SOURCE: Scoufos, Alice Lyle. “The ‘Martyrdom’ of Falstaff.” Shakespeare Studies 2 (1967): 174-91.

[In the following essay, Scoufos examines Falstaff's “undramatic and overly hasty demise” in Henry V.]

The undramatic and overly hasty demise of Sir John Falstaff in Shakespeare's Henry V has left readers and viewers of Renaissance drama dissatisfied for many years. It has also provided a touchstone for critical wit and ingenuity as any serious student of Elizabethan drama knows when he surveys the perennial crop of published commentary on Falstaff's death scene. From the modern point of view it seems unprovidential that Shakespeare should so suddenly rid himself of the most popular comic character he was ever to create.¹ And when we turn to the history plays, we do find textual evidence to indicate that there was some indecision in the playwright's mind or at least some change of dramatic plans, for in the epilogue of 2 Henry IV Shakespeare promises the audience further entertainment with Sir John in it: “If you be not too much cloid with Fat Meate, our humble Author will continue the story (with Sir John in it) and make you merry, with faire Katherine of France.” But, as everyone knows, Falstaff does not appear on stage in Henry V; his death is described in classic fashion by Mistress Quickly who functions ironically as a tragic messenger. And even though it is couched satirically in the mode of Greek tragedy with its stylized form, Falstaff's final scene appears adventitious to the modern reader. Falstaff and death had not, of course, been disassociated in the earlier dramas. Critics have remarked upon the three symbolic deaths which anticipate the demise of Falstaff in Henry V: the feigned death at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1 Henry IV, the “sweating death” of the buckbasket scene in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and the “burning” by fairies in the same play.² Even the intensification of disease imagery in 2 Henry IV lends substance to the atmosphere of death. Moreover, the epilogue of 2 Henry IV prepares for Falstaff's death with a proleptic phrase, “Falstaff shall dye of a sweat, unlesse already he be killd with your Opinions: For Old-Castle dyed a Martyr, and this is not the man.” And this reference to death and to the martyred Oldcastle leads into another famous crux which has plagued Shakespearian studies for many years; it also provides a point of departure for an investigation of the problems of the death scene. The whole Falstaff-Oldcastle matter is a complex and evocative problem which has not been satisfactorily explained by Shakespeare scholars; my own research among historical resources has provided me with some evidence which may suggest to an extent what happened in Elizabethan England to motivate the creator of Falstaff while he was writing the Falstaff cycle of plays, and that evidence also provides some answers, I think, to the perplexing problems found in the terminus ad quem of Falstaff's dramatic career.³

It was Nicholas Rowe who recorded in the first annotated edition of Shakespeare's plays the story of the Elizabethan family that objected to Shakespeare's use of Sir John Oldcastle's name for his comic character, thus bringing about the name-change to Falstaff.⁴ The titular descendant of Sir John Oldcastle (a Lollard who bore the title, Lord Cobham, through his marriage to the heiress of that family) was the Elizabethan nobleman, William Brooke, seventh Lord Cobham, the successor to the Lord Chamberlain's staff after the death of Henry, Lord Hunsdon, in 1596, and also a member of the Privy Council, a Knight of the Garter, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, Lord Lieutenant of Kent, Constable of the Tower, intimate friend of Lord Burghley, and father-in-law to Sir Robert Cecil. In his day Lord Cobham was a man of importance although history has forgotten him and his unkind son. The two major political factions which dominated Elizabeth's Court during the last decade of her reign were centered around the Cecils and around the Earl of Essex; Cobham, as might be expected, was closely aligned with his son-in-law and Lord Burghley. The conflict between Essex and the younger Lord Cobham (Henry Brooke who became the eighth baron when his father died in March of 1597) led at length to Essex's final catastrophe in 1601. At his trial Essex accused Cobham and Raleigh of plotting his ruin.⁵ These tensions were explosive. It is scarcely original of me to suggest that the political machinations and feuding in Elizabeth's Court are reflected in the drama of the period; that the Elizabethan dramatists used chronicle history to provide meaningful commentary upon contemporary political and social life is commonplace knowledge today. Shakespeare's use of the Oldcastle allusions appears to be an example of this method of using historical materials to mirror current affairs.⁶ And in the death of Sir John Falstaff we find I believe the last of the Shakespeare allusions to Oldcastle, and through those allusions, indirect references to the contemporary Lords of Cobham. Hence it is that I turn to the historical background for elucidation of the famous death scene.

In spite of the denial to the contrary in the epilogue of 2 Henry IV, the theme of martyrdom is present in the description of Falstaff's death. Sir John is dead, says Mistress Quickly, of a “burning quotidian Tertian” (or the Quarto reading, “burning tashan contigian feuer”) which is a lamentable sight. In an attempt to stave off sentimentality some of our more conservative critics today reject any suggestion of martyrdom in this description, but from the point of view of Falstaff's friends Sir John is dying of a broken heart. The statements are explicit in the text. Nym says, “The King hath run bad humors on the Knight,” and Pistol responds, “Nym, thou hast spoke the right, his heart is fracted and corroborate.” Many a modern heart has also been “fracted and corroborated” by the famous rejection scene of 2 Henry IV in which Henry V, regal in his coronation robes, commands his former friend, “I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers.” 'Tis this scene which separates the critics into Ephesians and Precise Brethren. We become so involved with Shakespeare's four-dimension characters that we forget he was using in this play chronicle materials which many Elizabethans knew by heart. The fifteenth-century chroniclers invariably described the beginning of Henry V's reign by repeating the story of his rejection of his wanton friends. One of the more colorful versions is that written by the anonymous author of The Brut:

And before he was Kyng, what tyme he regnyd Prince of Walyes, he fylle & yntendyd gretly to ryot, and drew to wylde company; 7 dyuers Ientylmen and Ientylwommen folwyd his wylle & his desire at his commaundment; & lykewyse all his meyne of his housolde was attendyng & plesyed with his gouernaunce, outsept iij men of his howsolde, whiche were ful hevy and sory of his gouernaunce. … And thanne he beganne to regne for Kyng, & he remembryd þe gret charge & wourship þat he shulde take upon hym; And anon he comaundyd al his peple þat were attendaunt to his housolde, to come before hym. And whan they herde þat, they were ful glad, for they subposyd þat he woolde a promotyd them in-to gret offices, & þat they shulde a stonde in gret favyr & truste with hym, & neerest of counsel, as they were afore tyme. & trustyng hereupon, they were þe homlyer & bolder unto hym, & nothyng dred hym; ynsomoche, þat whan they were come before hym, some of them wynkyd on hym, & some smylyd, & thus they made nyse semblaunte unto hym, meny one of them. But for al þat, þe Prynce kept his countynaunce ful sadly unto them, And sayde to them: Syrys, ye are þe peple þat I have cherysyd & mayntynyd in Ryot & wylde gouernaunce; and here I geve you all in commaundment, & charge yow, þat from this day forward þat ye forsake al mysgouernaunce, & lyve aftyr þe lawys of almyhety God, & aftyr þe lawys of oure londe. And who þat doyth contrarye, I make feythful promys to God, þat he shal be trewly ponised accordyng to the lawe, withoute eny favour of grace. … And so he rewardyd them richely with gold & sylver, & othyr Iuelys, and chargyd them alle to voyde his housolde, & lyve as good men, & never more to come in his presence, be-cause he woolde have noon occasion nor remembraunce wherby he shylde falle to ryot agen. … and thus was lefte in his housolde nomo but tho iij men, and meny one of them þat were eydyng & consentyng to his wyldnes, fyl aftyrward to gret myschefe and sorw.⁷

Without knowledge of the historical context the modern reader is inclined to exaggerate the pathos in the rejection of Falstaff. We are taken in by the expansive, effusive wit of the character which Shakespeare created, and we become one of Falstaff's crew. Falstaff's death is pathetic—until we turn the death scene over to examine the implications of its verso side. There are correlatives to this satiric martyrdom, correlatives which may shock the sheltered or the prim, for the historical Sir John Oldcastle (whose martyrdom is touched in this scene) was burned at the stake in Henry V's reign as a heretic and as a traitor to the crown of England. King Henry turned against the Lollard knight after the insurrection of 1413 which threatened the throne as well as the established church of that time.⁸ And although the playwright denied in the famous epilogue any allusion to Oldcastle's martyrdom, when one recalls the historical background, Falstaff's broken heart and burning fever become, I think, analogous to martyrdom. Furthermore, if we credit Rowe's story, the playright, having been reprimanded earlier for such allusiveness, added a ludicrous inversion, changing heat to cold, and in doing so substituted a far more famous martyrdom for parodic purpose. Falstaff's death at one point is patterned on that famous scene described in the final pages of Plato's Phaedo. Those of the Elizabethan audience who were schooled in classical literature would have recognized, I think, the parallel in Mistress Quickly's ingenuous words, “So a' bad me lay more Clothes on his feet: I put my hand into the Bed, and Felt to his knees, and so vp-peer'd, and upward, and all was as cold as any stone” (even the less-focused Quarto lines are pertinent: “Then he bad me put more cloathes at his feete: And I felt to them, and they were as cold as any stone: And to his knees, and they were as cold as any stone: And so vpward, and vpward, and all was as cold as any stone”) with Plato's description of the death of Socrates after he had drunk the cup of hemlock:

and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he could feel; and he said, “No;” and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff.⁹

In this instance the problem of Shakespeare's “small Latin and less Greek” need not intervene, though certainly both the original Greek text and its Latin translation were available in Elizabethan England. The Omnia Platonis Opera was published in Greek in September of 1513 at Venice, and the first volume of the Platonis Opera Quae Extant Omnia, which contained both Greek and Latin texts, was published by Henri Estienne in Geneva in 1578 and was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. Marsiglio Ficino's Latin translation of Plato's writings circulated throughout Europe after 1482, and the vernacular translations of the Phaedo were printed in the sixteenth century, the French in 1553 and 1581, the Italian in 1574.¹⁰ More important perhaps is the fact that when William Caxton published Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers' translation of The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophhres in 1477, he gave to the English reading public a lusty vernacular version of Plato's description of the death of Socrates. The particular passage reads as follows:

… he went alitil from them / & saide O god have mercy upon me / & anon his synewes shranke his fete wexed colde / and than he leide him down / one of his disciples tooke a boddekyn & prikked him in his feete / and axed him yf he felt eny thing + And he said naye / than he prikked him in his thyghes / and axed him if he felt it / he sayd naye + Anone the colde strake up unto his sydes than Socrates saide whan the colde cometh to my hert I must nedis dye +¹¹

That Shakespeare would parody our much beloved Plato will shock the more conservative critics; therefore, I hasten to point out the witty relevance of such usage. The fates of Socrates and Oldcastle are comparable in an important sense: we know that Socrates was accused of maligning the religion of the state (falsifying the ancient gods); it was Oldcastle's heresy, his rejection of the doctrines of the established church, which catapulted him from Fortune's erratic wheel. Moreover, this substitution of a martyr of greater fame is meaningful at the contemporary level, for like Socrates, William, seventh Lord Cobham, was a victim of the comic poets.¹² One should recall that in Plato's Apology Socrates explains that one of his greatest enemies has been public opinion and that the opinion had been molded by the comic poets from envy and malice. Socrates derides his accuser, Meletus, saying, “Such is the nature of the accusation: it is just what you have yourselves seen in the comedy of Aristophanes.”¹³ In like instance the Elizabethan Cobhams bore for many years the satire of the poets. At his trial in 1603 Henry, eighth Lord Cobham, complained that “except the house of Norfolk noe house of Englande received more disgrace and jealousy for many years together in the time past than my poor house.”¹⁴ And this is true. Oldcastle walked the stage in the anonymous play, The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, and again in Shakespeare's early versions of the Henry IV plays.¹⁵ Elinor Cobham's legend, which had undergone metamorphosis in the chronicles in a fashion similar to Oldcastle's story, was used not only by Shakespeare but by George Ferrers, Michael Drayton, Christopher Middleton, and Chettle and Day. As one might expect, Shakespeare's version of that legend presents an unflattering and treasonable portrait of that noblewoman.¹⁶ Furthermore, Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson also had some galled ink to use in their macabre portrayal of the ancestral Cob who was roasted before the Pope.¹⁷ Shakespeare's allusions to martyrdom in Falstaff's death scene are wittily (if not morally) fitting, and we find the fat knight dying like an ancient philosopher, though hell's fire is on his mind.

This inventive use of analogues was a mode associated with Oldcastle's death in the sixteenth century. Both John Bale and John Foxe had used a comparative technique in their eulogies of the Lollard martyr's death. In Bale's Brefe Chronycle the author did not hesitate to equate Oldcastle's death with that of Christ:

Syr Johan Oldcastell was brent in Cheanes at London in Saynct Gyles Felde, undre the Galowes, amonge the Laye People, and upon the prophane workynge Daye, at the Bysshoppes Procurement. And all this is ungloryouse, yea and verye despyseable unto those worldlye Eyes, what though Jesus Christ his Mastre afore him were handeled after a verye lyke Sort. For he was crucyfyed at Hierusalem, without the Cyte and without the holye Synagoge, acursed out of Churche, amonge the prophane Multytude, in the myddest of Theves, in the Place where as Theves were commonly hanged, and not upon the feastfull Daye but afore yt, by the Bysshoppes Procurement also.¹⁸

And Foxe found the details of Oldcastle's death analogous to the Biblical description of Elijah's ascent into heaven:

Thys is not to be forgotten which is reported by many that he should say that he should die here in earth after the sort and manner of Helias, the whyche whether it sprang of the common people whythoute cause, or that it was forshewed by him, I think it not without with some gift of prophecy, the end of the matter doth suffyciently proue. For lyke as when Helias should leaue this mortal life, he was caryed in a fiery charyot into immortality: even so the order of thys mannes death, not beinge muche unlike, followed the fygure of his departure. For he fyrste of all being lyfted up upon the galowes, as into a chariot, and compassed in round aboute wyth flamynge fyre, what other thyng I pray you dyd thys most holy martir of Christ represent then onlye a fygure of a certayne Helias flying up into heauen. The whych went up into heauen by a fiery chariot.¹⁹

The flames which torment Falstaff's slipping mind are, of course, those of mental anguish—the flea on Bardolph's red nose becomes “a blacke Soule burning in Hell.” Within this satiric context, this reference to flames is too hot for comfort.

Hostess Quickly's insistence that Falstaff had not gone to hell but was safe in Arthur's bosom is possibly another reference to Oldcastle's death. In the fifteenth-century accounts of the Lollard's execution his final prophecy was usually repeated: Oldcastle promised his followers that he would be resurrected on the third day after his death. Thomas Walsingham's version of this prophecy was turned into English by John Stow and was printed in the 1592 edition of Stow's Annales:

the last words that he spake, was to Sir Thomas of Erpingham, abjuring him, that if he saw him rise from death to life again, the third day, he would procure that his sect might be in peace & quiet; he was hanged by the necke in a chaine of iron, & after consumed with fire.²⁰

This promise of resurrection inspired the faithful Lollards who returned to Saint Giles Field, the scene of execution, on the third morning; when Oldcastle failed to appear, they gathered his ashes to rub in their eyes. When one recalls that the King Arthur of literature and legend was reported to be in Avalon and would return someday “twice as fair” to rule over his people, the relevance of Mistress Quickly's remark is apparent. Similarly, the Page's reference to incarnation and the Hostess' uncomprehending reply, “A' could never abide Carnation, 'twas a Colour he never lik'd,” become a religious reference applicable to the doctrine of transubstantiation and the incarnate Christ of the sacrament. Indeed, Oldcastle could not abide this “carnation.”²¹ When one recalls the Lollard's famous trial for heresy and the importance which was attached to Oldcastle's refusal to answer with doctrinal propriety the “murderous question” concerning the bread and Christ's body, Falstaff's mutterings take on new meaning. In addition, Falstaff's profane cries against the Whore of Babylon are also an apparent Oldcastle allusion. The scarlet woman, as all readers know, was an old symbol of derision for the Church of Rome, and Falstaff's outcry is analogous to Oldcastle's final outburst against the “whorish prelates” who condemned him. One of his colorful accusations was repeated frequently by the chroniclers: … quod Dominus noster Papa est verus Antichristus, hoc est caput ejusdem; Archiepiscopi et Episcopi, necnon alii praelati, sunt membra, et Fratres cauda ejusdem.²²

The allusiveness of Falstaff's crying out against women goes beyond the Oldcastle legend, I believe, for Shakespeare appears to pick up the earlier reference to Socrates and to make use of it again in these remarks of the Page and the Hostess. In the sixteenth century the ancient Greek philosopher was noted for his misogyny. William Caxton, as editor of Lord Rivers' translation of The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophhres (which contained an eclectic gathering of biographical ‘facts’ and quotations derived from the large body of Arabic translations of the ninth century, the works of Diogenes Laertius, and the Memorabilia of Xenophon), was faced with the problem of the unkind remarks on women attributed to the ancient philosopher. Lord Rivers had simply deleted them, and Caxton (after some doubts which he describes in detail) gathered the unchivalrous statements into an epilogue and appended it to The Dictes with an apology to the “good, wyse, playsant, humble, discrete, sobre, chast” women of England.²³ Caxton's Dictes was an extremely popular work; he reprinted it a number of times after 1477, as did Wynkyn de Worde in the sixteenth century. By the time that William Baldwin printed the anti-feminist sayings of Socrates in his Treatice of Morall Philosophy at mid-sixteenth century, many of the remarks had become jingles. Two examples of the “pithy mieters” should suffice:

Woman is more pittiful than manne,
more enuious than a serpent,
more malicious than a tyrant,
and more deceiptful than the deuill.

And another:

Prayer to God is the onely meane,
to preserue a man from a wicked queane.(24)

This common image of the ancient philosopher as a woman hater was available to Shakespeare, and I believe that he was treating it in comic fashion to increase the allusiveness of Falstaff's death scene. Such an allusion does not, of course, limit itself. Indeed, Falstaff may have had reason to curse women if poor Doll truly were in the “Poudring tub” in the preceding scene.

There are further allusions to the Oldcastle legend in the death scene; Falstaff's frightened cry to his Creator can be paralleled in the stories of the Lollard's martyrdom. Mistress Quickly describes Sir John as a “Christome Child” who “cryed out, God, God, God three or foure times.” This is, of course, a natural exclamation, but it is also allusive. In the chronicle accounts of Oldcastle's death the martyr was reported to have cried out Jehovah's name three times when the flames began to consume him. The Jesuit writer, Robert Parsons, later picked up this image from John Stow when he vilified both Oldcastle and Foxe's glorified image of Oldcastle in the Jesuit book, A Treatise of Three Conversions (a propaganda attack emphasizing the treason of Oldcastle, the earlier Lord Cobham, written and published in 1603-04 when the contemporary Lord Cobham, Henry Brooke, was on trial for his treason in the Main and Bye plots). At one point in his attack Parsons describes the death of a William Hackett who was executed in 1591 for his mad attempt against the realm and the established church, and Parsons brings in the reference to Oldcastle's cries which he apparently got from Stow:

For that Hackett said, he should rise againe the third day, as Oldcastle did: and went as devoutly to the gallowes, as the other did, cryinge, Jhehova, Jhehova, (as Stow setteth it downe) and at the gallowes railed no lesse bitterly upon Queene Elizabeth, than Oldcastle did upon that woorthie King Henry the fift.²⁵

But Parsons' use of the Oldcastle legend to denigrate the Cobhams is another part of the long series of events in the lives of that Elizabethan family.

Shakespeare's use of the Oldcastle legend and its analogues is only part of the admixture of satire found in Falstaff's character. Current happenings in Elizabeth's Court are mirrored in Sir John's death. Editors have noted the pun on “rheumatic-Romeatic;” it is possibly an allusion to Oldcastle's hatred for the Church of Rome. But the pun is also an allusion, I think, to the furtive intrigues of William, Lord Cobham, with the disaffected Catholics of Elizabeth's reign. Cobham played an important role in the intrigues of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Duke of Norfolk. Cobham's bungling in the Ridolfi affair resulted at length in the imprisonment of the Earls of Pembroke and Southampton and in the loss of the Duke of Norfolk's head. Southampton (the father of Shakespeare's patron) spent three years in close confinement as a result of this fiasco. Cobham turned informer, it seems, and escaped punishment.²⁶

The Elizabethan Lord Cobham seems again touched in Mistress Quickly's remark that Falstaff died “Betweene twelve and one, Just at turning of the tide,” for we know that William Brooke also died “about Midnight” on March 6, 1597. Our information comes from Rowland Whyte, that loquacious steward of Sir Robert Sidney, who kept his absent master informed of the details of London life. Sidney was eager to have Lord Cobham's staff as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and Whyte watched closely as Cobham drew his final breath.²⁷ Doubtless the actors were watching too, for the Lord Chamberlain's staff would also be transferred at Cobham's death; Henry Brooke, Cobham's eldest son, and George Carey, the new Lord Hunsdon, were vying for this important post which was a powerful position as far as the acting companies were concerned.²⁸

The preparations for death which William, Lord Cobham, made in 1597 are also relevant to Falstaff's final scene in Henry V, for in those plans we find, I think, a possible solution for that perplexing problem of the “Table of greene fields” which has intrigued Shakespeare scholars for over two centuries. Debate thrives today as readers supply ingenious emendations or argue for the Folio reading of this text. Theobald's emendation of the famous crux holds the field with most editors in this century, but the historical background of the Cobhams provides material to suggest that the “Table of greene fields” is meaningful as it stands, for we know that as death approached, Lord Cobham was concerned with a special project, an endowment which would provide a memorial table or tablet to be erected in his honor in Poppynefelde in Kent.

Lord Cobham at the age of seventy, being in poor health and despondent at the death of his daughter, Elizabeth, wife of Sir Robert Cecil, wrote and signed his last will on the 24th of February, 1597. He divided his lands, jewels, horses, and books among his three sons and three daughters, but he reserved some five thousand pounds of ready money and certain building materials for the use of William Lambarde, the antiquarian, Sir John Leveson, and Sir Thomas Fane, his executors, who were instructed to re-establish the ancient College of Cobham as an almshouse for the relief of the poor in Kent.²⁹ Lord Cobham died on the 6th of March, and a few days later William Lambarde wrote to Lord Burghley explaining Lord Cobham's wishes:

His lordship therefore minding an undoubted accomplishment of his godly and fatherly intentions as well towards the poore as his own children, did in his lifetime put into the hands of Sir John Leveson the sum of 5,600 pounds almost, in ready money, over and above rich furniture of his lady's provision amounting in his own estimacion to the value of 2,000 marks. His command to us was that with 2,000 pounds or more of these monies the late suppressed College of Cobham should be re-edified and endowed with livelihood for the perpetual maintenance of twenty poor.³⁰

In spite of the nuances of the old faith which clung to the plan, special permission to re-establish Cobham College was granted by an Act of Parliament which was passed in 1597 soon after Lord Cobham's wishes to found the New College of Cobham in Kent.³¹

The history of the Old College of Cobham is interesting and somewhat unique; it had been founded in 1362 by Lord John de Cobham who provided an endowment for a perpetual chantry which was to sing praises for the honor of God and the welfare of the souls of the founder and his progenitors. The endowment provided for the maintenance of five chaplains and a number of brothers from the priory of Saint Saviour, Bermondsey. The College flourished, and some one hundred and seventy-five years later when the master signed the bill of the king's supremacy in 1537 which “dissolved, dis-established, and dis-endowed” the College, the fellowship included eleven chaplains, and it had in revenues approximately 142 pounds per annum. After the dissolution the College remained uninhabited, and in this state of abandonment it fell into ruins.

The seventh Lord Cobham wished to rebuild the ancient monument in a new Protestant form, as an almshouse to assist the poor of Kent and, of course, to memorialize his name. The construction of New College progressed rapidly in 1597, and the establishment with its new rules and ordinances, its order for daily prayers and its code of conduct for the poor, was finished in September of 1598. The memorial tablet with the arms and quarterings of the Cobhams within a Garter was engraved and placed above the south entrance of the College. It stated that

This new College of Cobham in the County of Kent was founded for the relief of the poore at the charge of the late Right Honorable Sir William Brooke, Knight of the Garter, Lord Cobham, late Warden of the Cinque Ports, Lieutenant for the same County to the Excellent Majesty of Elizabeth, Queen of England, one of Her Highnesses Privy Councillors and Chamberlayne of Her most Honorable Household. He died 6th March 1596 [/97]. This was finished 29th September 1598.³²

The quadrangle of New College and the ruined Founder's Gateway with its memorial tablet remain standing today adjacent to Cobham Church in Kent.³³ Within the Church is a famous collection of monumental brasses which has been called the finest family collection in England.³⁴ It includes the magnificent bronze and marble effigies which Lord Cobham provided for his parents' tomb in 1561; he was conscious of memorials. Perhaps he anticipated the negligence and misfortune which would keep his own grave unadorned; before a worthy tomb was created for him, his sons and his estate fell to destruction in the plots of 1603. Today, New College stands as sufficient proof that “wasteful Time debateth with Decay.” But beyond being a symbol of mutability, this memorial structure may quite possibly be the “Table of greene fields” which Mistress Quickly mentions in Shakespeare's famous passage. Admittedly, the Table image is complex, but it is not incomprehensible as some critics insist, nor does it require rearrangement of elements or ellipses or transposed letters or parenthetical enclosures or emendations.³⁵ I find the Folio reading of this famous line both meaningful and consistent. Let us look at it closely in context.

In preceding lines Mistress Quickly describes Falstaff's delirium, his fumbling with the sheets and his toying with the flowers (I assume that Falstaff mistakes the floral design of the bed coverings for real posies; however, perhaps there were fresh flowers at hand, or there may be a suggestion of Elysian Fields in the Hostess' description of Sir John's irrational imaging). Mistress Quickly then describes Falstaff as smiling on the tips of his fingers. This is a prayerful pose which fits the preceding image of Falstaff slipping away as a “Christome Child,” but such a pose is also a traditional one for the effigies on monumental brasses, and the Hostess is quick to recognize that it is time for ultimate things though she attempts to cheer Sir John.

This realistic description of Falstaff's gestures is followed by a figurative description of his face in its drawn and discolored state. Mistress Quickly compares Falstaff's sharp nose to two things: a Pen and a Table. She remarks bluntly: “for his Nose was as sharpe as a Pen, and a Table of greene fields.” We have here, I believe, two similes and a problem of terminology. Let us proceed carefully.

Competent critics have noted the realistic death imagery in this passage, the withering of tissue, the green complexion, etc. The details are accurate here, and Mistress Quickly as well as her creator apparently knew the commonplace elements of Elizabethan medical lore and of the popular ars moriendi literature.³⁶ But the two similes which Mistress Quickly uses are allusive—as similes traditionally are. The comma should not confuse us: Shakespeare frequently uses a comma to separate compound elements (subjects, verbs, objects). For a cursory example, the preceding scene in the Folio contains several such instances of the playwright's “dramatic punctuation”:³⁷

1) Crowned with faith, and constant loyalty.

(II.ii.5)

2) Doing the execution, and the acte,

(II.ii.17)

3) With hearts create of duty, and of zeale.

(II.ii.31)

4) Treason, and murther, euer kept together,

(II.ii.105)

5) Wonder to waite on treason, and on murther:

(II.ii.110)

Modern editors are prone to remove these extraneous commas; however, the punctuation between Pen and Table has not been altered because Theobald's famous emendation has convinced most editors that this line contains two independent clauses: “For his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields.” This reasoning, I believe, is erroneous. I think Mistress Quickly is saying that Falstaff's nose resembles a pen and a table; the OED should provide clues to the meaning of these terms, and the historical background should provide an explanation for the allusion.

Although the word Pen can mean a quill-pen or writing instrument pointed and split into nibs at its lower end, Pen can also mean a hill or mountain, a jutting promontory.³⁸ Either of these definitions is relevant and will fit the context where the nose and nostrils are pinched by the onslaught of death. I prefer the former meaning, however, because of its connotation of writing or inscription—a meaning which links Pen with Table. And I think that Shakespeare intentionally juxtaposed these two images for mutual elucidation. The OED offers numerous meanings in use in the sixteenth century for the word Table, and the Shakespeare Concordance reveals that the playwright used the word variously in his plays.³⁹ However, in this passage I believe the word Table means a tablet bearing or intended for an inscription or device (OED: Table, sb., #2, a), in other words, a memorial table or monument. The attribute of sharpness is relevant if we limit the category of memorial tables or stones to the famous classical monuments of antiquity such as Trajan's Column or Cleopatra's Needle, a definition which places the image among the classical motifs used in the death scene.⁴⁰ To be explicit, I believe that Mistress Quickly says that Falstaff's nose just from his discolored face like a pointed monument built in green fields. If we place this remark against the topical background, it seems to me that the simile becomes a satiric allusion to the monument which Lord Cobham was planning on his death bed—a monument to be erected in Poppynefelde in Kent. Cobham College was built in the rural village of Cobham, and its site overlooked the green pasture lands to the south called Great Church Field and Little Church Field. The architect for the Old College and for the tower of Cobham Church was said to have been the great Henry Yevele, King's Master Mason and architect of the nave of Canterbury Cathedral. The New College was designed by Giles de Witte, an architect from the Low Countries whom Lord Cobham had hired to assist with the impressive wings of Cobham Hall which were constructed in the reign of Elizabeth.⁴¹

I do not know whether Shakespeare was ever in Cobham village or not, but I suspect that he had seen Yevele's tall tower at one time or another and that the image of the older building in its rural setting remained in his mind. Or perhaps he actually saw the New College after its completion in 1598 with its arched gateway and the memorial tablet above it. This Founder's Gateway is itself a pointed image with the tablet and crest sheltered by a projecting corbel-table, a pediment, and a peaked entablature which reaches to some height.⁴² It does seem to me that Lord Cobham's plans for New College supplied Shakespeare with a simile and an ironic allusion when he wrote the final lines concerning Falstaff. If our dating of Henry V is correct, these lines were written in 1599. The elder Lord Cobham was dead; he had caused the Lord Chamberlain's Men some tense moments when he received the Chamberlain's white staff in 1596. As a partial result he was immortalized, not by a memorial structure but by a satiric creation which has never been surpassed. However, perhaps the modern reader, looking back through the death scene, will find the satire on the Cobhams more gross than unsurpassed. Lest this response occur, let me remind the reader that the actions of William and Henry Brooke, Lords of Cobham, throughout Elizabeth's reign made them targets for those who wished to satirize disloyalty and disorder in the political world. Before Shakespeare used it, the Oldcastle legend had become a point of departure from which the barbed shafts of ridicule could be launched at the Cobhams. Our playwright adapted and perfected the satire. If from our distant vantage point in time such usage appears unseemly, we should remember that in the heat of political contests the rivalry of Court factions placed a number of lives at stake. The satire of Oldcastle's martyrdom with its reflections on the contemporary Cobhams appears to have been part of the propaganda of that conflict. Public pressure (or perhaps private) seems to have prevented the playwright's further development of the Oldcastle legend into the reign of Henry V. In his play of the ideal king Shakespeare wisely rid himself of an extremely successful but toxic character, and we find Falstaff dying of both a fever and a chill. In this final scene of the Falstaff cycle of plays the idea of martyrdom is not entirely gone, for the scene is densely complex with historical allusions, and the echo of a classical death rings them in. The satire of the tragic mode is pointed. The poignancy, the pathos which modern readers find reflected in the death scene are nineteenth-century sentimental affections which turned Falstaff into an amoral demigod of sensuous pleasures—a creature to be envied not condemned. The ancient Vice, like the historical archetype who was burned at the stake for heresy and treason, has been hid from view. Twentieth-century critics, or rather those who use the neo-historical approach in the analysis of literature, are successfully attempting the reconstruction of Falstaff as forceful satire on dishonor and disloyalty in the Elizabethan world scheme.⁴³

Notes

1. Various dates of composition for Henry V and for The Merry Wives of Windsor have been assigned by scholars. If the latter play was written after Henry V, then of course Falstaff was resurrected for his role in that Garter play. Leslie Hotson suggested some years ago that The Merry Wives was written to celebrate the election and/or installation of Lord Hunsdon to the Order of the Garter in 1597. My own study of the Falstaff satire leads me to believe that The Merry Wives was written to satirize Lord Cobham (Henry Brooke) when his name was submitted for election to the Garter in the spring of 1599. Most editors suggest that Henry V was written later in this same year while the Earl of Essex was in Ireland with the English forces. If this dating is correct, the death of Falstaff in Henry V is the final scene for that famous comic character.

2. See the articles by Robert F. Fleissner, “Falstaff's Green Sickness Unto Death,” SQ [Shakespeare Quarterly], XII (1961), 47-55; John M. Steadman, “Falstaff as Actaeon: A Dramatic Emblem,” SQ, XIV (1963), 231-244; Philip Williams, “The Birth and Death of Falstaff,” SQ, VIII (1957), 355-365.

3. My booklength study of the Falstaff-Oldcastle-Cobham problem, Shakespeare's Flaming Satire, is nearly complete. The abundance of historical records concerning the Cobhams (Oldcastle, Elinor Cobham, William and Henry Brooke) has provided some startling facts which help to explain the satire of the Lollard martyr that we find behind Falstaff's comic mask.

4. Rowe noted, “Upon this Occasion it may not be improper to observe, that this Part of Falstaff is said to have been written originally under the Name of Oldcastle; some of that Family being then remaining, the Queen was pleas'd to command him to alter it; upon which he made use of Falstaff.” The Works of Mr. William Shakespeare (London, 1709-10), I, viii. In the same paragraph Rowe tells the story of the Earl of Southampton's gift of one thousand pounds to Shakespeare, and he states that “If I had not been assur'd that the Story was handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured to have inserted it.” It is probable that Rowe also had his account of the playwright's trouble over the use of the Oldcastle name indirectly from Shakespeare's “godson.”

5. A detailed account of Essex's trial, the accusations, the events behind the catastrophe can be found in the second volume of W. B. Devereux's Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of Essex (London, 1853). At his execution Essex asked forgiveness of his enemies; this appears to have been the traditional act of Christian humility.

6. Some attempts have been made to work out the Oldcastle allusions, attempts which relate the satire to the contemporary Cobhams; see Leslie Hotson's study of the Cobhams in Shakespeare's Sonnets Dated and Other Essays (London, 1949), pp. 147-160; E. G. Clark, Raleigh and Marlowe: A Study in Elizabethan Fustian (New York, 1941), pp. 242-263. There are some inaccuracies in this latter study: a portrait of Sir Henry Cobham, the English ambassador to France who was knighted at Kenilworth in 1575, is ascribed as that of Henry, eighth Lord Cobham, Sir Henry's nephew. The remark that Henry Brooke's age was a well-kept secret is unfounded; the date of Henry's birth was published in Holinshed's Chronicles. He was born on the 22nd of November, 1564, and thus was the age of Shakespeare.

7. The Brut, edited by F. W. D. Brie, EETS, O.S. 136 (London, 1906-1908), pp.594-595.

8. Until the twentieth century the history of Sir John Oldcastle was written with great bias, either from a pro-Catholic or a pro-Protestant point of view. Modern scholars approach the problem of Oldcastle's martyrdom with more equanimity although there are still disagreements concerning the personality of the Lollard. See James H. Wylie, The Reign of Henry The Fifth (Cambridge, 1914-1929); W. T. Waugh, “Sir John Oldcastle,” English Historical Review, XX (1905), 434-456, 637-658; E. F. Jacob, The Fifteenth Century: 1399-1485 (Oxford, 1960); James Gairdner, Lollardy and the Reformation in England (London, 1908-1913); and of course the DNB, XLII, 86-93.

9. The Dialogues of Plato, tr. Benjamin Jowett (London, 1892), II, 266. Dover Wilson noted this parallel in the Cambridge edition of the play, but no critic that I can find has seen the significance of the satire. We revere Plato and Socrates too much. It may be worth while to note that in Elizabethan England the contemporary Lord Cobham had been compared with the noble Grecians by Francis Thynne, Lancaster Herald, in his eulogy of his patron which was made suspect because of its excision from Holinshed's Chronicles in 1586-87. Thynne used a quotation from The Republic which defined nobility as a class of men divided into four degrees: those nobles descended from kings and princes, those descended from good and virtuous ancestors, those who performed great feats of war, and those who excelled in “the prerogative of the Mind.” Thynne, of course, concluded his compliment by remarking that Lord Cobham possessed all these virtues: “… that Lord Cobham now living, being the glorie of that ancient and honorable familie, not onelie meriteth well of his countrie, as after shall appeare; but is also an honorable Mecenas of learning, a lover of learned persons, and not inferior in knowledge to anie of the borne nobilitie of England.” Raphael Holinshed, The Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande (London: 1586-87), III, 1499. It was an age of effusive dedications, but this praise must surely have rankled some of the “borne nobilitie.”

10. In the French translation of 1581 the relevant passage was printed as follows: “Mais quand Socrates sentit qu'en se promenant les iambes luy failloient, il se coucha à la renuerse, comme auoit dit le ministre, qui en le touchant vn peu apres, regardoit ses pieds & ses iambes: puis pressant fort l'vn des pieds, luy demanda s'il le sentoit, qui respondit que non, il en feit autant aux iambes, & peu à peu montant plus haut, il nous monstra ses parties estre desia toutes froides & roides.” Le Phedon De Platon. Le tout traduit de Grec en Francois … par Loys le Roy Dit Regivs (Paris; 1581), fol. 103^r.

11. The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophhres (Westmestre: W. Caxton, 1477), [fol. 26^r].

12. The satire used against the Cobhams is extremely complex; I am sure that I have not found all of it in my study of the problem. For a number of the ramifications see below, notes 15 and 16.

13. The Dialogues of Plato, II, 110-111. The allusion is even more complex when one recalls that Oldcastle too was lampooned by the fifteenth-century poets. See the anonymous poem, “Against the Lollards,” printed in Thomas Wright's Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History (London, 1861), II, 243-247; and see Hoccleve's poem which censures the defected knight, printed in The Poems of Richard James, ed. A. B. Grosart (London, 1880), pp. 138 ff.

14. Calendar of Salisbury Manuscripts, XV, 290.

15. Shakespeare's use of the Oldcastle allusions in the Henry IV plays is shadowy. We do not know how much revision these plays underwent when the character name was changed before the printing of the early quartos, but perhaps the Oldcastle allusions were always oblique. However, with the character of Falstaff bearing the martyr's name, almost any allusion would have been comprehensible to the Elizabethans, though today the modern reader finds those allusions unobtrusive unless he has made a detailed study of the chronicles of the fifteenth century. I find the allusions in the Henry IV plays functioning as prolepsis, as a foreshadowing of the history to come. In this sense they have a dual function: Oldcastle's later treasonable actions are suggested, but so too are the actions of the Elizabethan Cobhams. William Brooke dabbled in intrigue, and his sons were accused later of treason: one suffered a traitor's execution and the other spent his last sixteen years in the Tower of London. Shakespeare's technique with the allusions partakes of Sophoclean irony, and that irony was grounded, I believe, in truth as the poet saw it.

16. It is in 2H6 that Elinor Cobham's treason is handled by our playwright. As with the Oldcastle legend, Shakespeare goes back to the earlier pre-Reformation accounts of the story to find an incriminating version for his use. George Ferrers' use of the Elinor Cobham legend is a complex one. He at length got his “royal ballad” into print in the 1578 edition of the Mirror for Magistrates although the tragedies of the Duke of Gloucester and his wife Elinor were indexed in the 1559 and 1571 editions of the Mirror. See Lily Bess Campbell's introduction to The Mirror for Magistrates (New York, 1960), pp. 17-18; see the same scholar's article, “Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and Elianor Cobham His Wife in the Mirror for Magistrates,” HLB, V (1934), 119-155; Evaline Feasey, “The Licensing of the Mirror for Magistrates,” The Library, III (1922-23), 177-193. Ferrers' satire apparently was written when Lord Cobham's sister, Elizabeth Cobham, Marchioness of Northampton, was playing her hand in a dangerous game of diplomatic intrigue and treason. See also Michael Drayton, Englands Heroicall Epistles (London, 1598), sigs. H2 ff.; Christopher Middleton, The Legend of Humphrey, Duke of Glocester (London, 1600), sigs. D2 ff.; John Day, The Blind Beggar of Bednall Green (London, 1659). This play, published many years after its composition, was written by Day and Chettle and is comparable to the romantically unhistorical play, Sir John Oldcastle, in that it too “blanches” the character of an earlier Cobham accused of treason.

17. Thomas Nashe uses the roasting of the cob or miller's thumb before the Pope in his mock-epic legend in Lenten Stuffe, or Praise of the Red Herring. This attack on the Cobhams seems to have been launched after stern treatment was meted out to the authors of The Isle of Dogs in the summer of 1597, or so Nashe says in his prefatory remarks. Jonson, of course, uses the same theme in the dialogue of Cob in Every Man In His Humour.

18. Johan Bale, A Brefe Chronycle Concerning the Examinacyon and Death of the Blessed Martyr of Christ Syr Johan Oldcastell the Lorde Cobham [Antwerp? Hans Luft? 1544?], sig. H4.

19. John Foxe, Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Dayes, Touching Matters of the Church (London, 1563), p. 281.

20. John Stow, The Annales of England (London, 1592), p. 572. The italics are Stow's.

21. The major fifteenth-century accounts of Oldcastle's life and death are these: Thomas Walsingham, Ypodigma Neustriae (London, 1876), pp. 439 ff.; the same chronicler's Historia Anglicana (London, 1863-64), II, 298 ff. John Stow edited both of these manuscripts for Archbishop Parker in 1574. The Bodley Manuscript 462, ed. V. H. Galbraith as The Saint Albans Chronicle: 1406-1420 (Oxford, 1937) and which appears to have been in John Bale's possession at mid-sixteenth century, should supplement the Historia Anglicana. John Capgrave, The Chronicle of England (London, 1858), pp. 300 ff.; Thomas Netter of Walden, Fasciculi Zizaniorum (London, 1858), pp. 414 ff.; “Elhami Liber Metricus de Henrico Quinto,” Memorials of Henry the Fifth (London, 1858), pp. 77ff.; Chronica Regum Angliae Per Thomam Otterbourne, ed. Thomas Hearne (Oxford, 1716), pp. 2 ff.; Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, ed. Joseph Lumby (London, 1865-86), VIII, 549 ff.

    The transformation of Oldcastle's image from that of traitor to that of saint and martyr was accomplished by the “heresiarchs,” Tyndale, Bale, and Foxe. The latter's ebullient praise of the martyr, couched in his magnificently flamboyant prose, is the epicenter of The Acts and Monuments. Oldcastle's trial and the four major points of contention, concerning the sacraments of the altar, penance, images, and pilgrimages, were emphasized by all three writers. William Tyndale's “Bok of Thorpe” (The Examinacion of Master William Thorpe, Preste … The Examinacion of the Honorable Knight Syr Jhon Oldcastell Lord Cobham [Antwerp? 1530?]) was ordered burned in 1531, and only a unique copy remains in the British Museum—available, of course, on microfilm. Bale states in his Brefe Chronycle that he knew and used Tyndale's little book, and Foxe used both Bale's work and Tyndale's account of Oldcastle's trial. Foxe's account of Oldcastle's martyrdom grew to impressive size as he continued to edit and enlarge his book of martyrs during his lifetime.

22. Historia Anglicana, II, 295.

23. The Dictes or Sayengis, [fols. 74-76].

24. William Baldwin, A Treatice of Morall Philosophy (London, 1575), fols. 207^v, 246. This work was printed first in 1547; its popularity sent it through numerous editions before the end of the century.

25. N. D. [Robert Parsons], A Treatise of Three Conversions of England ([St. Omer,] 1603-04), II, 250. Other references to Oldcastle, “who was not only enemy to the Church and Cleargy, as before I have said: but also to the King and common wealth, & had devised a new King to set up against the old,” can be found at I, 490-491, 493-495, 540; II, unpaginated preface, 197-201, 245-51, 267-77. In his use of the Oldcastle legend Parsons was taking advantage of the propaganda technique perfected by the poets. I have found no relationship between Parsons and Shakespeare, but John Speed, the chronicler, seems to have suspected one when he remarked on the defamation of Oldcastle's character by the stage players and Parsons. See John Speed, The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (London, 1611), II, 637.

26. For primary materials concerning the Earl of Southampton's imprisonment see The Loseley Manuscripts, ed. A. J. Kempe (London, 1836), pp. 229 ff. Lord Cobham's role in the Rildolfi affair must be gleaned from the primary sources; he and his brother, Thomas, were acting as “pages” to the Duke of Norfolk. See William Murdin, A Collection of State Papers Relating to Affairs in the Reign of Elizabeth (London, 1759), pp. 10 ff. Cobham's deposition is printed in the Calendar of State Papers, Scotland, 1571-1574, pp. 9-10. Lord Burghley was protecting Cobham, in a sense, and Cobham apparently turned state's evidence. See Dugdale's comment on the affair: Cobham, “being one of the Lords committed to the Tower of London for complying with the Duke of Norfolk, in his design of marrying the Queen of Scotland, upon hope of pardon discovered all he knew therein.” The Baronage of England (London, 1675), II, 282.

27. Arthur Collins, Letters and Memorials of State in the Reigns of Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, King James (London, 1746), II, 25.

28. Leslie Hotson describes some of these tensions in his chapter on the Cobhams in Shakespeare's Sonnets Dated and Other Essays, pp. 147-160.

29. W. A. Scott Robertson, “Six Wills Relating to Cobham Hall,” Archaeologia Cantiana, XI (1877), 209-216.

30. Printed by A. A. Arnold, “Cobham College,” Archaeologia Cantiana, XXVII (1905), 80. It was William Lambarde who established one of the first Protestant “hospitals” or “colleges” in Elizabethan England in 1576 at Greenwich.

31. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Ninth Report, Part I, 286.

32. Printed from the original by A. A. Arnold, op. cit., p. 81.

33. F. D. Hoeniger has kindly informed me that the plaque above the ruined archway still stands in Kent.

34. Mill Stephenson, A List of Monumental Brasses in the British Isles (London, 1926), p. 221.

35. The list of commentators on the famous Table is almost endless. The most nearly complete article on the history of the emendations and revisions of this Folio line is that of E. G. Fogel, “‘A Table of Green Fields’ A Defense of the Folio Reading,” SQ, IX (1958), 485-492. See also the series of letters to the editor of the TLS in April and May of 1956: Leslie Hotson, “Falstaff's Death and Greenfield's,” TLS, April 6, p. 212; Sir Ernest Barker, “The Death of Falstaff,” TLS, April 13, p. 221; Oliffe Richmond, “The Death of Falstaff,” TLS, April 27, p. 253; N. Young, “The Death of Falstaff,” TLS, April 20, p. 237; Sir Ernest Barker, TLS, May 4, p. 269. In addition see an interesting article which suggests allusions to heraldry in the phrase: Hilda Hulme, “The Table of Green Fields,” Essays in Criticism, VI (1956), 117-119. This suggestion was answered by John S. Tuckey, “‘Table of Greene Fields’ Explained,” Essays in Criticism, VI (1956), 486-491. Philip Williams also considers the problem of the Table in “The Birth and Death of Falstaff Reconsidered,” SQ, VIII (1957), 359-365, and so does A. A. Mendilow, “Falstaff's Death of a Sweat,” SQ, IX (1958), 479-483.

36. See John M. Steadman's article, “Falstaff's ‘Facies Hippocratica,’ A Note on Shakespeare and Renaissance Medical Theory,” Studia Neophilologia, XXIX (1957), 130-135; see also A. S. Macnalty's article, “Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More,” Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, XII (1959), 36-57, which contains a section on the death of Falstaff and Shakespeare's possible use of More's De Quatuor Novissimis. In addition see Mendilow, op. cit., 479-483; Fleissner, op. cit., 47-55. For a survey of the ars moriendi literature of the later middle ages and the Renaissance, see the study by Sister Mary Catherine O'Connor, The Art of Dying Well (New York, 1942). One of these “courtesy books,” the Cordiale Siue De Quatour Nouissimis which Lord Rivers translated from the French of Jean Mielot, was printed by Caxton in 1479. This death literature enjoyed tremendous vogue. The signs of death (quibus signis cognoscitur moriens) are to be found in many books of the sixteenth century, and it is obvious, as least to me, that Shakespeare was aware of this large body of commonplace knowledge. He turns it, it would seem, into a most allusive and suggestive imagery.

37. The First Folio does not contain scene and line numbers for Henry V. I am using the facsimile of the British Museum copy (G. 11631) for punctuation, but for line identification I am using the New Arden text (1960) which is based on the Cambridge Shakespeare text of 1891. The problem of the compositor enters into any discussion of punctuation. We know that Falstaff's death scene falls within the first twelve pages of Henry V which were set by the two Folio compositors (Hinman labels them A and B) working from a manuscript copy. If Hinman's observations are correct, sig. h4a was set by Compositor B after he had finished sig. h3^v. Compositor A set sig. h4b (the column in which the “Table of greene fields” occurs), working simultaneously with Compositor B who was setting up the left column of this page to assist his partner. See Charlton Hinman, The Printing and Proof-Reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare (Oxford, 1963), II, 14-19. Since the particular use of the comma to separate compound subjects and objects occurs on both sig. h3^v and sig. h4b, I am assuming that the compositors were following the punctuation of the manuscript. This cannot be proved, of course, because both men may have had the same habits of punctuation, habits which differed in comma usage from the manuscript before them. If we look for additional examples of this use of the comma in other plays in the First Folio, instances can be found. In King Lear: Turne all her Mothers paines, and benefits / To laughter, and contempt (I. iv. 310-11). In Hamlet: And I do doubt the hatch, and the disclose / Will be some danger. (III. i. 175-76). In Measure for Measure: Your brother, and his louer haue embrac'd (I. iv. 40). These and additional examples not only from Shakespeare's plays but from Donne and Browne as well are listed by Percy Simpson, Shakespearian Punctuation (Oxford, 1911), pp. 47-48.

38. This latter meaning of Pen, which comes from the ancient Celtic language, was first suggested as a relevant definition by John Tuckey, op. cit., pp. 486-491.

39. John Bartlett, A Complete Concordance (London, 1956), p. 1512.

40. The technical term, obelisk, in use in England by 1549, apparently was never used by Shakespeare in his writings.

41. A description of New College and excellent photographs of Cobham Hall, Cobham Church with its unusually fine brasses, and the village are given by Christopher Hussey, “Cobham, Kent: A Mediaeval Parish,” Country Life, XCV (1944), 200-203, 244-247. Ralph Arnold also describes New College in A Yeoman of Kent (London, 1949), pp. 11-17, 164.

42. I should perhaps remark that OED lists a specialized definition of Table which is an architectural term meaning a horizontal projecting course or moulding, as a cornice, usually with a defining word, such as corbel-table, etc. (Table, sb., #12, a). Shakespeare may have had such terminology in mind; my preference of meanings, however, is for the definition of Table as a memorial tablet or stone. This meaning, it seems to me, fits more appropriately with the definition of Pen as shaft.

43. The research for this article was made possible by a Henry E. Huntington Library grant-in-aid.