Chapter LXXIV: Act III: SCENE 1. Page 487

GLEN. The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes
Of burning _cressets_.

A cresset light was the same as a beacon light, but occasionally portable. It consisted of a wreathed rope smeared with pitch and placed in a cage of iron like a trivet, which was suspended on pivots in a kind of fork. The light sometimes issued from a hollow pan filled with combustibles. The term is not, as Hanmer and others have stated, from the French _croissette_, a little cross, but rather from _croiset_, a cruet or earthen pot; yet as the French language furnishes no similar word for the cresset itself, we might prefer a different etymology. Our Saxon glossaries afford no equivalent term, but it may perhaps exhibit a Teutonic origin in the German _kerze_, a light or candle, or even in the French _cierge_, from _cereus_, because the original materials were of wax. Stowe the historian has left us some account of the marching watches that formerly paraded many of the streets of London, in which he says that "the whole way ordered for this watch extended to two thousand three hundred taylors yards of assize, for the furniture wherof with lights there were appointed _seven hundred cressets_, five hundred of them being found by the companies, the other two hundred by the chamber of London. Besides the which lights every constable in London, in number more than two hundred and forty, had his _cresset_, the charge of every _cresset_ was in light two shillings fourepence, and every _cresset_ had two men, one to beare or hold it, another to beare a bagge with light, and to serve it: so that the poore men pertaining to the _cressets_, taking wages, besides that every one had a strawne hat, with a badge painted, and his breakfast in the morning, amounted in number to almost two thousand."--_Survay of London_, 1618, 4to, p. 160. The following representations of _ancient cressets_ have been collected from various prints and drawings.

SCENE 1. Page 492.

HOT. And cuts me from the best of all my land,
A huge half-moon, a monstrous _cantle_.

The word in its _strict_ sense, signifies a _small_ piece of any thing, but here a portion or parcel. The French have _chanteau_ and _chantel_, from the Latin _quantulum_.

SCENE 1. Page 494.

GLEN. ... I framed to the harp
Many an English ditty, lovely well,
And gave _the tongue_ a helpful ornament,
A virtue that was never seen in you.

"Glendower means," says Mr. Ritson, "that he graced his _own_ tongue with the art of singing." This is surely wrong. The meaning is, that, by setting the English ditties to Welsh music, he had embellished the language in a manner that Hotspur had never done, the roughness of his speech affording neither poetry nor music. _Tongue_ was rightly explained by Dr. Johnson, _the English language_.

SCENE 1. Page 499.

MORT. ... that pretty Welsh
Which thou pourest down from these _swelling heavens_
I am too perfect in; and but for shame,
In such a parley would I answer thee.

According to Mr. Steevens, _swelling heavens_ are prominent _lips_. Are they not _eyes swollen with tears_? Glendower had just said that his daughter wept; and Mortimer tells his wife that he would answer the melting language of her eyes, if it were not _for shame_.

SCENE 2. Page 508.

P. HEN. By smiling _pick-thanks_.

A pick-thank is one who gathers or collects favour, thanks, or applause, by means of flattery. "Cave ne _falsam gratiam_ studes inire." Terence; which is thus Englished by Udall in his _Floures for Latine spekynge_, 1533, 12mo, fo. 137:--"Beware that thou desire not to _pyke_ or to have a _thanke_ of me undeserved."

SCENE 3. Page 522.

FAL. I never see thy face, but I think upon hell-fire.

Falstaff's wit at the expense of poor Bardolph's ruby face is inexhaustible. The same subject is treated with considerable humour in the following passage in Melton's _Astrologaster_, 1620, 4to: "But that which most grieves me, is, most of the varlets belonging to the citie colledges (I meane both the prodigious compters) have _fierie red faces_, that they cannot put a cup of Nippitato to their _snowts_, but with the extreme heat that doth glow from them, they make it cry hisse again, as if there were a gadd of burning steele flung into the pot," &c.

SCENE 3. Page 528.

FAL. There's no more truth in thee, than in a _drawn fox_.

The quotation from Olaus Magnus does not support Mr. Steevens's assertion that the fox when _drawn_ out of his hole was supposed to counterfeit death; for it is stated by that writer, and indeed by others, that he uses this device when hungry, to attract the birds, who mistake him for carrion. The following passage from Turbervile's _Noble arte of venery or hunting_ is offered, but with no great confidence, as a possible illustration of the phrase in question: "Foxes which have been beaten have this _subtletie_, to _drawe_ unto the largest part of the burrow where three or foure angles meete together, and there to stand at baye with the terriers, to the ende they may afterwardes shift and goe to which chamber they list."

SCENE 3. Page 535.

P. HEN. Go bear this letter to lord John of Lancaster, &c.

The first seven lines of this speech are undoubtedly prose, and should be so printed, like the preceding speeches of the Prince. No correct ear will ever receive them as blank verse, notwithstanding the efforts that have been or shall be made to convert them into metre.