had left him as Parolles in _Love's
Labour's Won_, and allowing for a short lapse of time, and the effects
of the life he had resolved to live, introduces him in _Henry IV._,
Part I. Act 1. Scene ii., as follows:

FAL. Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?

PRINCE. Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack and
unbuttoning thee after supper and sleeping upon benches after noon,
that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou would'st
truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day?
Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the
tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the
blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see
no reason why thou should'st be so superfluous to demand the time of
day.

In Parolles and Falstaff we have displayed the same lack of moral
consciousness, the same grossly sensuous materialism, and withal, the
same unquenchable optimism and colossal impudence.

When we remember that though Shakespeare based his play upon the old
_Famous Victories of Henry V._ and took from it the name Oldcastle, that
the actual characterisation of his Oldcastle--Falstaff--has no prototype
in the original, the abrupt first entry upon the scene of this
tavern-lounger and afternoon sleeper-upon-benches, as familiarly
addressing the heir apparent as "Hal" and "lad," supplies a good
instance of Shakespeare's method--noticed by Maurice Morgann--of making
a character _act and speak from those parts of the composition which are
inferred only and not distinctly shown_; but to the initiated, including
Southampton and his friends, who knew the bumptious self-sufficiency of
Shakespeare's living model, and who followed the developing
characterisation from play to play, the effect of such bold dramatic
strokes must have been irresistibly diverting.

It is difficult now to realise the avidity with which such publications
as Florio's _First_ and _Second Fruites_ were welcomed from the press
and read by the cultured, or culture-seeking, public of his day. Italy
being then regarded as the centre of culture and fashion a colloquial
knowledge of Italian was a fashionable necessity. A reference in a
current play to an aphorism of Florio's or to a characteristic passage
from the proverbial philosophy of which he constructs his
Italian-English conversations, which would pass unnoticed now, would be
readily recogn