was as great in describing weakness as strength." However this may be, we are pretty sure, that after Falstaff there is not a greater piece of work in the play than Master Abraham Slender, cousin to Robert Shallow Esquire, - a dainty sprout, or rather sapling, of provincial gentry, who, once seen, is never to be forgotten. In his consequential verdaney, his aristocratic official boobyism, and his lean-witted, lack-brain originality, this pithless hereditary squireling is altogether inimitable and irresistible; - a tall though slender specimen of most effective imbecility, whose manners and character must needs be all from within, because he lacks force of nature enough to shape or dress himself by any model. Mr. Hallam, whose judgment in such things is not often at fault, thinks Slender was intended as "a satire on the brilliant youth of the provinces," such as they were "before the introduction of news. papers and turnpike roads; awkward and boobyish among civil people, but at home in rude sports, and proud of exploits at which the town would laugh, yet perhaps with more courage and goodnature than the laughers."

Ford's jealousy is managed with great skill so as to help on the plot, bringing out a series of the richest incidents, and drawing the most savoury issues from the mellow, juicy old sinner upon whom he is practising. The means whereby he labours to justify his passion, spreading temptations and then concerting surprises, are quite as wicked as any thing Falstaff does, and have, besides, the further crime of exceeding meanness; but both their meanness and their wickedness are of the kind that rarely fail to be their own punishment. The way in which his passion is made to sting and lash him into reason, and the crafty discretion of his wife in glutting his disease and thereby making an opportunity to show him what sort of stuff it lives on, are admirable instances of the wisdom with which the Poet delights to underpin his most fantastical creations. The counter-plottings, also, of Page and his wife to sell their daughter against her better sense, are about as far from virtue as the worst purposes of Sir John; though their sins are of a more respectable kind than to expose them to ridicule. But we are the more willing to forget their unhandsome practices herein, because of their good-natured efforts at last to make Falstaff for get his sad miscarriages, and to compose whatsoever vexations and disquietudes still remain, in a well-crowned cup of social merriment. Anne Page is but an average specimen of discreet, placid, innocent mediocrity, yet with a mind of her own, in whom we can feel no such interest as a rich father causes to be felt by those about her. In her and Fenton a slight dash of romance is given to the play; their love forming a barely audible undertone of poetry in the grand chorus of Comicalities, as if on purpose that while the sides are shaken the neart may not be left altogether untouched.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

SIR JOHN FALSTAFF.
FENTON.

SHALLOW, a country Justice.
SLENDER, Cousin to Shallow.
MR. FORD,

MR. PAGE,

two Gentlemen dwelling at Windsor

WILLIAM PAGE, a Boy, Son to Mr. Page.

SIR HUGH EVANS, a Welch Parson.

DR. CAIUS, a French Physician.

Host of the Garter Inn.

BARDOLPH,

PISTOL,

NYM,

Followers of Falstaff.

ROBIN, Page to Falstaff.

SIMPLE, Servant to Slender.

RUGBY, Servant to Dr. Caius.

MRS. FORD.

MRS. PAGE.

ANNE PAGE, her Daughter, in love with Fenton.
MRS. QUICKLY, Servant to Dr. Caius.

Servants to Page, Ford, &c.

SCENE, Windsor, and the Parts adjacent.

MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

ACT 1

SCENE I. Windsor. Before PAGE's House.

Enter Justice SHALLOW, SLENDER, and
Sir HUGH EVANS.

2

Shal. SIR HUGH,' persuade me not; I will make a Star-chamber matter of it: if he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, Esquire.

Slen. In the county of Gloster, justice of peace, and coram.3

Shal. Ay, cousin Slender, and cust-alorum.

1 Sir was formerly applied to the inferior clergy as well as to knights. Fuller in his Church History says: "Such priests as have Sir before their Christian name were men not graduated in the university; being in orders, but not in degrees; while others, entitled masters,' had commenced in the arts." Besides Sir Hugh, Shakespeare has Sir Oliver Mar-text, the Vicar, in As You Like It, Sir Topas in Twelfth Night, and Sir Nathaniel, the Curate, in Love's Labour's Lost.

H.

The old court of Star-Chamber had cognizance of such cases. Thus in Jonson's Magnetic Lady, Act iii. sc. 3: "There is court above, of the Star-chamber, to punish routs and riots."

Н.

3 Coram is a corruption of quorum. A justice of quorum was so called from the words in the commission, Quorum A. unum esse volumus; and as there could be no quorum, that is, nothing could be done, without him, of course he had greater dignity than the others. Cust-alorum, in the next line, is the sapient Shallow's abbreviation of custos rotulorum, keeper of the rolls or records Slender, not understanding this, adds, "and ratolorum too.' Shallow's official attestation was, Coram me, Roberto Shallow, armigero; and his slender nephew, speaking by the book, puts the ablative, armigero, for the nominative, armiger, esquire. H.

Slen. Ay, and ratolorum too; and a gentleman born, master parson; who writes himself armigero; in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation, armigero.

Shal. Ay, that I do; and have done any time these three hundred years.*

Slen. All his successors, gone before him, hath done't; and all his ancestors, that come after him, may: they may give the dozen white luces in their

coat.

Shal. It is an old coat.

Eva. The dozen white louses do become an old coat well; it agrees well, passant: it is a familiar beast to man, and signifies love.

Shal. The luce is the fresh fish; the salt fish is an old coat."

Shallow here identifies himself with "all his successors gone before him;" an aristocratic way of speaking once common in England, and not wholly laid aside yet. Washington Allston was once the guest of an English nobleman who, though Shallow in nothing else, said he came over with William the Conqueror. We are indebted to Mr. Verplanck for this anecdote, and also for the information that Shallow's mode of speech, though common, is characteristic of him.

H.

This passage is exceedingly obscure, and perhaps no expla nation can make it clear. Shallow is allowed on all hands to be a satire on Sir Thomas Lucy, the Poet's old Stratford enemy, whose coat-of-arms bore three luces, not a dozen, as stated by Slender; though one of the family had a coat marked in four divisions, with three luces in each. Luce is the old name for pike, of which there were two kinds, the fresh-water and the salt. water pike. The most probable explanation, then, seems to be this: In the first place Slender blunders, calling them white luces, white being apparently used to denote the fresh-water pike; and Shallow, proud of his ancestry and therefore scorning the white luce, the fresh fish, corrects this blunder by saying, "It is an old coat," inferring that, because it is old, therefore it has the saltwater fish, not the fresh. Then Sir Hugh makes a double blunder, giving a white luce to an old coat, and mistaking luce for louse, the "familiar beast to man." And finally Shallow blun ders, mistaking Sir Hugh's "familiar beast" for the white luce

Slen. I may quarter, coz?

Shal. You may, by marrying.

Eva. It is marring indeed, if he quarter it.
Shal. Not a whit.

6

Eva. Yes, py'r-lady; if he has a quarter of your coat, there is but three skirts for yourself, in my simple conjectures: but that is all one. If Sir John Falstaff have committed disparagements unto you, I am of the church, and will be glad to do my benevolence, to make atonements and compremises between you.

Shal. The Council shall hear it: it is a riot.

Eva. It is not meet the Council hear a riot; there is no fear of Got in a riot: the Council, look you, shall desire to hear the fear of Got, and not to hear a riot take your vizaments in that.

Shal. Ha! o' my life, if I were young again, the sword should end it.

Eva. It is petter that friends is the sword, and end it and there is also another device in my prain, which, peradventure, prings goot discretions with it: There is Anne Page, which is daughter to master George Page, which is pretty virginity.

Slen. Mistress Anne Page? She has brown hair, and speaks small like a woman.

8

and proceeds to correct him by saying, "The luce" (that is, he louse) that you speak of "is the fresh fish," and so does not "become an old coat well," such as mine is: for "the salt fish is an old coat."

H.

To quarter meant, in heraldic language, to have armorial bearings as an appendage to hereditary arms; as a man, by marrying, may add his wife's titles, if she have any, to his own. Sir Hugh, who must still be talking, however ignorant he may be of the matter in question, goes on from blunder to blunder, mistaking coat-of-arms for coat, and the quartering of heraldry for the cutting of a thing into four parts.

1 Advisement.

H.

8 To speak small means much the same as what old Lear so