your bold-beating oaths, under the shelter of your honour! You will not do it, you ? PIST. I do relent; What would'st thou more of man? Enter ROBIN. ROB. Sir, here's a woman would speak with you. Enter Mistress QUICKLY. QUICK. Give your worship good-morrow. QUICK. Not so, an't please your worship. QUICK. I'll be sworn; as my mother was, the first hour I was born. FAL. I do believe the swearer: What with me? his sign pulled down, and his lattice born Again, in The Miseries of Inforc'd Marriage, 1607: 66 away." 'tis treason to the red lattice, enemy to the signpost." Hence the present chequers. Perhaps the reader will express some surprize, when he is told that shops, with the sign of the chequers, were common among the Romans. See a view of the left-hand street of Pompeii, (No. 9,) presented by Sir William Hamilton, (together with several others, equally curious,) to the Antiquary Society. STEEVENS. The following passage in Braithwaite's Strapado for the Divell, 1615, confirms Mr. Steevens's observation: "To the true discoverer of secrets, Monsieur Bacchus, master-gunner of the pottlepot ordnance, prime founder of red lattices," &c. in King Henry IV. Part II. Falstaff's page, speaking of Bardolph, says, "he called me even now, my lord, through a red lattice, and I could discern no part of his face from the window." MALONE. This designation of an ale-house is not altogether lost, though the original meaning of the word is, the sign being converted into a green lettuce; of which an instance occurs in Brownlow Street, Holborn.-In The Last Will and Testament of Lawrence Lucifer, the old Batchiler of Limbo, at the end of the "Blacke Booke," 1604, 4to. is the following passage : 66 watched sometimes ten houres together in an ale-house, ever and anon peeping forth, and sampling thy nose with the red Lattis." DOUCE. QUICK. Shall I vouchsafe your worship a word or two ? FAL. Two thousand, fair woman; and I'll vouchfafe thee the hearing. QUICK. There is one mistress Ford, sir ;-I pray, come a little nearer this ways:-I myself dwell with master doctor Caius. FAL. Well, on: Mistress Ford, you say, QUICK. Your worship says very true: I pray your worship, come a little nearer this ways. FAL. I warrant thee, nobody hears ;-mine own people, mine own people. QUICK. Are they so? make them his servants! Heaven bless them, and FAL. Well: Mistress Ford ;-what of her? QUICK. Why, sir, she's a good creature. Lord, lord! your worship's a wanton: Well, heaven forgive you, and all of us, I pray! as FAL. Mistress Ford;-come, mistress Ford,QUICK. Marry, this is the short and the long of it; you have brought her into such a canaries', 'tis wonderful. The best courtier of them all, when the court lay at Windsor, could never have brought her to such a canary. Yet there has been knights, and lords, and gentlemen, with their coaches; I warrant you, coach after coach, letter after letter, gift after gift; smelling so sweetly, (all musk,) and so rushling, I warrant you, in silk and gold; and in 7 canaries,] This is the name of a brisk light dance, and therefore is properly enough used in low language for any hurry or perturbation. JOHNSON. So, Nash, in Pierce Pennyless his Supplication, 1595, says: "A merchant's wife jets it as gingerly, as if she were dancing the canaries." It is highly probable, however, that canaries is only a mistake of Mrs. Quickly's for quandaries; and yet the Clown, in As You Like It, says, we that are true lovers, run into strange capers." STEEVENS. 66 8 LAY at Windsor,] i. e. resided there. MALONE. such alligant terms; and in such wine and sugar of the best, and the fairest, that would have won any woman's heart; and, I warrant you, they could never get an eye-wink of her. I had myself twenty angels given me this morning: but I defy all angels, (in any such sort, as they say,) but in the way of honesty :-and, I warrant you, they could never get her so much as sip on a cup with the proudest of them all: and yet there has been earls, nay, which is more, pensioners; but, I warrant you, all is one with her. FAL. But what says she to me? be brief, my good she Mercury. QUICK. Marry, she hath received your letter; for the which she thanks you a thousand times: and she gives you to notify, that her husband will be absence from his house between ten and eleven. 9 earls, nay, which is more, PENSIONERS;] This may be illustrated by a passage in Gervase Holles's Life of the First Earl of Clare, Biog. Brit. Art. Holles: "I have heard the Earl of Clare say, that when he was pensioner to the queen, he did not know a worse man of the whole band than himself; and that all the world knew he had then an inheritance of 4000l. a year.” TYRWHITT. Barrett, in his Alvearie, or Quadruple Dictionary, 1580, says that a pensioner was "a gentleman about his prince, alwaie redie, with his speare." STEEVENS. "In Pensioners were Gentlemen of the band of Pensioners.the month of December," [1539] says Stowe, Annals, p. 973, edit. 1605, 66 were appointed to waite on the king's person fifty Gentlemen, called Pensioners, or Speares, like as they were in the first yeare of the king; unto whom was assigned the summe of fiftie pounds, yerely, for the maintenance of themselves, and everie man two horses, or one horse and a gelding of service.' Their dress was remarkably splendid, and therefore likely te attract the notice of Mrs. Quickly. Hence, [as both Mr. Steevens and Mr. T. Warton have observed,] in A Midsummer Night's Dream, our author has selected from all the tribes of flowers the golden-coated cowslips to be pensioners to the Fairy Queen : "The cowslips tall her pensioners be, "In their gold coats spots you see;" &c. MALONE. FAL. Ten and eleven? QUICK. Ay, forsooth; and then you may come and see the picture, she says, that you wot of1 master Ford, her husband, will be from home. Alas! the sweet woman leads an ill life with him; he's a very jealousy man; she leads a very frampold 2 life with him, good heart. FAL. Ten and eleven: Woman, commend me to her; I will not fail her. QUICK. Why, you say well: But I have another messenger to your worship: Mistress Page hath her hearty commendations to you too ;—and let me tell you in your ear, she's as fartuous a civil modest wife, and one (I tell you) that will not miss you morning nor evening prayer, as any is in Windsor, whoe'er be the other: and she bade me tell your worship, that her husband is seldom from home; 2 1 you wor of;] To wot is to know. Obsolete. So, in King Henry VIII.: "wot you what I found?" STEEVENS.. frampold-] This word I have never seen elsewhere, except in Dr. Hacket's Life of Archbishop Williams, where a frampul man signifies a peevish troublesome fellow. JOHNSON. In The Roaring Girl, a comedy, 1611, I meet with a word, which, though differently spelt, appears to be the same: "Lax. Coachman. "Coach. Anon, sir! "Lax. Are we fitted with good phrampell jades ?" Ray, among his South and East country words, observes, that frampald, or frampard, signifies fretful, peevish, cross, froward. As froward (he adds) comes from from; so may, frampard. Nash, in his Praise of the Red Herring, 1599, speaking of Leander, says: "the churlish frampold waves gave him his belly full of fish-broth." 66 Again, in The Inner Temple Masque, by Middleton, 1619: 'tis so frampole, the puritans will never yield to it." Again, in The Blind Beggar of Bethnal-Green, by John Day: "I think the fellow's frampell," &c. And, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Wit at Several Weapons: "Is Pompey grown so malapert, so frampel?" STEEVENS. Thus, in The Isle of Gulls-"What a goodyer aile you, mother? are you frampull? know you not your own daughter?" HENLEY. but, she hopes, there will come a time. I never knew a woman so dote upon a man; surely, I think you have charms, la; yes, in truth. FAL. Not I, I assure thee; setting the attraction of my good parts aside, I have no other charms. QUICK. Blessing on your heart for't! FAL. But, I pray thee, tell me this: has Ford's wife, and Page's wife, acquainted each other how they love me? QUICK. That were a jest, indeed!-they have not so little grace, I hope :-that were a trick, indeed! But mistress Page would desire you to send her your little page, of all loves; her husband has a marvellous infection to the little page: and, truly, master Page is an honest man. Never a wife in Windsor leads a better life than she does: do what she will, say what she will, take all, pay all, go to bed when she list, rise when she list, all is as she will; and, truly, she deserves it: for if there be a kind woman in Windsor, she is one. You must send her your page; no remedy. FAL. Why, I will. QUICK. Nay, but do so then: and, look you, he may come and go between you both; and, in any 3 to send her your little page, OF ALL LOVES ;] Of all loves, is an adjuration only, and signifies no more than if she had said, 'desires you to send him by all means.' It is used in Decker's Honest Whore, P. I. 1635 :-" conjuring his wife, of all lovers, to prepare cheer fitting," &c. Again, in Holinshed's Chronicle, p. 1064: "Mrs. Arden desired him, of all loves, to come backe againe." Again, in Othello, Act III.: the general so likes your musick, that he desires you, of all loves, to make no more noise with it." 66 - A similar phrase occurs in a Letter from Gilbert Talbot to the Earl of Shrewsbury. See Lodge's Illustrations, &c. vol. ii. 101: " 'I earnestly desyred him, of all friendshipp, to tell me whether he had harde any thing to ye contrary.' Again, ibid. : "He charged me, of all love, that I should kepe this secrete." STEEVENS. |