350 Some guard some (of you) escort

  *these traitors Q’s ‘this traitour’ seems to suggest that the Archbishop alone is intended for the block; but as Stow and Holinshed agree, and as the play makes clear (cf. 334–7, 4.3.84–5), several rebels are executed.

  block of death block of wood on which the condemned are beheaded (OED block sb. 3b)

  351 SD *Although F indicates that the stage is cleared, Q does not. On the division of scenes, see 4.2n.

  4.2 *Although neither Q nor F marks this as a new scene, a general exit is clearly intended at the end of 4.1 (and is so designated in F), and the completion of the previous action is signalled by three rhyming couplets (4.1.346–51). Yet Shakespeare may have envisaged an un-broken sequence of episodes at Gaultree, much as he does at Shrewsbury in 1H4. Between the exit of the leaders and the entry of Falstaff and Collevile come an alarum and excursions during which the royal army, as commanded at 4.1.348, rounds up the rebels’ scattered stray. Good battle scenes were crowd pleasers, as Shakespeare knew; and although there is little to motivate the skirmishes here – far less hangs on them than hung on the battles at Shrewsbury or Bosworth Field – they add colour and excitement, and they also serve to bring Falstaff and Collevile onstage for their encounter.

  349 God] Q; Heauen F hath] Q; haue F 350 these traitors] F; this traitour Q SD] this edn; The captains guard Hastings, the Archbishop, and Mowbray. Oxf (after 337); not in QF 351 SD] F; not in Q

  4.2] Oxf; SCENE III. Capell; not in QF 0.1–2] Alarum Enter Falstaffe excursions Q; Enter Falstaffe and Colleuile. F 0.2] F; not in Q 2 place?] Q; place, I pray? F

  0.1 Alarum. Excursions. A SD common in Shakespeare’s history plays denoting the trumpet call to arms (OED alarm sb. 4a) and the confusion of sallies, sorties and skirmishes (OED excursion sb. 3) by which a few actors represented the clashes of entire armies.

  0.2 F’s placement of Collevile’s entry here offers strong evidence that the inclusion of his name in the massed entry at F 4.1.0 was a scribal error. Editors since Capell have often expanded the SD to read ‘Enter Falstaff and Colevile, meeting’; but as Davison suggests, it is equally plausible that they enter together with swords drawn, one of them backing the other onto the stage.

  1 condition social rank (OED sb. 10a)

  3–4 Collevile of the Dale Holinshed (3.530) includes a ‘sir Iohn Colleuill of the Dale’ among those rebels beheaded for conspiracy at Durham, after the King had marched there from York on his way to attack the Earl of Northumberland. The historical Collevile played no part at Gaultree. Though editors typically standardize the spelling of his name to ‘Coleville’, the spelling most frequently used in QF and the demands of scansion (cf. 60, 61, 71) suggest that the name was pronounced as three syllables (kŏl-ĕ-vīl).

  8–9 dungeon … Dale The joke is predicated on dales’ being known as deep places and possibly, like dungeons, as pits associated with hell (Cam1). I delete punctuation between enough and so in order to clarify the comparison being made: the dungeon will be sufficiently deep for Collevile still to be called ‘of the Dale’.

  12 sweat for you ‘have to exert energy (fight) to overcome you’. This anticipates the use of sweat in the second Epilogue, which promises a sequel in which ‘Falstaff shall die of a sweat’ (30), perhaps incurred by syphilis.

  3–4] prose Q; F lines Sir: / Dale. / 7 shall be still] Q (shalbe); shall still be F 8 enough so] enough, so Q; enough: so F

  13 they … lovers ‘The drops of sweat I shed in overcoming you will provoke tears in your friends’ (OED lover sb. 1a).

  14 rouse up stir up, awaken within yourself (OED v. 4)

  fear and trembling a biblical phrase – see Ephesians, 6.5: ‘Seruantes obey them that are [your] bodily maisters with feare & trembling’ – and possibly a vestige of Falstaff’s parody of Puritan cant

  14–15 do observance pay homage (as by kneeling)

  18–20 I … name ‘The size of my belly proclaims my name to the world in every language’; school is figurative for a large number (OED sb.2 2a), as of fish, but also plays on the idea of a place where those who teach languages gather. Recalling the image of ‘RUMOUR painted full of tongues’ (Ind.0.1–2), Falstaff shamelessly trades on the false report of his valour at Shrewsbury.

  20 An … but if only I had

  21 indifferency ordinary size

  were conditional: would be

  active in the military sense. Falstaff claims that if he were thinner, he would perform heroic deeds exceeding those for which he is famous.

  22 womb belly (OED sb. 1a). Falstaff humorously compares his own paunch with the rounded belly of a pregnant woman.

  undoes me prevents me being the most active (OED undo v. 8)

  23.2 Sir John Blunt No doubt intended to be among ‘the rest’ in Q’s SD, Blunt is addressed at 73, though he remains mute. He is similarly included in SDs at 3.1.31 and 5.2.41, though he is mute in both scenes. Shakespeare apparently found Blunt a convenient character to swell a scene.

  24 heat most intense period (as of fighting: see OED sb. 12a)

  follow pursue the enemy

  17 thought] Q(corr), F; thoght Q(uncorr) 18 tongues] Q(corr), F; tongs Q(uncorr) 23.1] Enter Iohn Westmerland, and the rest. Q; Enter Prince Iohn, and Westmerland. F; Enter Prince John of Lancaster, Westmoreland, Blunt, and others. Cam 24 further] Q; farther F

  25 powers soldiers, troops. Cf. 1.1.133n.

  25 SD2 retreat trumpet signal to call back an army in pursuit. Sounding a retreat would make sense after Prince John has ordered that the pursuit be stopped (‘Call in the powers’). Q’s ‘Retraite’ is separated from the SD for Westmorland’s entry at 23, close to the right margin, suggesting that it may have been written in the margin of the copy-text and subject to compositorial error in its placement.

  28 tardy tricks delaying tactics

  29 break … back i.e. get you hanged. The common nickname for the gallows, the wooden horse, summons a humorous image of Falstaff as a rider whose weight will prove too much for the horse to bear.

  30–1 but … thus if this were not the case. Falstaff is being ironic: he means that he would be sorry if either (1) the gallows did not break under his weight (thus making hanging impossible), or (2) he weren’t subject to the Prince’s rebuke, since, in these thankless times, rebuke is itself proof of one’s valour (31–2).

  31 I … but double negative: ‘I always knew that’

  check reproof

  33 motion movement of the body

  34 expedition speed. Falstaff asks rhetorically whether the Prince thinks he has the ability to move as swiftly as the mind can think. Cf. Ham 1.5.29–31: ‘that I with wings as swift / As meditation or the thoughts of love / May sweep to my revenge’.

  35 very … possibility conflation of time and distance: extremest inch is transferred from the ground Falstaff covered to the nearly impossible speed with which he covered it. His use of very to intensify a superlative form insists that he could move no faster.

  36 foundered … posts lamed more than 180 post-horses, presumably with hard riding. As post-horses were established (or ‘posted’) at every 10 miles, Falstaff claims to have ridden nearly 2,000 miles – an absurd boast, but one in keeping with his exuberantly false claims elsewhere. See also 1H4 2.4.236, where Prince Harry calls Falstaff a ‘horse-back-breaker’, and 29 above. For posts, see Ind.4n. and OED sb.2 1.

  25 SD1] Rowe; not in QF SD2 Sound] this edn retreat] Q (Retraite) (after 23) 36 foundered] Q (foundred), F (fowndred)

  36–7 travel-tainted weakened or wearied from riding (OED taint v. 2a, 3a)

  37 immaculate unstained (in reputation)

  40 He … yielded Falstaff’s truthful admission, so different from his lie about killing Hotspur in combat, may spring from his pride that Collevile surrendered owing to fear of Falstaff’s fierce reputation.

  that so that

  41 hook-nosed … Rome an irreverent characterization of Julius Caesar. The nose is the most prominent feature of Caesar’s profile in his medallion portrait, printed in North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives (1579), one of Shakespeare’s favourite sources.

  *There, cousin Falstaff, impersonating Caesar and, as ever, delighting in effrontery, uses these words to address Prince John as a familiar: cf. 25. Editors, however, have not been happy with them, conjecturing that the writing in Q’s copy-text wasn’t clear, that the compositor misread (finding further evidence in the catchword’s variant spelling ‘their’) and that F, or its copy-text, omitted the words owing to their unintelligibility. Humphreys’s ‘three words’ has been widely accepted, in part because he plausibly argues that Shakespeare borrowed the phrase from North’s translation of Plutarch’s ‘Life of Julius Caesar’, where, against a marginal note that ‘Caesar wryteth three wordes to certifie his victory [over King Pharnaces]’, the text reports that Caesar ‘onely wrote three words vnto Antius of Rome, Veni, Vidi, Vici; to wit, I came, I saw, I ouercame’ (Lives, 787). Falstaff’s translation of the Latin, of course, has five words, not three. GWW speculates that Falstaff may present Collevile to – or make him kneel before – the Prince on There, cousin, an intriguing staging possibility. It is presumptuous for a commoner, even one as irreverent as Falstaff, to address royalty as cousin.

  41–2 I … overcame The original Latin is from Caesar’s War Commentaries, though Shakespeare may have derived his translation from North: see 41n. above. Falstaff anticipates the tripartite pattern at 2.2.123–4.

  43 The line has proverbial force. Cf. ‘It is more of your goodness than my desert’ (Dent, G337).

  44 Here … him Falstaff’s ready surrender to the Prince of a prisoner he is entitled to keep is a magnanimous gesture. It stands in marked contrast to Hotspur’s refusal to hand his prisoners over to the King in 1H4 (1.1.90–4).

  41 There, cousin:] Q (there cosin,) (catchword their); there, Caesar, – Theobald; your cousin, – Capell; my cousin Collier; their true consul (Vaughan); the cozener Ard1; their Caesar, Sisson; three words, Ard2; not in F

  45 booked recorded

  47 particular ballad ballad written especially about me. Ballads on all sorts of subjects, printed as broadsides and illustrated with woodcuts, were hawked in the streets by ballad-mongers (cf. WT 4.4.262ff.), and it was not uncommon for a person to commission a ballad glorifying his own adventures. Bottom imagines singing just such a ballad before the Duke in MND 4.1.212–17. In 1H4 Falstaff threatens to have ballads written to expose his accomplices in the Gad’s Hill robbery and ‘sung to filthy tunes’ (2.2.43–4); and in Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, Joan Trash threatens Leatherhead, ‘and thou wrong’st mee, … I’ll finde a friend shall right me, and make a ballad of thee’ (2.2.15–17).

  48–53 To … noble The tortuous syntax requires explanation. The first if clause sets a condition (i.e. if I am forced to have this ballad written) which, once met, will result in the next two if clauses: (1) you will ‘all show like gilt twopences to me’, and (2) I shall outshine you as a full moon does the stars. But Falstaff expresses these results as hypothetical negatives: if these things don’t happen, ‘believe not the word of the noble’. The main clause thus, in typically Falstaffian fashion, challenges the listener to take his word as that of a man nobly born. Following Cowl (Ard1), Humphreys suggests that Falstaff is parodying the grandiloquent style of earlier stage heroes and especially, in the final lines, Basilisco’s boast in Soliman and Perseda, 1.3.81–2: ‘I repute myself no coward; / For humilitie shall mount’.

  49–50 like … me like counterfeits compared to me. Silver twopences were sometimes gilded and passed off as half-crowns, which were the same size but worth 30 pence.

  51 o’ershine outshine

  52 cinders … element stars of heaven, element harking back to the clear sky at 50

  52–3 show … her ‘look no bigger than the heads of pins compared with the full moon (her)’

  53 the noble Falstaff caps his bravado with a coinage pun: he has out-performed other nobles in battle just as a noble, a gold coin valued at six shillings eight pence, outshines the gilt twopences whose value he has just disparaged (cf. 49–50n.).

  54 let desert mount let my deserving rise to its rightful place in ‘the clear sky of fame’ (50). Falstaff requests nothing less than an apotheosis.

  46 by the Lord] Q; I sweare F 47 else] Q; not in F 48 on ’t] Q; of it F 52 pins’ heads] Q (pinnes heads), F (Pinnes-heads)

  55 heavy either substantial in merit (spoken ironically) or heinous (as in Ham 4.1.12: ‘O heavy deed!’). In either case the Prince is punning about Falstaff’s weight. The subject of this and the next four lines is desert (54).

  57 thick another pun: opaque, or of great bulk (like Falstaff’s body)

  59 do me good promote my fortunes (Shaaber, Variorum). For similar use of the phrase, cf. R3 4.3.33, MA 1.1.271 and MV 3.5.6. Humphreys cites a letter written to Sir Robert Cecil on 28 April 1595, recommending for preferment a Mr Buck, ‘whom Her Majesty … herself named, showing a gracious disposition to do him good, and think him fit … for one of two offices’ (Hist. Mss, Hatfield Papers, 5.189).

  what you will whatever you want

  60, 61, 71 Collevile Here, trisyllabic pronunciation ensures a pentameter line. See 3–4n.

  61 famous rebel There is nothing in the sources to confirm this assessment of Collevile; indeed, his alacrity in surrendering may seem cowardly. Nevertheless, the compliment inflates Falstaff’s achievement and invites the next line.

  62 true loyal. Falstaff may be reminding the Prince of his gesture at 44: ‘here I yield him.’

  63 betters those of higher rank

  64 led me hither both physically, to Gaultree, and politically, to the point of capture. The line implies reproach.

  64–5 Had … have Collevile intimates that he, like Mowbray (see 4.1.147–59, 183–96), argued against a negotiated peace settlement, leading some editors to believe that Shakespeare may once have intended a role for him in 4.1, where F includes his name in the initial SD. Alternatively, he may speak simply as a disgruntled soldier who thinks he knew better than his commanders.

  64 been … me taken my advice

  65 should would

  dearer at greater cost; i.e. not without a fight

  66–78 Falstaff deflates Collevile’s bravado with a withering comparison: where the rebel leaders sold themselves, Collevile ‘gave’ himself away. Falstaff’s thanks to Collevile for making a gift of himself is satirical.

  69 left pursuit stopped your pursuit (of the rebel soldiers)

  70 Retreat is made The signal for retreat has been sounded: cf. 25 SD2.

  execution stayed i.e. the massacre of the scattered stray (4.1.348) halted or prevented

  72 To York elision of events that occurred in 1405. Holinshed reports that both the Archbishop and Mowbray were ‘beheaded the morrow after Whitsundaie in a place without the citie’ of York (3.530), while Collevile and others were beheaded in Durham some time later. See 3–4n.

  present immediate

  73 Blunt the only time in the play he is mentioned by name in a speech. See 23.2n.

  sure securely

  74 dispatch we let us hasten (OED v. 8)

  75 the King … sick This is unhistorical. Holinshed reports that after Gaultree, the King himself supervised the executions of the rebels at York, ‘punished by greeuous fines the citizens of Yorke (which had borne armour on their archbishops side against him)’, and then led ‘an armie of thirtie and seuen thousand fighting men’ north to encounter Northumberland (5.530). Cf. Stow, Annales, 530.

  sore dangerously (OED adv. 1b)

  76 go before precede

  67 gratis] Q; not in F 69 Now,] Q; not in F 73 SD] Exit with Colleuile. F; Exeunt Blunt and others with Colevile. Cam; Exit Colevile guarded. / Collier; not in Q

  78 sober unhurried; showing no trace of urgency (OED adj. 5b)

  79–81 *Though Q and F print these lines as metrical prose, like Pistol’s (cf. 2.4.157–200n.), F’s arrangement of them on the page and its addition of ‘pray’ to make a decasyllabic line at 81 have encouraged some editors to print them as three regular verse lines ending at go, court and report, the final two forming a rhymed couplet. But the effect is forced: Falstaff does not speak verse elsewhere and has no reason to do so here.

  79 leave permission

  80 Gloucestershire the first identification in the play of Gloucestershire as the home of Justice Shallow. At 3.2.38, Shallow’s mention of Stamford Fair suggests a Lincolnshire location more appropriate for the play. Conceivably, Falstaff’s line is a vestige of an early draft of the play in which he visited Shallow on his way from London to Coventry, making a stop in Gloucestershire feasible. See 3.2n.

  81 stand … lord ‘act the part of a friend’ (OED stand v. 15c); cf. 3.2.220–1, 230.

  82–3 I … deserve a pledge not unlike the one Hal makes to Falstaff at Shrewsbury. Cf. 1H4 5.4.157–8.

  82 condition (1) capacity as commander-in-chief, (2) role as duke (cf. 84–5), or (3) disposition to be charitable

  84 would … wit wish you had the intelligence (to do so)

  ’twere better it would be worth more

  85 dukedom Falstaff may be alluding to Prince John’s condition mentioned at 82 (Ard1).

  85–8 Good … wine plays on the proverbial expression that ‘Good wine makes good blood’ (Dent, W461). In this epilogue to his military career, Falstaff wryly acknowledges his ‘Dutch courage’ or ‘pot valour’: if wine makes men brave, he jokes, then those who do without it are fools and cowards (93).

  85–6 sober-blooded temperate, or humourless

  77 SD] Craig subst.; not in QF 80 Gloucestershire] Q (Glostershire), F 81 lord in] Q; Lord, ’pray, in F

  82–3] F; prose Q 83 SD] Capell subst.; Exit. F; not in Q 84 had the] Q; had but the F

  88 never none F standardizes this colloquialism to ‘never any’.