Poins. O, Glendower.

Fal. Owen, Owen; the same ;-and his son-in-law, Mortimer; and old Northumberland; and that sprightly Scot of Scots, Douglas, that runs o'horseback up a hill perpendicular.

P. Hen. He that rides at high speed, and with his pistol kills a sparrow flying.

Fal. You have hit it.

P. Hen. So did he never the sparrow.

Fal. Well, that rascal hath good mettle in him; he will not run.

P. Hen. Why, what a rascal art thou then, to praise him so for running?

Fal. O'horseback, ye cuckoo? but, afoot, he will not budge a foot.

P. Hen. Yes, Jack, upon instinct.

Fal. I grant ye, upon instinct. Well, he is there too and one Mordake, and a thousand blue-caps more: Worcester is stolen away to night; thy father's beard is turned white with the news; you may buy land now as cheap as stinking mackarel.

Minshieu, in his DICT. 1617, explains a Welsh hook thus: " Armorum genus est ære in falcis modum incurvato, pertica longissimæ præfixo." Cotgrave calls it "a long hedging-bill, about the length of a partisan." See also Florio's Italian Dict. 1598: "Falcione. A bending forrest bill, or Welsh hook.

"Pennati. Hedge-bills, forest bills, Welsh hooks, or weeding hooks." Malone.

5-pistol-) Shakspeare never has any care to preserve the manners of the time. Pistols were not known in the age of Henry. Pistols were, I believe, about our author's time, eminently used by the Scots. Sir Henry Wotton somewhere makes mention of a Scottish pistol. Johnson.

Beaumont and Fletcher are still more inexcusable. In The Humourous Lieutenant, they have equipped Demetrius Poliorcetes, one of the immediate successors of Alexander the Great, with the same weapon. Steevens.

6

- blue-caps - A name of ridicule given to the Scots from their blue-bonnets. Johnson. There is an old ballad called Blew Cap for me, or "A Scottish lass her resolute chusing;

7

"Shee'll have bonny blew cap, all other refusing." Steevens.

- thy father's beard is turned white with the news;] I think Montne mentions a person condemned to death, whose hair turned grey in one night. Tollet,

P. Hen. Why then, 'tis like, if there come a hot June, and this civil buffeting hold, we shall buy maidenheads as they buy hob-nails, by the hundreds.

Fal. By the mass, lad, thou sayest true; it is like, we shall have good trading that way. But, tell me, Hal, art thou not horribly afeard? thou being heir apparent, could the world pick thee out three such enemies again, as that fiend Douglas, that spirit Percy, and that devil Glendower? Art thou not horribly afraid? doth not thy blood thrill at it?

P. Hen. Not a whit, i' faith; I lack some of thy instinct.

Fal. Well, thou wilt be horribly chid to-morrow, when thou comest to thy father: if thou love me, practise an

answer.

P. Hen. Do thou stand for my father, and examine me upon the particulars of my life.

Fal. Shall I? content:- This chair shall be my state,1 this dagger my sceptre, and this cushion my crown.2

Nashe, in his Have with you to Saffron Walden, &c. 1596, says: "-looke and you shall find a grey haire for everie line I have writ against him; and you shall have all his beard white too, by the time he hath read over this book." The reader may find more examples of the same phenomenon in Grimeston's translation of Goulart's Memorable Histories, p. 489, &c. Steevens.

8- - you may buy land &c.] In former times the prosperity of the nation was known by the value of land, as now by the price of stocks. Before Henry the Seventh made it safe to serve the King regnant, it was the practice at every revolution, for the conqueror to confiscate the estates of those that opposed, and perhaps of those who did not assist him. Those, therefore, that foresaw the change of government, and thought their estates in danger, were desirous to sell them in haste for something that might be carried away. Johnson.

9

Do thou stand for my father, and examine me upon the particulars of my life.] In the old anonymous play of Henry V, the same strain of humour is discoverable:

"Thou shalt be my lord chief justice, and shall sit in the chair, and I'll be the young prince and hit thee a box on the ear," &c.

Steevens.

1- This chair shall be my state,] A state is a chair with a canopy over it. So, in Macbeth:

"Our hostess keeps her state."

This, as well as a following passage, was perhaps designed to ridicule the mock majesty of Cambyses, the hero of a play which

P. Hen. Thy state is taken for a joint-stool, thy golden sceptre for a leaden dagger, and thy precious rich crown, for a pitiful bald crown!3

Fal. Well, an the fire of grace be not quite out of thee, now shalt thou be moved.-Give me a cup of sack, to make mine eyes look red, that it may be thought I have wept; for I must speak in passion, and I will do it in king Cambyses vein.

P. Hen. Well, here is my leg.5

Fal. And here is my speech: -Stand aside, nobility.
Host. This is excellent sport, i' faith.
Fal. Weep not, sweet queen, for trickling tears are vain.
Host. O, the father, how he holds his countenance!
Fal. For God's sake, lords, convey my tristful queen,

6

appears from Deckar's Gul's Hornbook, 1609, to have been exhibited with some degree of theatrical pomp. Deckar is ridiculing the impertinence of young gallants who sat or stood on the stage: " on the very rushes where the commedy is to daunce, yea and under the state of Cambises himselfe." Steevens.

2- this cushion my crown.] Dr. Letherland, in a MS. note, observes that the country people in Warwickshire use a cushion for a crown, at their harvest-home diversions; and in the play of King Edward IV, P. II, 1619, is the following passage: "Then comes a slave, one of those drunken sots, "In with a tavern reck'ning for a supplication. "Disguised with a cushion on his head." Steevens.

3 Thy state &c.] This answer might, I think, have better been omitted: it contains only a repetition of Falstaff's mock-royalty. Johnson.

This is an apostrophe of the Prince to his absent father, not an answer to Falstaff. Farmer.

Rather a ludicrous description of Falstaff's mock regalia.

Ritson.

4- King Cambyses' - The banter is here upon a play called, A lamentable Tragedie, mixed full of pleasant Mirth, containing the Life of Cambises, King of Persia. By Thomas Preston. [1570.] Theobald.

I question if Shakspeare had ever seen this tragedy; for there is a remarkable peculiarity of measure, which, when he professed to speak in king Cambyses' vein, he would hardly have missed, if he had known it. Johnson.

There is a marginal direction in the old play of King Cambises'. "At this tale tolde, let the queen weep;" which I fancy is al luded to, though the measure is not preserved. Farmer.

5

my leg.] That is, my obeisance to my father. Johnson.

For tears do stop the flood-gates of her eyes."

Host. O rare! he doth it as like one of these harlotry players, as I ever see.

Fal. Peace, good pint-pot; peace, good tickle-brain. -Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy time, but also how thou art accompanied: for though the camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it

6

my tristful queen,] Old copies-trustful. Corrected by Mr. Rowe. The word tristful is again used in Hamlet. Malone. 7the flood-gates of her eyes.) This passage is probably a burlesque on the following in Preston's Cambyses:

"Queen. These words to hear makes stilling teares issue from

chrystall eyes."

Perhaps, says Dr. Farmer, we should read-do ope the floodgates, &c. Steevens.

The allusion may be to the following passage in Soliman and

Perseda:

8

"How can mine eyes dart forth a pleasant look,
"When they are stop'd with floods of flowing tears?" Ritson.

harlotry players,] This word is used in The Plowman's Tale: "Soche harlotre men," &c. Again, in P. P. fol. 27: "I had lever hear an harlotry, or a somer's game." Junius explains the word by " inhonesta paupertinæ sortis fœditas."

Steevens.

9 - tickle-brain,] This appears to have been the nick name of some strong liquor. So, in A new Trick to cheat the Devil, 1636:

"A cup of Nipsitate brisk and neat,

"The drawers call it tickle-brain."

In The Antipodes, 1640, settle-brain is mentioned as another potation. Steevens.

1

-though the camomile, &c.] This whole speech is supremely comick. The simile of camomile used to illustrate a contrary effect, brings to my remembrance an observation of a late writer of some merit, whom the desire of being witty has betrayed into a like thought. Meaning to enforce with great vehemence the mad temerity of young soldiers, he remarks, that "though Bedlam be in the road to Hogsden, it is out of the way to promotion." Johnson.

In The More the Merrier, a Collection of Epigrams, 1608, is the following passage:

"The camomile shall teach thee patience,

"Which thriveth best when trodden most upon." Again, in Parasitaster, or the Fawne, a comedy, by Marston, 1606: "For indeed, sir, a repress'd fame mounts like camomile, the more trod down, the more it grows." Steevens.

The style immediately ridiculed, is that of Lyly, in his Euphues' grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears. That thou art my son. I have partly thy mother's word, partly my own opinion; but chiefly, a villainous trick of thine eye, and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip, that doth warrant me. If then thou be son to me here lies the point;-Why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of heaven2 prove a micher, and eat blackberries? a question not to be asked. Shall the son of England prove a thief, and take purses? a question to be asked. There is a thing,

"Though the camomile the more it is trodden and pressed downe, the more it spreadeth; yet the violet the oftener it is handled and touched, the sooner it withereth and decayeth," &c. Farmer.

Again, in Philomela, the Lady Fitzwaller's Nightingale, by Robert Greene, bl. 1. 1595, sign. 14: "The palme tree, the more it is prest downe, the more it sprowteth up: the camomill, the more it is troden, the sweeter smell it yieldeth." Reed.

2 Shall the blessed sun of heaven -) Thus the first quarto. In the second quarto, 1599, the word sun was changed to son, which consequently is the reading of the subsequent quartos and the folio: and so I suspect the author wrote. The orthography of these two words was formerly so unsettled, that it is often from the context alone one can determine what is meant. Malone.

3

a micher] i. e. truant; to mich is to lurk out of sight, a hedge-creeper. Warburton. The allusion is to a truant boy, who unwilling to go to school, and afraid to go home, lurks in the fields, and picks wild fruits. Johnson. In A Comment on the Ten Commandments, printed at London in 1493, by Richard Pynson, I find the word thus used:

"They make Goddes house a den of theyves; for commonly in such feyrs and markets, wheresoever it be holden, ther ben many theyves, michers, and cutpurse."

Again, in The Devil's Charter, 1607 :

"Pox on him, micher, I'll make him pay for it." Again, in Lyly's Mother Bombie, 1594:

"How like a micher he stands, as though he had truanted from honesty."

Again, in the old Morality of Hycke Scorner:

"Wanton wenches and also michers." Steevens.

A micher, I believe, means only a lurking thief distinguished from one more daring. Lambard in his Eirenarcha, 1610, p. 186, speaking of the powers which may be exercised by one justice, says, he may charge the constables to arrest such as shall be suspected to be "draw-latches, wastors, or robertsmen, that is to say, either miching or mightie theeves, for the meaning must remaine howsoever the word be gone out of use." Reed.