Part 21

In the second passage, Mr. Malone remarks that the _beaver_ "is confounded both here and in _Hamlet_ with visor, or used for _helmet_ in general," but that "Shakspeare is not answerable for any confusion on this subject, as he used _beaver_ in the same sense in which it was used by all his contemporaries." The latter part of this note applies very justly to the first passage, _beaver on_, where it is used generally for a _helmet_, but not to the present; _beavers down_ being perfectly accurate. It is submitted that the former part of the note, which relates to a supposed confusion both here and in Hamlet between _beaver_ and _visor_, is not quite accurate, as may hereafter appear.

In the third passage Mr. Malone says, "though _beaver_ properly signified that part of the helmet which was _let down_, to enable the wearer to drink, Shakspeare always uses the word as denoting that part of the helmet which, when raised up, exposed the face of the wearer; and such was the popular signification of the word in his time. In Bullokar's _English expositor_, 8vo, 1616, _beaver_ is defined thus:--'In armour it signifies that part of the helmet which may be _lifted up_ to take the breath more freely.'" On this passage Mr. Malone had also before remarked that Shakspeare confounded the _beaver_ and _visor_; for in _Hamlet_ Horatio says that he saw the old king's face, because he wore his _beaver up_; and yet the learned commentator inadvertently quotes Bullokar's definition, which is adverse to his own opinion. Another observation that suggests itself on Mr. Malone's note on _Hamlet_ is, that Shakspeare does _not always_ use _beaver_ to denote that part of the _helmet_ which, when raised up, exposed the face of the wearer; because we have just seen that he _sometimes_, as other writers do, applies it to the _whole_ of the helmet.

And lastly, as to preceding notes; the present writer had, in defending Shakspeare's accuracy, expressed himself in most faulty and inaccurate terms, when he said that "the beaver was as often made to lift up as to let down." A great deal of confusion has arisen from the want of due attention to these words.

There is a chance that the reader, unless he have paid more attention to what has already been stated than it perhaps deserves, may have got into a labyrinth; from which it shall be the endeavour of the rest of this note to extricate him.

In the first place, no want of accuracy whatever is imputable to Shakspeare.

The _beaver_ of a helmet is frequently used by writers, improperly enough, to express the helmet itself. It is in reality the lower part of it, adapted to the purpose of giving the wearer an opportunity of taking breath when oppressed with heat, or, without putting off the helmet, of taking his repast. As it was _raised up_ for this purpose, it could of course be _let down_ again; but it could not be _let down_ on either of the before-mentioned occasions. The _visiere_ or _visor_ was another moveable part in the front of a helmet, and placed above the beaver in order to protect the upper part of the face; and being perforated with many holes, afforded the wearer an opportunity of _discerning_ objects: and thence its name. It was made also to _lift up_ when the party either wanted more air, or was desirous of seeing more distinctly. It was perhaps never down but in actual combat; whilst the beaver would be thrown up or _kept_ down at the wearer's discretion, without much difference, except that in battle it would be closed, and at meals, or for additional coolness, thrown up. In short, the visor or beaver could only be _let down_ after they had been already lifted up; and when a writer speaks of their being _down_, it is generally meant that the helmet is closed.

To exemplify the above remarks, correct representations of a real helmet and its parts are here given. See likewise Grose's _Treatise on ancient armour_, plates 10, 26, 30.

Fig. 1. The helmet closed.

Fig. 2. The visor thrown up, the beaver down.

Fig. 3. The visor and beaver thrown up.

Fig. 4. The visor detached.

Fig. 5. The beaver detached.

ACT V.

SCENE 1. Page 567.

P. HEN. Of fickle changelings, and poor discontents, Which gape and _rub the elbow_, at the news Of hurly burly innovation.

The _itching of the elbow_, according to popular belief, denoted an approaching change of some kind or other.

SCENE 4. Page 587.

HOT. ... and life _time's fool_.

Mr. Steevens could not very easily have supported his opinion, that the allusion here is to the fool in the ancient farces, or in the representations called the _Dance of death_; a character which has been altogether misconceived in the course of the annotations on Shakspeare. Dr. Johnson's interpretation is much more natural and intelligible, and the allusion is certainly to the common or domestic fool, who was retained for the express purpose of affording _sport_ to his still more foolish employers. In this sense our author uses _death's fool_, _fortune's fool_, and _fate's fool_.

SCENE 5. Page 589.

P. HEN. _Embowel'd_ will I see thee by and by.

An ingenious commentator on Mr. Mason's supplement to Dr. Johnson's dictionary, (see the _Monthly magazine_, vol. xii. p. 299,) has disputed the usual sense of _embowel'd_ in this speech, on the ground that the prince would not be guilty of such _brutality_ as to see Falstaff _eviscerated_; and he therefore contends that the meaning is, _put into the bowels of the earth_. But surely the prince designs no more than that Falstaff's body shall be embalmed in the usual manner. When the knight rises, he exclaims, "if thou embowel me to day, I'll give you leave to _powder me_, and eat me to-morrow," evidently alluding to the practice of evisceration and subsequent treatment of a dead body by strewing aromatics over it for preservation. If the body were to be _put into the bowels of the earth_, as the commentator contends, Falstaff's "eat me to-morrow" would manifestly be an absurd expression. That the present writer may not be suspected of plagiarism on this occasion, he feels himself obliged to lay claim to the above opinion in answer to the commentator, as it appeared in the before-mentioned periodical publication.

But the following curious extract from the arraignment of Hugh Le Despenser, the favourite of Edward II., will set the question at rest for ever: "_Hugh_ contraytour este trove, par quoy vous agardent touz lez bonez gentz de realme, meyndrez et greyndres, ryches et povrez par comun assent, que vous come larone estes trove, par quey vous serrez pendue. Et contreytour estez trove, par quey vous serrez _treynez_[15] et quarterecez, et envoye parmy le realme. Et pur ceo que vous fuistez utlage par nostre seignour le roy et par commune assent, et estez revenue en courte sanz garrant, vous serrez decollez. Et pur ceo que vous abbestatez et procurastez discorde entre nostre seignour le roy et la royne et lez altrez del realme, si serret _enbouelleez_, et puis ils serront ars. Retrayez vous traytour, tyrant reneyee, si alez vostre juyse prendre. Traytour malveys et attaynte." In English. "_Hugh Le Despencer_, you have been found an arch-traitor, for which cause all good people of the realm, great and small, rich and poor, by common consent, award you a convicted felon; _therefore you shall be hanged_. And forasmuch as you have been found a traitor, _you shall be drawn and quartered, and [your limbs] dispersed throughout the kingdom_. And having been outlawed by our lord the king, and by common assent, you have unwarrantably returned into court; _and therefore you shall be beheaded_. And because you have procured and abetted discord between our lord the king, and the queen, and others of the realm, _you shall be embowelled, and [your bowels] afterwards burnt_. Begone traitorous renegade tyrant, and await the execution of your sentence. Wicked and attainted traitor!"--Knighton, inter _Historiæ Anglicanæ decem scriptores_, col. 2549.

The author of _Aulicus coquinariæ_, 1650, speaking of the opening of King James the First's body, has these words: "The next day was solemnly appointed for _imbowelling_ the corps, in the presence of some of the counsell, all the physicians, chirurgions, apothecaries, and the Palsgrave's physician."

We got this word from the _old_ French _eboeler_, the orthography of which at once declares its meaning. With us it might perhaps be more properly written _ebowel_, if the ear were not likely to be offended by the change.

* * * * *

Foote has borrowed some hints from Falstaff's speeches, in his admirably drawn character of Mother Cole. Among others take the following:--"Now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked. I must give over this life, and I will give it over." He immediately changes his praying into pursetaking. See particularly the beginning of the third scene in the third act. Our English Aristophanes seems to have been likewise indebted to a story related in Lord Bacon's _Apophthegms_, of an old bawd who on her death-bed was interrogated by a customer whether a wench whom she had provided for him was in all respects as she had promised; to which she answered, _that she was; and further left it to him to judge with what comfort and confidence she could expect to meet her Saviour, if she should leave the world with a lie in her mouth_.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] This word may serve to correct a mistake in a note in _King Richard III._, Act V. Scene 2, by Dr. Johnson, who had supposed that _drawn_ was the same as _exenterated_.

KING HENRY IV.

PART II.

ACT I.

SCENE 1. Page 11.

TRA. Up to the _rowel head_.

Dr. Johnson had either forgotten the precise meaning of the word _rowel_, or has made choice of inaccurate language in applying it to the _single spiked spur_ which he had seen in old prints. The former signifies the moveable spiked _wheel_ at the end of a spur, such as was actually used in the time of Henry the Fourth, and long before the other was laid aside. Shakspeare certainly meant the spur of his own time.

SCENE 1. Page 13.

NORTH. Even such a man so faint so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so _woe-begone_, Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night, &c.

Dr. Bentley's proposed substitution of _Ucalegon_ for _woe-begone_, is a most striking example of the uselessness of learning when unaccompanied with judgment to direct it. Where too had the doctor found that Ucalegon drew Priam's curtain? and, it may be added, where did Shakspeare find that any one did so? It is not very uncommon for our poet to forget his reading, and make events change places. Thus a little further on, he has confounded Althea's firebrand with Hecuba's; and it is not improbable that in the present instance he might have misapplied the vision of Hector to Æneas so finely described in the second book of the Æneid.

SCENE 3. Page 46.

HAST. The _duke_ of Lancaster and Westmorland.

Mr. Malone's note on this anachronism would be more perfect if this slight addition were made to it, "and then not duke of _Lancaster_ but of _Bedford_." Mr. Ritson seems to have traced the source of Shakspeare's error in calling prince John of Lancaster _duke_ of Lancaster, in Stowe's _Annales_; but he has omitted to remark that even then Shakspeare had forgotten that prince John was not the _second_ son of Henry the Fourth. The blunder of the industrious historian is unaccountable. See the seal of Henry the Fifth as prince of Wales and duke of Lancaster in Sandford's _Genealogical history_.

ACT II.

SCENE 1. Page 49.

HOST. A hundred mark is a long _loan_ for a poor lone woman to bear.

The old copy reads long _one_, and the above alteration has, on the suggestion of Theobald, been very improperly and unnecessarily made. The hostess means to say that a hundred mark is a long _mark_, that is _score_, _reckoning_, for her to bear. The use of mark in the singular number in familiar language admits very well of this equivoque.

SCENE 2. Page 64.

PAGE. Marry, my Lord, Althea dream'd she was delivered of a firebrand.

Dr. Johnson has properly noticed the error concerning Althea's firebrand. This mythological fable is _accurately_ alluded to in _2 Henry VI._ Act I. Scene 1; a circumstance that may perhaps furnish an additional argument, though a slight one, that that play was not written by Shakspeare.

SCENE 4. Page 91.

PIST. Have we not _Hiren_ here.

The notes on this expression have left it a matter of doubt whether Pistol is speaking of his sword or of a woman; but the fact is, after all, that the word Hiren was purposely designed by the author to be ambiguous, though used by Pistol with reference _only_ to his sword. When the hostess replies, "There's none such here, do you think I would deny her?" she evidently conceives that he is calling for some wench. Pistol, not regarding her blunder, _continues to handle his sword, and in his next speech_ reads the motto on it--SI FORTUNA ME TORMENTA, SPERATO ME CONTENTA. It is to be observed that most of the ancient swords had inscriptions on them, and there is no doubt that if diligent search were made, the one before us, in a less corrupted state, would be found. In the mean time the reader is presented with the figure of an old French _rapier_, in the author's possession, on which these lines are engraved: SI FORTUNE ME TOURMENTE L'ESPERANCE ME CONTENTE.

In further illustration, the following story from _Wits, fits and fancies_, 1614, 4to, is added:--"Haniball Gonsaga being in the low countries overthrowne from his horse by an English captaine, and commanded to yeeld himselfe prisoner: _kist his sword_ and gave it the Englishman saying: _Si fortuna me tormenta, il speranza me contenta_." Part of this story had already been quoted by Dr. Farmer, but not for a similar purpose.

SCENE 4. Page 94.

FAL. Quoit him down, Bardolph, like a _shove-groat_ shilling.

Mr. Steevens supposes the _shove-groat_ shilling to have been used in the game of shovel-board, by which he seems to infer that the games of _shove-groat_ and _shovel-board_ were the same; but this is apparently a mistake. The former was invented during the reign of Henry the Eighth; for in the statutes of his 33rd year, chap. ix., it is called a _new_ game. It was also known by the several appellations of _slide-groat_, _slide-board_, _slide-thrift_, and _slip-thrift_, the first of which was probably adopted from the game being originally played with the silver groats of the time, then nearly as large as modern shillings. When the broad shillings of Edward the Sixth were coined, they were substituted for the groats in this game, and used also at that of _shovel-board_, which seems to have been only a variation of the other on a larger scale. Nothing has occurred to carry it beyond the time of Henry the Eighth; and from the want of such a term as a _shovel-groat_, it is probably not older than the reign of Edward the Sixth, who first coined the shilling piece. _Shovel-board_ is already too well known to require any description of it in this place; but of the other little seems recorded, or not sufficient to discover the manner in which it was played. Holinshed, or rather Stanihurst, in his history of Ireland, speaking of a mandate for the execution of the Earl of Kildare in the reign of Henry the Eighth, says, that "one night when the lieutenant and he for their disport were playing at _slidegrote_ or _shofleboorde_, sodainly commeth from the Cardinall (Wolsey) a mandatum to execute Kyldare on the morrow. The earle marking the lieutenant's deepe sigh, By S. Bryde, Lieutenant, quoth he, there is some made game in that scrole; but fall how it will, _this throwe is for a huddle_." Here the writer has either confounded the two games, or might only mean to state that the Earl was playing at one or the other of them. Rice the puritan, in his _Invective against vices_, black letter, no date, 12mo, speaks of "paysed [weighed] _groates_ to plaie at slip-thrifte;" and in another place he asks whether God sent Adam into Paradise to play at it. There is a modern game called _Justice Jervis_, which is supposed by Mr. Strutt, who has described it at large, to bear some resemblance to _shove-groat_. See his _Sports and pastimes_, p. 225.

SCENE 4. Page 94.

PIST. Why then let grievous, ghastly, gaping _wounds Untwine the sisters three_. Come _Atropos_, I say!

This is manifestly in ridicule of Sackvile's _Complaynt of Henry Duke of Buckingham_, in _The mirour for magistrates_:

"Where eke my graundsire, Duke of Buckingham Was _wounded_ sore, and hardly scapt untane. But what may boote to stay the _sisters three_? When _Atropos_ perforce will cut the _thred_."

Stanzas 5 and 6.

SCENE 4. Page 96.

PAGE. The musick is come, sir.

FAL. Let them play;--play, sirs.

This music was, in all probability, that belonging to one of those dances called _passameasures_; and it appears to have afterwards travelled by some means or other to _Barbadoes_: for Ligon, in his entertaining account of that island, where he was in 1647, tells us that he heard it played there by an _old fellow_. Ligon, no doubt, remembered it on the stage, and it is very likely to have been the _original_ music of Shakspeare's time; but the above writer has very ignorantly supposed it to have been "a tune in great esteem in Harry the Fourth's dayes."

SCENE 4. Page 98.

FAL. Drinks off candles ends for _flap-dragons_; and _rides the wild mare_ with the boys.

A _flap-dragon_ is a sport among choice spirits, by putting nuts or raisins into a bowl of brandy, which being set on fire, the nuts are snatched out hastily and swallowed, the party usually burning his mouth and fingers. In this way men formerly drank healths to their mistresses. It is likewise a Christmas gambol among young people, at which, instead of brandy, spirits of wine are used. It is sometimes called _slap-dragon_ and _snap-dragon_. In _The laws of drinking_, 1617, 12mo, p. 147, a person is said to be "as familiar as _slap-dragons_ with the _Flemming_."

_Riding the wild mare_, is another name for the childish sport of _see-saw_, or what the French call _bascule_ and _balançoire_.

SCENE 4. Page 100.

FAL. ... and breeds no bate with telling of _discreet_ stories.

Dr. Warburton would most unnecessarily read _indiscreet_. Mr. Steevens supposes that "by _discreet stories_ is meant what suspicious masters and mistresses of families would call _prudential information_; i. e. what ought to be known, and yet is disgraceful to the teller." But Poins, of whom Falstaff is speaking, had no masters or mistresses; and if it be recollected with what sort of companions he was likely to associate, Falstaff's meaning will appear to be, that _he excites no censure for telling them modest stories_; or in plain English, that he tells them nothing but _immodest_ ones.

SCENE 4. Page 102.

FAL. What stuff wilt have a _kirtle_ of?

Notwithstanding this word has excited as much conjecture as almost any other in the language, it will still admit of discussion. _Kirtel_ is pure Saxon, and signifies, generally, a _covering_, i. e. over all the other garments; in which sense it will always be found to have been [properly] used. In Littelton's Dictionary it is Latinized _supparum_. See likewise Ducange's _Glossary_, and a multitude of other authorities. Hence probably _covercle_. From the circumstance of its occurring as often in the sense of a long as of a short garment, it is more probable that the root of the word should denote that which _covers_, simply, than something that is _short_, _curtus_. In one of the notes, Cotgrave is cited as making _kirtle_ and _petticoat_ synonymous; but this definition is at variance with the line in the comedy of _Ignoramus_,

"Gownos, silkcotos, _kirtellos_ et _peticotos_."

It is admitted, however, that this word has been used with great latitude of meaning. Randle Holme makes it the same with the apron.

SCENE 4. Page 104.

FAL. Ha! a bastard son of the king's?--And art not thou _Poins his brother_?

Mr. Ritson explains this _the brother of Poins_. But where is the use of asking the _prince_ such a question? It must be remembered that the prince and Poins have just made their appearance, and Falstaff has a question for _each_. The sense therefore is, "Art not thou Poins, the brother of this bastard?"

ACT III.

SCENE 2. Page 135.

BULL. ... here is four _Harry ten shillings_ in French crowns for you.

This is an anachronism; there were no coins of ten shillings value in the reign of Henry the Fourth. Shakspeare's _Harry ten shillings_ were those of Henry the Seventh or Eighth, but he thought these might do for any other Harry.

SCENE 2. Page 140.

SHAL. I was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur's show.