There are in his plays several characters that one feels would be all the better for a pipe. To take only the chief—Falstaff. It is inconceivable that he would not have smoked had he been given the chance. Smoked and smoked prodigiously, and have likened himself to no common mountain, but to a volcano, For tobacco he would have sponged on the Prince, and made a proud show of his endowment, and have run up a score heavier than his score at the Garter. He would have called hither Bardolph that he might light his pipe at his nose. Nothing short of the Union could have put his pipe out, the Union and the royal Counterblast against Tobacco," of which the cause may well have been that King James's tongue was so large as to leave no room in his mouth for anything else. Of course, it may be said that Falstaff came into "The Merry Wives of Windsor'' already committed to the days of Henry IV., when there was no tobacco, and that hehad to behave accordingly, even though Shakespeare was now drawing the folk of his own better-found days—it is the only play in which he does so -—~and a Windsor that originally stood: on the banks of Avon.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.