NORTH. Come, come, go in with me: 'tis with As with the tide swell'd up unto its height, SCENE IV. London. A Room in the Boar's Head Tavern, in Eastcheap. Enter Two Drawers. 1 DRAW. What the devil hast thou brought there? apple-Johns? thou know'st, sir John cannot endure an apple-John.* 2 DRAW. Mass, thou sayest true: The prince once set a dish of apple-Johns before him, and told him, there were five more sir Johns: and, putting off his 4an apple-John.] So, in The Ball, by Chapman and Shirley, 1639: thy man, Apple-John, that looks This apple will keep two years, but becomes very wrinkled and shrivelled. It is called by the French,-Deux-ans. Thus, Cogan, in his Haven of Health, 1595: "The best apples that we have in England are pepins, deusants, costards, darlings, and such other." Again, among instructions given in the year 1580 to some of our navigators, "for banketting on shipboard persons of credite," we meet with "the apple John that dureth two yeares, to make shew of our fruits? See Hackluyt, Vol. I. p. 441. STEEVENS. hat, said, I will now take my leave of these six dry, round, old, withered knights. It angered him to the heart; but he hath forgot that. 1 DRAW. Why then, cover, and set them down: And see if thou canst find out Sneak's noise; 5 mistress Tear-sheet would fain hear some musick. Despatch:-The room where they supped, is too hot; they'll come in straight. 2 DRAW. Sirrah, here will be the prince, and 'master Poins anon: and they will put on two of our 5 Sneak's noise ;] Sneak was a street minstrel, and therefore the drawer goes out to listen if he can hear him in the neighbourhood. JOHNSON. A noise of musicians anciently signified a concert or company of them. In the old play of Henry V. (not that of Shakspeare there is this passage: "there came the young prince, and two or three more of his companions, and called for wine good store, and then they sent for a noyse of musitians," &c. Falstaff addresses them as a company in another scene of this play. So again, in Westward Hoe, by Decker and Webster, 1607: "All the noise that went with him, poor fellows, have had their fiddle-cases pulled over their ears." Again, in The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, a comedy, printed 1598, the Count says: "O that we had a noise of musicians, to play to this antick as we go." Heywood, in his Iron Age, 1632, has taken two expressions from these plays of Henry IV. and put them into the mouth of Thersites addressing himself to Achilles: "Where's this great sword and buckler man of Greece? "And come peaking into the tents of the Greeks, Among Ben Jonson's Leges convivales is— 6 Fidicen, nisi accersitus, non venito." STEEvens. Despatch: &c.] This period is from the first edition, POPE. These words, which are not in the folio, are in the quarto given to the second drawer. Mr. Pope rightly attributed them to the first. MALONE. jerkins, and aprons; and sir John must not know of it: Bardolph hath brought word. 1 DRAW. By the mass, here will be old utis: It will be an excellent stratagem. 2 DRAW. I'll see, if I can find out Sneak. [Exit. Enter Hostess and DOLL TEAR-SHEET. HOST. I'faith, sweet heart, methinks now you are in an excellent good temperality: your pulsidge 7 here will be old utis:] Utis, an old word yet in use in some counties, signifying a merry festival, from the French huit, octo, ab A. S. Cahra, Octava festi alicujus.—Skinner. POPE. Skinner's explanation of utis (or utas) may be confirmed by the following passage from T. M.'s Life of Sir Thomas More: "-to-morrow is St. Thomas of Canterbury's eeve, and the utas of St. Peter-." The eve of Thomas à Becket, according to the new stile, happens on the 6th of July, and St. Peter's day on the 29th of June. Again, in A Contention between Liberality and Prodigality, a comedy, 1602: "Then if you please, with some roysting harmony, Old, in this place, does not mean ancient, but was formerly a common augmentative in colloquial language. Old Utis signifies festivity in a great degree. So, in Lingua, 1607: 66 there's old moving among them." Again, in Decker's comedy, called, If this be not a good Play the Devil is in it, 1612: "We shall have old breaking of necks then.” Again, in Soliman and Perseda, 1599: "I shall have old laughing." Again, in Arden of Feversham, 1592: "Here will be old filching, when the press comes out of Paul's." STEEVENS. See Vol. IX. p. 104, n. 4. MALone. ; beats as extraordinarily as heart would desire; and your colour, I warrant you, is as red as any rose: But, i'faith, you have drunk too much canaries and that's a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes the blood' ere one can say,-What's this? How do you now? DOL. Better than I was. Hem. HOST. Why, that's well said; a good heart's worth gold. Look, here comes sir John. Enter FALSTAFF, singing. FAL. When Arthur first in court'-Empty the jordan.-And was a worthy king: [Exit Drawer.] How now, mistress Doll? 8 HOST. Sick of a calm :2 yea, good sooth. ・your pulsidge beats &c.] One would almost regard this speech as a burlesque on the following passage in the interlude called The Repentance of Mary Magdalene, 1567. Infidelity says to Mary: 66 "Let me fele your poulses, mistresse Mary, be you sicke? STEEVENS. 9a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes the blood-] The same phraseology is seriously used by Arthur Hall, in his translation of the first Iliad, 4°. 1581: 66 -good Chrise with wine so red "The aulter throughly doth perfume :-" STEEVENS. 1 When Arthur first in court-]. The entire ballad is published in the first volume of Dr. Percy's Reliques of ancient English Poetry. STEEVENS. The words in the ballad are "When Arthur first in court began, * Sick of a calm:] I suppose she means to say of a 3 FAL. So is all her sect; an they be once in a calm, they are sick. DOL. You muddy rascal, is that all the comfort you give me? FAL. You make fat rascals, mistress Doll. 3 So is all her sect;] I know not why sect is printed in all the copies; I believe sex is meant. JOHNSON. Sect is, I believe, right. Falstaff may mean all of her profession. In Mother Bombie, a comedy, 1594, the word is frequently used: "Sil. I am none of that sect. "Can. Thy loving sect is an ancient sect, and an honourable," &c. Since the foregoing quotation was given, I have found sect so often printed for sex in the old plays, that I suppose these words were anciently synonymous. Thus, in Marston's Insatiate Countess, 1613: "Deceives our sect of fame and chastity." Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Valentinian: -Modesty was made 66 "When she was first intended: when she blushes "The purest temple of her sect, that ever "Made nature a blest founder." Again, in Whetstone's Arbour of Vertue, 1576: "Who, for that these barons so wrought a slaunder to her sect, "Their foolish, rash, and judgment false, she sharplie did detect." STEEVENS. In Middleton's Mad World my Masters, 1608, ( as Dr. Farmer has elsewhere observed,) a courtezan says, "it is the easiest art and cunning for our sect to counterfeit sick, that are always full of fits, when we are well." I have therefore no doubt that sect was licentiously used by our author, and his contemporaries, for sex. MALONE. I believe sect is here used in its usual sense, and not for sex. Falstaff means to say, that all courtezans, when their trade is at a stand, are apt to be sick. Douce. You make fat rascals,] Falstaff alludes to a phrase of the forest. Lean deer are called rascal deer. He tells her she calls him wrong, being fat he cannot be a rascal. JOHNSON. |