SHAL. Marry, I thank you for it; I thank you for that good comfort. She calls you, coz: I'll leave you.

ANNE. Now, master Slender.

SLEN. Now, good mistress Anne.

ANNE. What is your

will?

SLEN. My will? od's heartlings, that's a pretty jest, indeed! I ne'er made my will yet, I thank heaven; I am not such a sickly creature, I give heaven praise.

ANNE. I mean, master Slender, what would with me?

you

SLEN. Truly, for mine own part, I would little or nothing with you: Your father, and my uncle, have made motions: if it be my luck, so: if not, happy man be his dole! They can tell you how things go, better than I can: You may ask your father; here he comes.

Enter PAGE, and Mistress PAGE.

PAGE. Now, master Slender :-Love him, daughter Anne.

Why, how now! what does master Fenton here? You wrong me, sir, thus still to haunt my house: I told you, sir, my daughter is dispos'd of.

FENT. Nay, master Page, be not impatient. MRS. PAGE. Good master Fenton, come not to my child.

PAGE. She is no match for you.
FENT. Sir, will you hear me?

1- happy man be his dole !] A proverbial expression. See Ray's Collection, p. 116, edit. 1737. STEEVENS.

VOL. V.

L

PAGE.

No, good master Fenton. Come, master Shallow; come, son Slender; in:Knowing my mind, you wrong me, master Fenton. [Exeunt PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENder.

QUICK. Speak to mistress Page.

FENT. Good mistress Page, for that I love your daughter

In such a righteous fashion as I do,

Perforce, against all checks, rebukes, and manners, I must advance the colours of my love,2

And not retire: Let me have your good will.

ANNE. Good mother, do not marry me to yond❜

fool.

MRS. PAGE. I mean it not; I seek

husband.

you a better

QUICK. That's my master, master doctor.

ANNE. Alas, I had rather be set quick i' the earth, And bowl'd to death with turnips.3

MRS. PAGE. Come, trouble not yourself: Good master Fenton,

I will not be your friend, nor enemy:
My daughter will I question how she loves you,
And as I find her, so am I affected;

'Till then, farewell, sir :-She must needs go
Her father will be angry.

in;

[Exeunt Mrs. PAGE and ANNE

• I must advance the colours of my love,] The same metaphor occurs in Romeo and Juliet:

"And death's pale flag is not advanced there.”

be set quick the earth,

STEEVENS.

And bowl'd to death with turnips.] This is a common proverb in the southern counties. I find almost the same expression in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair: "Would I had been set in the ground, all but the head of me, and had my brains bowl'd at."

COLLINS.

FENT. Farewell, gentle mistress; farewell, Nan.* QUICK. This is my doing now;-Nay, said I, will you cast away your child on a fool, and a physician? Look on master Fenton :—this is my doing.

4

FENT. I thank thee; and I pray thee, once tonight

Farewell, gentle mistress; farewell, Nan.] Mistress is here used as a trissyllable. MALONE.

If mistress can be pronounced as a trissyllable, the line will still be uncommonly defective in harmony. Perhaps a monosyllable has been omitted, and we should read

"Farewell, my gentle mistress; farewell, Nan."

STEEVENS.

fool, and a physician?] I should read-fool or a phy

sician, meaning Slender and Caius. JOHNSON.

Sir Thomas Hanmer reads according to Dr. Johnson's conjecture. This may be right.-Or my Dame Quickly may allude to the proverb, a man of forty is either a fool or a physician; but she asserts her master to be both. FARMER.

So, in Microcosmus, a masque by Nabbes, 1637: "Choler. Phlegm's a fool.

"Melan. Or a physician."

Again, in A Maidenhead well lost, 1632:

"No matter whether I be a fool or a physician."

Mr. Dennis, of irascible memory, who altered this play, and brought it on the stage, in the year 1702, under the title of The Comical Gallant, (when, thanks to the alterer, it was fairly damned,) has introduced the proverb at which Mrs. Quickly's allusion appears to be pointed. STEEVENS.

I believe the old copy is right, and that Mrs. Quickly means to insinuate that she had addressed at the same time both Mr. and Mrs. Page on the subject of their daughter's marriage, one of whom favoured Slender, and the other Caius : "-on a fool or a physician," would be more accurate, but and is sufficiently suitable to Dame Quickly, referendo singula singulis.

Thus: "You two are going to throw away your daughter on a fool and a physician; you, sir, on the former, and you, madam, on the latter." MALONE.

once to-night-] i. e. sometime to-night. So, in a

Give my sweet Nan this ring: There's for thy

pains.

[Exit. QUICK. NOW heaven send thee good fortune! A kind heart he hath: a woman would run through fire and water for such a kind heart. But yet, I would my master had mistress Anne; or I would master Slender had her; or, in sooth, I would master Fenton had her: I will do what I can for them all three; for so I have promised, and I'll be as good as my word; but speciously' for master Fenton. Well, I must of another errand to sir John Falstaff from my two mistresses; What a beast am I to slack it ?8

[Exit.

SCENE V.

A Room in the Garter Inn.

Enter FALSTAFF and BARDOLPH.

FAL. Bardolph, I say,—

BARD. Here, sir.

FAL. Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in't. [Exit BARD.] Have I lived to be carried in a basket, like a barrow of butcher's offal; and to

letter from the sixth Earl of Northumberland; (quoted in the notes on the household book of the fifth earl of that name:' :) "-notwithstanding I trust to be able ons to set up a chapell off myne owne." Again, in Ben Jonson's Silent Woman: Well, I'll try if he will be appeased with a leg or an arm; if not, you, must die once." i. e. at some time or other. STEEVENS.

7

8

66

* — speciously -] She means to say specially. STEEvens. to slack it?] i. e. neglect. So, in King Lear: "- if then they chanced to slack you, we would control them." STEEVENS.

be thrown into the Thames? Well, if I be served such another trick, I'll have my brains ta'en out, and buttered, and give them to a dog for a new years gift. The rogues slighted me into the river with as little remorse as they would have drowned a bitch's blind puppies," fifteen i' the litter and you may know by my size, that I have a kind of alacrity in sinking; if the bottom were as deep as hell, I should down. I had been drowned, but that the shore was shelvy and shallow; a death that I abhor; for the water swells a man; and what a thing should I have been, when I had been swelled! should have been a mountain of mummy.

Re-enter BARDOLPH, with the wine.

BARD. Here's mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with you.

FAL. Come, let me pour in some sack to the Thames water; for my belly's as cold, as if I had swallowed snow-balls for pills to cool the reins. Call her in.

BARD. Come in, woman.

a bitch's blind puppies,] The old copy reads-" a blind bitch's puppies." STEEVENS.

I have ventured to transpose the adjective here, against the authority of the printed copies. I know, in horses, a colt from a blind stallion loses much of the value it might otherwise have; but are puppies ever drowned the sooner, for coming from a blind bitch? The author certainly wrote, as they would have drowned a bitch's blind puppies. THEOBALD.

The transposition may be justified from the following passage in The Two Gentlemen of Verona :-" one that I saved from drowning, when three or four of his blind brothers and sisters went to it." STEEVENS.