II. iv. 194. Most editors assume that Pistol is

speaking bad Italian. The Cambridge editors sug¬ gest that it is perhaps bad Spanish, and that he is reading the motto on his Toledo blade. Douce gives an illustration of a sword with a French version of this motto inscribed upon it. Farmer says: ‘Pistol is only a copy of Hannibal Gonsaga who vaunted on yielding himself a prisoner, as you may read in an old collection of tales called Wits, Fits, Fancies:
Si Fortuna me tormenta II speranza me contenta.’
Whatever the language, the meaning of Pistol’s motto is, If Fortune torments me, Hope contents me.