Page images
PDF
EPUB

PAGE. Not by my consent, I promise you. The gentleman is of no having: he kept company with the wild Prince and Poins; he is of too high a region, he knows too much. No, he shall not knit a knot in his fortunes with the finger of my substance: if he take her, let him take her fimply; the wealth I have waits on my consent, and my confent goes not that way.

FORD. I beseech you, heartily, fome of you go home with me to dinner: besides your cheer, you shall have sport; I will show you a monster.Master doctor, you shall go ;-so shall you, master Page ;-and you, fir Hugh.

SHAL. Well, fare you well :--we shall have the freer wooing at master Page's.

[Exeunt SHALLOW and SLENDER. CAIUS. Go home, John Rugby; I come anon. [Exit RUGBY.

Host. Farewell, my hearts: I will to my honeft knight Falstaff, and drink canary with him.

[Exit Hoft.

FORD. [Afide.] I think, I shall drink in pipe

Again, in A Woman never vex'd, comedy, by Rowley, 1632: "Go, go and reft on Venus' violets; shew her

"A dozen of batchelors' buttons, boy."

Again, in Westward Hoe, 1606 : "Here's my husband, and

no batchelor's buttons are at his doublet." STEEVENS.

6

tune.

- of no having :) Having is the fame as estate or forJOHNSON.

So, in Macbeth :

" Of noble having, and of royal hope."

Again, Twelfth Night:

[ocr errors]

-My having is not much;

"I'll make division of my present with you

"Hold, there is half my coffer." STEEVENS.

wine first with him; I'll make him dance." Will you go, gentles ?

7 Host. Farewell, my hearts: I will to my honest knight Falstaff, and drink canary with him.

Ford. [Afide.] I think, I Shall drink in pipe-wine first with him; I'll make him dance.] To drink in pipe-wine is a phrafe which I cannot understand. May we not suppose that Shakspeare rather wrote, I think I shall drink HORN-PIPE wine first with him: I'll make him dance?

Canary is the name of a dance, as well as of a wine. Ford lays hold of both senses; but, for an obvious reason, makes the dance a horn-pipe. It has been already remarked, that Shakspeare has frequent allusions to a cuckold's horns. TYRWHITT.

So, in Pasquil's Night-cap, 1612, p. 118:

"It is great comfort to a cuckold's chance
"That many thousands doe the Hornepipe dance."

STEEVENS.

Pipe is known to be a vessel of wine, now containing two hogsheads. Pipe-wine is therefore wine, not from the bottle, but the pipe; and the jest consists in the ambiguity of the word, which fignifies both a cask of wine, and a musical instrument.

JOHNSON.

The jeft here lies in a mere play of words. "I'll give him pipe-wine, which shall make him dance." Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1786. STEEVENS.

The phrafe,-" to drink in pipe-wine"-always feemed to me a very ftrange one, till I met with the following passage in King James's first speech to his parliament, in 1604; by which it appears that "to drink in" was the phraseology of the time: "- who either, being old, have retained their first drunken-in liquor," &c. MALONE.

I have seen the phrafe often in books of Shakspeare's time, but neglected to mark down the passages. One of them I have lately recovered: "If he goe to the taverne they will not onely make him paie for the wine, but for all he drinks in befides." Greene's Ghost haunting Conicatchers, 1602, Sign. B 4.-The following also, though of fomewhat later authority, will confirm Mr. Malone's observation: "A player acting upon a stage a man killed; but being troubled with an extream cold, as he was lying upon the stage fell a coughing; the people laughing, he rushed up, ran off the stage, saying, thus it is for a man to drink in porridg, for then he will be fure to cough in his grave." Jocabella, or a Cabinet of Conceits, by Robert Chamberlaine, 1640, N° 84. REED.

ALL. Have with you, to fee this monster.

SCENE III.

A Room in Ford's House.

Enter Mrs. FORD and Mrs. PAGE.

[Exeunt.

MRS. FORD. What, John! what, Robert!

MRS. PAGE. Quickly, quickly: Is the buck

basket

MRS. FORD. I warrant :-What, Robin, I say.

Enter Servants with a Basket.

MRS. PAGE. Come, come, come.

MRS. FORD. Here, fet it down.

MRS. PAGE. Give your men the charge; we must be brief.

MRS. FORD. Marry, as I told you before, John, and Robert, be ready here hard by in the brewhouse; and when I suddenly call you, come forth, and (without any pause, or staggering,) take this basket on your shoulders: that done, trudge with it in all haste, and carry it among the whitsters & in Datchet mead, and there empty it in the muddy ditch, close by the Thames fide.

MRS. PAGE. You will do it?

MRS. FORD. I have told them over and over; they lack no direction: Be gone, and come when you are called. [Exeunt Servants.

the whitsters] i. e. the blanchers of linen.

DOUCE.

M

MRS. PAGE. Here comes little Robin.

Enter ROBIN.

MRS. FORD. HOw now, my eyas-musket? 9 what news with you?

ROB. My mafter fir John is come in at your back-door, mistress Ford; and requests your company.

MRS. PAGE. You litttle Jack-a-lent, have you been true to us?

9 How now, my eyas-musket?] Eyas is a young unfledg'd hawk; I suppose from the Italian Niaso, which originally signified any young bird taken from the nest unfledg'd, afterwards a young hawk. The French, from hence, took their niais, and used it in both those significations; to which they added a third, metaphorically, a filly fellow; un garçon fort niais, un niais. Musket fignifies a Sparrow hawk, or the smalleft species of hawks. This too is from the Italian Muschetto, a small hawk, as appears from the original fignification of the word, namely, a troublesome stinging fly. So that the humour of calling the little page an eyas-musket is very intelligible. WARBURTON.

So, in Greene's Card of Fancy, 1608: "no hawk fo haggard but will stoop to the lure: no niesse so ramage but will be reclaimed to the lunes." Eyas-musket is the fame as infant Lilliputian. Again, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, B. I. c. xi. ft. 34:

[ocr errors]

-youthful gay,

"Like eyas-hauke, up mounts unto the skies,
"His newly budded pinions to essay."

In The Booke of Haukyng, &c. commonly called The Book of St. Albans, bl. 1. no date, is the following derivation of the word; but whether true or erroneous is not for me to determine: "An hauk is called an eyesse from her eyen. For an hauke that is brought up under a buffarde or puttock, as many ben, have watry eyen," &c. STEEVENS.

1

-Jack-a-lent,] A Jack o' lent was a puppet thrown at in Lent, like shrove-cocks. So, in The Weakest goes to the Wall, 1600:

"A mere anatomy, a Jack of Lent."

Rob. Ay, I'll be fworn: My master knows not of your being here; and hath threatened to put me into everlafting liberty, if I tell you of it; for, he swears, he'll turn me away.

MRS. PAGE. Thou'rt a good boy; this secrecy of thine shall be a tailor to thee, and shall make thee a new doublet and hofe. I'll go hide me.

MRS. FORD. Do so:-Go tell thy master, I am alone. Mistress Page, remember you your cue.

[Exit ROBIN. MRS. PAGE. I warrant thee; if I do not act it, hiss me. [Exit Mrs. PAGE. MRS. FORD. Go to then; we'll use this unwholesome humidity, this gross watry pumpion; -we'll teach him to know turtles from jays.2

Enter FALSTAFF.

FAL. Have I caught thee, my heavenly jewel? 3 Why, now let me die, for I have lived long enough; 4 this is the period of my ambition: O this bleffed hour!

Again, in The Four Prentices of London, 1615:

"Now you old Jack of Lent, fix weeks and upwards." Again, in Greene's Tu Quoque : "-for if a boy, that is throwing at his Jack o' Lent, chance to hit me on the shins," &c. See a note on the last scene of this comedy. STEEVENS.

3

[merged small][ocr errors]

from jays.] So, in Cymbeline:

- fome jay of Italy,

"Whose mother was her painting," &c. STEEVENS. Have I caught my heavenly jewel?] This is the first line of the second song in Sidney's Aftrophel and Stella. TOLLET. -Why, now let me die, for I have lived long enough; This sentiment, which is of facred origin, is here indecently introduced. It appears again, with fomewhat less of profaneness, in The Winter's Tale, Ast IV. and in Othello, Act II.

4

STEEVENS.

« PreviousContinue »