Page:Henry IV Part 1 (1917) Yale.djvu/130

116 to be said and done, than I can say or do in public in my present angry condition.'

 seven stars. The Pleiades; also a common tavern-sign.

 wandering knight. El Donzel del Febo, Knight of the Sun (or Phœbus), hero of a popular Spanish romance. This quotation is perhaps from some contemporary ballad founded on the romance.

 Falstaff plays on the word Grace, using it first as a title, then in reference to the spiritual state of grace, and finally as 'grace before meat.' From this simple pun he proceeds to a more complicated play on words. There is the obvious play on night and knight in l. 27, followed in l. 28 by the play on the words body, beauty, and booty, in each of which the vowel sound, in Shakespeare's day, approximated the round o sound, as in note. Finally there is the play on the phrase under whose countenance.

 Hal's quibble on the word durance would have greater significance if a buff jerkin were the costume of a prisoner instead of the ordinary dress of a sheriff's officer. The ideas of a sheriff and 'durance vile' are closely enough associated, however, to give some point to the jest.

 Eating the flesh of a hare was supposed to generate melancholy.

 Moor-ditch was a stagnant ditch and morass outside the walls of London.

 damnable iteration. A damnable trick of quoting and misapplying.

 Gadshill. The name of one of the robbers and of the place of the robbery.

 Eastcheap. The district in London where the Boar's Head Tavern, the rendezvous of Hal and Falstaff, was situated.