again would a' come:-I shall never see such a fellow. FAL. These fellows will do well, master Shallow. -God keep you, master Silence; I will not use many words with you :-Fare you well, gentlemen both: I thank you: I must a dozen mile to-night.Bardolph, give the soldiers coats. SHAL. Sir John, heaven bless you, and prosper your affairs, and send us peace! As you return, visit archers, have laid in their challenge against their fellow-knight, if speaking of their pastime I should have spared their names?' This quotation (adds Mr. Bowle) rescues three of them from oblivion; and it is not to be presumed that the whole table of these well known knights, most probably pretty numerous, could escape the knowledge of Shakspeare.-Maister Hewgh Offly was sheriff of London in 1588." The passage above quoted places Shallow's words in so clear a light that they leave me little to add upon the subject. We see that though he is apt enough to introduce frivolous and foreign circumstances, the mention of Sir Dagonet here, is not of that nature, Mile-end Green being probably the place where Arthur's knights displayed their skill in archery, or, in other words, where Arthur's show was exhibited. Whether this fellowship existed in the reign of Henry IV. is very unnecessary to enquire. We see in almost every one of his plays how little scrupulous Shakspeare was in ascribing the customs of his own time to preceding ages. It may perhaps be objected, that the "little quiver fellow," afterwards mentioned, is not described as an archer, but as managing a piece; but various exercises might have been practised at the same time at Mile-end Green. If, however, this objection should appear to the reader of any weight, by extending the parenthesis to the words-"Arthur's Show," it is obviated; for Shallow might have resided at Clement's Inn, and displayed his feats of archery in Arthur's show elsewhere, not on the day here alluded to. The meaning will then be, I remember when I resided at Clement's Inn, and in the exhibition of archery made by Arthur's knights I used to represent Sir Dagonet, that among the soldiers exercised at Mile-end Green, there was, &c. MAlone. 7a little QUIVER fellow,] Quiver is nimble, active, &c. "There is a maner fishe that hyght mugill, which is full quiver and swifte." Bartholomeus, 1535, bl. 1. HEnders on. my house; let our old acquaintance be renewed: peradventure, I will with you to the court. FAL. I would you would, master Shallow. SHAL. Go to; I have spoke at a word. Fare you well. [Exeunt SHALLOW and SILENCE. FAL. Fare you well, gentle gentlemen. On, Bardolph; lead the men away. [Exeunt BARDOLPH, Recruits, &c.] As I return, I will fetch off these justices: I do see the bottom of justice Shallow. Lord, lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying! This same starved justice hath done nothing but prate to me of the wildness of his youth, and the feats he hath done about Turnbull-street; and every third word a lie, duer paid to the hearer than the Turk's tribute. I do remember him at Clement's-inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring: when he was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head -- 8 about TURNBULL-STREET;] In an old comedy called Ram-Alley, or Merry Tricks, this street is mentioned again : "You swaggering, cheating, Turnbull-street rogue." Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Scornful Lady: "Here has been such a hurry, such a din, such dismal drinking, swearing, &c. we have all lived in a perpetual Turnbull-street.” Nash, in Pierce Pennilesse his Supplication, commends the sisters of Turnbull-street to the patronage of the Devil. Again, in The Inner Temple Masque, by Middleton, 1619: ""Tis in your charge to pull down bawdy-houses, 66 cause spoil in Shoreditch, "And deface Turnbull." 66 Again, in Middleton's comedy, called Any Thing for a Quiet Life, a French bawd says: J'ay une fille qui parle un peu François; elle conversera avec vous, a la Fleur de Lys, en Turnbull-street." Turnbull or Turnmill-street, is near Cow-cross, West Smithfield. The continuator of Stowe's Annals informs us that West Smithfield, (at present the horse-market,) was formerly called Ruffian's Hall, where turbulent fellows met to try their skill at sword and buckler. STEEVENS. fantastically carved upon it with a knife: he was so forlorn, that his dimensions to any thick sight were invincible: he was the very Genius of famine; yet lecherous as a monkey, and the whores called him-mandrake: he came ever in the rear-ward 9 —were INVINCIBLE:] That is, could not be mastered by any thick sight. Mr. Rowe and the other modern editors read, invisible. MALONE. Invincible cannot possibly be the true reading; invincible to, not being English; for whoever wrote or said-not be conquered to? Invincible by is the usual phrase; though Shakspeare, in Much Ado About Nothing, makes Don Pedro say, "I would have thought her spirit had been invincible against all assaults of affection;" a sufficient proof that he would not have written "invincible to a thick sight." STEEVENS. We have already had in these plays-guilty to self wrong, interest to the state, and a multitude of other instances of phraseology which seem strange to us now. See the Essay on Shakspeare's Phraseology. MALONE. Let us apply Mr. Steevens's process of translation to invisible, i. e. cannot be seen to, and it will be equally objectionable. The fact is, these verbal adjectives will admit of either conjunction. An object is perceived by, but it is perceptible either by or to the sight. We are wounded by something; but Coriolanus, vol. xiv. p. 209, wishes that his son may prove to shame invulnerable. BOSWELL. I call'd him-MANDRAKE:] This appellation will be somewhat illustrated by the following passage in Caltha Poetarum, or the Bumble Bee, composed by T. Cutwode, Esquyre, 1599. This book was commanded by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London to be burnt at Stationers' Hall in the 41st year of Queen Elizabeth : 66 Upon the place and ground where Caltha grew, "An object for faire Primula to view, 66 'Resembling man from thighs unto the shank," &c. The rest of the description might prove yet further explanatory; but on some subjects silence is less reprehensible than information. 66 In the age of Shakspeare, however, (as I learn from Thomas Lupton's Third Booke of Notable Thinges, 4to. bl. 1.) it was customary to make counterfeat mandrag, which is sold by deceyuers for much money." Out of the great double root of briony (by means of a process not worth transcribing) they produced the kind of priapic idol to which Shallow has been compared. STEEVENS. Bullein, in his Bullwark of Defence against all Sicknesse, &c. of the fashion; and sung those tunes to the overscutched huswives that he heard the carmen whistle, and sware-they were his fancies, or his good-nights". And now is this Vice's dagger* be 66 fol. 1597, p. 41, speaking of mandrake, says: "- this hearbe is called also anthropomorphos, because it beareth the image of a man; and that is false. For no herbe hath the shape of a man or woman; no truly, it is not naturall of his owne growing but by the crafty invention of some false men it is done by arte."-"My friend Marcellus, the description of this mandrake, as I have sayd, was nothing but the imposterous subtility of wicked people. Perhaps of fryers or supersticious monkes whych have wrytten thereof at length; but as for Dioscorides, Galen, and Plinie, &c. they have not wrytten thereof so largely as for to have head, armes, fyngers," &c. REED. See a former scene of this play, p. 24, n. 9; and Sir Thomas Brown's Vulgar Errors, p. 72, edit. 1686. MALONE. 2 Over-SCUTCHED -] That is, whipt, carted. PoPe. I rather think that the word means dirty or grimed. The word huswives agrees better with this sense. Shallow crept into mean houses, and boasted his accomplishments to dirty women. JOHNSON. Ray, among his north country words, says that an over-switched huswife is a strumpet. Over-scutched has undoubtedly the meaning which Mr. Pope has affixed to it. Over-scutched is the same as over-scotched. A scutch or scotch is a cut or lash with a rod or whip. STEEVENS. The following passage in Maroccus Extaticus, or Bankes' Bay Horse in a Traunce, 4to. 1595, inclines me to believe that this word is used in a wanton sense: "The leacherous landlord hath his wench at his commandment, and is content to take ware for his money; his private scutcherie hurts not the common-wealth farther than that his whoore shall have a house rent-free." MALONE. 3 FANCIES, or his GOOD-NIGHTS.] Fancies and Goodnights were the titles of little poems. One of Gascoigne's Goodnights is published among his Flowers. STEEVENS. 4 And now is this VICE's dagger] By Vice here the poet means that droll character in the old plays (which I have several times mentioned in the course of these notes) equipped with asses ears and a wooden dagger. It was very satirical in Falstaff to compare Shallow's activity and impertinence to such a machine as a wooden dagger in the hands and management of a buffoon. THEOBALD. See vol. xi. p. 479, n. 9. STEEvens. Vice was the name given to a droll figure, heretofore much shown upon our stage, and brought in to play the fool and make sport for the populace. His dress was always a long jerkin, a come a squire; and talks as familiarly of John of Gaunt, as if he had been sworn brother to him: fool's cap with ass's ears, and a thin wooden dagger, such as is still retained in the modern figures of Harlequin and Scaramouch. Minsheu, and others of our more modern criticks, strain hard to find out the etymology of the word, and fetch it from the Greek: probably we need look no further for it than the old French word Vis, which signified the same as Visage does now. From this in part came Visdase, a word common among them for a fool, which Menage says is but a corruption from Vis d'asne, the face or head of an ass. It may be imagined therefore that Visdase, or Vis d'asne, was the name first given to this foolish theatrical figure, and that by vulgar use it was shortened to plain Vis or Vice. HANMER. The word Vice is an abbreviation of Device; for in our old dramatick shows, where he was first exhibited, he was nothing more than an artificial figure, a puppet moved by machinery, and then originally called a Device or Vice. In these representations he was a constant and the most popular character, afterwards adopted into the early comedy. The smith's machine called a vice, is an abbreviation of the same sort.- Hamlet calls his uncle "a vice of kings," a fantastick and factitious image of majesty, a mere puppet of royalty. See Jonson's Alchymist, Act I. Sc. III. : "And on your stall a puppet with a vice." T. WARton. To each of the proposed etymologies of Vice in the note there seem to be solid objections. Hanmer's derivation from the French visdase, is unsupported by any thing like authority. This word occurs in no ancient French writer as a theatrical character, and has only been used by modern ones in the sense of ass or fool, and then probably by corruption; there being good reason to suppose that it was originally a very obscene expression. It is seldom, if ever, that an English term is made up from a French one, unless the thing itself so expressed be likewise borrowed; and it is certain that in the old French moralities and comedies there is no character similar to the Vice. Mr. Warton says it is an abbreviation of device, because in the old dramatical shows this character was nothing more than a puppet moved by machinery, and then originally called a device. But where is the proof of these assertions, and why should one puppet in particular be termed a device? As to what he states concerning the name of the smith's machine, the answer is, that it is immediately derived from the French vis, a screw, and neither probably from device; for the machine in question is not more a device than many other mechanical contrivances. Mr. Warton has likewise informed us that the vice had appeared as a puppet before |