Page:Henry IV Part 2 (1921) Yale.djvu/143

King Henry the Fourth printed in 1594, in which Muley Mahomet enters with lion's flesh on his sword, which he offers to his wife with the words,

 Most editors assume that Pistol is speaking bad Italian. The Cambridge editors suggest that it is perhaps bad Spanish, and that he is reading the motto on his Toledo blade. Douce gives an illustration of a sword with a French version of this motto inscribed upon it. Farmer says: 'Pistol is only a copy of Hannibal Gonsaga who vaunted on yielding himself a prisoner, as you may read in an old collection of tales called Wits, Fits, Fancies:

Whatever the language, the meaning of Pistol's motto is, If Fortune torments me, Hope contents me.

 shove-groat shilling. Shove-groat was a game which was a cross between shuffle-board and 'pitching pennies.' It was played on a board three feet long and a foot wide, and the object of the players was to shove coins into numbered spaces at the far end of the board.

 drinks flapdragons. Flapdragon or snapdragon is a sport which consists in snapping raisins or grapes from burning brandy and eating them.

 An impossible conjunction of planets.

 fiery Trigon. Poins continues the astrological figure by referring to the red-nosed Bardolph as the fiery Trigon. When the three superior planets were in that division of the zodiac which consisted of the three so-called fiery signs, Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius, they were said to be in the fiery Trigon, or triangle; when they were in Cancer,