In one modern edition of Shakespeare's The First Part of King Henry the Fourth, Falstaff, in a fit of exuberant swearing, describes Hal as an "eel-skin." But in another edition, the word is "elfskin." What's going on? Only one of these curious words can be "correct."
Paunchy Falstaff attacks Prince Hal with a string of half-comic, half-offensive epithets: "you starveling, you elfskin (or eel-skin), you dried neat's tongue, you bulls-pizzle, you stockfish...." A "starveling" is a person emaciated by hunger, "stockfish" is desiccated cod, and a "bull's pizzle," which an Elizabethan might dry to use as a whip, is self-explanatory. But "elfskin" or "eelskin?" "Elfskin" is the original reading, although in actual fact the earliest quarto prints not "elfskin" but "elsskin" where the first "s" is the old-fashioned "long s." "Elsskin" was as incomprehensible then as now and someone who participated in the making of the 1623 Folio changed the word to "elfskin" on the grounds, it is easy to imagine, that the first of the two long s's properly signified an "f." If "elfskin" is a word, then it's a Shakespearean coinage -- the word being otherwise unknown and the skin of elves not a subject of speculation even in an era that took such imaginary beings more seriously than does ours. Is it possible that, considering the context, "elfskin" could carry the meaning "as thin as fairy skin" -- even though elves were generally described as small and stunted rather than diaphonous?
The alternative, "eel-skin" is the inspiration of Sir Thomas Hanmer, whose edition of Shakespeare's works appeared in 1744. "Eel-skin" jibes with "stockfish" and "neat's tongue" as an example of Falstaff's fixation on edibles, although it was the eel itself rather than its skin that was the delicacy. As Hanmer well knew, Shakespeare had used the word "eel-skin" in a not dissimilar context in King John, when Philip the Bastard described his feeble half-brother's skinny arms as "two eel-skins stuffed."
"Elfskin" is therefore the earlier reading, closer by 150 years to William S. himself, but "eel-skin," though it dates only to the mid-eighteenth century, is much more colorful and apposite. It's therefore entirely possible that Hanmer restored Shakespeare's original intention. Possible, but not proven.
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