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ALL. Have with you, to see this monster.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.

A Room in Ford's House.

Enter Mrs. FORD and Mrs. PAGE.

MRS. FORD. What, John! what, Robert!' MRS. PAGE. Quickly, quickly: Is the buckbasket

MRS. FORD. I warrant :-What, Robin, I say.

Enter Servants with a Basket.

MRS. PAGE. Come, come, come.

MRS. FORD. Here, set it down.

MRS. PAGE. Give your men the charge; we must be brief.

MRS. FORD. Marry, as I told you before, John, and Robert, be ready here hard by in the brewhouse; and when I suddenly call you, come forth, and (without any pause, or staggering,) take this basket on your shoulders: that done, trudge with it in all haste, and carry it among the whitsters in Datchet mead, and there empty it in the muddy ditch, close by the Thames side.

MRS. PAGE. You will do it?

MRS. FORD. I have told them over and over; they lack no direction: Be gone, and come when you are called. [Exeunt Servants.

the whitsters - i. e. the blanchers of linen.

DOUCE.

wine first with him; I'll make him dance." Will you go, gentles?

7 Host. Farewell, my hearts: I will to my honest knight Falstaff, and drink canary with him.

Ford. [Aside. I think, I shall drink in pipe-wine first with him; I'll make him dance.] To drink in pipe-wine is a phrase which I cannot understand. May we not suppose that Shakspeare rather wrote, I think I shall drink HORN-PIPE wine first with him: I'll make him dance?

Canary is the name of a dance, as well as of a wine. Ford lays hold of both senses; but, for an obvious reason, makes the dance a horn-pipe. It has been already remarked, that Shakspeare has frequent allusions to a cuckold's horns. TYRWHITT. So, in Pasquil's Night-cap, 1612, p. 118:

"It is great comfort to a cuckold's chance

"That many thousands doe the Hornepipe dance."

STEEVENS. Pipe is known to be a vessel of wine, now containing two hogsheads. Pipe-wine is therefore wine, not from the bottle, but the pipe; and the jest consists in the ambiguity of the word, which signifies both a cask of wine, and a musical instrument.

JOHNSON.

The jest here lies in a mere play of words. "I'll give him pipe-wine, which shall make him dance." Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1786. STEEVENS.

The phrase," to drink in pipe-wine"-always seemed to me a very strange one, till I met with the following passage in King James's first speech to his parliament, in 1604; by which it appears that "to drink in" was the phraseology of the time: "who either, being old, have retained their first drunken-in liquor," &c. MALONE.

I have seen the phrase often in books of Shakspeare's time, but neglected to mark down the passages. One of them I have lately recovered: "If he goe to the taverne they will not onely make him paie for the wine, but for all he drinks in besides." Greene's Ghost haunting Conicatchers, 1602, Sign. B 4.-The following also, though of somewhat later authority, will confirm Mr. Malone's observation: "A player acting upon a stage a man killed; but being troubled with an extream cold, as he was lying upon the stage fell a coughing; the people laughing, he rushed up, ran off the stage, saying, thus it is for a man to drink in porridg, for then he will be sure to cough in his grave." Jocabella, or a Cabinet of Conceits, by Robert Chamberlaine, 1640, No 84. REED.

ALL. Have with you, to see this monster.

SCENE III.

A Room in Ford's House.

Enter Mrs. FORD and Mrs. PAGE.

[Exeunt.

MRS. FORD. What, John! what, Robert!

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MRS. PAGE. Quickly, quickly: Is the buckbasket

MRS. FORD. I warrant :-What, Robin, I say.

Enter Servants with a Basket.

MRS. PAGE. Come, come, come.

MRS. FORD. Here, set it down.

MRS. PAGE. Give your men the charge; we must be brief.

MRS. FORD. Marry, as I told you before, John, and Robert, be ready here hard by in the brewhouse; and when I suddenly call you, come forth, and (without any pause, or staggering,) take this basket on your shoulders: that done, trudge with it in all haste, and carry it among the whitsters in Datchet mead, and there empty it in the muddy ditch, close by the Thames side.

MRS. PAGE. You will do it?

MRS. FORD. I have told them over and over; they lack no direction: Be gone, and come when you are called. [Exeunt Servants.

8

the whitsters] i. e. the blanchers of linen.

DOUCE.

MRS. PAGE. Here comes little Robin.

Enter ROBIN.

MRS. FORD. How now, my eyas-musket? what news with you?

ROB. My master sir John is come in at your back-door, mistress Ford; and requests your company.

MRS. PAGE. You little Jack-a-lent,' have you been true to us?

How now, my eyas-musket?] Eyas is a young unfledg'd hawk; I suppose from the Italian Niaso, which originally signified any young bird taken from the nest unfledg'd, afterwards a young hawk. The French, from hence, took their niais, and used it in both those significations; to which they added a third, metaphorically, a silly fellow; un garçon fort niais, un niais. Musket signifies a sparrow hawk, or the smallest species of hawks. This too is from the Italian Muschetto, a small hawk, as appears from the original signification of the word, namely, a troublesome stinging fly. So that the humour of calling the little page an eyas-musket is very intelligible. WARburton.

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So, in Greene's Card of Fancy, 1608: " no hawk so haggard but will stoop to the lure: no niesse so ramage but will be reclaimed to the lunes." Eyas-musket is the same as infant Lilliputian. Again, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, B.. I. c. xi.

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-youthful gay,

"Like eyas-hauke, up mounts unto the skies,

"His newly budded pinions to essay."

In The Booke of Haukyng, &c. commonly called The Book of St. Albans, bl. 1. no date, is the following derivation of the word; but whether true or erroneous is not for me to determine: "An hauk is called an eyesse from her eyen. For an hauke that is brought up under a bussarde or puttock, as many ben, have watry eyen," &c. STEEVENS.

1

Jack-a-lent,] A Jack o' lent was a puppet thrown at in Lent, like shrove-cocks. So, in The Weakest goes to the Wall, 1600:

"A mere anatomy, a Jack of Lent.”

ROB. Ay, I'll be sworn: My master knows not of your being here; and hath threatened to put me into everlasting liberty, if I tell you of it; for, he swears, he'll turn me away.

MRS. PAGE. Thou'rt a good boy; this secrecy of thine shall be a tailor to thee, and shall make thee a new doublet and hose.-I'll go hide me.

MRS. FORD. Do so:-Go tell thy master, I am alone. Mistress Page, remember you your cue. [Exit ROBIN.

MRS. PAGE. I warrant thee; if I do not act it, hiss me. [Exit Mrs. PAGE. MRS. FORD. Go to then; we'll use this unwholesome humidity, this gross watry pumpion ;—we'll teach him to know turtles from jays.2

Enter FALStaff.

FAL. Have I caught thee, my heavenly jewel? 3 Why, now let me die, for I have lived long enough; this is the period of my ambition: this blessed hour!

4

Again, in The Four Prentices of London, 1615:

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"Now you old Jack of Lent, six weeks and upwards." Again, in Greene's Tu Quoque: "for if a boy, that is throwing at his Jack o' Lent, chance to hit me on the shins,' &c. See a note on the last scene of this comedy. STEEVENS. from jays.] So, in Cymbeline:

2

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some jay of Italy,

"Whose mother was her painting," &c. STEEVENS. Have I caught my heavenly jewel?] This is the first line of the second song in Sidney's Astrophel and Stella. TOLLET. Why, now let me die, for I have lived long enough ;] This sentiment, which is of sacred origin, is here indecently introduced. It appears again, with somewhat less of profaneness, in The Winter's Tale, Act IV. and in Othello, Act II.

STEEVENS.

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