I see no reason in the law of nature but I may snap at line' (cp. infra, 11. 351, 352; 'luce'='pike,' cp. Note, line 1, Merry Wives of Windsor).

III. ii. 26. Then was Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, a boy, and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk.' This is generally given as one of the points of evidence that Falstaff was originally called Oldcastle, Sir John Oldcastle having actually been in his youth page to the Duke of Norfolk: but it would seem that the same is true of Sir John Fastolf.

III. ii. 31. 'I see (Folios, saw') him break Skogan's head' (Quarto, Skoggins; Folio 1, 'Scoggans'); two Scogans must be carefully differentiated, though probably both are confused by Shakespeare in this passage:-(i.) Henry Scogan, the poet, Chaucer's Scogan, described by Ben Jonson in The Fortunate Isles, as "a fine gentleman, and master of arts

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

Daintily well";

(ii.) John Scogan, "an excellent mimick, and of great pleasantry in conversation, the favourite buffoon of the court of Edward

IV." A book of Scogins Jests' was published in 1565 by Andrew Borde, and probably suggested the name to Shakespeare.

III. ii. 140. but much of the father's substance'; so Quarto; Folios, not'; the Variorum of 1821 proposed not much'; the Quarto reading must be understood as ironical.

III. ii. 203. The windmill in St. George's field'; (cp. illustration).

III. ii. 294. Dagonet in Arthur's show'; Sir Dagonet is Ar

The Knights of the Round Table (see note on III. ii. 294) From an illuminated MS. of Lancelot (No 676) in the National Library at Paris. thur's fool in the story of Tristram de Lyonesse; 'Arthur's show' was an exhibition of archery by a society of 58 members which styled itself "The Ancient Order, Society, and Unitie laudable of Prince Arthur and his Knightly Armory of the Round Table,"

and took the names of the knights of the old Romance. Mulcaster referred to it in his Positions, concerning the training up of children (1581). The meeting-place of the society was Mileend Green. (The names of the knights of the old romance may be well illustrated by the illustration on the next page.)

III. 1. 331. 'invisible'; Rowe's emendation; Quarto and Folios, 'invincible,' i.e. (?) "not to be evinced, not to be made out, indeterminable" (Schmidt).

III. ii. 332, 333. ‘yet . . mandrake'; 340-343, 'a' came good-nights'; omitted in Folios.

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III. ii. 349. philosopher's two stones'; Ione of which was an universal medicine, the other a transmuter of base metals into gold"; so Warburton; Malone explains:-"I will make him of twice the value of the philosopher's stone."

IV. i. 55-79. Omitted in Quarto.

6

IV. i. 71. there'; the reading of the Folios; Hanmer conjectured sphere'; Collier chair.'

IV. i. 93. Neither this line nor 95 is to be found in the Folios, and they are omitted in some copies of the Quarto. To some corruption of the text is due the obscurity of 11. 94-96, which Clarke paraphrases:-"The grievances of my brother general, the commonwealth, and the home cruelty to my born brother, cause me to make this quarrel my own." The archbishop's brother had been beheaded by the King's order.

IV. i. 103-139. Omitted in Quarto.

IV. i. 173. ‘true substantial form,' i.e. 'in due form and legal validity.'

IV. iii. 43. hook-nosed fellow of Rome'; Quarto adds 'there cosin' before I came,' which Johnson took to be a corruption of there, Casar?'

IV. iii. 121, 122. commences it and sets it in act and use'; Tyrwhitt saw in these words an allusion "to the Cambridge Commencement and the Oxford Act; for by those different names the two Universities have long distinguished the season at which each gives to her respective students a complete authority to use those hoards of learning which have entitled them to their several degrees."

IV. iv. 35. as flaws congealed in the spring of day'; according to Warburton the allusion is "to the opinion of some philosophers that the vapours being congealed in the air by the cold (which is most intense in the morning), and being afterwards rarefied and let loose by the warmth of the sun, occasion those sudden and

impetuous gusts of wind which are called flaws"; Malone explained 'flaws' to mean small blades of ice which are stuck on the edges of the water in winter mornings."

IV. iv. 122. 'loathly births of nature,' i.e. unnatural births.

IV. v. 205. And all my friends'; Tyrwhitt's conjecture for 'thy friends' of the Folios and Quarto. Dyce' my foes.' Clarke explains the original reading thus:-" By the first thy friends the King means those who are friendly inclined to the prince, and who, he goes on to say, must be made securely friends."

IV. v. 235. ''Tis called Jerusalem'; probably from the tapestries of the history of Jerusalem with which it was hung; now used for the meetings of Convocation.

V. i. 31, 32. ‘A friend i' court is better than a penny in purse'; cp. The Romaunt of the Rose, 5540:

"For frende in court aie better is

Than peny is i npurse, certis";

Camden gives the same proverbial expression.

V. ii. 38. A ragged and forestall'd remission'; 'forestall'd has been variously interpreted; the simplest interpretation seems to be ‘anticipated, asked for before being granted,' not necessarily by the Chief-Justice himself, but by his friends; the explanation fits in well with the dignified utterance of the speaker. Others explain, a pardon that is sure not to be granted, the case having been prejudged'; 'a pardon which is precluded from being absolute, by the refusal of the offender to accuse or alter his conduct,' etc. (The accompanying figure, from a monument in Deerhurst Church, Gloucestershire, represents the costume of a judge of the time of Henry IV.)

V. iii. 73. Do me right'; 'to do a man right' was formerly, according to Steevens, the usual expression in pledging healths.

‘And dub me knight'; it was a custom in Shakespeare's day to drink a bumper kneeling to the health of one's mistress. He who performed this exploit was dubbed a knight for the evening, cp. A Yorkshire Tragedy, "They call it knighting in London when they drink upon their knees" (Malone).

V. iii. 121. 'Dead? As nail in door'; an ancient proverbial expression; the door-nail was probably the nail on which the knocker struck. "It is there

fore used as a comparison to any one irrevocably dead, one who has fallen (as Virgil says) multa morte, that is, with abundant death, such as iteration of strokes on the head would naturally produce."

V. iii. 141. 'Where is the life that late I led'; a scrap of an old song; cp. Taming of the Shrew, IV. i.

V. v. 28. obsque hoc nihil est,' 'tis all in every part'; the second and later Folios correct obsque' to 'absque,' but the error may have been intentional on the author's part. Pistol uses a Latin expression 'ever the same, for without this there is nothing,' and then goes on to allude to an English proverbial expression, "All in all, and all in every part," which he seems to give as its free rendering.

V. v. 108. 'I heard a bird so sing'; a proverbial expression still extant.

EPILOGUE. Shakespeare's authorship of this epilogue has been doubted, and it has been described as 'a manifest and poor imitation of the epilogue to As You Like It. It is noteworthy that it occurs already in the Quarto (1600), though with one important difference; the words and so kneel down queen' (11. 36, 37) are printed there at the end of the first paragraph, after 'infinitely.' It seems probable, therefore, that the epilogue originally ended there, and that the remaining lines were added somewhat later. One is strongly tempted to infer that the additions to the epilogue were called forth by the success of the first and second parts of the play of Sir John Oldcastle, written evidently to vindicate the character of Falstaff's original, and put on the stage as a counter-attraction to Henry IV., hence the words, added in a spirit of playful defiance, ́for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man' (1. 33). The first part of Sir John Oldcastle was performed for the first time about the Ist of November 1599, the second part, dealing with the Lollard's death, wase evidently written by the end of the year. The First Part of the true and honourable history of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham, appeared in two editions in 1600; Shakespeare's name had been impudently printed on the titlepage of the former and less correct edition; the authors were Munday, Drayton, Wilson, and Chettle. The Second Part' is not known to exist.

1. 28. our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine in France'; Shakespeare changed his mind. The public was not to be in

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