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Then let us meet them like necessities: 4

And that same word even now cries out on us;
They say, the bishop and Northumberland

Are fifty thousand strong.

War.

It cannot be, my lord;

Rumour doth double, like the voice and echo,
The numbers of the fear'd:-Please it your grace,
To go to bed; upon my life, my lord,

The powers that you already have sent forth,
Shall bring this prize in very easily.

To comfort you the more, I have received
A certain instance, that Glendower is dead.5
Your majesty hath been this fortnight ill;
And these unseason'd hours, perforce, must add
Unto your sickness.

K. Hen.

I will take your counsel: And, were these inward wars once out of hand,

We would, dear lords, unto the Holy Land." [Exeunt.

prove the sense, and the anticipation of then diminishes the force of the same adverb in the following line. Steevens.

4 Then let us meet them like necessities:] I am inclined to read : Then let us meet them like necessity.

That is, with the resistless violence of necessity; then comes more aptly the following line:

And that same word even now cries out on us.

That is, the word necessity. Johnson.

That is, let us meet them with that patience and quiet temper with which men of fortitude meet those events which they know to be inevitable.-I cannot approve of Johnson's explanation.

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M. Mason

that Glendower is dead.] Glendower did not die till after King Henry IV.

Shakspeare was led into this error by Holinshed, who places Owen Glendower's death in the tenth year of Henry's reign. See Vol. VIII, p. 259, n. 5. Malone.

6 unto the Holy Land.] This play, like the former, proceeds in one unbroken tenor through the first edition, and there is therefore no evidence that the division of the Acts was made by the author. Since, then, every editor has the same right to mark the intervals of action as the players, who made the present distribution, I should propose that this scene may be added to the foregoing Act, and the remove from London to Gloucestershire be made in the intermediate time, but that it would shorten the next Act too much, which has not, even now, its due proportion to the rest. Johnson.

SCENE II.

Court before Justice Shallow's House in Gloucestershire." Enter SHALLOW and SILENCE, meeting; MOULDY, SHADOW, WART, FEEBLE, BULL-CALF, and Servants, behind.

Shal. Come on, come on, come on; give me your hand, sir, give me your hand, sir: an early stirrer, by the rood. And how doth my good cousin Silence?

Sil. Good morrow, good cousin Shallow.

7 ·Justice Shallow's House in Gloucestershire.] From the following passage in The Return from Parnassus, 1606, we may conclude that Kempe was the original Justice Shallow.-Burbage and Kempe are introduced, instructing some Cambridge students to act. Burbage makes one of the students repeat some lines of Hieronymo and King Richard III. Kempe says to another, "Now for you,-methinks you belong to my tuition; and your face methinks would be good for a foolish Mayor, or a foolish Justice of Peace."-And again: "Thou wilt do well in time if thou wilt be ruled by thy betters, that is, by myselfe, and such grave aldermen of the play-house as I am." It appears from Nashe's Apologie of Pierce Penniless, 1593, that he likewise played the Clown: "What can be made of a rope-maker more than a clowne. Will. Kempe, I mistrust it will fall to thy lot for a merriment one of these days." Malone.

8 by the rood.] i. e. the cross. Pope.

Hearne, in his Glossary to Peter Langtoft, p. 544, under the word cross, observes, that although the cross and the rood are commonly taken for the same, yet the rood properly signified formerly the image of Christ on the cross; so as to represent both the cross and figure of our blessed Saviour, as he suffered upon it. The roods that were in churches and chapels were placed in shrines that were called rood lofts. Roodloft, (saith Blount) is a shrine whereon was placed the cross of Christ. The rood was an image of Christ on the cross, made generally of wood, and erected in a loft for that purpose, just over the passage out of the church into the chancel." Reed.

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Bullokar, however, is a better authority than any of these, being contemporary with Shakspeare. In his English Expositor, 8vo. 1616, he defines roode thus: "In land it signifies a quarter of an acre. It is sometimes taken for the picture of our Saviour upon the cross." Malone.

9 Sil.] The oldest copy of this play was published in 1600. It must however have been acted somewhat earlier, as in Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, which was performed in 1599, is the following reference to it: "No, lady, this is a kinsman to Justice Silence." Steevens.

Shal. And how doth my cousin, your bedfellow? and your fairest daughter, and mine, my god-daughter Ellen? Sil. Alas, a black ouzel, cousin Shallow.

Shal. By yea and nay, sir, I dare say, my cousin William is become a good scholar: He is at Oxford, still, is he not?

Sil. Indeed, sir; to my cost.

Shal. He must then to the inns of court shortly: I was once of Clement's-inn; where, I think, they will talk of mad Shallow yet.

Sil. You were called-lusty Shallow, then, cousin.

Shal. By the mass, I was called any thing; and I would have done any thing, indeed, and roundly too. There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Bare, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele a Cotswold man,1—you had not four such swingebucklers in all the inns of court again: and, I may say

1--

Will Squele a Cotswold man,] The games at Cotswold were, in the time of our author, very famous. Of these I have seen accounts in several old pamphlets; and Shallow, by distinguishing Will Squele, as a Cotswold man, meant to have him understood as one who was well versed in manly exercises, and consequently of a daring spirit, and an athletic constitution.

Steevens.

2 - swinge-bucklers-] Swinge-bucklers and swash-bucklers were words implying rakes or rioters in the time of Shakspeare. Nash, addressing himself to his old opponent Gabriel Harvey, 1598, says: Turpe senex miles, 'tis time for such an olde foole to leave playing the swash-buckler."

Again, in The Devil's Charter, 1607, Caraffa says, "when I was a scholar in Padua, faith, then I could have swinged a sword and buckler," &c. Steevens.

"West Smithfield (says the Continuator of Stowe's Annals, 1631,) was for many years called Ruffians' Hall, by reason it was the usual place of frayes and common fighting, during the time that sword and buckler were in use; when every serving-man, from the base to the best, carried a buckler at his backe, which hung by the hilt or pummel of his sword which hung before him.-Untill the 20th year of Queen Elizabeth, it was usual to have frayes, fights, and quarrels upon the sundayes and holydayes, sometimes, twenty, thirty, and forty swords and bucklers, halfe against halfe, as well by quarrels of appointment as by chance.--And in the winter season all the high streets were much annoyed and troubled with hourly frayes, and sword and buckler men, who took pleasure in that bragging fight; and although they made great shew of much furie, and fought often, yet seldome any man was hurt,

to you, we knew where the bona-robas3 were; and had the best of them all at commandment. Then was Jack Falstaff, now sir John, a boy; and page to Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk.

Sil. This sir John, cousin, that comes hither anon about soldiers?

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Shal. The same sir John, the very same. I saw him break Skogan's head' at the court gate, when he was a

for thrusting was not then in use, neither would any one of twenty strike beneath the waste, by reason they held it cowardly and beastly." Malone.

3

bona-robas-] i. e. ladies of pleasure. Bona Roba, Ital. So, in The Bride, by Nabbes, 1640:

"Some bona-roba they have been sporting with." Steevens. See Florio's Italian Dictionary, 1598: "Buona roba, as we say good stuff; a good wholesome plump-cheeked wench." Malone.

4 Then was Jack Falstaff, now sir John, a boy; and page to Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk.] The following circumstances, tending to prove that Shakspeare altered the name of Oldcastle to that of Falstaff, have hitherto been overlooked. In a poem by J. Weever, entitled The Mirror of Martyrs, or the Life and Death of that thrice valiant Captaine and most godly Martyre Sir John Oldcastle, Knight, Lord Cobham, 18mo. 1601. Oldcastle, relating the events of his life, says:

"Within the spring-time of my flow'ring youth,

"He [his father] stept into the winter of his age; "Made meanes (Mercurius thus begins the truth) "That I was made Sir Thomas Mowbrais page." Again, in a pamphlet, entitled The Wandering Jew telling Fortunes to Englishmen, 4to. (the date torn off, but apparently a republication about the middle of the last century) [1640] is the following passage in the Glutton's speech: "I do not live by the sweat of my brows, but am almost dead with sweating. I eate much, but can talk little. Sir John Oldcastle was my great grandfather's father's uncle. I come of a huge kindred." Reed.

Different conclusions are sometimes drawn from the same premises. Because Shakspeare borrowed a single circumstance from the life of the real Oldcastle, and imparted it to the fictitious Falstaff, does it follow that the name of the former was ever employed as a cover to the vices of the latter? Is it not more likely, because Falstaff was known to possess one feature in common with Oldcastle, that the vulgar were led to imagine that Falstaff was only Oldcastle in disguise? Hence too might have arisen the story that our author was compelled to change the name of the one for that of the other; a story sufficiently specious to have imposed on the writer of The Wandering Jew, as well as on the credulity of Field, Fuller, and others, whose coincidence has been brought in support of an opinion contrary to my own. Steevens,

crack, not thus high: and the very same day did I fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a fruiterer, behind Gray'sinn. O, the mad days that I have spent! and to see how many of mine old acquaintance are dead!

Sil. We shall all follow, cousin.

Shal. Certain, 'tis certain; very sure, very sure: death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?

5

Skogan's head-] Who Skogan was, may be understood from the following passage in The Fortunate Isles, a masque, by Ben Jonson, 1626:

Methinks you should enquire now after Skelton, "And master Scogan.

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Scogan? what was he?

"Oh, a fine gentleman, and a master of arts

"Of Henry the Fourth's times, that made disguises
"For the king's sons, and writ in ballad royal

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Daintily well," &c.

Among the works of Chaucer is a poem called "Scogan unto the Lordes and Gentilmen of the Kinge's House." Steevens.

In the written copy, (says the editor of Chaucer's Works, 1598,) the title hereof is thus: "Here followethe a morall ballade to the Prince, now Prince Henry, the Duke of Clarence, the Duke of Bedford, the Duke of Gloucester, the kinges sons, by Henry Scogan, at a supper among the merchants in the vintrey at London, in the house of Lewis John." The purport of the ballad is to dissuade them from spending their youth "folily."

John Skogan, who is said to have taken the degree of master of arts at Oxford, "being (says Mr. Warton) an excellent mimick, and of great pleasantry in conversation, became the favourite buffoon of the court of King Edward IV" Malone.

This was John Scogan, jester to King Edward IV, and not Henry, the poet, who lived long before, but is frequently confounded with him. Our author, no doubt, was well read in John's Fests, "gathered by Andrew Boarde, doctor of physick," and printed in 4to. and black letter, but without date; and his existence, which has been lately called in question, (for what may not be called in question?) is completely ascertained by the following characteristic epitaph, accidentally retrieved from a contemporary manuscript in the Harleian library (No. 1587):

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Hic iacet in tumulo corpas SCOGAN ecce JOHANNIS;

Sit tibi pro speculo, letus fuit eius in annis:

Leti transibunt, transitus pitare nequibunt;

Quo nescimus ibunt, vinosi cito peribunt. Ritson.

a crack,] This is an old Islandic word, signifying a boy or child One of the fabulous kings and heroes of Denmark, called Hrolf, was surnamed Krake. See the story in Edda, Fable 63. Tyrwhitt.

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