Enter Mrs. FORD and Mrs. PAGE. MRS. FORD. Sir John? art thou there, my deer? my male deer? FAL. My doe with the black scut?-Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Green Sleeves; hail kissing-comfits, and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here. [Embracing her. harts live with small sustenance.-The red mushroome helpeth well to make them pysse their greace, they are then in so vehement heate," &c. FARMER. In Ray's Collection of Proverbs, the phrase is yet further explained: "He has piss'd his tallow. This is spoken of bucks who grow lean after rutting-time, and may be applied to men." The phrase, however, is of French extraction. Jacques de Fouilloux in his quarto volume entitled La Venerie, also tells us that stags in rutting time live chiefly on large red mushrooms, qui aident fort à leur faire pisser le suif." STEEVENS. 66 9 Let the sky rain POTATOES ;-hail KISSING-COMFITS, and snow ERINGOES; let there come a TEMPEST of provocation,] Potatoes, when they were first introduced in England, were supposed to be strong provocatives. See Mr. Collins's note on a passage in Troilus and Cressida. Act V. Sc. II. Kissing-comfits were sugar-plums, perfumed to make the breath sweet. Monsieur Le Grand D'Aussi, in his Histoire de la Vie privée des Français, vol. ii. p. 273, observes-" Il y avait aussi de petits drageoirs qu'on portait en poche pour avoir, dans le jour, de quoi se parfumer la bouche." So also in Webster's Duchess of Malfy, 1623: 66 66 Sure your pistol holds Nothing but perfumes or kissing comfits." In Swetnan Arraign'd, 1620, these confections are calledkissing-causes."-" Their very breath is sophisticated with amber-pellets, and kissing-causes." Again, in A Very Woman, by Massinger: 66 Comfits of ambergris to help our kisses." For eating these, Queen Mab may be said, in Romeo and Juliet, to plague their lips with blisters. Eringoes, like potatoes, were esteemed to be stimulatives. So, (says the late Mr. Henderson,) in Drayton's Polyolbion : "Whose root th' eringo is, the reines that doth inflame, 66 So strongly to performe the Cytherean game.". MRS. FORD. Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart. FAL. Divide me like a bribe-buck', each a haunch I will keep my sides to myself, my shoul ders for the fellow of this walk 2, and my horns I bequeath your husbands. Am I a woodman ? ha! 3 But Shakspeare. very probably, had the following artificial tempest in his thoughts, when he put the words on which this note is founded into the mouth of Falstaff. 66 Holinshed informs us, that in the year 1583, for the entertainment of Prince Alasco, was performed a verie statelie tragedie named Dido, wherein the queen's banket (with Æneas' narration of the destruction of Troie) was lively described in a marchpainę patterne, the tempest wherein it hailed small confects, rained rose-water, and snew an artificial kind of snow, all strange, marvellous and abundant." Brantome also, describing an earlier feast given by the Vidam of Chartres, says-" Au dessert, il y eut un orage artificiel qui, pendant une demie heure entiere, fit tomber une pluie d'eaux odorantes, et un grêle de dragées." STEEVENS. I Divide me like a BRIBE-BUCK,] i. e. (as Mr. Theobald observes,) a buck sent for a bribe. He adds, that the old copies, mistakingly, read-brib'd-buck. STEEVENS. Cartwright, in his Love's Convert, has an expression somewhat similar: "Put off your mercer with your fee-buck for that season." 2 M. MASON. my SHOULDERS for the FELLOW of this WALK,] Who the fellow is, or why he keeps his shoulders for him, I do not understand. JOHNSON. A walk is that district in a forest, to which the jurisdiction of a particular keeper extends. So, in Lodge's Rosalynde, 1592: "Tell me, forester, under whom maintainest thou thy walke?" MALONE. To the keeper the shoulders and humbles belong as a perquisite. So, in Friar Bacon, and Friar Bungay, 1599: GREY? "Butter and cheese, and humbles of a deer, "Such as poor keepers have within their lodge." Again, in Holinshed, 1586, vol. i. p. 204: "The keeper, by a -hath the skin, head, umbles, chine and shoulders." STEEVENS. custom 3 a woodman ?] A woodman (says Mr. Reed, in a note on Measure for Measure, Act IV. Sc. III.) was an attendant on the officer, called Forrester. See Manwood on the Forest Laws, 4to. Speak I like Herne the hunter?-Why, now is Cupid a child of conscience; he makes restitution. As I am a true spirit, welcome! MRS. PAGE. Alas! what noise? [Noise within. MRS. FORD. Heaven forgive our sins! FAL. What should this be? MRS. FORD. MRS. PAGE. Away, away. [They run off: FAL. I think, the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that is in me should set hell on fire; he would never else cross me thus. Enter Sir HUGH EVANS, like a satyr; Mrs. QUICKLY, and PISTOL; ANNE PAGE, as the Fairy Queen, attended by her brother and others, dressed like fairies, with waren tapers on their heads1. QUICK. Fairies, black, grey, green, and white, You moon-shine revellers, and shades of night, 1615, p. 46. It is here, however, used in a wanton sense, for one who chooses female game as the objects of his pursuit. en In its primitive sense I find it employed in an ancient MS. titled The Boke of Huntyng, that is cleped Mayster of Game: "And wondre ye not though I sey wodemanly, for it is a poynt of a wodemannys crafte. And though it be wele fittyng to an hunter to kun do it, yet natheles it longeth more to a wodemannys crafte," &c. A woodman's calling is not very accurately defined by any author I have met with. STEEVENS. 4 This stage-direction I have formed on that of the old quarto, corrected by such circumstances as the poet introduced when he new-modelled his play. In the folio there is no direction whatsoever. Mrs. Quickly and Pistol seem to have been but ill suited to the delivery of the speeches here attributed to them; nor are either of those personages named by Ford in a former scene, where the intended plot against Falstaff is mentioned. It is highly probable, (as a modern editor has observed,) that the performer who had represented Pistol, was afterwards, from necessity, employed among the fairies; and that his name thus crept into the copies. He here represents Puck, a part which in the old quarto is given to Sir Hugh. The introduction of Mrs. Quickly, however, cannot be accounted for in the same manner; for in the first sketch in 5 You orphan-heirs of fixed destiny 3, PIST. Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys". quarto, she is particularly described as the Queen of the Fairies; a part which our author afterwards allotted to Anne Page. MALONE. 5 You ORPHAN-heirs of fixed destiny,] But why orphan-heirs? Destiny, whom they succeeded, was yet in being. Doubtless the poet wrote: "You ouphen heirs of fixed destiny." i. e. you elves, who minister, and succeed in some of the works of destiny. They are called in this play, both before and afterwards, ouphes; here ouphen; en being the plural termination of Saxon nouns. For the word is from the Saxon Alpenne, lamiæ, dæmones. Or it may be understood to be an adjective, as wooden, woollen, golden, &c. WARBURTON. Dr. Warburton corrects orphan to ouphen; and not without plausibility, as the word ouphes occurs both before and afterwards. But, I fancy, in acquiescence to the vulgar doctrine, the address in this line is to a part of the troop, as mortals by birth, but adopted by the fairies: orphans in respect of their real parents and now only dependent on destiny herself. A few lines from Spenser will sufficiently illustrate this passage: "The man whom heavens have ordaynd to bee "He wonneth in the land of Fayeree, "Yet is no Fary borne, ne sib at all "To elfes, but sprong of seed terrestriall, 66 And whilome by false Faries stolen away, "Whiles yet in infant cradle he did crall," &c. Edit. 1590. b. iii. st. 26. FARMER. Dr. Warburton objects to their being heirs to Destiny, who was still in being. But Shakspeare, I believe, uses heirs, with his usual laxity, for children. So, to inherit is used in the sense of to possess. MALONE. -quality.] i. e. fellowship. See The Tempest: "Ariel, and all his quality." STEEVENS. 7 Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy o-yes. Pist. Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys.] These two lines were certainly intended to rhyme together, as the preceding and subsequent couplets do; and accordingly, in the old editions, the final words of each line are printed, oyes and toyes. Cricket, to Windsor chimnies shalt thou leap: Where fires thou find'st unrak'd, and hearths unswept, There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry9: FAL. They are fairies; he, that speaks to them, shall die : I'll wink and couch: No man their works must eye. [Lies down upon his face. EVA. Where's Pede1?-Go you, and where you find a maid, That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said, This, therefore, is a striking instance of the inconvenience, which has arisen from modernizing the orthography of Shakspeare. TYRWHITT. 8 Where fires thou find'st UNRAK'D,] i. e. unmade up, by covering them with fuel, so that they may be found alight in the morning. This phrase is still current in several of our midland counties. So, in Chapman's version of the sixteenth book of Homer's Odyssey: 66 still rake up all thy fire "In fair cool words :-" STEEVENS. 9 — as BILBERRY:] The bilberry is the whortleberry. Fairies were always supposed to have a strong aversion to sluttery. Thus, in the old song of Robin Good-Fellow. See Dr. Percy's Reliques, &c. vol. iii.: "When house or hearth doth sluttish lye, "I pinch the maidens black and blue," &c. STEEVvens. 1 Evans. Where's BEDE? &c.] Thus the first folio. The quartos-Pead.-It is remarkable that, throughout this metrical business, Sir Hugh appears to drop his Welch pronunciation, though he resumes it as soon as he speaks in his own character. As Falstaff, however, supposes him to be a Welch Fairy, his peculiarity of utterance must have been preserved on the stage, though it be not distinguished in the printed copies. STEEVENS. 2 Go and where you, find a maid,you RAISE up the organs of her fantasy ;] The sense of this speech is that she, who had performed her religious duties, should be secure against the illusion of fancy; and have her sleep, like that of infancy, undisturbed by disordered dreams. This was then the popular opinion, that evil spirits had a power over the |