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42 Falstaff's worthy body-guard are getting tired of hard knocks in fight; Nym compares their late activity to a somewhat florid 'plain-song' [meaning an extempore descant, as explained above]; Pistol says it is a 'just' plainsong. A 'just' plainsong would mean that the singer had managed his extempore descant 'without singing eyther false chords or forbidden descant one to another.' Similarly, there is little doubt that both Ancient and Corporal managed to take a part in the skirmishings with as little damage as possible to their sconces.

The speech of the boy at l. 41 hardly enrols Bardolph amongst music lovers. At all events he stole a lute-case, and seems to have liked it so much that he carried it 36 miles before his worser nature prevailed on him to sell it for 1½d.

The next quotation still concerns Jack Falstaff and his crew, all of whom (and strictly in accordance with history) seem to have been sound practical musicians. This time they are speaking, not of descant, but of Prick-song. The chiefest virtue in the performance of Prick-song, by which Falstaff and Nym probably understood both sacred and secular part-music, is that a man should 'keep time,' religiously counting his rests, 'one, two, three, and the third in your bosom,'