king, as, God save thy grace, (majesty, I should fay; for grace thou wilt have none,)-

P. HEN. What! none?

FAL. No, by my troth; not so much as will ferve to be prologue to an egg and butter.

P.HEN. Well, how then? come, roundly, roundly. FAL. Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us, that are squires of the night's body, be call'd thieves of the day's beauty; let us be-Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, gotten ballad on the subject of this marvellous hero's adventures. In Peele's Old Wives Tale, Com. 1595, Eumenides, the wandering knight, is a character. STEEVENS.

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let not us, that are Squires of the night's body, be call'd thieves of the day's beauty; This conveys no manner of idea to me. How could they be called thieves of the day's beauty? They robbed by moonshine; they could not steal the fair day-light. I have ventured to substitute booty: and this I take to be the meaning. Let us not be called thieves, the purloiners of that booty, which, to the proprietors, was the purchase of honeft labour and industry by day. THEOBALD.

It is true, as Mr. Theobald has observed, that they could not steal the fair day-light; but I believe our poet by the expression, thieves of the day's beauty, meant only, let not us who are body Squires to the night, i. c. adorn the night, be called a disgrace to the day. To take away the beauty of the day, may probably mean, to difgrace it. A Squire of the body fignified originally, the attendant on a knight; the person who bore his head-piece, spear, and shield. It became afterwards the cant term for a pimp; and is so used in the second part of Decker's Honest Whore, 1630. Again, in The Witty Fair One, 1633, for a procuress: "Here comes the Squire of her mistress's body."

Falstaff however puns on the word knight. See the Curialia of Samuel Pegge, Esq. Part I. p. 100. STEEVENS.

There is also, I have no doubt, a pun on the word beauty, which in the western counties is pronounced nearly in the same manner as booty. See K. Henry VI. Part III:

"So triumph thieves upon their conquer'd booty." MALONE. Diana's foresters, &c.]

" Exile and flander are justly mee awarded,

" My wife and heire lacke lands and lawful right;

" And me their lord made dame Diana's knight."

minions of the moon: And let men say, we be men of good government; being govern'd as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we-steal.

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P. HEN. Thou say'st well; and it holds well too : for the fortune of us, that are the moon's men, doth ebb and flow like the fea; being govern'd as the fea is, by the moon. As, for proof, now: purse of gold most resolutely snatch'd on Monday night, and most dissolutely spent on Tuesday morning; got with swearing-lay by; and spent with crying-bring in: now, in as low an ebb as the foot of the ladder; and, by and by, in as high a flow as the ridge of the gallows.

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FAL. By the Lord, thou say'st true, lad. And is not my hoftess of the tavern a most sweet wench? 3

So lamenteth Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, in The Mirra of Magistrates. HENDERSON.

We learn from Hall, that certain persons who appeared as foresters in a pageant exhibited in the reign of King Henry VIII. were called Diana's knights. MALONE.

9 -- got with swearing-lay by; ] i. e. fwearing at the pafsengers they robbed, lay by your arms; or rather, lay by was a phrafe that then signified stand flill, addressed to those who were preparing to ruch forward. But the Oxford editor kindly accommodates these old thieves with a new cant phrafe, taken from Bagshot-heath or Finchley-common, of lug out. WARBURTON.

To lay by, is a phrase adopted from navigation, and fignifics, by slackening fail to become stationary. It occurs again in King Henry VIII:

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3

"Even the billows of the fea

Hung their heads, and then lay by." STEEVENS. - and spent with crying, bring in:) i. c. more wine.

MALONE.

And is not my hostess of the tavern &c.] We meet with the same kind of humour as is contained in this and the three following speeches, in The Moftellaria of Piautus, A& 1. sc. iii: "Jampridem ecastor frigida non lavi magis lubenter, "Nec unde me melius, mea Scapha, rear effe defecatam.

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P. HEN. As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle. And is not a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance ? 5

Sca. " Eventus rebus omnibus, velut horno messis magna fuit. Phi. Quid ea messis attinet ad meam lavationem?

Sca. Nihilo plus, quam lavatio tua ad meffim."

In the want of connection to what went before, probably confifts

the humour of the Prince's question. STEEVENS.

This kind of humour is often met with in old plays. In The Gallathea of Lyly, Phillida says: " It is a pittie that nature framed you not a woman.

" Gall. There is a tree in Tylos, &c.

" Phill. What a toy it is to tell me of that tree, being nothing to the purpose," &c.

Ben Jonfon calls it a game at vapours. FARMER.

4 As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the caftle.] Mr. Rowe took notice of a tradition, that this part of Falstaff was written originally under the name of Oldcastle. An ingenious correfpondent hints to me, that the passage above quoted from our author, proves what Mr. Rowe tells us was a tradition. Old lad of the caftle seems to have a reference to Oldcastle. Besides, if this had not been the fat, why, in the epilogue to The Second Part of Henry IV. where our author promises to continue his story with Sir John in it, should he fay, "Where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions: for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man." This looks like declining a point that had been made an objedion to him. I'll give a farther matter in proof, which feems almoft to fix the charge. I have read an old play, called, The famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, containing the honourable battle of Agincourt. The action of this piece commences about the 14th year of K. Henry the Fourth's reign, and ends with Henry the Fifth's marrying Princess Catharine of France. The scene opens with Prince Henry's robberies. Sir John Oldcastle is one of the gang, and called Jockie; and Ned and Gadshill are two other comrades. From this old imperfed sketch, I have a suspicion, Shakspeare might form his two parts of Henry IV. and his history of Henry V.; and consequently it is not improbable, that he might continue the mention of Sir John Oldcastle, till some descendant of that family moved Queen Elizabeth to command him to change the name. THEOBALD.

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my old lad of the castle. This alludes to the name Shakspeare first gave to this buffoon character, which was Sir John Oldcastle; and when he changed the name he forgot to strike out

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FAL. How now, how now, mad wag? what, in thy quips, and thy quiddities? what a plague have I to do with a buff jerkin?

of

this expreffion that alluded to it. The reason of the change was this; one Sir John Oldcafte having suffered in the time of Henry the Fifth for the opinions of Wickliffe, it gave offence, and therefore the poet altered it to Falstaff, and endeavours to remove the scandal in the epilogue to The Second Part of Henry IV. Fuller takes notice of this matter in his Church History: - "Stage-poets have themselves been very bold with, and others very merry at, the memory fir John Oldcastle, whom they have fancied a boon companion, a jovial royster, and a coward to boot. The best is, fir John Falstaff hath relieved the memory of fir John Oldcaftle, and of late is substituted buffoon in his place." Book IV. p. 168. But, to be candid, I believe there was no malice in the matter. Shakspeare wanted a droll name to his character, and never con fidered whom it belonged to. We have a like instance in The Merry Wives of Windfor, where he calls his French quack, Caius, a name at that time yery respectable, as belonging to an eminent and learned physician, one of the founders of Caius College in Cambridge. WARBURTON.

The propriety of this note the reader will find contested at the beginning of K. Henry V. Sir John Oldcastle was not a character ever introduced by Shakspeare, nor did he ever occupy the place of Falstaff. The play in which Oldcastle's name occurs, was not the work of our poet.

Old lad is likewise a familiar compellation to be found in some of our most ancient dramatick pieces. So, in The Trial of Treasure, 1567: "What, Inclination, old lad art thou there?" In the dedication to Gabriel Harvey's Hunt is up, &c. by T. Nash, 1598, old Dick of the castle is mentioned.

Again, in Pierce's Supererogation, or a New Praise of the Old Affe, 1593: And here's a lusty ladd of the caftell, that will binde beares, and ride golden asses to death." STEEVENS.

Old lad of the castle, is the same with Old lad of Caftile, a Caftilian- - Meres reckons Oliver of the castle amongst his romances: and Gabriel Harvey tells us of "Old lads of the castell with their rapping babble." - roaring boys. - This is therefore no argument for Falstaff's appearing first under the name of Oldcastle. There is however a passage in a play called Amends for Ladies, by Field the player, 1618, which may seem to prove it, uuless he confounded the different performances:

P. HEN. Why. what a pox have I to do with my hostess of the tavern?

"The play where the fat knight, hight Oldcastle,
" Did tell you truly what this honour was?"

FARMER.

Fuller, besides the words cited in the note, has in his Worthies, p. 253, the following passage; "Sir John Oldcastle was first made a thrafonical puff an emblem of mock valour, a make-sport in all plays, for a coward." Speed, likewise, in his Chronicle, edit. 2. p. 178, favs: "The author of The Three Converions (i. e. Parsons the Jesuit), hath made Oldcastle a ruffian a robber, and a rebel, and his authority, taken from the stage players, is more befitting the pen of his flanderous report, than the credit of the judicious, being only grounded from the papist and the poet, of like conscience for lies, the one ever feigning, and the other ever falfifying the truth." RirsoN.

From the following passage in The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinaire, or the Walkes in Powles, quarto, 1604, it appears that Sir John Oldcastle was represented on the stage as a very fat man (certainly not in the play printed with that title in 1600): - “ Now, figniors, how like you mine hoft? did I not tell you he was a madde round knave and a merrie one too? and if you chaunce to talke of fatte Sir John Oldcastle, he will tell you, he was his great grand-father, and not much unlike him in paunch. "The hoft, who is here described, returns to the gallants, and entertains them with telling them stories. After his first tale, he says: " Nay gallants, I'll fit you, and now I will ferve in another, as good as vinegar and pepper to your roast beefe." Signor Kicksh: awe replies: "Let's have it, let's taste on it, mine host, my noble fat actor."

The cause of all the confusion relative to these two characteres, and of the tradition mentioned by Mr. Rowe, that our author changed the name from Oldcastle to Falstaff. (to which I do not give the finallest credit,) seems to have been this. Shakspeare appears evidently to have caught the idea of the character of Falstaff from a wretched play entitled The famous Victories of King Henry V. (which had been exhibited before 1589,) in which Henry Prince of Wales is a principal character. He is accompanied in his revels companied and his robberies by Sir John Oldcastle, ("a pamper'd glutton, and a debauchee, as he is called in a piece of that age,) who appears to be the character alluded to in the passage above quoted from The Meeting of Gallants, &c. To this character undoubtedly it is that

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