Chapter LXXVIII: Act II: SCENE 1. Page 49

HOST. A hundred mark is a long _loan_ for a poor lone woman to bear.

The old copy reads long _one_, and the above alteration has, on the suggestion of Theobald, been very improperly and unnecessarily made. The hostess means to say that a hundred mark is a long _mark_, that is _score_, _reckoning_, for her to bear. The use of mark in the singular number in familiar language admits very well of this equivoque.

SCENE 2. Page 64.

PAGE. Marry, my Lord, Althea dream'd she was delivered of a
firebrand.

Dr. Johnson has properly noticed the error concerning Althea's firebrand. This mythological fable is _accurately_ alluded to in _2 Henry VI._ Act I. Scene 1; a circumstance that may perhaps furnish an additional argument, though a slight one, that that play was not written by Shakspeare.

SCENE 4. Page 91.

PIST. Have we not _Hiren_ here.

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 conceives 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. In the mean time the reader is presented with the figure of an old French _rapier_, in the author's possession, on which these lines are engraved: SI FORTUNE ME TOURMENTE L'ESPERANCE ME CONTENTE.

In further illustration, the following story from _Wits, fits and fancies_, 1614, 4to, is added:--"Haniball Gonsaga being in the low countries overthrowne from his horse by an English captaine, and commanded to yeeld himselfe prisoner: _kist his sword_ and gave it the Englishman saying: _Si fortuna me tormenta, il speranza me contenta_." Part of this story had already been quoted by Dr. Farmer, but not for a similar purpose.

SCENE 4. Page 94.

FAL. Quoit him down, Bardolph, like a _shove-groat_ shilling.

Mr. Steevens supposes the _shove-groat_ shilling to have been used in the game of shovel-board, by which he seems to infer that the games of _shove-groat_ and _shovel-board_ were the same; but this is apparently a mistake. The former was invented during the reign of Henry the Eighth; for in the statutes of his 33rd year, chap. ix., it is called a _new_ game. It was also known by the several appellations of _slide-groat_, _slide-board_, _slide-thrift_, and _slip-thrift_, the first of which was probably adopted from the game being originally played with the silver groats of the time, then nearly as large as modern shillings. When the broad shillings of Edward the Sixth were coined, they were substituted for the groats in this game, and used also at that of _shovel-board_, which seems to have been only a variation of the other on a larger scale. Nothing has occurred to carry it beyond the time of Henry the Eighth; and from the want of such a term as a _shovel-groat_, it is probably not older than the reign of Edward the Sixth, who first coined the shilling piece. _Shovel-board_ is already too well known to require any description of it in this place; but of the other little seems recorded, or not sufficient to discover the manner in which it was played. Holinshed, or rather Stanihurst, in his history of Ireland, speaking of a mandate for the execution of the Earl of Kildare in the reign of Henry the Eighth, says, that "one night when the lieutenant and he for their disport were playing at _slidegrote_ or _shofleboorde_, sodainly commeth from the Cardinall (Wolsey) a mandatum to execute Kyldare on the morrow. The earle marking the lieutenant's deepe sigh, By S. Bryde, Lieutenant, quoth he, there is some made game in that scrole; but fall how it will, _this throwe is for a huddle_." Here the writer has either confounded the two games, or might only mean to state that the Earl was playing at one or the other of them. Rice the puritan, in his _Invective against vices_, black letter, no date, 12mo, speaks of "paysed [weighed] _groates_ to plaie at slip-thrifte;" and in another place he asks whether God sent Adam into Paradise to play at it. There is a modern game called _Justice Jervis_, which is supposed by Mr. Strutt, who has described it at large, to bear some resemblance to _shove-groat_. See his _Sports and pastimes_, p. 225.

SCENE 4. Page 94.

PIST. Why then let grievous, ghastly, gaping _wounds
Untwine the sisters three_. Come _Atropos_, I say!

This is manifestly in ridicule of Sackvile's _Complaynt of Henry Duke of Buckingham_, in _The mirour for magistrates_:

"Where eke my graundsire, Duke of Buckingham
Was _wounded_ sore, and hardly scapt untane.
But what may boote to stay the _sisters three_?
When _Atropos_ perforce will cut the _thred_."

Stanzas 5 and 6.

SCENE 4. Page 96.

PAGE. The musick is come, sir.

FAL. Let them play;--play, sirs.

This music was, in all probability, that belonging to one of those dances called _passameasures_; and it appears to have afterwards travelled by some means or other to _Barbadoes_: for Ligon, in his entertaining account of that island, where he was in 1647, tells us that he heard it played there by an _old fellow_. Ligon, no doubt, remembered it on the stage, and it is very likely to have been the _original_ music of Shakspeare's time; but the above writer has very ignorantly supposed it to have been "a tune in great esteem in Harry the Fourth's dayes."

SCENE 4. Page 98.

FAL. Drinks off candles ends for _flap-dragons_; and _rides the
wild mare_ with the boys.

A _flap-dragon_ is a sport among choice spirits, by putting nuts or raisins into a bowl of brandy, which being set on fire, the nuts are snatched out hastily and swallowed, the party usually burning his mouth and fingers. In this way men formerly drank healths to their mistresses. It is likewise a Christmas gambol among young people, at which, instead of brandy, spirits of wine are used. It is sometimes called _slap-dragon_ and _snap-dragon_. In _The laws of drinking_, 1617, 12mo, p. 147, a person is said to be "as familiar as _slap-dragons_ with the _Flemming_."

_Riding the wild mare_, is another name for the childish sport of _see-saw_, or what the French call _bascule_ and _balançoire_.

SCENE 4. Page 100.

FAL. ... and breeds no bate with telling of _discreet_ stories.

Dr. Warburton would most unnecessarily read _indiscreet_. Mr. Steevens supposes that "by _discreet stories_ is meant what suspicious masters and mistresses of families would call _prudential information_; i. e. what ought to be known, and yet is disgraceful to the teller." But Poins, of whom Falstaff is speaking, had no masters or mistresses; and if it be recollected with what sort of companions he was likely to associate, Falstaff's meaning will appear to be, that _he excites no censure for telling them modest stories_; or in plain English, that he tells them nothing but _immodest_ ones.

SCENE 4. Page 102.

FAL. What stuff wilt have a _kirtle_ of?

Notwithstanding this word has excited as much conjecture as almost any other in the language, it will still admit of discussion. _Kirtel_ is pure Saxon, and signifies, generally, a _covering_, i. e. over all the other garments; in which sense it will always be found to have been [properly] used. In Littelton's Dictionary it is Latinized _supparum_. See likewise Ducange's _Glossary_, and a multitude of other authorities. Hence probably _covercle_. From the circumstance of its occurring as often in the sense of a long as of a short garment, it is more probable that the root of the word should denote that which _covers_, simply, than something that is _short_, _curtus_. In one of the notes, Cotgrave is cited as making _kirtle_ and _petticoat_ synonymous; but this definition is at variance with the line in the comedy of _Ignoramus_,

"Gownos, silkcotos, _kirtellos_ et _peticotos_."

It is admitted, however, that this word has been used with great latitude of meaning. Randle Holme makes it the same with the apron.

SCENE 4. Page 104.

FAL. Ha! a bastard son of the king's?--And art not thou _Poins his
brother_?

Mr. Ritson explains this _the brother of Poins_. But where is the use of asking the _prince_ such a question? It must be remembered that the prince and Poins have just made their appearance, and Falstaff has a question for _each_. The sense therefore is, "Art not thou Poins, the brother of this bastard?"