Ch. Just. To punish you by the heels, would amend the attention of your ears; and I care not, if I do become your physician.

Fal. I am as poor as Job, my lord; but not so patient: your lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me, in respect of poverty; but how I should be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or, indeed, a scruple itself.

Ch. Just. I sent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me.

Fal. As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws of this land-service, I did not come.

Ch. Just. Well, the truth is, sir John, you live in great infamy.

Fal. He that buckles him in my belt, cannot live in less.

Ch. Just. Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.

Fal. I would it were otherwise; I would my means were greater, and my waist slenderer.

Ch. Just. You have misled the youthful prince.

Fal. The young prince hath misled me: I am the fellow with the great belly, and he my dog.2

Ch. Just. Well, I am loth to gall a new-healed wound; your day's service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night's exploit on Gads-hill: you may thank the unquiet time for your quiet o'er-posting that action. Fal. My lord?

Ch. Just. But since all is well, keep it so: wake not a sleeping wolf.

Fal. To wake a wolf, is as bad as to smell a fox. Ch. Just. What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt out.

2

he my dog.] I do not understand this joke. Dogs lead the blind, but why does a dog lead the fat? Johnson.

If the fellow's great belly prevented him from seeing his way, he would want a dog as well as a blind man. Farmer.

And though he had no absolute occasion for him, Shakspeare would still have supplied him with one. He seems to have been very little solicitous that his comparisons should answer completely on both sides. It was enough for him that men were sometimes led by dogs. Malone.

Fal. A wassel candle, my lord;3 all tallow: if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth.

Ch. Just. There is not a white hair on your face, but should have his effect of gravity.

Fal. His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.

Ch. Just. You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.*

Fal. Not so, my lord; your ill angel is light; but, I hope, he that looks upon me, will take me without weighing and yet, in some respects, I grant, I cannot go, I cannot tell: Virtue is of so little regard in these coster-monger times, that true valour is turned bear

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3 A wassel candle, &c.] A wassel candle is a large candle lighted up at a feast. There is a poor quibble upon the word wax, which signifies increase as well as the matter of the honey-comb. Johnson. The same quibble has already occurred in Love's Labour's Lost, Act V, sc. ii:

"That was the way to make his godhead wax.' " Steevens. 4You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.] Thus the quarto, 1600. Mr. Pope reads with the folio, 1623,-evil angel. Steevens.

What a precious collator has Mr. Pope approved himself in this passage! Besides, if this were the true reading, Falstaff could not have made the witty and humorous evasion he has done in his reply. I have restored the reading of the oldest quarto. The Lord Chief Justice calls Falstaff the Prince's ill angel or genius: which Falstaff turns off by saying, an ill angel (meaning the coin called an angel) is light; but, surely, it cannot be said that he wants weight: ergo-the inference is obvious. Now money may be called ill, or bad; but it is never called evil, with regard to its being under weight. This Mr. Pope will facetiously call restoring lost puns: but if the author wrote a pun, and it happens to be lost in an editor's indolence, I shall, in spite of his grimace, venture at bringing it back to light. Theobald.

"As light as a clipt angel," is a comparison frequently used in the old comedies. So, in Ram-Alley, or Merry Tricks, 1611:

The law speaks profit, does it not?

"Faith, some bad angels haunt us now and then." Steevens. I cannot go, I cannot tell:] I cannot be taken in a reckoning; I cannot pass current. Johnson.

5

6 in these coster-monger times,] In these times when the prevalence of trade has produced that meanness that rates the merit of every thing by money. Johnson.

A coster-monger is a costard-monger, a dealer in apples called by that name, because they are shaped like a costard, i. e. man's head. See Vol. IV, p. 44, n. 3; and p. 47, n. 8. Steevens.

herd: Pregnancy is made a tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings: all the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry. You, that are old, consider not the capacities of us that are, young; you measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls and we that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confess, are wags too.

Ch. Just. Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and every part about you

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8

Pregnancy-] Pregnancy is readiness. So, in Hamlet: "How pregnant his replies are?" Steevens

-your wit single?] We call a man single-witted, who attains but one species of knowledge. This sense I know not how to apply to Falstaff, and rather think that the Chief Justice hints at a calamity always incident to a grey-haired wit, whose misfortune is, that his merriment is unfashionable. His allusions are to forgotten facts; his illustrations are drawn from notions obscured by time; his wit is therefore single, such as none has any part in but himself. Johnson.

I believe all that Shakspeare meant was, that he had more fat than wit; that though his body was bloated by intemperance to twice its original size, yet his wit was not increased in proportion to it.

In ancient language, however, single often means small, as in the instance of beer; the strong and weak being denominated double and single beer. So, in The Captain, by Beaumont and Fletcher: "sufficient single beer, as cold as chrystal." Macbeth also speaks of his "single state of man." See Vol. VII, p. 42, n. 8. Steevens.

Johnson's explanation of this passage is not conceived with his usual judgment.—It does not appear that Falstaff's merriment was antiquated or unfashionable; for if that had been the case, the young men would not have liked it so well, nor would that circumstance have been perceived by the Chief Justice, who was older than himself. But though Falstaff had such a fund of wit and humour, it was not unnatural that a grave judge, whose thoughts were constantly employed about the serious business of life, should consider such an improvident, dissipated old man, as single-witted, or half-witted, as we should now term it. So, in the next Act, the Chief Justice calls him, a great fool; and even his friend Harry, after his reformation, bids him not to answer "with

blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fy, fy, fy, sir John!

Fal. My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head, and something a round belly. For my voice,-I have lost it with hollaing, and singing of anthems. To approve my youth further, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judgment and understanding; and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him. For the box o' the ear that the prince gave you, -he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have checked him for it; and the young lion repents: marry, not in ashes, and sackcloth; but in new silk, and old sack.1

Ch. Just. Well, heaven send the prince a better companion!

Fal. Heaven send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him.

Ch. Just. Well, the king hath severed you and prince

a fool-born jest," and adds, "that white hairs ill became a fool and jester."

I think, however, that this speech of the Chief Justice is somewhat in Falstaff's own style; which verifies what he says of himself, "that all the world loved to gird at him, and that he was not only witty in himself, but the cause that wit is in other men." M. Mason.

I think Mr. Steevens's interpretation the true one. Single, however, (as an anonymous writer has observed) may mean, feeble or weak. So in Fletcher's Queen of Corinth, Act III, sc. i: "All men believe it, when they hear him speak,

"He utters such single matter, in so infantly a voice." Again, in Romeo and Juliet: “O single-soal❜d jest, solely sin. gular for the singleness," i. e. the tenuity.

In our author's time, as the same writer observes, small beer was called single beer, and that of a stronger quality, double beer. Malone.

9 antiquity?] To use the word antiquity for old age, is not peculiar to Shakspeare. So, in Two Tragedies in One, &c. 1601: "For false illusion of the magistrates

1

"With borrow'd shapes of false antiquity." Steevens.

-marry, not in ashes, and sackcloth; but in new silk, and old sack.] So, Sir John Harrington, of a reformed brother. Epigrams, L. 3, 17:

"Sackcloth and cinders they advise to use;

"Sack, cloves and sugar thou would'st have to chuse."

Bowle

Harry: I hear, you are going with lord John of Lancaster, against the archbishop, and the earl of Northumberland.

2

But

Fal. Yea; I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. look you pray, all you that kiss my lady peace at home, that our armies join not in a hot day; for, by the Lord, I take but two shirts out with me, and I mean not to sweat extraordinarily: if it be a hot day, an I brandish any thing but my bottle, I would I might never spit white again. There is not a dangerous action can peep out his head, but I am thrust upon it: Well, I cannot last ever: But it was always3 yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. If you will needs say, I am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God, my name were. not so terrible to the enemy as it is. I were better to be eaten to death with rust, than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

Ch. Just. Well, be honest, be honest; And God bless your expedition!

Fal. Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound, to furnish me forth?

4

Ch. Just. Not a penny, not a penny; you are too impatient to bear crosses. Fare you well: Commend me to my cousin Westmoreland.

[Exeunt Ch. Just. and Atten.

2 ·would I might never spit white again.] i. e. May I never have my stomach inflamed again with liquor, for, to spit white is the consequence of inward heat. So, in Mother Bombie, a comedy, 1594: "They have sod their livers in sack these forty years; that makes them spit white broth as they do." Again, in The Virgin Martyr, by Massinger:

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I could not have spit white for want of drink."

Steevens.

3 But it was always &c.] This speech, in the folio, concludes at -I cannot last ever. All the rest is restored from the quarto. A clear proof of the superior value of those editions, when compared with the publication of the players. Steevens.

4 you are too impatient to bear crosses.] I believe a quibble' was here intended. Falstaff had just asked his lordship to lend him a thousand pound, and he tells him in return that he is not to be entrusted with money. A cross is a coin so called, because stamped with a cross. So, in As you Like it:

"If I should bear you, I should bear no cross." Steevens.