Gads. Give me thy hand: thou shalt have a share in our Cham. Nay, rather let me have it, as you are a false thief. SCENE II.—The Highway, near Gadshill. Enter PRINCE HENRY and POINS. 95 [Exeunt. Poins. Come, shelter, shelter: I have removed Falstaff's horse, and he frets like a gummed velvet. 92, 93. Give... man] prose Qq; three lines ending hand. purpose, man. Ff. 93. purchase] purpose Ff. 97. Exeunt.] omitted Qq. 96. my] the Ff. 97. you] QI; ye the rest. SCENE II. The Highway .] Cambridge; The highway. Pope; Scene changes to the Highway. Theobald; Gad's Hill. The Road down it. Capell. Enter •] Capell; Enter Prince, Poines, and Peto, &c. Qq; Enter Prince, Poynes, and Peto. Ff. 93 purchase] A euphemistic expression for thieves' plunder. Henry V. III. ii. 45: "They will steal any thing and call it purchase," and Greene, Art of Conny-Catching, 1591 (Grosart, x. 38): "The monie that is won, Purchase." Also Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, II. i. F reads purpose, and gives Gadshill's speech in three lines, ending hand... purpose Gadshill is perhaps quoting from some popular ballad. ... .. man. 93. a true man] an honest man, as opposed to a thief. Heywood, The Royall King, iii (Pearson, vi. 39): "hee that is a Theefe cannot be a true man,' ," and Munday, Drayton, Wilson and Hathaway, The Life of Sir John Oldcastle (1600), III. iv: "Sir John. Stand, true-man! saies a thief. King. Stand, thiefe! saies a true man." 95. "homo men] A trite quotation from Lily's Shorte Introduction of Grammar (ed. 1549): "a Noune Substantive either is Proper to the thing that it betokeneth; as, Edwardus is my proper Name: Or else is common to more; as, Homo is a Name common to all men.' Gadshill has promised as a "true man"; the chamberlain bids him promise as a "false thief," to which Gadshill replies that he is a [true] man, for "homo" is a common name to all men, including [false] thieves. The quotation from Lily is the subject of many equivocations in Elizabethan dramatists and writers. See Harman, Caveat for Common Cursetors, 1567 (Early Eng. Text Soc. ed., p. 73): "And afterwards she is commen and indifferent for any that wyll use her, as homo is a commen name to all men"; and Middleton, The World Tost at Tennis (Bullen, vii. 156): Faith, the Latins haue no proper word for it [cuckold] that ever I read; homo, I take it, is the best, Because it is a common name to all men.” Also The Puritan, I. i; and Hazlitt's Dodsley, ix. 53 and vi. 309. 97. muddy] dull-witted. So in The True Trojans, v. iv. (Hazlitt's Dodsley, xii. 528): "O, that base fortune should great spirits damp, And fawn on muddy slaves," and Munday, The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, II. i: "muddy slaves, whose balladising rhymes. show their brutish thoughts." Also The Play of Stucley, line 1309. Prince. Stand close. Enter FALSTAFF. Fal. Poins! Poins, and be hanged! Poins! Prince. Peace, ye fat-kidneyed rascal! what a brawling dost thou keep! Fal. Where's Poins, Hal? Prince. He is walked up to the top of the hill: I'll go seek him. 5 ΙΟ Fal. I am accursed to rob in that thief's company: the rascal hath removed my horse, and tied him I know not where. If I travel but four foot by the squire further afoot, I shall break my wind. Well, I doubt not but to die a fair death for all this, if I 'scape hanging for killing that rogue. I have forsworn his 15 company hourly any time this two and twenty years, and yet I am bewitched with the rogue's company. If the rascal have not given me medicines to make ... 16. two and 8. is walked] This construction, common in M.E., is found as late as the eighteenth century. 7. Where's] Q1; What the rest. 10. thief's] theefe F. 10. the] that Ff. 12. squire] squaire Q 8; square Ff 3, 4; squier Cambridge. twenty] Ff; xxii. or 22. Qq. 16. years] yeares Q 1; yeare or year the rest. fraudulently treated with gum which improved its gloss but rendered it liable to fret or fray. See Beaumont and Fletcher, The Woman-Hater, IV. iii: "She's a piece of dainty stuff Smooth and soft, as new sattin; She was ne'er gumm'd yet. nor fretted"; Middleton, Anything for a Quiet Life, II. ii; "Franklin Junior. Good satins, sir. George. The best in Europe, sir; here's a piece. . . . Mark his gloss, he dazzles the eye to look upon him. Franklin. Is he not gummed?" and Ray, Proverbs: "Frets like gumm'd taffaty." Steevens quotes Webster and Marston, The Malcontent: "I'll come among you, like gum into taffata, to fret, fret." IO, II. the rascal . . . horse] Mr. Craig thought that Shakespeare may have been indebted to Nashe's Pierce Penilesse his Supplication to the Divell, 1592 (Works, McKerrow, i. 201): "The Romane Censors, if they lighted upon a fat corpulent man, they straight tooke away his horrse, and constrained him to goe a foote.... If we had such horse-takers amongst us, and that surfit-swolne Churles, who now ride on foot-cloathes, might be constrained to carrie their flesh budgets from place to place on foote, the price of velvet and cloath would fall with their belies. . . . Plenus venter nil agit libenter." 12. by the squire] measured by the squier or rule, accurately measured. So in Winter's Tale, 1v. iv. 348; and Jonson, A Tale of a Tub, Iv. ii. Minshew has: "Squire or rule. G. Esquierre... à esquierre, i. ad normam, by the squire," and Cotgrave defines Esquierre as "A Rule, or Squire." 18. medicines] love philtres. Cf. Drayton, The Muses' Elysium, Nymphal vii: " physic... And powders too to make their sweethearts love me love him, I'll be hanged; it could not be else; Prince. Peace, ye fat-guts! lie down; lay thine ear close 25 30 Fal. Have you any levers to lift me up again, being down? 35 'Sblood, I'll not bear mine own flesh so far afoot again for all the coin in thy father's exchequer. Prince. Thou liest; thou art not colted, thou art uncolted. 21. upon] on Qq 6-8. 22. An] Pope; And Qq, Ff. it] vpon't Ff. 21. Bardolph] Bardoll Qq. 22. I'll rob] I rob Ff. 23. as drink] as to drinke Ff. 27, 28. upon 29. upon] light vpon Ff. 29, 30. Give me] Giue Ff i, 2. 33. canst] Q 1; can the rest. 36. 'Sblood] omitted Ff. 40. Prince Hal] prince, Hal Qq 1, 2. them," and Tarlton's Jests (ed. Hall, p. 43): "unlesse you can give me medicines to make me love them." Cotgrave gives: "Philtre. ... An amorous potion, or loue-procuring medicine." The effects of such a medicine are described in an amusing way in Beaumont and Fletcher's Humorous Lieutenant, IV. vi. Fynes Moryson (Itinerary, c. 1617) relates that the Germans, especially in the lower parts of Germany, gave one another potions to force love, that "Spanish flyes and like things were used for this purpose, and that accidents were of frequent occurrence (C. Hughes, Shakespeare's Europe, p. 348). 38. colt] cheat, trick. So Beaumont and Fletcher in The Little French Lawyer, II. ii: "Am I thus colted?" and in Rule a Wife, Iv, i; "I'le colt you once more"; and Nashe, Have with you to Saffron Walden, 1596 (Grosart, iii. 143). Steevens cites Beaumont and Fletcher's Loyal Subject, III. i; "What are we bobbed thus still? colted and carted?" Also North's Plutarch, Cicero, 1579 (ed. 1676, p. 728): "thus was Cicero finely colted, as old as he was, by a young man" [New Eng. Dict.]. Bailey's Dict. (Canting Words): "Colt, an Inn-keeper that lends a Horse to a Highway-man, or to Gentlemen Beggars; also a Lad newly initiated into Roguery." Wright quotes "The Innekeeper or Hackney-man, of whome they haue horses, is cald a Colt" from a chapter on "Rancke Riders. The manner of cozening Inn-keepers in Dekker's Lanthorne and Candle-light (Grosart, iii, 251), Prince. Out, ye rogue! shall I be your ostler? Fal. Go hang thyself in thine own heir-apparent garters! If I be ta'en, I'll peach for this. An I have not ballads made on you all and sung to filthy tunes, let 45 a cup of sack be my poison: when a jest is so forward, and afoot too! I hate it. Enter GADSHILL, BARDOLPH and PETO with him. Gads. Stand. Fal. So I do, against my will. Poins. O, 'tis our setter: I know his voice. Bardolph, 50 what news? 42. ye] QI; you the rest. 43. Go] omitted Qq 1, 2. 44. An] Pope; and Qq, Ff. 45. you] omitted Qq 3-8, Ff. 46. a jest] Q1, Ff; iest the rest. 47. Enter. .] Capell; Enter Gadshill. Qq, Ff. 50, 51. news?] separate line in Ff. may 1S 43. Go hang... garters]" He hang himself in his own garters quoted by Steevens from Ray's Proverbs. Cf. C. Tourneur, The Atheist's Tragedy, 1. v: The gentleman. swore he would hang me up at the next door So, for want of a cord, he took his own garters off; and as he was going to make a noose, I watched my time and ran away. And as I ran, indeed I bid him hang himself in his own garters." In Munday, The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, v. i, Brand the murderer hangs himself from a tree with his own garters. 44, 45. An . . . ballads] An allusion to the practice of spiting an enemy by hiring a ballad-writer to lampoon him. See Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, 11. i: 66 an thou wrong'st me . . . I'll find a friend who shall right me, and make a ballad of thee"; Massinger, The Parliament of Love, Iv. v: "I will have thee Pictured as thou art now, and thy whole story Sung to some villainous tune in a lewd ballad." Ballads were written on every topical subject of interest to the populace, from an event of national importance down to a robbery or the execution of a common felon. The writers of these ballads were in the lowest degree of poets-"ten-groat rhymers" Massinger calls them (The Bondman, v. iii). One Martin Parker was a famous writer of ballads, and Jonson (Every Man in his Humour, 1. ii) mentions John Trundle at the sign of the Nobody in Barbican Bardolph . . ... as a printer of ballads. The ballads were sung and sold in the streets by ballad-singers, and the sheets on which they were printed were frequently stuck upon the walls of inns or taverns as they were scutchions" (see Glapthorne, Ladies Privilidge, iii, and Fletcher, Philaster, ii). 66 45. sung ... tunes] So in Andromana, v. ii (Hazlitt's Dodsley, xiv. 267): "I shall . . . Be balladed, and sung to filthy tunes"; and in S. Rowley, The Noble Souldier (1634), III. (Bullen's Old English Plays, i): "I shall haue scurvy ballads made of me Sung to the Hanging Tune." Each kind of ballad had its appropriate tune. Thus Fortune my Foe was the Hanging Tune, i.e. the tune to which were sung ballads relating to executions. 47. afoot] in execution. Cf. Beaumont and Fletcher, The Noble Gentleman, i: "see this business be a-foot With expedition"; R. Brome, The English Moor, 1. ii: "some stratagem a foot. For forward, and afoot too Vaughan proposed forward afoot, and I afoot too. A conjectural emendation (Anon. ap. Cambridge Shakespeare) forward, and afoot too is happy. Mr. Craig, I think, read the passage so. See 50. setter] a thieves' decoy. Greene, Art of Conny-Catching, 1591 (Grosart, x. 15); Dekker, The Belman of London (Grosart, iii. 130, 131): "The party that fetcheth in the Gull... is... called... the Setter." J. Wilkins (An Essay towards a Real Character, 1668) Bard. Case ye, case ye; on with your vizards: there's Fal. You lie, ye rogue; 'tis going to the king's tavern. Fal. To be hanged. Prince. Sirs, you four shall front them in the narrow lane; Ned Poins and I will walk lower: if they 'scape from your encounter, then they light on us. Peto. How many be there of them? Gads. Some eight or ten. Fal. 'Zounds, will they not rob us? Prince. What, a coward, Sir John Paunch? 55 60 Fal. Indeed, I am not John of Gaunt, your grandfather; 65 but yet no coward, Hal. Prince. Well, we leave that to the proof. Poins. Sirrah Jack, thy horse stands behind the hedge: Fal. Now cannot I strike him, if I should be hanged. Poins. Here, hard by: stand close. 70 [Exeunt Prince and Poins. 56. all.-] all: 59. Poins] omitted Ff. 55. ye] Qq 1, 2; you the rest. 58. Sirs] omitted Qq 3-8, Ff. Q1; How ... they Q 2; But how 63. 'Zounds] omitted Ff. Wee 'l or We'll Ff. Qq 1, 2; all. the rest. 61. How . there] they Qq 3-8; But how many be Ff. 67. Well, we] Qq 1, 2; Well, weele Qq 3-8; 73. Exeunt .] Malone. defines a "Setter as a "Theefs-spy"; 50, 51. Bardolph, what news?] what newes?" (Qq 3-6) or "Bardol, what newes?" (Qq7, 8) as part of Poins's speech, and in the same line with it. 52. case ye] don your vizards. Cf. Cymbeline, v. iii. 22, and Romeo and Juliet, 1. iv. 29: "Give me a case to put my visage in." 54. to... exchequer] The revenue collected by sheriffs and other of the king's officers was paid into the Exchequer and there audited. 56. make us all.-] make our fortunes, as in Wilkins, Miseries of Enforced Marriage (Hazlitt's Dodsley, ix. 540): "Have I not promised to make you ?'" For Falstaff's jest cf. Middleton, The Phoenix, II. ii: "Captain. a voyage toward will make us allPhonix. Beggarly fools and knaves [Aside]." here's |