I; go to then, there's sympathy: you are merry, so am I; Ha! ha! then there's more sympathy: you love sack, and so do I; Would you desire better sympathy? Let it suffice thee, mistress Page, (at the least, if the love of a soldier can suffice,) that I love thee. I will not say, pity me, 'tis not a soldier-like phrase; but I say, love me. By me,

Thine own true knight,

By day or night,

Or any kind of light,

With all his might,

For thee to fight,

John Falstaff.

tent, 1604: "You must take her in the right vein then; as, when the sign is in Pisces, a fishmonger's wife is very sociable: in Cancer, a precisian's wife is very flexible."

Again, Dr. Faustus, 1604:

"I will set my countenance like a precisian.”

Again, in Ben Jonson's Case is alter'd, 1609:

"It is precisianism to alter that,

"With austere judgement, which is given by nature."

STEEVENS.

If physician be the right reading, the meaning may be this: A lover uncertain as yet of success, never takes reason for his counsellor, but, when desperate, applies to him as his physician. MUSGRAVE.

• Thine own true knight,

By day or night,] This expression, ludicrously employed by Falstaff, is of Greek extraction, and means, at all times. So, in the twenty-second Iliad, 433:

ὅ μοι NUKΤΑΣ ΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΗΜΑΡ

Εὐχωλή.

Thus faithfully rendered by Mr. Wakefield:

"My Hector! night and day thy mother's joy."

So likewise, in the third book of Gower, De Confessione Amantis:

"The sonne cleped was Machayre,

"The daughter eke Canace hight,

By daie bothe and eke by night."

Loud and still was another phrase of similar meaning.

STEEVENS.

ACT II. SCENE I.

Before Page's House.

Enter Mistress PAGE, with a letter.

MRS. PAGE. What! have I 'scaped love-letters in the holy-day time of my beauty, and am I now a subject for them? Let me see:

[Reads.

Ask me no reason why I love you; for though love use reason for his precisian, he admits him not for his counsellor : You are not young, no more am

7

though love use reason for his precisian, he admits him not for his counsellor:] This is obscure: but the meaning is, though love permit reason to tell what is fit to be done, he seldom follows its advice.-By precisian, is meant one who pretends to a more than ordinary degree of virtue and sanctity. On which account they gave this name to the puritans of that time. So Osborne-" Conform their mode, words, and looks, to these PRECISIANS." And Maine, in his City Match:

66

I did commend

"A great PRECISIAN to her for her woman."

WARBURTON.

Of this word I do not see any meaning that is very apposite to the present intention. Perhaps Falstaff said, Though love use reason as his physician, he admits him not for his counsellor. This will be plain sense. Ask not the reason of my love; the business of reason is not to assist love, but to cure it. There may however be this meaning in the present reading. Though love, when he would submit to regulation, may use reason as his precisian, or director, in nice cases, yet when he is only eager to attain his end, he takes not reason for his counsellor.

JOHNSON.

Dr. Johnson wishes to read physician; and this conjecture becomes almost a certainty from a line in our author's 147th

sonnet:

"My reason the physician to my love," &c. FARMER. The character of a precisian seems to have been very generally ridiculed in the time of Shakspeare. So, in The Malcon

I; go to then, there's sympathy: you are merry, so am I; Ha! ha! then there's more sympathy: you love sack, and so do I; Would you desire better sympathy? Let it suffice thee, mistress Page, (at the least, if the love of a soldier can suffice,) that I love thee. I will not say, pity me, 'tis not a soldier-like phrase; but I say, love me. By me,

Thine own true knight,

By day or night,

8

Or any kind of light,
With all his might,

For thee to fight,

John Falstaff.

tent, 1604: "You must take her in the right vein then; as, when the sign is in Pisces, a fishmonger's wife is very sociable: in Cancer, a precisian's wife is very flexible."

Again, Dr. Faustus, 1604:

"I will set my countenance like a precisian."

Again, in Ben Jonson's Case is alter'd, 1609:

"It is precisianism to alter that,

"With austere judgement, which is given by nature."

STEEVENS.

If physician be the right reading, the meaning may be this: A lover uncertain as yet of success, never takes reason for his counsellor, but, when desperate, applies to him as his physician. MUSGRAVE.

8

• Thine own true knight,

By day or night,] This expression, ludicrously employed by Falstaff, is of Greek extraction, and means, at all times. So, in the twenty-second Iliad, 433:

· ὅ μοι NUKΤΑΣ ΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΗΜΑΡ

Εὐχωλή.

Thus faithfully rendered by Mr. Wakefield:

"My Hector! night and day thy mother's joy."

So likewise, in the third book of Gower, De Confessione Amantis:

"The sonne cleped was Machayre,
"The daughter eke Canace hight,
"By daie bothe and eke by night.'

Loud and still was another phrase of similar meaning.

STEEVENS.

What a Herod of Jewry is this?-O wicked, wicked, world!-one that is well nigh worn to pieces with age, to show himself a young gallant! What an unweighed behaviour' hath this Flemish drunkard1 picked (with the devil's name) out of my conversation, that he dares in this manner assay me? Why, he hath not been thrice in my company!-What should I say to him?-I was then frugal of my mirth: 2-heaven forgive me!-Why, I'll exhibit a bill in the parliament for the putting down of men.3 How shall I be revenged on him? for

9

What an unweighed behaviour &c.] Thus the folio 1623. It has been suggested to me, that we should read—one.

1

STEEVENS.

Flemish drunkard-] It is not without reason that this term of reproach is here used. Sir John Smythe in Certain Discourses, &c. 4to. 1590, says, that the habit of drinking to excess was introduced into England from the Low Countries "by some of our such men of warre within these very few years whereof it is come to passe that now-a-dayes there are very fewe feastes where our said men of warre are present, but that they do invite and procure all the companie, of what calling soever they be, to carowsing and quaffing; and, because they will not be denied their challenges, they, with many new conges, ceremonies, and reverences, drinke to the health and prosperitie of princes; to the health of counsellors, and unto the health of their greatest friends both at home and abroad : in which exercise they never cease till they be deade drunke, or, as the Flemings say, Doot dronken." He adds, "And this aforesaid detestable vice hath within these six or seven yeares taken wonderful roote amongest our English nation, that in times past was wont to be of all other nations of Christendome one of the soberest." REED.

2

I was then frugal of my mirth:] By breaking this speech into exclamations, the text may stand; but I once thought it must be read, If I was not then frugal of my mirth, &c.

3

JOHNSON.

for the putting down of men.] The word which seems to have been inadvertently omitted in the folio, was restored by Mr. Theobald from the quarto, where the corre

revenged I will be, as sure as his guts are made of puddings.

sponding speech runs thus: "Well, I shall trust fat men the worse, while I live, for his sake. O God; that I knew how to be revenged of him!"-Dr. Johnson, however, thinks that the insertion is unnecessary, as "Mrs. Page might naturally enough, in the first heat of her anger, rail at the sex for the fault of one." But the authority of the original sketch in quarto, and Mrs. Page's frequent mention of the size of her lover in the play as it now stands, in my opinion fully warrant the correction that has been made. Our author well knew that bills are brought into parliament for some purpose that at least appears practicable. Mrs. Page therefore in her passion might exhibit a bill for the putting down or destroying men of a particular description; but Shakspeare would never have made her threaten to introduce a bill to effect an impossibility, viz. the extermination of the whole species.

There is no error more frequent at the press than the omission of words. In a sheet of this work now before me [Mr. Malone means his own edition] there was an out, (as it is termed in the printing-house,) that is, a passage omitted, of no less than ten lines. In every sheet some words are at first omitted.

The expression, putting down, is a common phrase of our municipal law. MALONE.

I believe this passage has hitherto been misunderstood, and therefore continue to read with the folio, which omits the epithet -fat.

The putting down of men, may only signify the humiliation of them, the bringing them to shame. So, in Twelfth Night, Malvolio says of the Clown-" I saw him, the other day, put down by an ordinary fool;" i. e. confounded. Again, in Love's Labour's Lost-"How the ladies and I have put him down!" Again, in Much Ado about Nothing-" You have put him down, lady, you have put him down." Again, in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, edit. 1632, p. 482-" Lucullus' wardrobe is put down by our ordinary citizens."

I cannot help thinking that the extermination of all men would be as practicable a design of parliament, as the putting down of those whose only offence was embonpoint.

I persist in this opinion, even though I have before me (in support of Mr. Malone's argument) the famous print from P. Brueghel, representing the Lean Cooks expelling the Fat ones.

STREVENS.