II. iv. 268. reasons. A play on the words reasons and raisins, which were pronounced alike.
II. iv. 325. royal. A royal was 10s.; a noble 6s. 8d.
II. iv. 355-362. Bardolph becomes angry and adopts a threatening attitude. 'My red face,' he implies, 'portends choler (anger).' Hal finds it merely a sign of a hot liver (caused by drinking) and an empty purse (also caused by drink). When Bardolph insists that it is choler, Hal quibblingly interprets choler as collar, and suggests that if his face were rightly taken, it would be taken by a halter.
II. iv. 430. King Cambyses. A ranting bombastic tragedy by Thomas Preston (1570). Line 436 shows that Falstaff knew more than the name of the play, one line of which reads: '(At this tale tolde let the Queene weep.)
Queene: These wordes to hear makes stilling teares
issue from christal eyes.'
II. iv. 443. Falstaff may be referring to the Hostess as a pint-pot always well filled with tickle-brain, or he may be using tickle-brain not in its technical sense, but merely as an appropriate word for describing the flighty character of the Hostess.
II. iv. 444 ff. Falstaff is here burlesquing the somewhat pompous and artificial style of King Henry, and Shakespeare is, at the same time, burlesquing the fashionable and artificial prose style of his own contemporaries, known as Euphuism. This style was exemplified in John Lyly's Euphues (1578-1580), and its chief characteristics are: (1) The constant use of antithesis, (2) The use of alliteration to emphasize the antithetic clauses, (3) The frequent use of a long string of similes all relating to the same subject, often taken from the fabulous qualities ascribed to plants, animals, and minerals, (4) The constant use of rhetorical questions, (5) Frequent
