6

PAGE. Not by my confent, I promise you. The gentleman is of no having: he kept company with the wild Prince and Poins; he is of too high a region, he knows too much. No, he fhall not knit a knot in his fortunes with the finger of my substance: if he take her, let him take her fimply; the wealth I have waits on my confent, and my confent goes not that way.

FORD. I beseech you, heartily, fome of you go home with me to dinner: befides your cheer, you fhall have sport; I will fhow you a monster.Mafter doctor, you fhall go ;-fo fhall you, mafter Page; and you, fir Hugh.

SHAL. Well, fare you well :-we shall have the freer wooing at mafter Page's.

[Exeunt SHALLOW and SLENder. CAIUS. Go home, John Rugby; I come anon.

[Exit RUGBY. HOST. Farewell, my hearts: I will to my honest knight Falstaff, and drink canary with him.

Exit Hoft. FORD. [Afide.] I think, I fhall drink in pipe

Again, in A Woman never vex'd, comedy, by Rowley, 1632: Go, go and reft on Venus' violets; fhew her

"A dozen of batchelors' buttons, boy.”

Again, in Westward Hoe, 1606: "Here's my husband, and no batchelor's buttons are at his doublet." STEEVENS.

6

tune.

of no having:] Having is the fame as eftate or forJOHNSON.

So, in Macbeth:

"Of noble having, and of royal hope."

Again, Twelfth Night:

My having is not much;

"I'll make divifion of my present with you?
"Hold, there is half my coffer." STEEVENS.

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

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

Ford. [Afide.] I think, I shall drink in pipe-wine first with him; I'll make him dance.] To drink in pipe-wine is a phrafe which I cannot underftand. May we not fuppofe 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 fenfes; but, for an obvious reason, makes the dance a horn-pipe. It has been already remarked, that Shakfpeare has frequent allufions to a cuckold's horns. TYRWHITT. So, in Pafquil'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 veffel of wine, now containing two hogfheads. Pipe-wine is therefore wine, not from the bottle, but the pipe; and the jeft confifts in the ambiguity of the word, which fignifies both a cask of wine, and a mufical inftrument. JOHNSON.

The jeft 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 feemed to me a very strange one, till I met with the following paffage in King James's firft fpeech to his parliament, in 1604; by which it appears that "to drink in" was the phrafeology of the time: -who either, being old, have retained their first drunken-in liquor," &c. MALONE.

I have seen the phrafe often in books of Shakspeare's time, but neglected to mark down the paffages. 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 befides." Greene's Ghoft haunting Conicatchers, 1602, Sign. B 4.-The following alfo, though of fomewhat later authority, will confirm Mr. Malone's obfervation: "A player acting upon a stage a man killed; but being troubled with an extream cold, as he was lying upon the ftage fell a coughing; the people laughing, he rushed up, ran off the stage, faying, thus it is for a man to drink in porridg, for then he will be fure to cough in his grave." Jocabella, or a Cabinet of Conceits, by Robert Chamberlaine, 1640, N° 84. REED.

ALL. Have with you, to fee this monster.

SCENE III.

A Room in Ford's Houfe.

[Exeunt.

Enter Mrs. FORD and Mrs. PAGE.

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

MRS. PAGE. Quickly, quickly: Is the buck

basket

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

Enter Servants with a Basket.

MRS. PAGE. Come, come, come.

MRS. FORD. Here, fet 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 fuddenly call you, come forth, and (without any paufe, or ftaggering,) take this basket on your fhoulders: that done, trudge with it in all hafte, and carry it among the whitsters 3 in Datchet mead, and there empty it in the muddy ditch, close by the Thames fide.

MRS. PAGE. You will do it?

8

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

the whitfters-] i. e. the blanchers of linen.

DOUCE.

MRS. PAGE. Here comes little Robin.

Enter ROBIN.

MRS. FORD. How now, my eyas-musket? 9 what news with you?

ROB. My mafter fir John is come in at your back-door, miftrefs Ford; and requefts your company.

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

9 How now, my eyas-mufket?] Eyas is a young unfledg'd hawk; I suppose from the Italian Niaso, which originally fignified any young bird taken from the neft unfledg'd, afterwards a young hawk. The French, from hence, took their niais, and used it in both thofe fignifications; to which they added a third, metaphorically, a filly fellow; un garçon fort niais, un niais. Mufket fignifies a Sparrow hawk, or the fmalleft fpecies of hawks. This too is from the Italian Mufchetto, a small hawk, as appears from the original fignification of the word, namely, a troublefome stinging fly. So that the humour of calling the little page an eyas-musket is very intelligible. WARBURTON.

So, in Greene's Card of Fancy, 1608: no hawk fo haggard but will stoop to the lure: no niesse fo ramage but will be reclaimed to the lunes." Eyas-musket is the fame as infant Lilliputian. Again, in Spenfer's Fairy Queen, B, I. c. xi. ft. 34:

"youthful gay,

"Like eyas-hauke, up mounts unto the skies,
"His newly budded pinions to effay."

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 buffarde or puttock, as many ben, have watry eyen," &c. STEEVENS.

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

"A mere anatomy, a Jack of Lent.”

ROB. Ay, I'll be fworn: 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 fwears, he'll turn me away.

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

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

MRS. PAGE. I warrant thee; if I do not act it, hifs me. Exit Mrs. PAGE. MRS. FORD. Go to then; we'll use this unwholefome humidity, this grofs watry pumpion;-we'll teach him to know turtles from jays."

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: Õ this bleffed hour!

Again, in The Four Prentices of London, 1615:

"Now you old Jack of Lent, fix 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

4

fome jay of Italy,

"Whose mother was her painting," &c. STEEVENS.

3 Have I caught my heavenly jewel?] This is the first line of the second song in Sidney's Aftrophel and Stella. TOLLET. Why, now let me die, for I have lived long enough ;] This fentiment, which is of facred origin, is here indecently introduced. It appears again, with somewhat lefs of profanéness, in The Winter's Tale, Act IV. and in Othello, A& II.

STEEVENS.