P. 101, 1. 21. Turk Gregory] Meaning Gregory the Seventh, called Hildebrand. This furious friar surmounted almost invincible obstacles to deprive the Emperor of his right of investiture of bishops, which his predecessors had long attempted in vain. Fox, in his history, hath made Gregory so odious, that I don't doubt but the good Protestants of that time were well pleased to hear him thus characterized, as uniting the attributes of their two great enemies, the Turk and Pope, in one. WARBURTON.

P. 101, 1. 24. P. Hen. He is, indeed; &c.] The Prince's answer, which is apparently connected with Falstaff's last words, does not cohere so well as if the knight had said

I have made him sure; Percy's safe enough. Perhaps a word or two like these may be lost.

JOHNSON.

Sure has two significations, certainly disposed of, and safe. Falstaff uses it in the former sense, the Prince replies to it in the latter, STEEVENS,

P. 101, last but one 1, "tis hot, 'tis hot; there's that will saek a city.] Aquibble on the word sack. JOHNSON.

P. 102, 1. 3. I'll pierce him.] Certainly, he'll pierce him, i. e. Prince Henry will, who is just gone out to seek him. Besides, I'll pierce him, contradicts the whole turn and hunour of the speech. WARBURTON,

I rather take the conceit to be this; To pierce a vessel is to tap it. Falstaff takes up his bottle which the Prince had tossed at his head, and -being about to animate himself with a draught, eries: If Percy be alive, I'll pierce him, and

so draws the cork. I do not propose this with

much confidence.

JOHNSON.

I believe Falstaff makes this boast that the Prince may hear it; and continues the rest of the speech in a lower accent,

out of hearing. STEEVENS.

or when he is

Shakspeare was not aware that he here ridiculed the serious etymology of the Scottish historian: "Piercy a penetrando oculum Regis Scotorum, ut fabulatur Boetius."

Skinner. HOLT WHITE. P. 102, 1. 5. A carbonado is a piece of meat eut cross-wise for the gridiron.

P. 102, 1. 15.

JOHNSON.

thou bleed'st too much:] History says, the Prince was wounded in the face by an arrow. STEEVENS

P. 102, 1. 21. - amaze i. e. throw inte consternation. STEEVENS.

P. 104, 1. 6. Who never promiseth, but he means to pay. —] We

should certainly read:

Who never promiseth, but means to pay.' which agrees with what the Prince says in the first Act:

'And pay the debts I never promised."

M. MASON, P. 104, l. 12, thy lost opinion;] i. e. thy lost reputation; for in that sense the word was then used. REED.

P. 105, l. 21.' Hot. O, Harry, thou hast robb'd me of my youth:] Shakspeare has chosen to make Hotspur fall by the hand of the Prince of Wales; but there is, I believe, no authority for the fact. Holinshed says, "The King shew that day with his own hand six and thirty persons of his enemies.

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The other (i. e. troops) of his party, encouraged by his doings, fought valiantly, and slew the Lord Percy, called Henry Hotspur." Speed says Percy was killed by an unknown hand. MALONE.

P. 105, 1. 27-30. But thought's the slave of life, &c.] Hotspur in his last moments endeavours to console himself. The glory of the Prince wounds his thoughts; but thought, being dependent on life, must cease with it, and will soon be at 'an end. Life, on which thought depends, is itself of no great value, being the fool and sport of time; of time, which with all its dominion over sublunary things, must itself at last be stopped. JOHNSON.

Hotspur alludes to the Fool in our ancient farces, or the representations commonly called Death's Dance, &c. STEEVENS.

P. 106, 1. 5. how much art thou shrunk !] A metaphor taken from cloth, which shrinks when it is ill- weav'd, when its texture is loose. JOHNSON.

P. 106, 1. 14, But let my favours hide thy mangled face;] We should read-favour, face, or countenance. He is stooping down here to kiss Hotspur., WARBURTON. He rather covers his face with a scarf, to hide. the ghastliness of death. JOHNSON.

P. 106, 1. 18. ignomy] So the word ignominy was formerly written. REED,

P. 106, 1. 26, Death hath not struck so fat a deer to-day,] There is in these lines a very natural mixture of the serious and ludicrous produced by the view of

Percy and Falstaff. I wish all play on words had been forborn. JOHNSON.

Fat is the reading of the first quarto 1598, the most authentick impression of this play, and of the folio. The other quartos have fair. MALONE.

So fat a deer, seems to be the better reading, for Turbervile, in The Terms of the Ages of all Beasts of Venerie and Chase, observes, "You shall say by anie deare, great deare, and not a fayre deare, unless it which in the fifth year is called a fayre rowe-bucke." ToOLLET.

be a rowe,

a

P. 106, 1. 27. many dearer, -] many of greater value. JOHNSON.

P. 106, 1.31. To powder is to salt. JOHNSON. P. 107, 1. 29. I am not a double man:] That is, I am not Falstaff and Perey together, though having Percy on my back, I seem double.

JOHNSON.

P. 108, 1. 10. I gave him this wound in the thigh: The very learned Lord Lyttelton observes, that Shakspeare has applied an action to Falstaff, which William of Malmsbury, tells us was really done by one of the Conqueror's knights to the body of King Harold. I do not however believe that Lord Lyttelton supposed Shakspeare to have read this old Monk. The story is told likewise by Matthew Paris and Matthew of Westminster; and by many of the English Chroniclers, Stowe, Speed, &c. &c. FARMER. P. 109, 1. 7. Thus ever did rebellion find rebuke,] Thomas Churchyard, in a catalogue of his own printed works, prefixed to his Challenge, 1595, informs us, that

he had published "a hooke called A Rebuke to Rebellion (dedicated) to the good old Earle of Bedford," STEEVENS.

NOTES TO THE
SECOND PART OF
KING HENRY IV..

The transactions comprised in this history take up about nine years. The action commences with the account of Hotspur's being defeated and killed (1403); and closes with the death of King Henry IV. and the coronation of King Henry V. (1412-13.) THEOBALD.

This play was entered at Stationers' Hall, August 23, 1600. STEEVENS.

The Second Part of King Henry IV. I suppose to have been written in 1598. See An Ättempt to ascertain the Order of Shakspeare's Plays. MALONE.

Mr. Upton thinks these two plays improperly called The First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. The first play ends, he says, with the peaceful settlement of Henry in the kingdom by the defeat of the rebels. This is hardly true; for the rebels are not yet finally suppressed. The second, he tells us, shows Henry the Fifth in the various lights of a good-natured rake, till, on his father's death, he assumes a more manly character. This is true; but this representation gives us no idea of a dramatic action. These two plays will appear to every reader, who shall peruse them without ambition of cri

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