better thou hadst struck thy mother, thou paper-faced
villain.

HOST. O the Lord, that Sir John were come! he would make this a
bloody day to somebody. But I pray God the fruit of her womb
miscarry.

The natural sequel to the conditions so plainly indicated in the
passages quoted from the lately revised _Love's Labour's Lost_,
regarding Jaquenetta and Armado, and from the recently written _Henry
IV._ in reference to Doll Tearsheet and Falstaff, is reported in due
time in a postscript to a letter written by Elizabeth Vernon, now Lady
Southampton, on 8th July 1599, to her husband, who was in Ireland with
Essex. She writes from Chartley:

"All the nues I can send you that I thinke will make you mery is that
I reade in a letter from London that Sir John Falstaff is by his
Mistress Dame Pintpot made father of a godly millers thum a boye
thats all heade and very litel body: but this is a secret."

Here we have record that Shakespeare's patron, and his patron's wife,
knew that Falstaff had a living prototype who was numbered among their
acquaintances. That the birth of this child was not in wedlock is
suggested by the concluding words of the Countess's letter "but this is
a secret."

The identification of Florio as the original caricatured as Parolles and
Falstaff has never been anticipated, though some critics have noticed
the basic resemblances between these two characters of Shakespeare's.
Parolles has been called by Schlegel, "the little appendix to the great
Falstaff."

A few slight links in the names of characters have led some commentators
to date a revision of _All's Well that Ends Well_ at about the same time
as that of the composition of _Measure for Measure_ and _Hamlet_. While
the links of subjective evidence I have adduced for one revision in, or
about, the autumn of 1598, and at the same period as that of the
composition of the _Second Part of Henry IV._, of the final revision of
_Love's Labour's Lost_, and shortly after the production of _Troilus and
Cressida_, in 1598, are fairly conclusive, a consideration of the
characterisation of Falstaff in the _First Part of Henry IV._ and of the
evidence usually advanced for the date of the composition of this play
will elucidate this idea.

The _First Part of Henry IV._ in its present form belongs to a period
shortly preceding the date of its entry in the Stationers' Registers, in
February 1598. I am convinced that it was published at t