news from the court, I take it, there is but two ways: either to utter them, or to conceal them. I am, sir, under the king, in some authority.

Pist. Under which king, Bezonian ? speak, or die. Shal. Under king Harry.

Pist.

Shal. Harry the Fourth.

Pist.

Harry the Fourth, or Fifth?

A foutra for thine office!

Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is king;
Harry the Fifth's the man. I speak the truth.
When Pistol lies, do this; and fig me, like
The bragging Spaniard.

Fal. What! is the old king dead?

Pist. As nail in door: 3 The things I speak are just. Fal. Away, Bardolph; saddle my horse.-Master Robert Shallow, choose what office thou wilt in the land, 'tis thine.-Pistol, I will double charge thee with dignities.

Bard. O, joyful day!—I would not take a knighthood for my fortune.

Pist. What? I do bring good news?

Fal. Carry master Silence to bed.-Master Shallow, my lord Shallow, be what thou wilt, I am fortune's steward. Get on thy boots; we'll ride all night.O, sweet Pistol:-Away, Bardolph. [Exit BARD.]Come, Pistol, utter more to me; and, withal, devise something to do thyself good.-Boot, boot, master Shallow; I know the young king is sick for me. Let us take any man's horses; the laws of England are at my commandment. Happy are they which have been my friends; and woe to my lord chief justice!

1 Bezonian, according to Florio a bisogno, is "a new-levied souldier, such as comes needy to the wars." Cotgrave, in bisongne, says "a filthie knave, or clowne, a raskall, a bisonian, base-humored scoundrel." Its original sense is a beggar, a needy person; it is often met with very differently spelled in the old comedies.

2 An expression of contempt or insult.

3 Steevens remarks, that this proverbial expression is oftener used than understood. The door nail is the nail in ancient doors on which the knocker strikes. It is therefore used as a comparison for one irrecoverably dead, one who has fallen (as Virgil says) multa morte, i. e. with abundant death, such as reiterated strokes on the head would produce.

Pist. Let vultures vile seize on his lungs also!
Where is the life that late I led, say they.
Why, here it is; welcome these pleasant days.

SCENE IV. London. A Street.

[Exeunt.

Enter Beadles, dragging in HOSTESS QUICKLY and DOLL TEAR-SHEET.1

Host. No, thou arrant knave; I would I might die, that I might have thee hanged: thou hast drawn my shoulder out of joint.

1 Bead. The constables have delivered her over to me; and she shall have whipping-cheer enough, I warrant her. There hath been a man or two lately killed about her.

2

Dol. Nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie. Come on; I'll tell thee what, thou damned tripe-visaged rascal; an the child I now go with do miscarry, thou hadst better thou hadst struck thy mother, thou paper-faced villain.

Host. O the Lord, that sir John were come! he would make this a bloody day to somebody. But pray God, the fruit of her womb miscarry!

I

1 Bead. If it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions again; you have but eleven now. Come, I charge you both go with me; for the man is dead, that you and Pistol beat among you.

Dol. I'll tell thee what, thou thin man in a censer ! 3 I will have you as soundly swinged for this, you bluebottle rogue! you filthy, famished correctioner! if you be not swinged, I'll forswear half-kirtles.5

1 In the quarto, 1600, we have "Enter Sincklo, and three or four officers." And the name of Sincklo is prefixed to the Beadle's speeches. Sincklo is also introduced in The Taming of the Shrew; he was an actor in the same company with Shakspeare.

2 Nut-hook was a term of reproach for a bailiff or constable.

3 Doll compares the beadle's spare figure to the embossed figures in the middle of the pierced convex lid of a censer made of thin metal. The sluttery of rush-strewed chambers rendered censers or fire pans, in which coarse perfumes were burned, most necessary utensils.

4 Beadles usually wore a blue livery.

5 A half-kirtle was a kind of apron or fore part of the dress of a woman.

1 Bead. Come, come, you she knight-errant, come. Host. O, that right should thus overcome might! Well; of sufferance comes ease.

Dol. Come, you rogue, come; bring me to a justice. Host. Ay; come, you starved blood-hound.

Dol. Goodman death! goodman bones!

Host. Thou atomy, thou!

Dol. Come, you thin thing; come, you rascal! 1 Bead. Very well.

[Exeunt.

SCENE V. A public Place near Westminster Abbey.

Enter two Grooms, strewing Rushes.

1 Groom. More rushes, more rushes.

2 Groom. The trumpets have sounded twice.

1 Groom. It will be two o'clock ere they come from the coronation. Despatch, despatch.

[Exeunt Grooms.

Enter FALSTAFF, SHALLOW, PISTOL, BARDOLPH, and the Page.

Fal. Stand here by me, master Robert Shallow; I will make the king do you grace: I will leer upon him, as 'a comes by; and do but mark the countenance that he will give me.

Pist. God bless thy lungs, good knight.

Fal. Come here, Pistol; stand behind me.-O, if I had had time to have made new liveries, I would have bestowed the thousand pound I borrowed of you. [To SHALLOW.] But 'tis no matter; this poor show doth better: this doth infer the zeal I had to see him.

Shal. It doth so.

Fal. It shows my earnestness of affection.

Shal. It doth so.

Fal. My devotion.

Shal. It doth, it doth, it doth.

Fal. As it were, to ride day and night; and not to

deliberate, not to remember, not to have patience to shift me.

Shal. It is most certain.

Fal. But to stand stained with travel, and sweating with desire to see him; thinking of nothing else; putting all affairs else in oblivion; as if there were nothing else to be done, but to see him.

Pist. 'Tis semper idem, for absque hoc nihil est: "Tis all in every part.

Shal. "Tis So, indeed.

Pist. My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver,
And make thee rage.

Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts,
Is in base durance, and contagious prison;
Hauled thither

By most mechanical and dirty hand :—

Rouse up revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto's

snake,

For Doll is in; Pistol speaks nought but truth.

Fal. I will deliver her.

[Shouts within, and the trumpets sound. Pist. There roared the sea, and trumpet-clangor

sounds.

Enter the King and his Train, the Chief Justice among them.

Fal. God save thy grace, king Hal! my royal Hal! 2 Pist. The Heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!

Fal. God save thee, my sweet boy!

King. My lord chief justice, speak to that vain man. Ch. Just. Have you your wits? know you what 'tis you speak?

Fal. My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!

1 Warburton thought that we should read:—

"Tis all in all and all in every part."

2 A similar scene occurs in the anonymous old play of King Henry V. Falstaff and his companions address the king in the same manner, and are dismissed as in this play.

King. I know thee not, old man.

prayers;

Fall to thy

How ill white hairs become a fool, and jester!
I have long dreamed of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swelled, so old, and so profane;1
But, being awake, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men :—
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest ;

Presume not, that I am the thing I was;
I

For Heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turned away my former self:

So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me; and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of

my riots;
Till then I banish thee, on pain of death,—
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,-
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
For competence of life, I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil;
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will according to your strength and qualities-
Give you advancement.3-Be it your charge, my lord,
To see performed the tenor of our word.

Set on. [Exeunt King, and his Train. Fal. Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound. Shal. Ay, marry, sir John; which I beseech you to let me have home with me.

Fal. That can hardly be, master Shallow. Do not you grieve at this; I shall be sent for in private to him: look you, he must seem thus to the world. Fear not your advancement; I will be the man yet, that shall make you great.

1 Profane (says Johnson) in our author often signifies love of talk. 2 Henceforward.

3 This circumstance Shakspeare may have derived from the old play of King Henry V. But Hall, Holinshed, and Stowe, give nearly the same account of the dismissal of Henry's loose companions.