FENT. Farewell, gentle miftrefs; farewell, Nan.s QUICK. This is my doing now ;-Nay, faid I, will you caft away your child on a fool, and a phyfician? 5 Look on master Fenton :-this is my doing.

FENT. I thank thee; and I pray thee, once tonight

4 Farewell, gentle miftrefs; farewell, Nan.] Miftrefs is here used as a triffyllable. MALONE.

If mistress can be pronounced as a triffyllable, the line will ftill be uncommonly defective in harmony. Perhaps a monofyllable has been omitted, and we should read

"Farewell, my gentle miftrefs; farewell, Nan." STEEVENS.

5 fool, and a phyfician?] I fhould read-fool or a phyfician, meaning Slender and Caius. JOHNSON.

Sir Thomas Hanmer reads according to Dr. Johnson's conjecture. This may be right.-Or my Dame Quickly may allude to the proverb, a man of forty is either a fool or a phyfician; but the afferts her mafter to be both. FARMER.

So, in Microcofmus, a mafque by Nabbes, 1637: "Choler. Phlegm's a fool.

"Melan. Or a phyfician."

Again, in A Maidenhead well loft, 1632:

"No matter whether I be a fool or a phyfician."

Mr. Dennis, of irafcible memory, who altered this play, and brought it on the stage, in the year 1702, under the title of The Comical Gallant, (when, thanks to the alterer, it was fairly damned,) has introduced the proverb at which Mrs. Quickly's allufion appears to be pointed. STEEVENS.

I believe the old copy is right, and that Mrs. Quickly means to infinuate that she had addreffed at the fame time both Mr. and Mrs. Page on the fubject of their daughter's marriage, one of whom favoured Slender, and the other Caius : 66 -on a fool or a phyfician," would be more accurate, but and is fufficiently fuitable to Dame Quickly, referendo fingula fingulis.

Thus: "You two are going to throw away your daughter on a fool and a physician; you, fir, on the former, and you, madam, on the latter." MALONE

6 -once to-night-] i. e. fometime to-night. So, in a

Give my fweet Nan this ring: There's for thy [Exit.

pains.

QUICK. Now heaven send thee good fortune! A kind heart he hath: a woman would run through fire and water for fuch a kind heart. But yet, I would my mafter had mistress Anne; or I would mafter Slender had her; or, in footh, I would mafter Fenton had her: I will do what I can for them all three; for fo I have promised, and I'll be as good as my word; but fpecioufly for mafter Fenton. Well, I muft of another errand to fir John Falstaff from my two miftreffes; What a beaft am I to flack it? 8 [Exit.

SCENE V.

A Room in the Garter Inn.

Enter FALSTAFF and BARDOLPH.

FAL. Bardolph, I fay,

BARD. Here, fir.

FAL. Go fetch me a quart of fack; put a toast in't. [Exit BARD.] Have I lived to be carried in a basket, like a barrow of butcher's offal; and to

letter from the fixth Earl of Northumberland; (quoted in the notes on the household book of the fifth earl of that name :) “—notwithstanding I trust to be able ons to set up a chapell off myne owne." Again, in Ben Jonfon's Silent Woman: "Well, I'll try if he will be appeased with a leg or an arm; if not, you muft die once." i. e. at fome time or other. STEEVENS. ?Speciously-] She means to fay Specially. STEEVENS. 8 to flack it ?] i. e. neglect. So, in King Lear: "-if then they chanced to Лack you, we would control them.” STEEVENS,

be thrown into the Thames? Well, if I be served fuch another trick, I'll have my brains ta'en out, and buttered, and give them to a dog for a new year's gift. The rogues flighted me into the river with as little remorfe as they would have drowned a bitch's blind puppies,' fifteen i' the litter and you may know by my fize, that I have a kind of alacrity in finking; if the bottom were as deep as hell, I should down. I had been drowned, but that the fhore was fhelvy and fhallow; a death that I abhor; for the water fwells a man; and what a thing fhould I have been, when I had been fwelled! I should have been a mountain of mummy.

Re-enter BARDOLPH, with the wine.

BARD. Here's miftrefs Quickly, fir, to speak with you.

FAL. Come, let me pour in fome fack to the Thames water; for my belly's as cold, as if I had fwallowed fnow-balls for pills to cool the reins. Call her in.

9

BARD. Come in, woman.

a bitch's blind puppies,] The old copy reads―" a blind bitch's puppies." STEEVENS.

I have ventured to tranfpofe the adjective here, against the authority of the printed copies. I know, in horses, a colt from a blind stallion lofes much of the value it might otherwise have; but are puppies ever drowned the fooner, for coming from a blind bitch? The author certainly wrote, as they would have drowned a bitch's blind puppies. THEOBALD.

The tranfpofition may be juftified from the following paffage in The Two Gentlemen of Verona: " -one that I faved from drowning, when three or four of his blind brothers and fifters went to it." STEEVENS.

Enter Mrs. QUICKLY.

QUICK. By your leave; I cry you mercy: Give your worship good-morrow.

FAL. Take away these chalices: Go brew me a pottle of fack finely.

BARD. With eggs, fir?

FAL. Simple of itself; I'll no pullet-sperm in my brewage.—[Exit BARDOLPH.]-How now?

QUICK. Marry, fir, I come to your worship from mistress Ford.

FAL. Miftrefs Ford! I have had ford enough: I was thrown into the ford: I have my belly full of ford.

QUICK. Alas the day! good heart, that was not her fault: fhe does fo take on with her men; they miftook their erection.

FAL. So did I mine, to build upon a foolish woman's promise.

QUICK. Well, fhe laments, fir, for it, that it would yearn your heart to fee it. Her husband goes this morning a birding; fhe defires you once more to come to her between eight and nine: I muft carry her word quickly: The'll make you amends, I warrant you.

FAL. Well, I will vifit her: Tell her fo; and bid her think, what a man is: let her confider his frailty, and then judge of my merit.

QUICK. I will tell her.

FAL. Do fo. Between nine and ten, fay'ft thou?
QUICK. Eight and nine, fir.

FAL. Well, be gone: I will not mifs her,

QUICK. Peace be with you, fir!

[Exit.

FAL. I marvel, I hear not of mafter Brook; he sent me word to stay within: I like his money well. O, here he comes.

Enter FORD.

FORD. Blefs you, fir!

FAL. Now, mafter Brook? you come to know what hath paffed between me and Ford's wife? FORD. That, indeed, fir John, is my business. FAL. Master Brook, I will not lie to you; I was at her house the hour fhe appointed me. FORD. And how sped you, fir?1

FAL. Very ill-favouredly, mafter Brook.

FORD. How fo, fir? Did she change her determination?

FAL. No, mafter Brook; but the peaking cornuto her husband, master Brook, dwelling in a continual 'larum of jealoufy, comes me in the inftant of our encounter, after we had embraced, kiffed, protested, and, as it were, spoke the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a rabble of his companions, thither provoked and inftigated by his diftemper, and, forfooth, to fearch his houfe for his wife's love.

FORD. What, while you were there?

FAL. While I was there.

FORD. And did he search for you, and could not find you?

I

•how fped you, fir ?] The word how I have reftored from the old quarto. MALONE.