition, how much art thou shrunk ! Is room enough. This earth, that bears thee dead, Bears not alive so stout a gentleman. I should not make so deart a show of zeal : [He sees FALSTAFF on the ground. [Exit. FAL. [Rising slowly.] Embowelled! if thou embowel me to-day, I'll give you leave to powder me, and eat me too, to-morrow. 'Sblood, 'twas time to counterfeit, or that hot termagant Scot had paid me scot and lot too. Counterfeit? I lie,§ I am no counterfeit to die, is to be a counterfeit; for he is but the counterfeit of a man, who hath not the life of a man: but to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valour is, discretion; in the which better part, I have saved my life. 'Zounds,|| I am afraid of this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead. How if he should counterfeit too, and rise? By my faith,¶ I am afraid, he would prove the better counterfeit. Therefore I'll make him sure: yea, and I'll swear I killed him. Why may not he rise, as well as I? Nothing confutes me but eyes, and nobody sees me therefore, sirrah, [Stabbing him.] with a new wound in your thigh, come you along with** [Takes HOTSPUR on his back. me. Re-enter PRINCE HENRY and PRINCE JOHN. P. HEN. Come, brother John ; full bravely hast thou flesh'd We will not trust our eyes, without our ears:- FAL. No, that's certain; I am not a double man but if I be not Jack Falstaff, then am I a Jack. There is Percy: [Throwing the body down.] if your father will do me any honour, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy himself. I look to be either earl or duke, I can assure you. P. HEN. Why, Percy I killed myself, and saw thee dead. FAL. Didst thou?-Lord, Lord, how this+ world is given to lying!-I grant you, I was down, and out of breath; and so was he: but we rose both at an instant, and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. If I may be believed, so; if not, let them, that should reward valour, bear the sin upon their own heads. I'll take it upon my death, I gave him this wound in the thigh: if the man were alive, and would deny it, 'zounds!§ I would make him eat a piece of my sword. P. JOHN. This is the strangest tale that e'er I heard. P. HEN. This is the strangest fellow, brother Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back: [A retreat is sounded. The trumpet sounds || retreat, the day is ours. [Exeunt PRINCE HENRY and PRINCE JOHN. FAL. I'll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, God reward him!! If I do grow great,** I'll grow less; for I'll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman should do. [Exit, bearing off the body. SCENE V. Another part of the Field. The trumpets sound. Enter KING HENRY, PRINCE HENRY, PRINCE JOHN, WESTMORELAND, and others, with WORCESTER and VERNON, pri soners. K. HEN. Thus ever did rebellion find rebuke.-- If, like a Christian, thou hadst truly borne, WOR. What I have done, my safety urg'd me power. You, son John, and my cousin Westmoreland, Towards York shall bend you, with your dearest speed, To meet Northumberland, and the prelate Scroop, (*) First folio, way. "I thank your grace for this high courtesy, Which I shall give away immediately." [Exeunt. (1) SCENE II.—An apartment in a Tavern.] According to the modern editions, the action of this scene takes place Now, not to dwell upon in a room of the king's palace. the improbability of the prince of Wales surrounding himself with licentious companions, and planning a vulgar robbery in such a place, we are compelled to infer that he was not in the practice of making the court his home. In the last Act of "Richard II." King Henry asks: "Can no man tell of my unthrifty son? 'Tis full three months since I did see him last." And in a subsequent scene in the present play, when Falstaff personates the monarch, one of his inquiries, founded upon his knowledge of the prince's habits, is- "Where hast thou been this month?" (2) SCENE II. Or the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe.] Steevens acutely conceived that the "drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe," meant the dull croak of a frog, one of the native minstrels of that fenny county; but it is more credible that Lincolnshire was celebrated for the making or playing on this instrument. In "A Nest of Ninnies," by Robert Armin, 1608, a Lincolnshire bagpipe is mentioned in a way to show it was familiarly known:"At a Christmas time, when great logs furnish the hallfire-when brawne is in season, and, indeede, all reveling is regarded, this gallant knight kept open house for all commers, where beefe, beere, and bread was no niggard. Amongst all the pleasures prouided, a noyse of minstrells and a Lincolnshire bagpipe was prepared-the minstrels for the great chamber, the bagpipe for the hall--the minstrells to serue vp the knight's meat, and the bagpipe for the common dauncing." (3) SCENE II.-The melancholy of Moor-ditch.] Moorditch was a part of the great ditch or moat, which, with the well-known wall, surrounded and formed the defence of London. This ditch was begun in 1211, and finished in 1213. That portion of it known as Moor-ditch, extending from the Postern called Moorgate, to Bishopsgate, was cleansed and widened in 1595; but Stowe relates that it soon filled again, and, flanked as it was on the one side with miserable dwellings, and on the other by an unwholesome and sometimes impassable morass, it is easy to understand how the sombre, melancholy aspect of this filthy stream should have become proverbial. Taylor in his Pennylesse Pilgrimage," 1618, says-"Walking thus downe the street, (my body being tyred with trauell, and my mind attyred with moody, muddy, Moore-ditch melancholly,") &c. 66 (4) SCENE II.-Wisdom cries out in the streets.] In the first folio, this scriptural expression is omitted, in compliance, it has been thought, with the Act 3 Jac. I.; but that Act, which we append, was restricted to preventing the The numberless omisprofane use of the sacred names. sions of phrases like the above, as well as "by my faith," "by my troth," "by the mass," &c. &c. in the folio, must therefore be attributed not to the Act of Parliament in question, but to the increasing influence of the Puritans. 3 JAC. I. c. 21. AN ACTE TO RESTRAIN THE ABUSES OF PLAYERS, (1605-6.) For the preventing and avoyding of the greate Abuse of the Holy Name of God in Stageplayes, Interludes Maygames Shewes and such like;-Be it enacted by our Soveraigne Lorde the Kings Majesty, and by the Lories Spirituall and Temporall, and Commons in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authoritie of the same, That if at any tyme or tymes, after the end of this present Session of Parliament any person or persons doe or shall in any Stage play Interlude Shewe Maygame or Pageant jestingly or prophanely speake or use the holy Name of God or of Christ Jesus, or of the Holy Ghoste or of the Trinitie, which are not to be spoken but with feare and reverence, shall forfeite for everie such Offence by hym or them comitted Tenne Pounde, the one Moytie thereof to the Kings Majestie his Heires and Successors, the other Moytie thereof to hym or them that will sue for the same in any Courte of Recorde at Westminster, wherein no Essoigne Proteccion or Wager of Lawe shalbe allowed. (5) SCENE II.-Gadshill.] This place, which is on the Kentish road near Rochester, appears at one time to have enjoyed the same kind of unenviable notoriety which ren dered Shooters Hill and Hounslow Heath the terror of travellers in later days. So early as 1558, a ballad was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company, entitled The Robbery at Gadshill, and there is still extant among the Lansdowne Manuscripts in the British Museum a cir cumstantial narrative in the handwriting of Sir Roger Manwood, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, dated July 3, 1590, of the exploits of a daring gang of robbers, who at that period infested Gadshill and its vicinity. We extract a portion of this curious account; the whole of which may be seen in Boswell's edition of Malone's Shakespeare, vol. xvi. p. 432. "In October, at begynninge of last Mychaelmas Terme, iij or iiij robberyes done at Gadeshill by certen foote theres, vppon hughe and crye, one of the Theves named Hachfe flying and squatted in a bushe, was broughte to me, sad vppon examynacion findinge a purse and things about h suspiciouse, and his cause of being there and his flying and other circumstances very suspiciouse, I committed him to the Jayle, and he ys of that robberye indyted. "In the course of that Michaelmas Terme, I being st London, many robberyes weare done in the hye waves at Gadeshill on the west parte of Rochester, and at Chatham downe on the east parte of Rochester, by horse theves, with suche fatt and lustye horses, as weare not lyke hackney horsses, nor farr jorneying horsses, and one of them some tyme wearing a vizarde greye bearde (by reason that to the persons robbed, the Theves did use to mynister an othe that there should bee no hue and crye made after, and also did gyve a watche woorde for the parties robbed, the better to escape other of their theves companye devyded vppon the hyghe-waye,) he was by common report in the country called Justice Greye Bearde; and non durst travell that waye without great companye. "After the end of that Mychaelmas Terme, iij ori gentn. from London rydinge home towardes Canterburye, at the west end of Gadeshill, weare overtaken by v or vj horsemen all in clokes vpp about their faces, and fellowe lyke all, and none lyke servants or waytinge on the other, and swiftly ridinge by them gatt to the east end of Gadeshill, and there turned about all their horsses on the faces of the trewe men, wherby they became in feare; but by chanse one of the trewe men did knowe this Curtall to bee one of the v or vj swift ryders, and after some speache betwene them of the manyfold robberyes there done and that by company of this Curtall, that gentleman hoped to have the more saffetye from robbing. This Curtall with the other v or vj swifte ryders, rode awaye to Rochester before, and the trewe men coming afterwards neere Rochester they did mete this Curtall retorning on horsebacke, rydinge towards Gadeshill againe; and after they had passed Rochester, in Chatham streete, at a Smyths fordge they did see the reste of the swyft ryders tarying about shoing of their horsses, and then the trewe men doubted to be set vppon at Chatham downe, but their company being the greater, they passed without troble to Sittingborne that nyghte where they harde of robberyes daylye done at Chatham downe and Gadeshill, and that this Curtall with v or vj other as lustye companyons, and well horssed, much havnted the innes and typlinge howses at Raynham, Sittingborne, and Rochester, with liberall expences." In another memorandum belonging to the same collection, which relates to similar depredations in other parts of the country, we find the word match, used precisely as in "Ratsey's Ghost," (see note b, p. 513) to signify the plot, or scheme of a robbery, showing that the "set a match of the quartos is the true reading, and the "set a watch" of the folio, a misprint : "There maner of robbinge is to robbe in suche companies as afore saide if the matche soe require, and sometimes doe devide themselves and robbe three or fower together onelie, in a companie." This, indeed, is put beyond all question by Minsheu's explanation of "Outeparters." "Some are of opinion, that those which are tearmed outparters, are at this day called out-putters, and are such as set matches for the robbing any man or house; as by discovering which way he rideth or goeth, or where the house is weakest and fittest to be entred." (6) SCENE II.-Redeeming time, when men think least I will.] We had purposed in this scene, to say a few words on the contrast presented by the traditional character of the prince, familiarized as it is to us by the delightful fancies of the poet, and that ascribed to him by Mr. Luders and Mr. Tyler, the historians, who have laboured so zealously to exculpate him from the imputation of youthful riot and dishonour; but, upon reflection, prefer reserving our observations until Henry appears as King of England. (7) SCENE III.-His brother-in-law, the foolish Mortimer.] Every historian, from Walsingham to Sharon Turner, has fallen into the error of confounding Sir Edmund Mortimer with his nephew, Edmund Earl of March, who at this period was a boy not more than ten years of age, and in custody of the king at Windsor. Sir Edmund Mortimer was taken prisoner by Owen Glendower, at the battle fought June 12, 1402, near Melienydd in Radnorshire; became devotedly attached to the Welsh chieftain, and married his daughter. By this connexion, Owen shortly after obtained another accession to his power and influence in the person of Hotspur, who, incensed, it was thought, at the king's refusal to ransom his brother-in-law (for Hotspur had married Mortimer's sister), suddenly revolted from his side, and allied himself to the cause of his old opponent, Glendower. (1) SCENE I. ACT II. breeds fleas like a loach.] The efforts of critics who gravely labour to establish the pertinence and integrity of such comparisons as these, are as profitable, to adopt a characteristic simile of Gifford's, as the milking he-goats in a sieve. When the obtuse carrier tells us that his horse provender is as dank as a dog-that chamber-lie breeds fleas like a loach, and that he himself is stung like a tench and as well bitten as a king, he means no more, than that the peas and beans are very damp, that chamberlie breeds many fleas, and that he is severely stung. So, when the immortal Mrs. Quickly declares Sir John and his Dulcinea to be "as rheumatic as two dried toasts," she intends only to convey, what she wants language to describe in words, or imagination to portray properly by figure, that they are inordinately quarrelsome. An appropriate and congruous resemblance would be as inappropriate and incongruous in such mouths, as forcible and well chosen phraseology. The Water Poet, John Taylor, has very happily derided such inapposite similitudes:-"But many pretty ridiculous aspersions are cast upon Dogges, so that it would make a Dogge laugh to heare and understand them. As I have heard a Man say, I am as hot as a Dogge, or as cold as a Dogge, I sweate like a Dogge, (when a Dogge never sweates) as drunke as a Dogge, hee swore like a Dogge, and one told a man once That his Wife was not to be believ'd for she would lye like a Dogge," &c. -A Dogge of Warre, 1630. (2) SCENE I.-Thou lay st the plot, how.] The collusion between the Chamberlains and Ostlers, and the "Gentle men of the Road," in old times, is often referred to in works of the period. In Harrison's "Description of England," (Holinshed, Vol. I. p. 246,) there is an interesting account of old English Inns, wherein the villainy of tapsters, drawers, chamberlains, and ostlers, forms a prominent topic:-"Those townes that we call thorowfaires have great and sumptuous innes builded in them, for the receiving of such travellers and strangers as pass to and fro. The manner of harbouring wherein, is not like to that of some other countries, in which the host or good man of the house doth chalenge a lordlie authoritie over his ghests, but cleane otherwise, sith everie man may use his inne as his owne house in England, and have for his monie how great or little varietee of vittels, and what other service himselfe shall thinke expedient to call for. Our innes are also verie well furnished with naperie, bedding and tapisterie, especiallie with naperie; for beside the linnen used at the tables which is commonlie washed dailie, is such and so much as belongeth unto the estate and calling of the ghest. Ech commer is sure to lie in cleane sheets, wherein no man hath been lodged since they came from the landresse, or out of the water wherein they were last washed. If the traveller have an horsse, his bed doth cost him nothing, but if he go on foot he is sure to paie a penie for the same; but whether he be horsseman or footman, if his chamber be once appointed he may carie the kaie with him, as of his own house. so long as he lodgeth there. If he loose oughte whilest he abideth in the inne, the host is bound by a generall custome to restore the damage, so that there is no greater securitie anie where for travellers than in the gretest ins of England. There horsses in like sort are walked, dressed, and looked unto by certain hostelers or hired servants, appointed at the charges of the goodman of the house, who in hope of extraordinarie reward will deale verie deligentlie after outward appeerance in this their function and calling. Herein neverthelesse are manie of them blameworthie, in that they doo not onelie deceive the beast oftentimes of his allowance by sundrie meanes, except their owners looke well to them, but also make such packs with slipper merchants which hunt after preie (for what place is sure from evill and wicked persons) that manie an honest man is spoiled of his goods as he travelleth to and fro, in which feat also the counsells of the tapsters or drawers of drink, and chamberleins is not seldome behind or wanting. Certes I beleeve not that chapman or traveller in England is robbed by the waie without the knowledge of some of them, for when he commeth into the inne and alighteth from his horsse, the hostler forthwith is verie busie to take downe his budget or capcase in the yard from his sadle bow, which he poiseth slilie in his hand to feele the weight thereof or if he misse of this pitch, when the ghest hath taken up his chamber, the chamberleine that looketh to the making of the beds, will be sure to remove it from the place where the owner hath set it as if it were to set it more convenientlie some where else, whereby he getteth an inkling whether it be monie or other short wares and thereof giveth warning to such od ghests as hant the house and are of his confederacie, to the utter undoing of manie an honest yeoman as he journieth by the waie. The tapster in like sort for his part doth marke his behaviour, and what plentie of monie he draweth when he paieth the shot, to the like end: so that it shall be an hard matter to escape all their subtile practises. Some thinke it a gay matter to commit their budgets at their comming to the goodman of the house: but thereby they oft bewraie themselves. For albeit their monie be safe for the time that it is in his hands (for you shall not heare that a man is robbed in his inne) yet after their departure the host can make no warrantize of the same, sith his protection extendeth no further than the gate of his owne house and there cannot be a surer token unto such as prie and watch for those booties, than to see anie ghest deliver his capcase in such manner." (3) SCENE I.-Great oneyers.] For oneyers of the ancient text, Pope proposed oneraires,-trustees or commissioners; Theobald, Moneyers; Capell. Mynheers; Malone, onyers, that is, public accountants; and Hanmer, owners. Of all these conjectures we prefer the last. not merely because it better suits the context than any of the others, but because one having, as we believe, of old, the pronunciation of own, a sound it still retains in only, (or onelie, as it was once written,) oneyers might easily have been misprinted for owners. summer Eve-June 23d-fasting, and in silence; but the "I had No medicine, sir, to go invisible, Beside the bestowing invisibility, there seem to have been other qualities attributed to this seed, even by scientific persons, in the 17th century, of which John Parkinson, in his "Theater of Plants," 1640, speaks as follows:-" The seede which this and the female Ferne doe beare, and to be gathered onely on Midsommer eve at night, with I know not what conjuring words,-is superstitiously held by divers, not onely Mountebankes and Quacksalvers, but by other learned men, (yet it cannot be said but by those that are too superstitiously addicted,) to be of some secret hidden vertue, but I cannot finde it exprest what it should be for Bauhinus, in his Synonimies upon Mat thiolus, saith these tales are neither fabulous nor superstitious." It must be observed that the "conjuring words" mentioned in this extract constitute Shakespeare's "receipt of fern-seed" as being the formula and directions with which it was to be effectually gathered. (5) SCENE IV.-The Boar's Head Tavern.] Were it practicable to obtain original and pertinent illustrations of the famous Boar's Head Tavern of Shakespeare, there would be little difficulty in composing an interesting article on the subject. But all that is really known, or that is likely to be known relating to the edifice, has been repeatedly told; and its story belongs rather to poetical and speculative history, than to antiquarian or topographical research. Yet the name and the locality were familiar in connexion, so early as the end of the fourteenth century. when William Warden gave "all that his tenement called 'the Boar's Head,' in East Cheap," towards the support of certain priests serving a chapel founded by Sir William Walworth, in the adjoining church of St. Michael, Crooked Lane. There is no existing evidence to prove, whether any part (4) SCENE I. We have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk So early as the reign of Henry V. Lydgate celebrated the fame of East-Cheap, as being pre-eminent for good cheer, a reputation it seems to have maintained throughout the sixteenth century. It is remarked by Stow, in one of those many incidental passages in which he has be found |