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EVA. Leave your prabbles, o'man. What is the

focative cafe, William?

WILL. O vocativo, O.

EVA. Remember, William; focative is, caret.

QUICK. And that's a good root.

EVA. 'Oman, forbear.

MRS. PAGE. Peace.

EVA. What is your genitive cafe plural, William? WILL. Genitive cafe?

EVA. Ay.

WILL. Genitive,-borum, barum, horum.

QUICK. 'Vengeance of Jenny's cafe! fie on her! -never name her, child, if fhe be a whore. EVA. For fhame, 'oman.

QUICK. You do ill to teach the child fuch words: he teaches him to hick and to hack," which they'll do faft enough of themselves; and to call horum: -fie upon you!

EVA. 'Oman, art thou lunatics? haft thou no understandings for thy cafes, and the numbers of the genders? Thou art as foolish chriftian creatures, as I would defires.

MRS. PAGE. Pr'ythee, hold thy peace.

EVA. Shew me now, William, fome declenfions of your pronouns.

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borum, barum, horum.] Taylor, the water-poet, has borrowed this jeft, fuch as it is, in his character of a ftrumpet: "And come to horum, harum, whorum, then

"She proves a great proficient among men." STEEVENS.

to hick and to hack,] Sir William Blackstone thought that this, in Dame Quickly's language, fignifies" to ftammer or hefitate, as boys do in faying their leffons;" but Mr. Steevens, with more probability, fuppofes that it fignifies, in her dialect, to do mifchief. MALONE.

WILL. Forfooth, I have forgot.

Eva. It is ki, ke, cod; if you forget your kies, your kes, and your cods, you must be preeches. Go your ways, and play, go.

MRS. PAGE. He is a better scholar, than I thought he was.

EVA. He is a good sprag3 memory. Farewell, mistress Page.

MRS. PAGE. Adieu, good fir Hugh. [Exit Sir HUGH.] Get you home, boy.-Come, we ftay too long. [Exeunt,

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Enter FALSTAFF and Mrs. FORD.

FAL. Miftrefs Ford, your forrow hath eaten up my fufferance: I fee, you are obfequious in your love, and I profess requital to a hair's breadth; not

6 -your kies, your kæs, &c.] All this ribaldry is likewife found in Taylor the water-poet. See fol. edit. p. 106.

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STEEVENS. -you must be preeches.] Sir Hugh means to fay-you must he breech'd, i. e. flogg'd. To breech is to flog. So, in The Taming of the Shrew:

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"I am no breeching scholar in the schools." Again, in The Humorous Lieutenant, By Beaumont and Fletcher: Cry like a breech'd boy, not eat a bit." STEEVENS. 8 -Sprag⋅ -] I am told that this word is ftill used by the common people in the neighbourhood of Bath, where it fignifies ready, alert, fprightly, and is pronounced as if it was written-Sprack.

STEEVENS.

A fpackt lad or wench, fays Ray, is apt to learn, ingenious. REED. -your forrow hath eaten up my sufferance: I fee, you are obfequious in your love,] So, in Hamlet:

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66

for fome term

"To do obfequious forrow."

The epithet obfequious refers, in both inftances, to the ferioufnefs with which obfequies, or funeral ceremonies, are performed. STEEVENS,

only, mistress Ford, in the fimple office of love, but in all the accoutrement, complement, and ceremony of it. But are you fure of your husband now? MRS. FORD. He's a birding, fweet fir John.

MRS. PAGE. [Within.] What hoa, goffip Ford! what hoa!

MRS. FORD. Step into the chamber, fir John. [Exit FALSTAFF.

Enter Mrs. PAGE.

MRS. PAGE. How now, fweetheart? who's at home befides yourself?

MRS. FORD. Why, none but mine own people. MRS. PAGE. Indeed?

MRS. FORD. No, certainly:-Speak louder. [Afide. MRS. PAGE. Truly, I am fo glad you have nobody here.

MRS. FORD. Why?

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MRS. PAGE. Why, woman, your husband is in his old lunes again: he fo takes on yonder with my husband; fo rails against all married mankind; fo curfes all Eve's daughters, of what complexion foever; and fo buffets himself on the forehead, crying, Peer-out, peer-out! that any madness, I

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lunes] i. e. lunacy, frenzy. See a note on The Winter's Tale, A&t II. fc. ii. The folio, reads-lines, instead of lunes. The elder quartos-his old vaine again. STEEVENS.

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The correction was made by Mr. Theobald. MALONE.

he fo takes on -] To take on, which is now ufed for to grieve, feems to be used by our author for to rage. Perhaps it was applied to any paffion. JOHNSON.

It is used by Nash in Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the Devil, 1592, in the fame fenfe: "Some will take on like a madman, if they fee a pig come to the table." MALONE.

4-Peer-cut!] That is, appear horns. Shakspeare is at his old lunes. JOHNSON.

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ever yet beheld, seem'd but tameness, civility, and patience, to this diftemper he is in now: I am glad the fat knight is not here.

MRS. FORD. Why, does he talk of him?

MRS. PAGE. Of none but him; and fwears, he was carried out, the last time he search'd for him, in a basket protests to my husband, he is now here; and hath drawn him and the rest of their company from their sport, to make another experiment of his fufpicion: but I am glad the knight is not here; now he shall see his own foolery.

MRS. FORD. How near is he, mistress Page? MRS. PAGE. Hard by; at ftreet end; he will be here anon.

MRS. FORD. I am undone !-the knight is here. MRS. PAGE. Why, then you are utterly fhamed, and he's but a dead man. What a woman are you? Away with him, away with him; better fhame than murder.

MRS. FORD.Which way should he go? how fhould I bestow him? Shall I put him into the basket again?

Re-enter FALSTAFF.

FAL. No, I'll come no more i' the basket: May I not go out, ere he come?

MRS. PAGE. Alas, three of mafter Ford's brothers watch the door with pistols,' that none shall issue

Shakspeare here refers to the practice of children, when they call on a fnail to push forth his horns:

"Peer out, peer out, peer out of your hole,

"Or else I'll beat you black as a coal." HENLEY. swatch the door with piftols,] This is one of Shakspeare's anachronisms. DOUCE.

out; otherwise you might flip away ere he came. But what make you here?"

FAL. What fhall I do? I'll creep up into the chimney.

MRS. FORD. There they always ufe to discharge their birding-pieces: Creep into the kiln-hole." FAL. Where is it?

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MRS. FORD. He will feek there on my word. Neither prefs, coffer, cheft, trunk, well, vault, but he hath an abstract for the remembrance of fuch places, and goes to them by his note: There is no hiding you in the house.

FAL. I'll go out then.

MRS. PAGE. If you go out in your own femblance, you die, fir John. Unless you go out disguis'd,

Thus, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Thaliard fays,

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"Can get him once within my piftol's length," &c.

and Thaliard was one of the courtiers of Antiochus the third, who reigned 200 years before Chrift; a period rather too early for the ufe of piftols. STEEVENS.

• But what make you here?] i. e. what do you here. MALONE. The fame phrafe occurs in the first scene of As you like it :

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"Now, fir! what make you here?" STEEVENS.

-creep into the kiln-hole.] I fufpect, these words belong to Mrs. Page. See Mrs. Ford's next fpeech. That, however, may be a fecond thought; a correction of her former propofal: but the other fuppofition is more probable. MALONE.

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an abstract—] i. e. a lift, an inventory. STEEVENS. Rather, a fhort note or defcription. So, in Hamlet: "The abftrat, and brief chronicle of the times."

MALONE.

9 Mrs. Page. If you go, &c.] In the firft folio, by the mistake of the compofitor, the name of Mrs. Ford is prefixed to this speech and the next. For the correction now made I am anfwerable. The editor of the fecond folio put the two fpeeches together, and gave them both to Mrs. Ford. The threat of danger from without afcertains the first to belong to Mrs. Page. See her fpeech on Falstaff's re-entrance. MALONE.

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