Page:Henry IV Part 2 (1921) Yale.djvu/139

King Henry the Fourth here a pun on the two Compters, or debtors', prisons in London.

 Blind beggars often had dogs to lead them through the streets.

 wax. 'A poor quibble on the word wax, which signifies increase as well as the matter of the honey-comb.' Johnson.

 An angel was a gold coin, worth upwards of six shillings, which took its name from its device, the archangel Michael. Falstaff is here punning on the word, and in the phrases cannot go and cannot tell, he is perhaps using terms which refer to the circulation of money, meaning 'I cannot pass current. I cannot count as good coin.'

 spit white. Furnivall quotes Batman uppon Bartholome (1582): 'If the spettle be white viscus, the sicknesse cometh of fleame; if black, of melancholy;—the white spettle not knottie, signifieth health.'

 bear crosses. Another quibble on coins, many of which were marked with crosses.

 A three-man beetle is a mallet so heavy that it requires three men to swing it. Filliping the toad, according to Steevens, is a Warwickshire game, in which a toad is placed on the end of a short board placed across a log; the other end of the board is then struck with a mallet, and the toad thrown into the air. If Falstaff took the part of the toad in this game, it would, he implies, require a three-man beetle to fillip one of his size.

 Many emendations have been suggested for this apparently corrupt passage. It is probable that a line has been lost here, but it is possible to understand Lord Bardolph's speech without changing the text. Lord Hastings has just been remonstrating with Lord Bardolph for his pessimism, saying that hope never injured any cause. Lord