the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.

CH. JUST. To punish you by the heels, would amend the attention of your ears; and I care not, if I do become your physician.

FAL. I am as poor as Job, my lord; but not fo patient: your lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me, in respect of poverty; but how I fhould be your patient to follow your prefcriptions, the wife may make fome dram of a fcruple, or, indeed, a fcruple itself.

CH. JUST. I fent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me.

FAL. As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws of this land-fervice, I did not

come.

CH. JUST. Well, the truth is, fir John, you live in great infamy.

FAL. He that buckles him in my belt, cannot live in lefs.

foever that Falstaff ever was called Oldcastle in thefe plays. The letters prefixed to this fpeech crept into the firft quarto copy, I have no doubt, merely from Oldcastle being, behind the fcenes, the familiar theatrical appellation of Falstaff, who was his ftage-fucceffor. All the actors, copyifts, &c. were undoubtedly well acquainted with the former character, and probably used the two names indifcriminately.-Mr. Steevens's fuggeftion that Old. might have been the beginning of fome actor's name does not appear to me probable; because in the lift of "the names of the principal actors in all these plays" prefixed to the firft folio, there is no actor whofe name begins with this fyllable; and we may be sure that the part of Falstaff was performed by a principal actor.

MALONE.

Principal actors, as at present, might have been often changing from one play-house to another; and the names of fuch of them as had quitted the company of Hemings and Condell, might therefore have been purposely omitted, when the lift prefixed to the folio 1623 was drawn up. STEEVENS.

CH. JUST. Your means are very flender, and your wafte is great.

FAL. I would it were otherwife; I would my means were greater, and my waift flenderer.

CH. JUST. You have misled the youthful prince. FAL. The young prince hath misled me: I am the fellow with the great belly, and he my dog.3

CH. JUST. Well, I am loth to gall a new-heal'd wound; your day's fervice at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night's exploit on Gads-hill: you may thank the unquiet time for your quiet o'er-pofting that action.

FAL. My lord?

CH. JUST. But fince all is well, keep it fo: wake not a fleeping wolf.

FAL. To wake a wolf, is as bad as to smell a fox. CH. JUST. What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt out.

3

FAL. A waffel candle, my lord; all tallow:

he my dog.]. I do not understand this joke. Dogs lead the blind, but why does a dog lead the fat? JOHNSON.

If the fellow's great belly prevented him from feeing his way, he would want a dog as well as a blind man. FARMER.

And though he had no abfolute occafion for him, Shakspeare would ftill have fupplied him with one. He feems to have been very little folicitous that his comparisons should answer completely on both fides. It was enough for him that men were fometimes led by dogs. MALONE.

A waffel candle, &c.] A waffel candle is a large candle lighted up at a feat. There is a poor quibble upon the word wax, which fignifies increase as well as the matter of the honey-comb.

JOHNSON. The fame quibble has already occurred in Love's Labour's Loft, A&t V. fc. ii:

"That was the way to make his godhead wax."

STEEVENS.

if I did fay of wax, my growth would approve the truth.

CH. JUST. There is not a white hair on your face, but fhould have his effect of gravity.

FAL. His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.

CH. JUST. You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.'

FAL. Not fo, my lord; your ill angel is light; but, I hope, he that looks upon me, will take me without weighing: and yet, in some respects, I grant, I cannot go, I cannot tell: Virtue is of fo little regard in thefe cofter-monger times, that true

You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.] Thus the quarto, 1600. Mr. Pope reads with the folio, 1623,evil angel. STEEVENS.

What a precious collator has Mr. Pope approved himself in this paffage! Befides, if this were the true reading, Falstaff could not have made the witty and humorous evafion he has done in his reply. I have restored the reading of the oldeft quarto. The Lord Chief Juftice calls Falftaff the Prince's ill angel or genius: which Falstaff turns off by faying, an ill angel (meaning the coin called an angel) is light; but, furely, it cannot be faid that he wants weight: ergothe inference is obvious. Now money may be called ill, or bad; but it is never called evil, with regard to its being under weight. This Mr. Pope will facetioufly call reftoring loft puns: but if the author wrote a pun, and it happens to be loft in an editor's indolence, I fhall, in fpite of his grimace, venture at bringing it back to light. THEOBALD.

"As light as a clipt angel," is a comparison frequently used in the old comedies. So, in Ram-Alley, or Merry Tricks, 1611:

"The law fpeaks profit, does it not?

"Faith, fome bad angels haunt us now and then." STEEVENS. 6 I cannot go, I cannot tell:] I cannot be taken in a reckoning; I cannot pafs current. JOHNSON.

7 in thefe cofter-monger times,] In thefe times when the prevalence of trade has produced that meanness that rates the merit of every thing by money. JOHNSON.

A cofter-monger is a coftard-monger, a dealer in apples called by that name, because they are shaped like a coftard, i. e. man's head. See Vol. V. p. 229, n. 8; and P. 233, n. 5. STEEVENS.

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valour is turn'd bear-herd: Pregnancy is made a tapfter, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings: all the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age fhapes them, are not worth a gooseberry. You, that are old, confider not the capacities of us that are young; you meafure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls and we that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confess, are wags too.

CH. JUST. Do you fet down your name in the fcroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moift eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreafing leg? an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken? your wind fhort? your chin double? your wit fingle? and every part about you blafted with

8

9

Pregnancy-] Pregnancy is readiness. So, in Hamlet:
"How pregnant his replies are?" STEEVENS.

-your wit fingle?] We call a man fingle-witted, who attains but one fpecies of knowledge. This fenfe I know not how to apply to Falitaff, and rather think that the Chief Juftice hints at a calamity always incident to a grey-hair'd wit, whose misfortune is, that his merriment is unfashionable. His allufions are to forgotten facts; his illuftrations are drawn from notions obfcured by time; his wit is therefore fingle, fuch as none has any part in but himfelf. JOHNSON.

I believe all that Shakspeare meant was, that he had more fat than wit; that though his body was bloated by intemperance to twice its original fize, yet his wit was not increafed in proportion to it.

In ancient language, however, fingle often means fmall, as in the inftance of beer; the ftrong and weak being denominated double and fingle beer. So, in The Captain, by Beaumont and Fletcher: fufficient fingle beer, as cold as chryftal." Macbeth also speaks of his "fingle ftate of man." See Vol. VII. p. 360, n. 5.

STEEVENS.

Johnfon's explanation of this paffage is not conceived with his ufual judgement.-It does not appear that Falstaff's merriment was antiquated or unfashionable; for if that had been the cafe, the

antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, fir John!

FAL. My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head, and fomething a round belly. For my voice,-I have loft it with hollaing, and finging of anthems. To approve my youth further, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judgement and understanding; and he that will caper with me for a thoufand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him. For the box o'the ear that the prince gave you, he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a fenfible lord. I have check'd him for it;

young men would not have liked it fo well, nor would that circumftance have been perceived by the Chief Juftice, who was older than himself. But though Falstaff had fuch a fund of wit and humour, it was not unnatural that a grave judge whofe thoughts were conftantly employed about the serious bufinefs of life, fhould confider fuch an improvident, diffipated old man, as single-witted, or half-witted, as we should now term it. So in the next act, the Chief Juftice calls him, a great fool; and even his friend Harry, after his reformation, bids him not to answer "with a fool-born jest," and adds, “that white hairs ill become a fool and jefter."

I think, however, that this fpeech of the Chief Juftice is fomewhat in Falstaff's own ftyle; which verifies what he says of himself, "that all the world loved to gird at him, and that he was not only witty in himself, but the cause that wit is in other men." M. MASON. I think Mr. Steevens's interpretation the true one. Single, however, (as an anonymous writer has observed,) may mean, feeble or weak. So, in Fletcher's Queen of Corinth, A&t III. fc. i:

"All men believe it, when they hear him speak, "He utters fuch fingle matter, in fo infantly a voice." Again, in Romeo and Juliet: "O fingle-foal'd jeft, folely fingular for the finglenefs," i. e. the tenuity.

In our author's time, as the fame writer obferves, fmall beer was called fingle beer, and that of a stronger quality, double beer.

MALONE. —antiquity?] To ufe the word antiquity for old age, is not peculiar to Shakspeare. So, in Two Tragedies in one, &c. 1601: "For falfe illufion of the magiftrates

"With borrow'd fhapes of falfe antiquity." STEEVENS.