hiding-place after Falstaff has been abusing him to Doll Tear-street.[1] "Didst thou hear me?" "Yes; and you knew me, as you did when you ran away by Gad's Hill: you knew I was at your back, and spoke it on purpose to try my patience." How slyly Falstaff avoids putting his foot into this trap; and the Prince underestimated his resources. "No, no, no, not so; I did not know thou wast within hearing. No abuse, Hal, on my honor; no abuse, Ned. I dispraised him before the wicked, that the wicked might not fall in love with him; and thy father is to give me thanks for it." His mind is supple and adaptive, yet all the more comical because the talent is futile for concealment, and only earns for him a laugh which shakes the arm suspended to chastise.
He extemporizes deafness, and does not hear the Chief Justice calling to him. When the attendant comes and plucks him by the elbow to bid him note the Justice, he gains time by inventing the pretext that a beggar has him by the sleeve. "What! a young knave, and beg!" But this resource was by no means invented by Falstaff. This world is an old hand at it; and, whenever the truth of one age summons the error of the past to arrest and judgment, the interested parties start a dodge, and stimulate it with voluble pretence of earnestness, hoping to make it serve their day, at least. When Galileo discovered the satellites of Jupiter, people expected the sky to fall. Something must be done to prop it up. So they said that, even if the satellites could
- ↑ Obviously the proper reading. Prince Henry says, "This Doll Tear-street should be some road." First noticed by Coleridge.
