reminds Falstaff of his own manner of life and probable fate.
I. ii. 39. Achitophel. The counsellor of Absalom (II Samuel 15-17) who was cursed by David, and who 'gat him home to his house and hanged himself' after Absalom rejected his counsel.
I. ii. 40. yea-forsooth knave. The reference is to the mild oaths employed by the Puritanical middleclass tradespeople of Shakespeare's own day. Cf. Hotspur's ridicule of this same trait in 1 Henry IV, III. i. 251 ff.
I. ii. 51-54. Falstaff is here playing with the ancient jest that deceived husbands wear invisible horns. Lightness is obviously used in a double sense, and the old spelling of lanthorn, which emphasizes the horn sides of an Elizabethan lantern, carries out the jest.
I. ii. 57. Paul's. The nave of St. Paul's Cathedral was in Shakespeare's day the business center of London. From eleven to twelve, and three to six, daily, men of all professions and trades congregated there. Men out of work, and masters looking for servants, posted their advertisements on the pillars of the nave. Falstaff is probably referring here to a popular saying, quoted in The Choice of Change, 1598: 'A man must not make choice of three things in three places: of a wife in Westminster, of a servant in Paul's, of a horse in Smithfield; lest he choose a quean, a knave, or a jade.' Smithfield is the great cattle market of London.
I. ii. 61, 62 This episode from The Famous Victories of Henry V is reprinted in Appendix A, see pp. 142, 143.
I. ii. 102. hunt counter. A hunting term meaning to follow the trail in a direction opposite to that which the game has taken. There is also perhaps
