ATTEN. Sir, my lord would speak with you. CH. JUST. Sir John Falstaff, a word with you. FAL. My good lord!-God give your lordship good time of day. I am glad to see your lordship abroad: I heard say, your lordship was fick : I hope, your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet fome fmack of age in you, some relish of the faltness of time; and I most humbly beseech your lordship, to have a reverend care of your health.

CH. JUST. Sir John, I fent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury.

FAL. An't please your lordship, I hear, his majesty is return'd with some discomfort from Wales. CH. Just. I talk not of his majesty :-You would not come when I fent for you.

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FAL. And I hear moreover, his highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy.

CH. Just. Well, heaven mend him! I pray, let me speak with you.

FAL. This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an't please your lordship; a kind of fleeping in the blood, a whorefon tingling.

CH. JUST. what tell you me of it? be it as it is. FAL. It hath its original from much grief; from study, and perturbation of the brain: I have read the cause of his effects in Galen; it is a kind of deafness.

CH. JUST. I think, you are fallen into the disease; for you hear not what I say to you.

I think it much more probable that Falstaff means to allude to the counter-prifon. Sir T. Overbury in his character of A Serjeant's yeoman, 1616, (in modern language, a bailiff's follower,) calls him a Counter-rat." MALONE.

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FAL. Very well, my lord, very well: rather, an't please you, it is the disease of not listening,

* Fal. Very well, my lord, very well:] In the quarto edition, printed in 1609, this speech stands thus:

Old. Very well, my lord, very well: ----

I had not obferved this, when I wrote my note to The first Part of Henry IV. concerning the tradition of Falstaff's character having been first called Oldcastle. This almost amounts to a felf-evident proof of the thing being fo: and that the play being printed from the stage manufcript, Oldcastle had been all along altered into Falftaff, except in this fingle place by an oversight; of which the printers not being aware, continued these initial traces of the original name.

THEOBALD.

Old.

I am unconvinced by Mr. Theobald's remark. might have been the beginning of some actor's name. Thus we have Kempe and Cowley, instead of Dogberry and Verges, in the 4to. edit. of Much Ado about Nothing, 1600.

Names utterly unconnected with the perfonæ dramatis of Shakspeare, are sometimes introduced as entering on the ftage. Thus, in The Second Part of King Henry IV. edit. 1600: "Enter th' Archbishop, Thomas Mowbray, (Earle Marshall) the Lord Haftings, Fauconbridge, and Bardolfe." Sig. B. 4.-Again: "Enter the Prince, Poynes, Sir John Ruffell, with others." Sig. C 3.

1600:

Again, in King Henry V.
Orleance, Gebon." Sig. D 2.

Enter Burbon, Conftable,

to

Old might have been inserted by a mistake of the same kind; or indeed through the laziness of compofitors, who occasionally permit the letters that form fuch names as frequently occur, remain together, when the rest of the page is distributed. Thus it will fometimes happen that one name is fubftituted for another. This obfervation will be well understood by those who have been engaged in long attendance on a printing-house; and those to whom my remark appears obfcure, need not to lament their ignorance, as this kind of knowledge is usually purchased at the expence of much time, patience, and disappointment.

In 1778, when the foregoing observations first appeared, they had been abundantly provoked. Juftice, however, obliges me to subjoin, that no part of the fame cenfure can equitably fall on the printing-office or compositors engaged in our present republication.

STEEVENS.

I entirely agree with Mr. Steevens in thinking that Mr. Theobald's remark is of no weight. Having already difcuffed the fubje& very fully, it is here only neceffary to refer the reader to Vol. VIII. p. 185, feq. in which I think I have shewn that there is no proof what

the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.

CH. JUST. To punish you by the heels, would amend the attention of your ears; and I care not, if 1 do become your physician.

FAL. I am as poor as Job, my lord; but not fo patient : your lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me, in respect of poverty; but how I should be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wife may make some dram of a scruple, or, indeed, a scruple itself.

CH. JUST. I fent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me. FAL. As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws of this land-fervice, I did not

come.

CH. Just. Well, the truth is, fir John, you live in great infamy.

FAL. He that buckles him in my belt, cannot live in lefs.

soever that Falstaff ever was called Oldcaftle in these plays. The letters prefixed to this speech crept into the first quarto copy, I have no doubt, merely from Oldcafile being, behind the scenes, the familiar theatrical appellation of Falstaff, who was his stage-fucceffor. All the actors, copyifts, &c. were undoubtedly well acquainted with the former character, and probably used the two names indifcriminately. Mr. Steevens's suggestion that Old. might have been the beginning of some actor's name does not appear to me probable; because in the lift of the names of the principal actors in all these plays" prefixed to the first folio, there is no actor whose name begins with this syllable; and we may be fure that the part of Falstaff was performed by a principal actor.

MALONE.

Principal actors, as at present, might have been often changing from one play-house to another; and the names of fuch of them as had quitted the company of Hemings and Condel, might therefore have been purposely omitted, when the lift prefixed to the folio 1623 was drawn up. STEEVENS.

VOL. XIII.

D

CH. JUST. Your means are very flender, and your waste is great.

FAL. I would it were otherwife; I would my means were greater, and my waist slenderer. CH. JUST. You have mifled the youthful prince. FAL. The young prince hath mifled me: I am the fellow with the great belly, and he my dog.3

CH. JUST. Well, I am loth to gall a new-heal'd wound; your day's service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night's exploit on Gads-hill : you may thank the unquiet time for your quiet o'er-pofting that action.

FAL. My lord?

CH. JUST. But fince all is well, keep it so: wake not a fleeping wolf.

FAL. To wake a wolf, is as bad as to finell a fox. CH. JUST. What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt out.

FAL. A waffel candle, my lord ; all tallow:

3-he my dog.] I do not understand this joke. Dogs lead the blind, but why does a dog lead the fat? Johnson.

If the fellow's great belly prevented him from seeing his way, he would want a dog as well as a blind man. FARMER.

And though he had no absolute occafion for him, Shakspeare would ftill have fupplied him with one. He seems to have been very little folicitous that his comparifons should anfwer completely on both fides. It was enough for him that men were sometimes led by dogs. MALONE.

4 A waffel candle, &c.] A waffel candle is a large candle lighted up at a feast. There is a poor quibble upon the word wax, which fignifies increase as well as the matter of the honey-comb.

JOHNSON.

The fame quibble has already occurred in Love's Labour's Loft, Ad V. fc. ii: "That was the way to make his godhead wax."

See Vol. VII. p. 333, n. 5. MALONE.

STEEVENS.

if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth.

CH. Just, There is not a white hair on your face, but should have his effect of gravity. FAL. His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy. CH. JUST. You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.5

FAL. Not fo, my lord; your ill angel is light; but, I hope, he that looks upon me, will take me without weighing and yet, in some respects, I grant, I cannot go, I cannot tell: Virtue is of fo little regard in these coster-monger times, that true

* You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.) Thus the quarto, 1600. Mr. Pope reads with the folio, 1623, tvil angel. STEEVENS.

What a precious collator has Mr. Pope approved himself in this paffage! Befides, if this were the true reading, Falstaff could not have made the witty and humorous evafion he has done in his reply. I have restored the reading of the oldeft quarto. The Lord Chief Juftice calls Falstaff the Prince's ill angel or genius: which Falstaff turns off by saying, an ill angel (meaning the coin called an angel) is light; but, surely, it cannot be faid that he wants weight: ergo the inference is obvious. Now money may be called ill, or bad; but it is never called evil, with regard to its being under weight. This Mr. Pope will facetioufly call restoring loft puns: but if the author wrote a pun, and it happens to be loft in an editor's indolence, I shall, in spite of his grimace, venture at bringing it back to light. THEOBALD.

"As light as a clipt angel," is a comparison frequently used in the old comedies. So, in Ram-Alley, or Merry Tricks, 1611:

The law speaks profit, does it not?

"Faith, some bad angels haunt us now and then." STEEVENS. 6 I cannot go, I cannot tell :) I cannot be taken in a reckoning; I cannot pass current. JOHNSON.

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_ in these cofter-monger times, ) In these times when the prevalence of trade has produced that meanness that rates the merit of every thing by money. JOHNSON.

A cofter-monger is a coftard-mouger, a dealer in apples called by that name, because they are shaped like a coftard, i. e. man's head. See Vol. VII. p. 229, n. 8; and p. 233, n. 5. STEEVENS.

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