Part 20
In aid of Mr. Malone's conjecture that sack was so called as being a _dry_ wine, _vin sec_, it may be remarked that the old orthography was _secke_ and not _sack_. Dr. Boorde in his _Regimente of health_, 1562, 12mo, calls it so. In Hollyband's _French schoolemaister_, 1619, 12mo, we have "_secke_, du vin sec." Again, "Some of you chaplaines, get my lorde a cup of _secke_, to comfort his spirites." Ponet's _Treatise of politike power_, 1556, 12mo; and Cotgrave in his _Dictionary_, makes _sack_ to be _vin sec_. This plausible etymology might have been wholly relied on, if an ingenious female traveller in speaking of the Tatar _koumis_, a preparation of mare's milk, had not informed us that she could not choose to partake of it out of the goatskin _sacks_ in which it is carried "as the Spaniards," says she, "do their wine; which, by the by, is a practice so common in Spain, _as to give the name of sack_ to a species of sweet wine once highly prized in Great Britain."--Guthrie's _Tour through the Crimea_, 1802, 4to, page 229. More stress is to be laid on this matter from a remarkable coincidence mentioned by Isidore of Seville, in his _Etymologies_, book iii. ch. 4, where he states _saccatum_ to be a liquor made from water and the dregs of wine passed through a sack. See also Ducange _Gloss._ v. _Saccatum_, and Carpentier's supplement, v. _Saquatum_.
Whatever has been said in the course of the scattered notes concerning Falstaff's _sack_ is so confused and contradictory, that it will be the duty of a future editor, either to concentrate them for the purpose of enabling the reader to deduce his own inference; or, rejecting them altogether in their present form, to extract from the materials they supply, the best opinion he may be able to form. There are two principal questions on the subject: 1. Whether sack was known in this country in the time of Henry the Fourth? 2. Whether it was a dry or a sweet wine when this play was written? The first is very easily solved; for there appears to be no mention of it till the 23rd year of Henry the Eighth, when a regulation was made that no malmseys, romineis, _sackes_ nor _other sweet_ wines, should be sold for more than three-pence a quart. The other question is full of difficulties, and the evidence relating to it very contradictory. We see it was a _sweet_ wine before Shakspeare's time, a circumstance that may be noticed as adverse to the etymology of _sec_. But if it was sweet, whence the use of sugar, which we do not find to have been added to other sweet wines? The testimony of Dr. Venner proves that sack was drunk either with or without sugar, _according to the palate_. The quality of this wine, originally sweet and luscious, might have undergone a change, or else some other _Spanish_ wine less saccharine in its nature might have obtained the name of sack.
SCENE 2. Page 385.
POINS. ... and _sirrah_, I have cases of buckram, &c.
Mr. Malone has in this and some other places maintained that _sirrah_ was not used as a term of disrespect in Shakspeare's time; but the learned commentator would probably have revised his opinion had he recollected the quarrel between Vernon and Basset in the first part of Henry the Sixth, where, in the most opprobrious manner, _sirrah_ is answered by _villain_. It seems to have been used much in the same way as at present, sometimes expressing anger and contempt, yet more frequently in a milder way when addressed to children and servants. It was even applied to women.
SCENE 3. Page 399.
HOT. And if the Devil come and _roar_ for them.
This line would be highly relished by an audience accustomed in Shakspeare's time to "Satan's chaunt," on some of the minor stages. On the theatrical _roaring_ of the Devil, see the notes of Messrs. Steevens and Malone in _King Henry V._ Act IV.
SCENE 3. Page 403.
WOR. As to o'er-walk a current, roaring loud, On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.
He seems to allude to the practice of making a bridge by means of a sword or a spear sometimes adopted by the heroes of ancient chivalry. See _Lancelot of the lake_, and other similar romances. Such an incident is represented on an ivory chest engraved in the first volume of Mr. Carter's _Specimens of ancient sculpture and painting_.
SCENE 3. Page 407.
HOT. And that same _sword-and-buckler_ prince of Wales.
To convey to the reader a complete idea of a sword-and-buckler man of Shakspeare's time, the following print of a young Englishman is exhibited. It is taken from the collection of dresses designed by Titian, and said to have been engraved on wood by his brother Cesar Vecelli, the editor of which remarks that the English youths then made great use of the sword and buckler. A similar figure occurs in the frontispiece to Cranmer's Bible, designed by Holbein, which has been most unfaithfully copied in Lewis's _History of the translations of the bible_. Mr. Strutt has given more correct copies of the man with the buckler in his _Manners and customs of the inhabitants of England_, vol. iii. pl. xii. and in his _Dress and habits of the people of England_, pl. cxxxviii.
The subject receives much illustration from a passage in _Stowe's chronicle_, p. 869, edit. 1634: "Untill about the twelfe or thirteenth yeere of Queene Elizabeth the auncient English fight of sword and buckler was onely had in use: the bucklers then being but a foote broad, with a pike of foure or five inches long. Then they began to make them full halfe ell broad with sharpe pikes ten or twelve inches long wherewith they meant either to breake the swords of their enemies, if it hit upon the pike, or els suddenly to run within them and stabbe, and thrust their buckler with the pike, into the face, arme or body of their adversary; but this continued not long. Every haberdasher then sold bucklers." The above historian had, no doubt, good authority for what he says respecting the length of the _pike_; but it is certain that in the eighth year of Elizabeth a proclamation was issued by which no person was permitted to wear any sword or rapier that should exceed the length of one yard and half a quarter in the blade, nor any dagger above the length of twelve inches in the blade, _nor any buckler with a point or pike exceeding the length of two inches_. The mode of wearing the buckler at the back may be seen in the cut p. 209.
SCENE 3. Page 407.
HOT. I'd have him poison'd with a pot of ale.
Mr. Steevens suggests that this speech has reference to the prince of Wales's pot companions, and Dr. Grey to the manner of King John's death. It will indeed suit either of those circumstances. But this remark has been principally made for the purpose of correcting an error of long standing with respect to what has been generally called _Caxton's chronicle_. Dr. Grey, relying perhaps on Bale or Nicolson, has inaccurately cited Caxton's _Fructus temporum_ for the account of King John's death; yet this work was never printed by Caxton under that title. It was professedly compiled by a schoolmaster of Saint Alban's, and originally printed in that city in 1483. In this form it is properly called _The Saint Alban's chronicle_, and is in fact a republication of one attributed to Caxton, with some additions at the beginning and end. The original often occurs in manuscript both in French and English; and, from the evidence of an ancient note in one copy preserved among the Harleian manuscripts, appears to have been composed by a monk of Glastonbury, named Douglas, who in the early part of it has copied Geoffrey of Monmouth. This work has been commonly ascribed to Caxton, and is often cited, even by old writers, under the name of _his_ chronicle, though he only made a trifling addition by a continuation to his own time. It is likewise supposed to have been _originally printed_ by him, but this is in all probability a mistake; for there is an edition undoubtedly printed by William Machlinia without date, which had escaped the observation of the correct and industrious Herbert. The type is the same as that used in the _Speculum Christiani_. This is presumed to be the prior edition which is spoken of in the prologue to that which Caxton printed in 1480, and there is no proof whatever that he printed any edition before that year.
ACT II.
SCENE 3. Page 436.
LADY PER. Of _basilisks_, of cannon, _culverin_.
In the note we are only told that "a _basilisk_ is a cannon of a particular kind." It is well known that there was a serpent so called, perhaps an imaginary one; and this animal with others of a like nature being sculptured on the ancient pieces of artillery, supplied them with the various appellations of _serpentines_, _culverines_, (from the French _couleuvre_,) _flying dragons_, &c. Of these the _basilisk_ was the largest. It was sometimes called a _double culverine_, and was much used about the middle of the sixteenth century, especially by the Turks. It must have been of a prodigious size, as it carried a ball of near two hundred pounds weight. Coryat mentions that he saw in the citadel of Milan "an exceeding huge basiliske which was so great that it would easily contayne the body of a very corpulent man."--_Crudities_, p. 104, quarto edition. Father Maffei, in his History of the Indies, relates that Badur, king of Cambay, had at the siege of Chitor four basilisks of so large a size that each was drawn by a hundred yoke of oxen, so that the ground trembled beneath them.
SCENE 3. Page 438.
LADY PER. In faith _I'll break thy little finger, Harry_.
This "token of amorous dalliance" is more particularly exemplified in an ancient song, entitled _Beware my lyttyl fynger_, reprinted by Mr. Ritson from Sir John Hawkins's History of music.
As the learned historian has not stated whence he procured this piece, it may be worth adding that it occurs in a small oblong quarto volume of songs with music, printed, according to appearance, by Wynkyn de Worde, in 1530; but as it varies in some instances from the reading in Sir John's work it is possible that he might have used some other authority.
SCENE 4. Page 442.
P. HEN. I am no proud Jack, like Falstaff; but a _Corinthian_, a lad of mettle.
The celebrity of Lais, the Corinthian courtezan, is said to have occasioned the proverb cited in Mr. Steevens's note, because from the extravagance of the lady's demands _every one could not afford to go to Corinth_, which, says Taverner, in his _Proverbs or adagies of Erasmus_, 1569, 12mo, is of like sense with our English proverb, _Every man may not be a lord_. We are told by Strabo that the temple of Venus at Corinth was furnished with a thousand young girls who performed the rites of the goddess. In short, that city appears to have been so notorious for its luxury, that ancient writers are full of allusions on this subject. See particularly Aristophanes's _Plutus_, Act I. Scene 2, and Saint Paul's first epistle to the _Corinthians_, ch. v. verse 1. This may serve to explain why _wenchers_ were called _Corinthians_.
SCENE 4. Page 444.
FRAN. Anon, anon, sir.
This was the _coming, sir_, of the waiters in Shakspeare's time. In _Summer's last will and testament_, Harvest says, "Why, friend, I am no _tapster_ to say, _anon, anon, sir_."
SCENE 4. Page 461.
P. HEN. Thou _knotty-pated_ fool.
Although it certainly stands thus in the old copy, the word should be changed without scruple to _nott-pated_, _i. e._ polled or cropped. The prince had a little before bestowed the same epithet on the drawer. In this place it may refer to the practice of nicking or cropping naturals.
SCENE 4. Page 461.
FAL. What upon compulsion? No; were I at the _strappado_, or all the racks in the world, I would not tell you on compulsion.
As the _strappado_ has been elsewhere improperly defined "a chastisement by blows," under an idea that a strap was used on the occasion, it may be necessary to take further notice of it on this occasion. It _was_ a military punishment, by which the unfortunate sufferer was most inhumanly tortured in the following manner:--a rope being fastened under his arms, he was drawn up by a pulley to the top of a high beam, and then suddenly let down with a jerk. The consequence usually was a dislocation of the shoulder blade. Representations of this nefarious process may be seen in Breughel's print of _The punishments of the law_; in one of Gerini's fine _Views of Florence_, and in Callot's _Miseries of war_. The term is evidently taken from the Italian _strappare_, to pull or draw with violence. At Paris there was a spot called _l'estrapade_ in the fauxbourg St. Jaques, where soldiers received this punishment. The machine, whence the place took its name, remained fixed like a perpetual gallows.
SCENE 4. Page 468.
FAL. ... he of Wales, that gave _Amaimon_ the bastinado.
_Amaimon_, king of the East, was one of the _principal devils_ who might be bound or restrained from doing hurt from the third hour till noon, and from the ninth hour till evening. See Scot's _Discovery of witchcraft_, B. xv. ch. 3.
ACT III.
SCENE 1. Page 487.
GLEN. The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes Of burning _cressets_.
A cresset light was the same as a beacon light, but occasionally portable. It consisted of a wreathed rope smeared with pitch and placed in a cage of iron like a trivet, which was suspended on pivots in a kind of fork. The light sometimes issued from a hollow pan filled with combustibles. The term is not, as Hanmer and others have stated, from the French _croissette_, a little cross, but rather from _croiset_, a cruet or earthen pot; yet as the French language furnishes no similar word for the cresset itself, we might prefer a different etymology. Our Saxon glossaries afford no equivalent term, but it may perhaps exhibit a Teutonic origin in the German _kerze_, a light or candle, or even in the French _cierge_, from _cereus_, because the original materials were of wax. Stowe the historian has left us some account of the marching watches that formerly paraded many of the streets of London, in which he says that "the whole way ordered for this watch extended to two thousand three hundred taylors yards of assize, for the furniture wherof with lights there were appointed _seven hundred cressets_, five hundred of them being found by the companies, the other two hundred by the chamber of London. Besides the which lights every constable in London, in number more than two hundred and forty, had his _cresset_, the charge of every _cresset_ was in light two shillings fourepence, and every _cresset_ had two men, one to beare or hold it, another to beare a bagge with light, and to serve it: so that the poore men pertaining to the _cressets_, taking wages, besides that every one had a strawne hat, with a badge painted, and his breakfast in the morning, amounted in number to almost two thousand."--_Survay of London_, 1618, 4to, p. 160. The following representations of _ancient cressets_ have been collected from various prints and drawings.
SCENE 1. Page 492.
HOT. And cuts me from the best of all my land, A huge half-moon, a monstrous _cantle_.
The word in its _strict_ sense, signifies a _small_ piece of any thing, but here a portion or parcel. The French have _chanteau_ and _chantel_, from the Latin _quantulum_.
SCENE 1. Page 494.
GLEN. ... I framed to the harp Many an English ditty, lovely well, And gave _the tongue_ a helpful ornament, A virtue that was never seen in you.
"Glendower means," says Mr. Ritson, "that he graced his _own_ tongue with the art of singing." This is surely wrong. The meaning is, that, by setting the English ditties to Welsh music, he had embellished the language in a manner that Hotspur had never done, the roughness of his speech affording neither poetry nor music. _Tongue_ was rightly explained by Dr. Johnson, _the English language_.
SCENE 1. Page 499.
MORT. ... that pretty Welsh Which thou pourest down from these _swelling heavens_ I am too perfect in; and but for shame, In such a parley would I answer thee.
According to Mr. Steevens, _swelling heavens_ are prominent _lips_. Are they not _eyes swollen with tears_? Glendower had just said that his daughter wept; and Mortimer tells his wife that he would answer the melting language of her eyes, if it were not _for shame_.
SCENE 2. Page 508.
P. HEN. By smiling _pick-thanks_.
A pick-thank is one who gathers or collects favour, thanks, or applause, by means of flattery. "Cave ne _falsam gratiam_ studes inire." Terence; which is thus Englished by Udall in his _Floures for Latine spekynge_, 1533, 12mo, fo. 137:--"Beware that thou desire not to _pyke_ or to have a _thanke_ of me undeserved."
SCENE 3. Page 522.
FAL. I never see thy face, but I think upon hell-fire.
Falstaff's wit at the expense of poor Bardolph's ruby face is inexhaustible. The same subject is treated with considerable humour in the following passage in Melton's _Astrologaster_, 1620, 4to: "But that which most grieves me, is, most of the varlets belonging to the citie colledges (I meane both the prodigious compters) have _fierie red faces_, that they cannot put a cup of Nippitato to their _snowts_, but with the extreme heat that doth glow from them, they make it cry hisse again, as if there were a gadd of burning steele flung into the pot," &c.
SCENE 3. Page 528.
FAL. There's no more truth in thee, than in a _drawn fox_.
The quotation from Olaus Magnus does not support Mr. Steevens's assertion that the fox when _drawn_ out of his hole was supposed to counterfeit death; for it is stated by that writer, and indeed by others, that he uses this device when hungry, to attract the birds, who mistake him for carrion. The following passage from Turbervile's _Noble arte of venery or hunting_ is offered, but with no great confidence, as a possible illustration of the phrase in question: "Foxes which have been beaten have this _subtletie_, to _drawe_ unto the largest part of the burrow where three or foure angles meete together, and there to stand at baye with the terriers, to the ende they may afterwardes shift and goe to which chamber they list."
SCENE 3. Page 535.
P. HEN. Go bear this letter to lord John of Lancaster, &c.
The first seven lines of this speech are undoubtedly prose, and should be so printed, like the preceding speeches of the Prince. No correct ear will ever receive them as blank verse, notwithstanding the efforts that have been or shall be made to convert them into metre.
ACT IV.
SCENE 1. Page 543.
VER. All plum'd like _estridges_, that _wing_ the wind Bated like eagles having lately bath'd:
The evident corruption or mutilation in these lines, has rendered any attempt to explain them a task of great difficulty. It will be necessary in the first place to ascertain the exact sense of the word _estridge_; and although it is admitted that the _ostrich_ was occasionally so denominated by our old writers, it is by no means certain that this bird is meant in the present instance. It may seem a very obvious comparison between the feathers of a crested helmet and those of the ostrich; and had the expression _plum'd like estridges_ stood _singly_, no doubt whatever could have arisen. It is what follows that occasions the difficulty.
The old copies read, _with the wind_: now if the ostrich had been here alluded to, the conjectural substitution of _wing_ would have been absolutely requisite; but the line which follows cannot by any possible construction be made to apply to that bird. It relates altogether to falconry, a sport to which Shakspeare is perpetually referring. Throughout the many observations on these difficult lines, it has been quite overlooked that _estridge_ signifies a _goshawk_. In this sense the word is used in _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act III. Scene 2:
"And in that mood [of fury] the dove will peck the _estridge_."
There is likewise a similar passage in the third part of _King Henry VI._, which may serve as a commentary on the above line:
"So cowards fight, when they can fly no further; So _doves_ do peck the _faulcon's_ piercing talons."
It would be absurd to talk of a dove pecking an ostrich; the allusion is to the practice of flying falcons at pigeons. Thus Golding in his translation of _Ovid's metamorphoses_, fo. 9:
"With flittering feather sielie _doves_ so from the _gosshawk_ flie."
The manor of Radeclyve in Nottinghamshire was held by the service of "mewing a goshawk;" in the original charter, "mutandi unum _estricium_" In the romance of _Guy earl of Warwick_ we have,
"_Estrich falcons_, of great mounde."
Falconers are often called _ostregers_ and _ostringers_ in the old books of falconry, and elsewhere. _Estridge_ for _ostrich_ or _ostridge_ is a corrupt spelling that crept into the language at the commencement of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and it appears that after that period the two words were very often confounded together, and used one for the other.
The explanation of _to bate_, as cited from _Minsheu_ in one of the notes, cannot apply to _ostriches_, though it does, very properly, to a bird of prey like the falcon.
After all, there is certainly a line lost, as Mr. Malone has very justly and ingeniously conjectured; but the place should rather seem to have been _after_ the word _bath'd_, than _before_. The sense of the old copies, as to what remains, will then be tolerably perspicuous:
"All plum'd like estridges, that with the wind Bated, like eagles having lately bath'd * * * * * * *"
_i. e._ plumed like falcons, which, their feathers being ruffled with the wind, like eagles that have recently bathed, _make a violent fluttering noise_; the words in Italics being here conjecturally offered as something like the sense of the omitted line.
SCENE 1. Page 546.
VER. I saw young Harry with his _beaver on_.
There are two other passages in Shakspeare's plays that relate to the _beaver_, which it will be best to insert here for the purpose of avoiding confusion, and to afford likewise the means of assembling together the various and discordant opinions of the commentators. These are, 1. in _King Henry IV._ Part II. Act IV. Scene 1, "their beavers _down_;" and 2. in _Hamlet_, Act I. Scene 2, "he wore his beaver _up_."
In the first of these passages Dr. Warburton would read _with his beaver up_; and he remarks that "the _beaver_ is only the visiere of the helmet, which, let down, covers the face. When the soldier was not upon action, he wore it _up_, so that his face might be seen, but when upon [in] action, it was let down to cover and secure the face." All this is correct, except that the beaver is certainly not the visor.
Dr. Johnson says, "there is no need of all this note; for beaver may be a helmet." This too is very just; the beaver, a part only of the helmet strictly speaking, is frequently used to express a helmet generally. Thus, in the first scene of the third part of _King Henry VI._, "I cleft his _beaver_ with a downright blow." The latter part of the doctor's note was unnecessary, and its inference apparently wrong.
Mr. Malone remarks that "Dr. Warburton seems not to have observed, that Vernon only says, he saw _young Harry_, not that he saw his _face_." But surely, Dr Warburton having contended for the reading _beaver up_, could not have misconceived Vernon's meaning as above.
Dr. Lort contents himself with distinguishing and explaining the beaver and visor. He is however wrong in stating that the beaver was _let down_ to enable the wearer to drink.
Mr. Malone's second note relating to _Hamlet_, will be considered in the third passage.