demure serious, reserved (OED adj. 2)

  88–9 come … proof (1) ‘who amount to much or fulfil their potential’ (OED proof sb. 7); but also, with a pun on proof as the strength of alcoholic content (OED sb. 10a), (2) ‘who ever take a drink’. Cf. 2.4.118.

  89–91 for … green-sickness The syntax is awkward: making many fish meals parallels thin drink as a subject of the verb doth … over-cool. Humphreys suggests that these lines may be indebted to a speech by Bacchus in Nashe’s Summer’s Last Will and Testament (1094–8): ‘I beseech the gods of good fellowship, thou maist fall into a consumption with drinking smal beere. Euery day maist thou eate fish and let it sticke in the midst of thy maw, for want of a cup of wine to swim away in. Venison be Venenum to thee’ (Works, 3.268).

  89 thin drink beer, and perhaps small beer, a weak or watered-down drink disparaged by the Prince at 2.2.5–11. The effect on the blood of wine versus ale (barley-broth), a drink stronger than beer, is debated in H5 when the French Constable, amazed by the courage of the English forces, asks, ‘Can sodden water, / A drench for sur-reined jades, their barley-broth, / Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat? / And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine, / Seem frosty?’ (3.5.18–22).

  90 making … meals eating a lot of fish. Falstaff subscribes to the belief that red meat makes a man virile and courageous; fish, the opposite.

  91 green-sickness chlorosis, a form of anaemia mostly affecting girls at the onset of puberty, so named because it turns the skin a greenish tint

  92 get wenches beget daughters. Falstaff’s claim that weak drink and a fish diet cause a man to father children of the ‘weaker sex’ is contradicted by the proverbial wisdom of the day, which held that ‘Who goes drunk to bed begets but a girl’ (Dent, B195).

  93 should would

  94 but for inflammation ‘if it weren’t for the spirit that drink inflames in us’

  sherris sack a Spanish white wine (OED sack sb.3 1a, b) imported from Xeres (hence, sherris, modern Jerez). See 1.2.198n. on new … sack.

  95 twofold operation The powers over the brain and blood which Falstaff attributes to sack are not entirely his own invention. He freely draws from medical lore of the day (which was in turn indebted to Hippocrates), and particularly from Timothy Bright’s Treatise of Melancholy (1586; 93 – 9), which details how ‘wine, and strong drinke … haue a power to comfort the braine, and hart, and affect all our bodie throughout with celeritie and quicknesse’.

  95, 96 ascends me, dries me On use of the ethical dative, see 2.1.40–1n.

  88 none] Q; any F

  96 dull sluggish

  96–7 crudy vapours thick or dense – crudy is an obsolete form of ‘curdy’ (OED adj. 2) – spirits or exhalations which were said to develop within bodily organs, especially the stomach, and then rise to the brain, obstructing it and causing ill health (OED vapour sb.pl. 3a). Humphreys cites Timothy Bright’s analogous description of melancholy: ‘grosse, dull, and of fewe comfortable spirits; and plentifully replenished with such as darken all the clernesse of those sanguineous, and … defile their purenesse with the fogge of that slime’ (Treatise, 100). Cf. 95n.

  97 environ envelop

  apprehensive alert, discerning, responsive (OED adj. 3)

  98 quick lively

  forgetive imaginative, inventive; apparently a Shakespearean coinage from ‘forge’. Cf. H5 Chorus.5.23: ‘the quick forge and working-house of thought’, and Ham 4.7.88: ‘in forgery of shapes and tricks’. Pronounced with a soft g and with emphasis on the first syllable.

  fiery ardent, spirited

  99 shapes imaginary or spectral forms (OED sb. 6c)

  99–100 which … wit The syntax is confusing. If which refers to shapes, then it is probably the subject of the verb becomes – a common use of a singular verb with a plural subject (cf. 1.1.33n.). If which refers to sherris sack, however, the subject and verb are in agreement, though the antecedent is more distant. The tongue would seem to be in apposition to the voice to which these fanciful shapes are delivered o’er; the collective voice and tongue then give utterance, or birth, to wit, with delivered reinforcing the birthing metaphor. Conceivably, though less grammatically, tongue stands not in apposition to voice but as itself the subject of becomes: once the shapes have been delivered to the voice, the tongue – as agent of the voice – gives birth to them as speech and thus becomes wit.

  102 settled not flowing, coagulated (OED ppl.a. 6)

  liver by classical tradition, the seat of the passions. See 1.2.176–7n.

  103 white On whiteness as a badge of cowardice, see R3 4.4.464: ‘White-livered runagate’, and H5 3.2.32: ‘For Bardolph, he is white-livered and red-faced’.

  105 parts’ extremes the extremities of different parts of the body

  96 crudy] Q, F (cruddie)

  106 illumineth the face a reference to the flush which frequently accompanies too much drink and is characteristic of alcoholics, as in descriptions of Bardolph (cf. 2.2.73, 2.4.333 and 337). Falstaff ennobles the red face as a beacon that inspires courage in the rest of the body.

  107 little kingdom, man The notion of the human body as a microcosm of the body politic was a popular trope in Renaissance literature, and this passage develops it with comic and physiological flair. For more serious applications, see R2 5.5.1 – 11, KJ 4.2.245–6, JC 2.1.68–9, and especially Menenius’ fable of the belly in Cor 1.1.95–159.

  108–9 vital … heart The heart is, by analogy, the commander of lively troops (vital commoners) who, coming from the interior of the country (inland), gather together (muster) to serve him: commoners here is another term for spirits, highly refined fluids which were said to come in three forms – natural, animal and vital – and were ‘supposed to permeate the blood and chief organs of the body’ (OED spirit sb. 16a), thereby determining both physical and spiritual characteristics.

  108 petty of lesser importance, subordinate (OED adj. 3a)

  109 muster me ‘assemble for the purpose of enlistment’ (OED v. 2c), here with the ethical dative

  109–10 great … up tautology: swollen and inflated (as with courage or pride)

  112–15 skill … use Falstaff attributes to sack the power to teach the soldier how to wield his weapon bravely and to enable the scholar to use his hoard of learning. Syntactically, so that appears to introduce two dependent clauses which detail the consequences of not drinking sack: (1) ‘skill is nothing’, and (2) ‘learning, a mere hoard’, with the comma replacing the verb. Wilson (Cam1) points out a parallel passage in Nashe’s Summer’s Last Will and Testament (984–90): ‘So, I tell thee, giue a soldier wine before he goes to battaile … it makes him forget all scarres and wounds, and fight in the thickest of his enemies, as though hee were but at foyles amongst his fellows. Giue a scholler wine, going to his booke, or being about to inuent, it sets a new poynt on his wit, it glazeth it, it scowres it, it giues him acumen’ (Works, 3.265).

  113–14 hoard … devil alludes to the superstition that buried treasure was guarded by evil spirits

  114–15 commences … act possibly puns on graduation exercises at Cambridge and Oxford. William Harrison, in his Description of England, 2.3, comments that ‘In Oxford this solemnitee is called an Act, but in Cambridge they vse the French word Commensement’ (75). See also Tyrwhitt, 97–8). Falstaff thus humorously implies that sack confers the same distinction as a university degree. See Cowl (Ard1) and Humphreys (Ard2); also OED commence v. 4c; act sb. 8.

  106 illumineth] Q; illuminateth F 110 with this] Q; with his F 111 sherris, so that] Q; Sherris. So, that F 113 hoard] Q (whoord), F (Hoord)

  in act into action

  115 Hereof comes it ‘thus it happens’

  117–18 he hath … manured an echo of the Bishop of Carlisle in R2, who prophesies that ‘The blood of English shall manure the ground’ (4.1.138). Falstaff avouches that the manuring (with sherry) has happened already.

  118 husbanded cultivated. Cf. 3.2.114.

  119 endeavour exertion, effort: humorous application of a word for physical labour to the labour of drinking

  good store a large quantity (OED store sb. 4). In Famous Victories, the Vintner’s Boy reports that ‘the young Prince and three or four more of his companions … called for wine good store’ (2.81–3).

  fertile extends the agrarian simile and means, figuratively, promoting thought and action

  120 that so that

  hot ardent, passionate, hot-blooded (OED adj. 6a) and possibly sexually active (6c), in contrast to the cold-bloodedness of his father and his brother John

  121 human secular, as opposed to divine. Q’s ‘humane’ was the common spelling of ‘human’ until the 18th century.

  122 thin potations weak or watered-down liquor (OED sb. 2). Cf. thin drink at 89.

  126 Gloucestershire See 80n.

  127 Master, Esquire The compounding of titles is sarcastic: Falstaff is mocking the man he is about to fleece. Esquire was a term for a member of the landed gentry. See 3.2.57n.

  128 temp’ring warming, softening. Wax was softened between the fingers to prepare it for use as a seal (OED temper v. 13).

  117 sterile] Q, F (stirrill) 121 human] Q (humane); not in F 123.1] Q (after 124), F 128 temp’ring] Q (tempring); tempering F

  129 seal with him play on words: (1) reach an agreement with him, or, continuing the metaphor of tempering, (2) mould him, like wax, to my purposes

  4.3 This scene between father and son is an imaginative fusion of several sources. Holinshed briefly recounts that the Prince ‘tooke awaie’ his father’s crown after attendants had told him the King was dead (3.541). The dramatization of this episode in Famous Victories is closer to Shakespeare’s version and may have provided the source for the Prince’s reply to the King’s denunciation of him. In Daniel, the King himself addresses the crown before going to sleep; but portions of his advice to the Prince, after he has awoken, are echoed closely by Shakespeare (CW, 3.119–30). Shakespeare makes little direct use of an episode narrated by Holinshed, dated 1412, in which the Prince, seeking to allay his father’s suspicion that he wants to usurp the throne, kneels before him, hands him a dagger and vows ‘that his life was not so deare to him, that he wished to liue one daie with his [father’s] displeasure’ (3.539); but the dramatization of this episode in Famous Victories may have inspired the overall shape and tone of Shakespeare’s scene.

  The location of the scene is identified as the Jerusalem Chamber (360–2), mentioned by Holinshed (3.541) as the room in which the King died. The chamber itself, however, is not in the royal palace at Westminster, where this scene takes place, but in Westminster Abbey. The reference to Jerusalem brings full circle Henry’s wish to make a journey to the Holy Land on a crusade he first proposed at the conclusion of R2, here ironically fulfilled.

  0.1–3 *Q’s inclusion of the ghost character Kent in the entry is further evidence that the copy-text for Q was Shakespeare’s holograph: cf. the entries in Q of Fauconbridge at 1.3.0 and Blunt at 3.1.31. The name Kent, like that of Harcourt at 93, was apparently chosen at random out of Holinshed. An Edmund, Earl of Kent, rescued Thomas, Duke of Clarence, in an action against the French in 1405, and his son led a raid against the French with Warwick in 1412. See 3.1.1n.

  The King’s illness has seemed to many editors to require that he be carried in on a chair or even a bed, and usually his entry is staged in this way. In the corresponding scene in Famous Victories, the King is apparently too weak to walk and refers to his chair (8.26); and here his unawareness that Clarence is present may suggest that the he is indeed sitting or reclining by 16–17, and thus unable to look around. There is no compelling reason, however, that the King should not enter under his own power. It makes theatrical sense for him to sit at the point he mentions feeling unwell and calls those in attendance to come near him (102–11).

  130 SD] F; not in Q 4.3] Oxf; Scena Secunda F; SCENE IV. Capell; not in Q 0.1–3 Enter … GLOUCESTER] Q (Enter the King, Warwike, Kent, Thomas duke of Clarence, Humphrey of Gloucester.); F (Enter King, Warwicke, Clarence, Gloucester.) 0.3 and Attendants] Cam2 subst.; and others. / Capell; not in QF 1 God] Q; Heauen F

  2 debate struggle

  3 higher fields battlefields in which they will fight in a holy (higher) rather than a civil cause. Henry had intended to undertake a crusade early in his kingship (R2 5.6.49–50) but had had to break off his plans in order to cope with civil rebellion (1H4 1.147–8). He has renewed his wish to go to the Holy Land at 3.1.108, but once again rebellion, compounded by his own ill health (cf. 3.1.104–6), prevents him from acting on it. His motives for undertaking a crusade are debatable. In R2 they seem penitential, sprung from his need to atone for King Richard’s murder, and there is no reason to think that his desire to war against the infidel in 1H4 is any less genuine. Similarly, his motives in this scene would be less seriously in doubt if he did not advise Prince Harry at 338–44 to undertake foreign wars as a shrewd means to deflect political opposition. The machiavellianism of such deathbed advice, probably inspired by Daniel’s account in CW, 3.127, encourages a more cynical reassessment of Henry’s motives and potentially colours his earlier references to a crusade with political opportunism.

  4 sanctified i.e. because used in a holy cause

  5 addressed prepared

  power army. Cf. 1.1.133.

  6 substitutes in absence deputies

  invested furnished with royal authority

  7 level readily accessible (OED adj. 3a)

  8 we want I lack

  9 pause us The verb is used reflexively.

  10 Come underneath can be restrained by

  12–13 Humphrey … brother?] Pope; prose QF 12 Gloucester] Q (Gloster), F

  17 presence attendance

  18 would wishes

  19–48 Political subtext enriches the significance of this speech. Stow reports that the King on his deathbed expressed a fear to Prince Harry that ‘after my departure from this life, some discord shall grow and arise between thee and thy brother Thomas duke of Clarence, whereby the realme may be brought to destruction and misery’; for both princes have ‘great stomacke and courage’ and Clarence, ‘through his high mind,’ may ‘make some enterprise against thee, intending to vsurp vpon thee’ (Annales, 545). Shakespeare makes little of the potential for fraternal betrayal, but the King’s conversation with Harry in Stow is the probable source of his admonition to Clarence here, and the Prince’s sober pledge in Stow to ‘honor & loue my brethren aboue al men, as long as they be to me true, faithfull and obedient’ (545) may prompt the King’s charitable assessment of him at 30–41.

  20 chance does it happen (OED v. 1a)

  24 offices functions

  effect perform

  26 greatness kingship

  27 omit neglect

  blunt make less of (OED v. 2); put at risk

  28 grace sovereign favour

  29 careless … will indifferent to his interests

  18 SD] this edn 28 lose] QF(loose)

  30 gracious merciful, compassionate: a term conventionally applied to royalty

  30, 36 observed shown due respect

  32 meting doling out (OED mete v.1 6). Q’s ‘meet’ was an alternate spelling for ‘mete’, though it is possible, as Furnivall (1909) does, to keep the original spelling to signify ‘meeting the need of charity’ or giving alms. Other editors, suspecting a scribal or compositorial misreading of e for l, prefer F’s ‘melting’ as an attribute of charity: yielding to tender emotion.

  33 flint hard, implacable

  34 humourous capricious, playing on the belief in four bodily humours whose changes were thought to govern our dispositions, and one of which, moisture, is appropriate for winter

  35 flaws … day icy squalls at daybreak. OED glosses ‘flaw’ as both a snowflake (sb.1 1) and a sudden gust of wind (sb.2 1): sudden at 34 makes the latter gloss preferable. Metaphorically, flaws can be sharp bursts of passion (sb.2 2), but a literal reading seems to be required for the simile to work.

  congealed cold or icy; congealèd

  36 temper disposition, mood

  38 blood passion, mood

  39 time F’s ‘line’, preferred by some editors, suggests that Clarence may play his brother like a fish, but the image seems inappropriate and at odds with the whale simile at 40.

  40 Till that until

  whale on ground Holinshed (3.1259) reports that a whale was stranded near Ramsgate in 1574.

  41 Confound exhaust

  working exertion

  41–8 Learn … gunpowder Henry’s exhortation to Clarence is akin to Polonius’s aphoristic advice to Laertes in its rapid metamorphosis of images and puns: ‘Those friends thou hast … / Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel’ (Ham 1.3.61–2). As Wilson notes (Cam1), the hoop of steel used to make barrels (cf. rib of steel, 2.3.54) here melts into a ring of gold, emblematic of Clarence’s power to ensure fraternal union, and then into a chalice (vessel) filled with the communal blood of the princes. As at Gaultree, however, the chalice used for pledging amity may in fact be tainted with venom; but just as the chalice of family loyalty Shall never leak, so the united blood vessel of the princes should be able to withstand all attempts to make it burst.

  32 meting] Q (meeting); melting F 33 notwithstanding, being] F; notwithstanding being Q he is] Q; hee’s F 38 inclined] Q (inclind), F (enclin’d) 39 time] Q; Line F

  45 suggestion suspicion, promptings to disloyalty (OED sb. 1a); probably pronounced as four syllables

  46 force perforce willy-nilly. Cf. 4.1.116. The King thinks it inevitable that political circumstances will work to turn the princes against one another: see 19–48n.

  47–8 though … gunpowder Cf. RJ 5.1.60 – 5: ‘A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear / … that the trunk may be discharged of breath / As violently as hasty powder fired / Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s womb’.

  47 though it even though the venom

  48 aconitum aconite, commonly called wolfsbane, a potently poisonous plant which Elizabethans thought invented by Hecate

  rash violent; operating quickly and strongly (OED adj. 2b)

  49 observe See 30, 36n.