Brook: It is a merry knight.-Will you go on, hearts ?1 SHAL. Have with you, mine host. PAGE. I have heard, the Frenchman hath good skill in his rapier.2 SHAL. Tut, sir, I could have told you more: In these times you stand on distance, your passes, stoc. 1 will you go on, hearts?] For this substitution of an intelligible for an unintelligible word, I am answerable.— The old reading is-an-heirs. See the following notes. STEEVENS. We should read, Will you go ON, HERIS? i. e. Will you go on, master? Heris, an old Scotch word for master. WARBURTON. The merry Host has already saluted them separately by titles of distinction; he therefore probably now addresses them collectively by a general one-Will you go on, heroes? or, as probably,-Will you go on, hearts? He calls Dr. Caius Heart of Elder; and adds, in a subsequent scene of this play, Farewell my hearts. Again, in The Midsummer Night's Dream, Bottom says, -Where are these hearts?" My brave hearts, or my bold hearts, is a common word of encouragement. A heart of gold expresses the more soft and amiable qualities, the mores aurei of Horace; and a heart of oak is a frequent encomium of rugged honesty. Sir T. Hanmer reads-Mynheers. 66 STEEVENS. There can be no doubt that this passage is corrupt. Perhaps we should read-Will you go and hear us? So, in the next page-" "I had rather hear them scold than fight." MALOne. in his rapier.] In the old quarto here follow these words: "Shal. I tell you what, master Page; I believe the doctor is no jester; he'll lay it one [on]; for though we be justices and doctors and churchmen, yet we are the sons of women, master Page. "Page. True, master Shallow. "Shal. It will be found so, master Page. Page. Master Shallow, you yourself have been a great fighter, though now a man of peace." Part of this dialogue is found afterwards in the third scene of the present act; but it seems more proper here, to introduce what Shallow says of the prowess of his youth. MALONE. cadoes, and I know not what: 'tis the heart, master Page; 'tis here, 'tis here. I have seen the time, with my long sword,3 I would have made you four tall fellows' skip like rats. my long sword,] Before the introduction of rapiers, the swords in use were of an enormous length, and sometimes raised with both hands. Shallow, with an old man's vanity, censures the innovation by which lighter weapons were introduced, tells what he could once have done with his long sword, and ridicules the terms and rules of the rapier. JOHNSON. The two-handed sword is mentioned in the ancient Interlude of Nature, bl. 1. no date: "Somtyme he serveth me at borde, 66 Somtyme he bereth my two-hand sword." See a note to The First Part of K. Henry IV. Act II. STEEVENS. Dr. Johnson's explanation of the long sword is certainly right; for the early quarto reads-my two-hand sword; so that they appear to have been synonymous. Carleton, in his Thankful Remembrance of God's Mercy, 1625, speaking of the treachery of one Rowland York, in betraying the town of Deventer to the Spaniards in 1587, says: "he was a Londoner, famous among the cutters in his time, for bringing in a new kind of fight-to run the point of the rapier into a man's body. This manner of fight he brought first into England, with great admiration of his audaciousness: when in England before that time, the use was, with little bucklers, and with broad swords, to strike, and not to thrust; and it was accounted unmanly to strike under the girdle." The Continuator of Stowe's Annals, p. 1024, edit. 1631, supposes the rapier to have been introduced somewhat sooner, viz. about the 20th year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, [1578] at which time, he says, Sword and Bucklers began to be disused. Shakspeare has here been guilty of a great anachronism in making Shallow ridicule the terms of the rapier in the time of Henry IV. an hundred and seventy years before it was used in England. MALONE. It should seem from a passage in Nash's Life of Jacke Wilton, 1594, that rapiers were used in the reign of Henry VIII. "At that time I was no common squire, &c.-my rapier pendant like a round stick fastned in the tacklings, for skippers the better to climbe by." Sig. C 4. RITSON. tall fellows-] A tall fellow, in the time of our author, meant a stout, bold, or courageous person. In A Discourse on HOST. Here, boys, here, here! shall we wag? PAGE. Have with you:-I had rather hear them scold than fight. [Exeunt Host, SHALLOW, and PAGE. FORD. Though Page be a secure fool, and stands so firmly on his wife's frailty, yet I cannot put off my opinion so easily: She was in his company at Page's house; and, what they made there, I know Usury, by Dr. Wilson, 1584, he says, "Here in England, he that can rob a man on the high-way, is called a tall fellow." Lord Bacon says, "that Bishop Fox caused his castle of Norham to be fortified, and manned it likewise with a very great number of tall soldiers." The elder quarto reads-tall fencers. STEEVENs. stands so firmly on his wife's frailty,] Thus all the copies. But Mr. Theobald has no conception how any man could stand firmly on his wife's frailty. And why? Because he had no conception how he could stand upon it, without knowing what it was. But if I tell a stranger, that the bridge he is about to cross is rotten, and he believes it not, but will go on, may I not say, when I see him upon it, that he stands firmly on a rotten plank? Yet he has changed frailty for fealty, and the Oxford editor has followed him. But they took the phrase, to stand firmly on, to signify to insist upon; whereas it signifies to rest upon, which the character of a secure fool, given to him, shews. So that the common reading has an elegance that would be lost in the alteration. WARBURTON. To stand on any thing, does signify to insist on it. So, in Heywood's Rape of Lucrece, 1630: "All captains, and stand upon the honesty of your wives." Again, in Warner's Albion's England, 1602, Book VI. chap. 30: "For stoutly on their honesties doe wylie harlots stand.” The jealous Ford is the speaker, and all chastity in women appears to him as frailty. He supposes Page therefore to insist on that virtue as steady, which he himself suspects to be without foundation. STEEVENS. -and stands so firmly on his wife's frailty,] i. e. has such perfect confidence in his unchaste wife. His wife's frailty is the same as his frail wife. So, in Antony and Cleopatra, we meet with death and honour, for an honourable death. MALONE. 6 and, what they made there,] An obsolete phrase signifying-what they did there. MALONE. not. Well, I will look further into't: and I have a disguise to sound Falstaff: If I find her honest, I lose not my labour; if she be otherwise, 'tis labour well bestowed. [Exit. SCENE II. A Room in the Garter Inn. Enter FALSTAFF and PISTOL. FAL. I will not lend thee a penny. I will retort the sum in equipage. 7 So, in As you like it, Act I. SC. i: 8 "Now, sir, what make you here?" STEEVENS. the world's mine oyster, &c.] Dr. Grey supposes Shakspeare to allude to an old proverb, "The mayor of Northampton opens oysters with his dagger,"-i. e. to keep them at a sufficient distance from his nose, that town being fourscore miles from the sea. STEEVENS. • I will retort the sum in equipage.] This is added from the old quarto of 1619, and means, I will pay you again in stolen goods. WARBurton. I rather believe he means, that he will pay him by waiting on him for nothing. So, in Love's Pilgrimage, by Beaumont and Fletcher: "And boy, be you my guide, "For I will make a full descent in equipage." That equipage ever meant stolen goods, I am yet to learn. STEEVENS. Dr. Warburton may be right; for I find equipage was one of the cant words of the time. In Davies' Papers Complaint, (a poem which has erroneously been ascribed to Donne,) we have several of them: "Embellish, blandishment, and equipage." Which words, he tells us in the margin, overmuch savour of witlesse affectation. FARMER. Dr. Warburton's interpretation is, I think, right. Equipage indeed does not per se signify stolen goods, but such goods as FAL. Not a penny. I have been content, sir, you should lay my countenance to pawn: I have grated upon my good friends for three reprieves for you and your coach-fellow, Nym;" or else you had looked through the grate, like a geminy of baboons. I am damned in hell, for swearing to gentlemen my friends, you were good soldiers, and tall fellows:1 and when mistress Bridget lost the handle of her fan,' I took't upon mine honour, thou hadst it not. Pistol promises to return, we may fairly suppose, would be stolen. Equipage, which, as Dr. Farmer observes, had been but newly introduced into our language, is defined by Bullokar in his English Expositor, 8vo. 1616: "Furniture, or provision for horsemanship, especially in triumphs or tournaments." Hence the modern use of this word. MALONE. 9 your coach-fellow, Nym ;] Thus the old copies. Coach-fellow has an obvious meaning; but the modern editors read, couch-fellow. The following passage from Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels may justify the reading I have chosen : ""Tis the swaggering coach-horse Anaides, that draws with him there." 66 Again, in Monsieur D'Olive, 1606: "Are you he my page here makes choice of to be his fellow coach-horse? Again, in A true Narrative of the Entertainment of his Royal Majestie, from the Time of his Departure from Edinburgh, till his Receiving in London, &c. 1603: -a base pilfering theefe was taken, who plaid the cutpurse in the court: his fellow was ill mist, for no doubt he had a walking-mate: they drew together like coach-horses, and it is pitie they did not hang together." Again, in Every Woman in her Humour, 1609: "For wit, ye may be coach'd together.' Again, in 10th Book of Chapman's Translation of Homer: "their chariot horse, as they coach-fellows were." your coach-fellow, Nym ;] i. e. he, who draws along with you; who is joined with you in all your knavery. So before, Page, speaking of Nym and Pistol, calls them a "yoke of Falstaff's discarded men.' MALONE. 1-tall fellows:] See p. 76. 2 lost the handle of her fan,] that fans, in our author's time, were STEEVENS. It should be remembered, more costly than they are at present, as well as of a different construction. They con |